Brontoforumus

Scans of a Batman zine from the 60s and 70s. Figured some people here might be interesting in looking through and seeing what the fans were concerned about at the time.

The Lego Batman Movie is the latest in the 8-year trend of recognizing that, you know what, Batman '66 was actually pretty cool.

It's a fun 90 minutes, loaded with cameos, references, and Easter eggs. There's not a whole lot of depth there, but it spends time on a couple of rich Batman themes, chiefly his creation of a surrogate family and his symbiotic and almost romantic relationship with the Joker.

Bruce Timm is working on a direct-to-video Batman and Harley Quinn movie. Kevin Conroy and Loren Lester return as Batman and Nightwing; Melissa Rauch is Harley; Paget Brewster is Ivy.

It looks enough like The New Batman Adventures that I'm ready to assume it's the first new DCAU story in 11 years.

How have I never heard of this? Bruce Timm, John DiMaggio, Tara Strong.

I'm surprised. Animated gifs of that pole-dancing scene have been making the rounds for years.

Yeah, I really liked the DC shorts but they kinda quietly disappeared. Probably down to the misfortune of being a DVD special feature right when DVDs were on the way out. But my belief in short cartoons is well-documented. (I particularly liked the Spectre and Jonah Hex shorts and the realization that they were basically the same story in two completely different settings.)

Catwoman on a stripper pole really plays into all the worst stereotypes about the kind of people who watch direct-to-video PG-13 superhero cartoons, though.

Mothra wrote:Bruce Timm, John DiMaggio, Tara Strong.

Yeah, kinda; Timm produced (that and all the DC Universe movies for the first few years) but those definitely aren't his character designs; DiMaggio and Strong are the second- and third-billed voices after Eliza Dushku as Catwoman.

Penny Arcade did a strip and post about "Batman and Bill", with Tycho touching on the aspect of authorship.

Relevant to a few people in this thread, I think.

Yeah, I've been meaning to check out Batman and Bill; I hear good things, and Nobleman has really been a fantastic advocate for Finger's legacy over the years. He was probably the greatest driving force in finally getting Finger that co-creator credit, and I believe he's also the guy who tracked down Bill's granddaughter Athena. (Uh, spoiler alert, I guess? Is it a spoiler if the film in question is a documentary?)

(Nobleman shot my an e-mail once thanking me for my Not My Batman blog post -- I guess he probably just trawls Google for people talking about Bill Finger? Anyway, seemed like a nice guy too.)

When your mission is to make sure people hear about this guy, I don't see "googling the guy to see who else heard of him" to be too far off.

Rausch is going to take some getting used to. (I kinda think of Tara Strong as the regular Harley since '11, but per IMDb there have actually been quite a few of them.) Brewster sounds a little off if your ear's expecting Diane Pershing, too, of course, but not as noticeably so.

And hey, Alec Holland's name's in there; presumably that means he'll be showing up, which is pretty cool. We've never seen Timm do Swamp Thing, have we?

"This is no ordinary leafy mouse!"

Haven't caught Batman and Harley yet; I don't hear good things, unfortunately.

But this could be good:



I really like what they're doing with shadow. Mignola's style is hard to translate into animation, but it looks like Timm's up to his usual visual standard here.

Now if only they could actually reprint the comics.

Looks like it's in print in the US ($11.69 at Amazon (affiliate link)). Not sure why it'd be hard to come by in Canada if we can get it here, but I'd say keep an eye out, I'd expect it to be available sooner than later.

DC does seem to have trouble with its reprint schedule. I'm still waiting for Fourth World vol 4 to come back into print; I've got the first 3 but never got to finish it.

Course, neither did Kirby.

Thad wrote:Haven't caught Batman and Harley yet; I don't hear good things, unfortunately.

Saw it yesterday and absolutely loved it. If people are saying it's a disappointment, I don't really understand why.

It's a Bruce Timm DVD movie done in the style of the original batman DCAU series. Timeline-wise I think it actually takes place after Joker dropped Harley off the ledge in Return of the Joker, since she mentions him only once to literally call him an asshole.

It is also horny as hell, with most of the limited budget going into lots of A+ shots of Harley writhing and shaking her butt and such. I didn't particularly mind since that just feels really in-character for her, but, I could see it getting obnoxious for some. Also, animation is sometimes jankey thanks to the lower budget.





I thought they did a perfect job with Harley - she’s spot on the whole way through.

The tone was constantly fighting between full-on farce and Regular Batman Mystery With Goofy Character In It, so, I didn't love that. I wish they'd have picked one tone and stuck with it.

I think the thing is that they didn’t really need Batman to be in this one. I think Nightwing would’ve worked just as well playing the straight man to Harley’s antics, and he would’ve filled the role of reserved on-task dweeb. Hell, it could’ve even worked as a way to develop Nightwing more, drive home the differences between his style and Batman’s, and set the stage for him eventually splitting off to go solo.

Ah well, overall it was delightful.

Robert Pattinson is replacing Ben Affleck as Batman. He's a fine actor when he's got the right script, but so's Affleck. So's Clooney. "The right script" is the part I'm iffy on.

I'd say that the age difference between the two of them all but confirms that Flashpoint is going to be a continuity reset and they'll have to throw out most of the Dark Knight Returns Old Batman stuff. (Though I'd be interested in a version where they kill off Affleck and have Pattinson play Dick as Batman -- the villain's already going to be Deathstroke, who's always been more Dick's villain than Bruce's.)

Much as I hate DC's periodic continuity resets in the comics, I can certainly see the appeal in the movies of a plot explanation that throws out all the shit people didn't like but keeps the shit they did (Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam, Harley Quinn, and hopefully they'll be keeping Jeremy Irons and JK Simmons in Pattinson's supporting cast).

The problem as I see it is that Flashpoint itself is a grimdark Geoff Johns story that's perfectly in keeping with all the shit that's wrong with the DCEU. And last I heard, the latest delay was because Ezra Miller wanted a darker script, because "Flash is too fun; let's make him more like Batman" has been the driving ethos of the character since 2009. Fixing what's wrong with the DCEU by adapting Flashpoint seems like a "Dig up, stupid!" solution.

There's another Dark Knight Returns sequel coming.

Which, under ordinary circumstances, would be a big "nope", but Rafael Grampa is drawing it, so I'm...considering it. I'm not crazy about giving Frank Miller more money, but man, I love Grampa's work.

Slowly working my way through Batman: TAS on Blu-Ray. Going to run the whole series, even the lesser episodes.

And it doesn't get any lesser than The Underdwellers, but I watched that today and it still has its charm. Some really gorgeous animation and solid performances. As bad as the episode is, Conroy's delivery in the bit about "I don't pass sentence; that's for the courts. But in your case I'm sorely tempted" is one of his all-time best line reads, for my money.

Though in an episode full of WTFs, the WTFiest is that Bruce Wayne has a fucking gun collection.

Thad wrote:Bruce Wayne has a fucking gun collection.

Somehow that makes perfect sense to me under the "Bruce Wayne is the costume" philosophy. I don't remember how far TAS pushed that concept though.