Comic Book Rehab

What Would James Bond Really Listen To On Spotify?

2026-10-03T11:50:54.076-07:00

From King Zero:

I'm craving gummi sharks, now:

Ah, an "#iseewhatyoudidthere" inside joke.

Let's try imagining a playlist that doesn't include people who sang the title songs for the films:

Okay. :-)

Gum In Her Hair: A Tom Lingquist Mystery

2026-06-24T06:44:59.000-07:00

He's back! Tom Lingquist - part-time movie theater employee, full-time Private Investigator, with a new mystery, currently available in paperback and ebook format, with the hardcover volume coming soon. It's currently available anywhere books are sold online, like Amazon or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer to check it out from your local library, you may, but if they don't have it in stock or on order, you'll simply have to request it - most public libraries like carrying books they know people want to read, unless it's a book not offered by the distributor; all of my books are available for them to order via Ingram, Hoopla and Overdrive.

So, what's it about?

What's not in the description that I left for the readers to discover is that I devote some time to unveil elements of Tom's personal life. Characters introduced in the first book, Baroness Sells Books, - Alex, Mike, Grimmer, Bailey, Vanessa, L.T. - return in this one. You'll also be introduced to new characters, like Grace, Pia, Tara, Lisa, Vivian, Tony, Christine and Elizabeth. Characters who played key roles in Baroness Sells Books - Melody, Esther, Rob - get mentioned in a coda of sorts. The events in this new book take place during the same year as the first one, roughly 8 months later, in time for Halloween, available to own on Summerween.

Also available is a re-release of my Urban Fantasy novella, As She Wishes . Frequent visitors to the blog might recall this title, when it premiered as an ebook in 2014.

Cover to the hardcover edition.

Cover to the paperback edition.

I've given it a new cover for its debut in paperback and hardcover. It is also available to purchase at Barnes and Noble online. Purchasing any of my books in hardcover or paperback at Barnes and Noble's website allows you the option of picking up your copy at any of their brick-and-mortar locations. And yes, if you prefer to check it out at your local library, it is available for them to put on order upon request, if they have not done so.

So click on the links and give either or both books a try. Happy reading!

Make A Promise, Keep A Promise/Promises Made, Promises Kept

2026-06-04T21:48:15.030-07:00

#MakeAPromiseKeepAPromise

#PromisesMadePromisesKept

Tom Lingquist...is returning.

"TO THE LIBRARY!"

2026-05-07T23:44:07.133-07:00

Technically, it would be at the library

across from this location; kinda ironic

that the most iconic location for a

library is more like a museum..

I've achieved 2 new goals in getting my first mystery novel published: the hardcover edition is now available as a traditional, clothbound hardcover with dust jacket.

The Back Cover.

This edition is not just available to order at Amazon..it's also available for libraries to stock on their shelves. If you haven't given my book a try because it's not available at the public library to borrow, that's not a problem; simply ask your librarian to order a copy - it is available through Ingram, the main distribution company that libraries order books from to fill and update their shelves with new books; most libraries have a "Suggest a book"/"Recommend a book"/"Request a book" form on the homepage of their website; requesting this book will also help other readers of mystery and detective fiction find the debut of a new series to read:

The ISBN for Baroness Sells Books (ISBN-13: 9798295816307) helps the library sort through thousands of entries in the catalog. Once they order it, you'll only need your library card..

I'll end this with an excerpt from the new hardcover edition of Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery by Joseph Adorno :

"Baroness Sells Books" UPDATE

2026-03-06T19:50:00.000-08:00

New year, new and improved cover for Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery, available only at Amazon:

The cover to the

Hardcover & Paperback editions.

Cover to the Ebook on Kindle.

You may recall, my first attempt was to have the cover be the cover of Baroness Holly, the novel written by the unfortunate first-time author, part-time movie theater employee, Adrian Hernandez:

The Ebook cover used a simple black-and-red design, a riff on having a character named Baroness:

This one's for the G.I. Joe fans.

The next attempt is what I call the grainy photograph cover. It's supposed to be an image of Melody Valle, one of the characters in the book. My issue with it was that I could never get it to look sharp enough without making it more grainy. Another problem, similar to the Barones Holly gimmick cover, is that it could be confused with being erotica, rather than a private eye novel.

Melody Valle.

One thing that stuck around after that iteration was the design and colors I used for the titles.

Almost there. Nice try.

And here we are. For the first time, the movie theater setting at the heart of the book gets it's turn on the cover, while the initial illustrated Baroness Holly novel-as-the-cover concept gets to stay in there. The debut of part-time movie theater employee, full-time private eye Tom Lingquist now has a cover that's a keeper. I'm sticking with this one. Once again, it's only available at Amazon

Kudos...Meme-made Kudos

2026-03-06T19:41:00.000-08:00

How nice to see accolades about my book:

;)

Baroness Sells Books - UPDATE

2026-03-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

My mystery novel, Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery is only available at Amazon.com. I'm halfway through the next book featuring Tom Lingquist. I'll say one thing about it: if your favorite parts of Baroness Sells Books was all the little details about Tom's job at the Persephone29 multiplex, there's more of that in this next one. If your favorite part of that book was the twists and turns that connected a silly romance novel to the deaths of three people, there's more of that in the next book, too. If your favorite part of Baroness Sells Books were my descriptions of the various attractive women Tom Lingquist encounters in the book, there's more of that, too. If your favorite part of Baroness Sells Books is Tom Lingquist as a detective, well, there's more of him, too. If your favorite part of Baroness Sells Books is that it was about the same length as a Goosebumps book, well...this next one might be a little longer. If your favorite part of Baroness Sells Books were my covers, I've got something in mind for this next one, too.

And if your favorite part of Baroness Sells Books is that it was available only at Amazon and the ebook is FREE if you're a Kindle Unlimited subscriber? The next book will be there, too.

The "Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery by Joseph Adorno" Music Needle-Drop Playlist!

2026-03-06T19:36:00.001-08:00

First things first, in that order:

Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery by Joseph Adorno (that's ME) is available now, only at Amazon,

The plot:

Now, in my previous post regarding this book, I toyed with imagining the cast of a film adaptation; this time, I'm imagining the soundtrack...a Needle-Drop Playlist..'Needle-Drop' being the unofficial term often-used when, for example, to describe director Martin Scorsese's ability to insert pop music into his films and integrate them into his narrative to inform and underpin, but never undermine his narratives..it's a gift.

Here's how it'll work: I'll name the song and artist and describe the moments in which they are meant to be heard in the background; you can listen to them while reading the book, certainly; you can even combine this with my casting choices and picture it all coming together in your imagination. Obviously, there's no original score, which would've found a way to integrate the insertion of these songs, or even sample them to inspire riffs on them; a big-budget adaptation, really - a modestly-budgeted version would probably just have the songs and no score..and no room for Leo as Tom Linguist, though it might get Jenna Ortega as Melody..Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood..

Which is why I'm insisting this is a playlist for the book..available at Amazon

Let's begin:

1. Jafu - "Bag of Tricks" (2013): This instrumental number makes a nice opening theme, introducing us to my detective, Tom Lingquist, his office, his friend - attorney Alexandra "Alex" Waidbern (the closest I get to giving him a Watson in this book) and introducing his newest case, which leads to..

2. Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson - "Barry Lyndon Is A Boring Movie" (2013): Another instrumental number, with the most misleading title ever - it was created as an original piece for the documentary, ROOM 237, a speculative film in which fans of THE SHINING present theories and observations about the movie and its director, Stanley Kubrick; this music appeared in a scene where one of the fans posits that Kubrick made The Shining to escape from his ennui, which was manifesting in his work (or so the guy says); he believed that Kubrick, 'With an I.Q. of about 200', made BARRY LYNDON while he was 'bored...BARRY LYNDON is a very boring movie'; the composers must have found that remark so amusing, they decided to name the original music created for that scene after it, thus leading to a lot of confusion on YouTube, where irate fans of Kubrick are quick to vent their anger without being in on the joke.

For my intents and purposes, I imagined this music plays anytime that the story dwells upon the mysterious death of Adrian Hernandez and his book, BARONESS HOLLY.

3. The Midnight - "Helvetica" (2020): yeah, another instrumental number, but I thought it was cute, to be heard while reading the scene introducing Tom's apartment, or the scenes between himself and Alex.

4. Trauma Cat - "Popcorn Machine" (2020): the first song with vocals on the playlist; I found it hilarious that it's essentially a riff on the old 'Let's all go to the lobby' jingle; to be played and replayed with any scene in the book with Tom arriving for work at the multiplex, Persephone29, as well as any scenes during his various shifts.

5. Roman Holiday - Don't Try To Stop It (1983): I LOVE this song! I have no idea why it's become so obscure, but I remember first hearing it in the mid-80's, as a kid, when it was included as a series of music videos by Hanna-Barbera called HBTV, which would take the songs & vocals and mash them with an assortment of stock footage from their library to create a 'music video', similar to what Disney was doing with DTV around the same time:

The song fits perfectly with scenes of Tom, Melody and Rob setting up the concession stand, along with the subsequent chase scene up the escalators...don't try to stop it, don't try to stop it..I might also add that the song sounds like another riff on the 'Let's All Go To The Lobby' jingle.

6. Fire, INC. - "Nowhere Fast" (1984): this is just in here because it's mentioned in the book, but no lyrics are quoted; it's alluded to being used in a film I made-up for the world within-the-book, titled PINK BLAZE. Once that song is name-dropped, as soon as you look it up, it will stay in your brain for awhile; it's become obscure because it's not identified with a particular singer; the female lead vocals were actually an autotuned mix of 3 different singers.

7. Rema, ft. Selena Gomez - "Calm Down" (2022): this song gets mixed in a lot of TIkTok videos and shorts on social media; in the book, it gets used in a bit of dark comedy, the aftermath of Rob taking his big...leap.

8. The Scarlet Pimpernel (Musical)/Terrence Mann - "Where's The Girl?" (1997): Simply, in my opinion, the best song in the musical adaptation of Baroness Emma Orczy's adventure novel. Particularly effective juxtaposition with the sequences where Lingquist begins to doubt his own line of inquiry and ponder if he's going on a wild goose chase.

9. `Panski & John Skyfield Phil Collins cover mix - "In The Air Tonight" - (House mix, 2018): this is interesting..a remix of a Phil Collins classic, it has a different vibe, different energy; when I first heard it, I thought it would've been perfect for a BATGIRL movie trailer to set the mood just right..particularly if the producers hadn't cast a relative unknown in the lead and cast Lily Collins as Barbara Gordon..yeah, I still can't get over what might've been:

Who's that girl?..Batgirl.

And the Michael Keaton cameo

One more:

EMILY IN GOTHAM

One for the road:

Maybe there's hope...

Moving on, this song is mentioned playing as part of the playlist heard at Jill's, the restaurant Tom goes to for the beginning of his date with Esther, one of his co-workers; this is the first of 3 songs name-dropped in the book during this key scene. The 2nd song is...

10. The Midnight - "Vampires" (Instrumental, 2016): another Instrumental version of a song in which the instrumental version is arguably superior to the original version, which has vocals, yet the instrumental version realizes how music has a vibe that can be reworked to various moods; in this case, it's another song playing at Jill's restaurant, played after Esther has arrived to meet with Tom and their conversation picks up.

11. Layo & Bushwacka! - "Blind Tiger" (2002): THIS is another song that's fallen into obscurity, but deserves more attention; it was featured in a segment of THE MATRIX tie-in sequel, THE ANIMATRIX, titled, "A DETECTIVE STORY"..and in THIS book, it is name-dropped as the final song playing at Jill's restaurant during Tom and Esther's time there, particularly right after the moment when a jar of pills spills out of Esther's handbag...

12. Madonna - "Who's That Girl?" (1987),

13. Eve - "Who's That Girl?" (2001),

And..

14. Eurythmics - "Who's That Girl?" (1983): for the end I thought it would be fitting to not JUST have one, but all THREE best-known pop songs titled "Who's That Girl?"; I took some care to arrange the order in which they appear on the list; they sorta lead into each other. 'Who IS Baroness Holly?' is the mystery that drives the book; by the end, the mystery is solved, though the songs serve as an extra coda to the one that appears in the final chapter.

And there you have it: "Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery" - The Needle-Drop Playlist.

Book available only at Amazon

Have a Happy Reading Experience!

"Baroness Sells Books" - One Month Later

2026-03-06T19:36:00.000-08:00

Where to begin?

With the book, of course!

Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery by Joseph Adorno is currently available only at Amazon in 3 formats: Hardcover, Paperback and Ebook on Kindle; the ebook is FREE for Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

What's the book about?

After a few weeks, the book has appeared on lists:

I see you, "Top Release" bar.

And while attempting to self-promote across social media, I often cross paths with "people" who, by way of introducing themselves, will either like a post or reply with a quote that reposts my post, in hope that I would be interested in paying them to promote Baroness Sells Books on my behalf. It sounds pretty nifty in theory, but I would be more impressed if they had purchased a copy of my book and then tease what they could bring to the table by knowing something about it.

By the way, as an aside, I find promoting a book on Reddit akin to walking into a motorcycle bar the day after you purchased a motorcycle for the first time...

He's lucky they didn't eat him

alive.

These were the best efforts at currying favor, though:

This tweet reads as if they

had read the screenshot of

the summary on the back

cover...with one eye open;

Tom Lingquist is a private

eye who has been working

at a movie theater; he's not

an amateur sleuth - he's

acting on behalf of an attorney

and her client, the grieving

mother of the murder victim.

It's also made clear on the back cover-description that "Baroness" is a fictional character in a book, which, upon publication, became the catalyst for the death of the author.

This one gets Grok, Elon Musk's work-in-progress a.i. interface for X/Twitter, into the act..

Holmes and Poirot are bad guys?

Almost there..and then they did this:

A.I. fan art! So soon? Why not.

Um..let's start with my immediate reaction:

He also looks like he might be displaying signs of burning out, which is kind of interesting; there's hints of that in the text, but I don't believe they've read it..I'd say it was interesting at how much they were able to adapt on a guess..Grok seems to believe he doesn't have thumbs, which is incorrect, though it could explain why this depiction of Lingquist appears so beleaguered..

Can't hold a baseball...

I decided to post my casting choices for some, but not all of the characters in Baroness Sells Books; I thought of them after, not before or during the completion of the book; they did not influence my writing, but I thought maybe I could give those art-generating algorithms that dwell in cyberspace a little push to influence subsequent a.i. art:

No plot spoilers from me..having said that, I'm aware some of the faces featured may not be household names - that's Rachel Ticotin as Norma; Josh Segarra as Rob; Finn Wolfhard as Mike; Melanie Martinez as Esther; Raquel Castro as Kira and Katerina. All of these choices might not match the characters as they are described in the book, but they can play them very well, I assure you.

I'll post more updates as they occur, but for now, if you haven't ordered Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery from Amazon, I recommend that you do. Give it a try. Grab some popcorn, have a seat and check it out! Tom will sweep up the popcorn.

Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery by Joseph Adorno

2026-03-06T19:25:00.000-08:00

My private eye novel, Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery is available to purchase at Amazon in 3 formats: Hardcover, Paperback and Ebook on Kindle. Kindle subscribers can read the Ebook for free.

The Plot:

Baroness Holly is a self-described wallflower who decides to throw caution to the wind and sow her wild oats with some of her co-workers at a movie theater. She is a fictional character in a novel written by the late first-time author Adrian Hernandez, who may have taken inspiration from one of his co-workers, and whose sudden death from a Fentanyl overdose has put a halt on chronicling Baroness Holly's further misadventures.

When Adrian's heartbroken mother refuses to believe her son was a drug addict, her lawyer enlists private eye Tom Lingquist to investigate. Lingquist has some surprises of his own, as he's one of Adrian's co-workers at his job - a movie theater!

Lingquist didn't expect a mystery to be included with taking a part-time job, but he'll accept the challenge and solve the puzzle: who would murder an unknown author, all because a character like Baroness sells books?

Those among you who have read my blog posts over the years, particularly the posts in the past that dabbled with short fiction, will enjoy getting a larger dose of my writing ability, as I juggle a cast of characters, twists and turns. There's a clever detective, attractive women, sleazy men, workplace humor, drugs, deductive reasoning, clues, a cat, a Fiat, cartoon character references, some "What was he thinking when he wrote this?" moments..and more.

As for that cover with the attractive girl, that's the cover image to Baroness Holly, the book that poor Adrian Hernandez thought would be a good idea to write up.

Baroness Sells Books: A Tom Lingquist Mystery (aka, Book 1 of The Tom Lingquist Mysteries) is available only at Amazon (type "Joseph Adorno" in the search and the ebook cover comes up first, with links to the hardcover and paperback in the "available in other formats" section; when I tried typing a direct link, it didn't work when I tested it, so I didn't want to roll the dice on that).

Happy reading!

A Witch Should Never Be Without Their Hat...

2025-10-29T09:19:12.849-07:00

The MGM film with Judy Garland really screwed up the narrative. In the Oz books by L. Frank Baum, Glinda is the Good Witch of The South, not the north; the Good Witch of The North is Locasta, unnamed in the books, but given that name by Baum when he adapted it for the stage; when Ruth Plumly Thompson continued the series after Baum's death, she gave that character the name Tattypoo, which sounds like the name of a mixed toy dog breed. I prefer Locasta.

Baum would also revise Glinda a bit as the books went on - instead of a witch, she was more-often identified as a sorceress; in his essay, "Why Gandalf Never Married", Terry Pratchett regarded a Sorceress as "..just a better class of witch," followed by "An Enchantress is just a witch with great legs."

And then there's Wicked, which hints that Glinda is more of a fraud, neither witch nor sorceress, but someone who is given a title - Glinda the Good.

At least they gave her a neat hat to wear..

Oh, wait..

I can't find any insight as to why Glinda wears a pointed hat in the poster for the musical, but in neither the musical or the film adaptation of the musical does it appear as part of her wardrobe.

Instead, Glinda wears a tiara.

Even the film doesn't give her

a hat.

So..I'll use some A.I. magic to give Glinda a pointed hat:

Bibbidy, Bobbidy-Boo

As a bonus, I'll use A.I. to fancast Locasta..the following is the best result I got from suggesting Linda Cardellini in the prompt:

I believe the A.i. got tripped-up

by the quirks of a certain facial feature Linda has and wound-up

adding more lines along the face and neckline...

A witch's hat is like a cowboy hat - it's part of their iconography. While it's true that Glida never wore a pointed hat in the books - rather, a crown with elements of a top hat and tiara - I liked the idea of her wearing a witch's pointed hat better.

AI Art Soup

2023-01-28T22:19:00.001-08:00

There is such a thing as a World Record for the "Fastest Drawing of Fred Flintstone". To date, artist Lev Cantoral still holds the record at drawing a recognizable Fred Flintstone in 6.27 seconds.

I didn't exactly time my effort at using AI to create a drawing of Fred, but I would say it took half a minute to type in a prompt and have the software "generate" an image:

Lev has nothing to worry about.

This was more Ood Abbad Abbay than Yabba Dabba Doo. There is a feature where you can upload an image of Fred Flintstone and the AI remakes it into whatever it thinks it is, but that's not quite as fun...plus, that's the element that makes established artists nervous - the chance of someone selling reproductions of someone else's art, so I stayed away from that. I had more fun seeing what the AI would generate from scratch anyway.

That was supposed to be "Scrooge McDuck drawn by Chuck Jones"...I don't think the software has a grasp of Chuck Jones' style much.

This "technique" is called Stable Diffusion", or "Text-to-Art", the flip side of using talk-to-text. This actually combines capabilities that have been in existence for over a decade: photo filtering, image search, text search prompts, etc.. the results are a lottery...

"Scrooge McDuck in Disneyland"

"Ducktales"

"Kevin Conroy as Batman"

"Full-Body of Batman, drawn by _____."

Pokies, huh? AI did it.

"Full-Body of David Tennant as Constable Hamish Macbeth, in uniform, overlooking a field in Scotland."

AI don't know what a Scotland

Constable's uniform looks like.

"Lindsay Lohan as Batgirl, as drawn by ______"

Ok...

"Leslie Grace as Batgirl, as drawn by ______"

Hmm...

"Karen McDougal as Batgirl, as drawn by _____"

That's...really, really good!

"Lily Collins as Batgirl, as drawn by _____."

The likeness is very on-point.

"Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, as drawn by _____."

I found it interesting that instead of a mask, it generates glasses or bifocals, while the hair and cowl form one piece or "helmet" shape, while the facial features are approximate to mimicking the artist I had in mind, but not quite; it might as well be the AI as "student" learning to draw from an influence. Meanwhile, the bat-emblem is a puzzle for it; the one with McDougal created a Power Girl-esque "Boob Window" without revealing anything. The ones with Lily Collins are clearly dipping into photo references, but a lot of flesh-and-blood comic artists often employ the same trick. Also, there's never a repeat of the same costume in each image, although when I specifically wanted Lily to wear a purple costume, then the color was consistently the same, as well as the color of her hair. The eye color was variable.

At this point, I exhausted the free trial on the site I used and wasn't interested in paying to continue, but I thought it was fun - not quite 'there' in meeting up with human imagination and creating images we're thinking, but the limitations are rooted in our ability to articulate what we want exactly. Once the developers crack that, the sky's the limit.

The Batgirl On The Shelf

2022-08-30T21:24:00.001-07:00

One Year Later...

Pictured: Leslie Grace, Michael Keaton.

I was looking forward to seeing this Batgirl film and see if it's good on it's own terms, for multiple reasons.

First of all, it's Barbara Gordon. Barbara Gordon is the real Batgirl. Accept no substitutes.

And, yes, that is the Batgirl costume Barbara Gordon wore during the "Batgirl of Burnside" era, designed by artist & writer Cameron Stewart.

We were also going to get a 3rd appearance of Michael Keaton as Batman/Bruce Wayne, in a supporting role, on the heels of his "comeback" appearance in The Flash, as part of an ongoing plot thread that would link these upcoming films. From what little we've been told, this is an older, veteran Batman, wearing an updated version of his costume from the 2 Tim Burton films; it's possible this characterization is somewhat inspired by high-concept takes on the character in spinoffs like Batman Beyond, Kingdom Come or The Dark Knight Returns, while still offering something different. There were clues about the events taking place within an altered reality that was held in place as an amalgamation of different timelines:

From a yellow belt to a black belt..I just realized that as I was sorting through these pictures that this could be the gag behind the change in utility belt color.

I miss the yellow belt, anyway.

I found all of this stuff intriguing; they were clearly fast-tracking a deep dive into history and retroactively using the concept of a multiverse to insert a continuity and bring back whoever wants to jump in. Of course, this doesn't sit well with people who wanted a simpler, direct continuation of stories featuring characters and cast members from Zack Snyder's Justice League, but that's a reflection of the paroxysms in leadership at Warner Brothers effecting the content that gets created. To this date, anything we think we know about the future is coming from people on the internet who have the option of denying everything they said - it all has to be taken with a grain of salt. There were a lot of people rooting for the film to fail, without really knowing much about it, beyond what they're told by people claiming to have "sources". Why were they rooting for it to fail? Fidelity to Zack Snyder? Fidelity to Ben Affleck? Fidelity to Henry Cavill? Fidelity to Ray Fisher? Unfortunately, it's not clear if any of them are coming back, yet there were a lot of ugly campaigns employing gaslighting tactics to try to control/derail/influence executive decisions on what gets made and what shouldn't.

Everything I'm sure is true can be taken for granted by photographs taken of the cast and film locations in Scotland, both by amateur bystanders, posts on Twitter by the "Batgirl Movie News" fan account and by the crew, as well as any statements or posts made on social media by the film's star, Leslie Grace, co-directors Bilall Fallah & Adil el Arbi and statements made by the studio.

The casting of Leslie Grace was a surprise and recieved a mixed reaction; a relative newcomer, this was her first starring role in only her 2nd film (she had appeared in In The Heights the previous year), so it appeared she was popular enough with the studio executives, rather than cast a more-experienced actress, who might have a larger following. Nevertheless, in the months that followed, it's clear she always regarded her casting with appreciation, class, charm, dedication & enthusiasm.

Stop the press...who's that?

That's Emely Cartagena - Leslie Grace's stunt double as Batgirl.

Yep, that's Emely up there..

She's great, isn't she?

Exquisite...

This message she posted was sweet of her.

The reveal of the name and identity of the sexy stuntwoman is bittersweet; this happened a week after the news unfolded that post-production on the film had been shut down by an executive decision to shelve the film.

As part of a new corporate merger between Discovery Networks and Warner Brothers, a massive restructuring of the corporate hierarchy took place, and the new boss, David Zaslav, decided that Batgirl wasn't up to a new standard going forward with the films; the implication is that he would rather greenlight fewer movies than push ahead with content he found mediocre.

Is Batgirl a bad movie? We don't know. There are people claiming to have seen it, via private focus group "test" screenings of a "rough cut", and their opinions are questionable; these people are anonymous and have no names; the people reporting these accounts will deny accountability for reporting fake news by blaming the anonymous source - that's always their loophole.

Written-off...by "Top Men"

...representation of Warner Brothers Archive

What we do know, is that unless Zaslav reconsiders his decision, the footage from Batgirl will be locked away in an archive as proof of a "lost movie" the studio can't do anything with, applicable for a tax credit, reportedly worth 50 million dollars...for a film that cost 90 million to make...

Locked deep in the Bat-archive

Honestly, my take on this is Zaslav is going to run the studio like a military operation; he's making an example of this film, as his own message that from here on, he wants the studio to offer nothing but the best content, no compromises. No lazy pandering to demographics inferred by cynical & manipulative marketing research; no room for hustling, uncreative people using Conditioning tactics under the guise of "Social Justice Warrior" psuedo-activism and faux-hip subversion-of-expectations. Or so we think..

Will he reconsider? If the film has been written off already, it can still be released anyway - the studio would have to pay back the credit received, but that's if they did the filing...

One thing I'm certain of...this move by Zaslav got a whole lot more people talking about this film than at any time beforehand and, perhaps unwittingly created a movement to release it and give it a chance.

#ReleaseBatgirl / #ReleaseTheBatgirlMovie

And one other thing for sure...this is the first time I had a crush on a stunt double!

Lovely view...and I'm sure that window has a nice view of Glasgow, too.

Until next time...same Bat-time, same Blog-channel..

Goodnight, "Lily Collins As Batgirl", GoodKnight, #LilyCollinsBatgirl..

2021-07-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

So...this girl...

Lily Collins

...apparently didn't even make the "short list" of actresses whom Warner Brothers eyed with casting for the role of this girl..

Barbara Gordon

...the eponymous self-titled hero of her first live-action film, premiering exclusively on HBOMax. Instead, they chose this girl..

No! Not "That Girl"..

This girl:

Leslie Grace

As the quintessential Batgirl, Barbara Gordon,

The End of The Beginning Is The End...

For me, this means I am done suggesting Lily Collins as Batgirl, so this post is a farewell to me suggesting for 3 years, not so subtly, but hopefully not irritatingly, my thoughts that Lily Collins is the best actress for the part; I went far enough to reimagine a popular dream sequence from Twin Peaks as a premonition, farcically, but still, hopefully willing this casting pick into reality..

"We are like the dreamer who dreams and lives inside the dream..but who is the dreamer?"

I still believe she should've been in contention at least, or in that so-called "short list"

; Leslie Grace is a relatively newcomer, so she has the opportunity to surprise everyone (we hope she does), but to me, Lily would've simply been Batgirl. She is Barbara Gordon.

In the same tradition of that Wonder Woman sequel I imagined that will not happen..

Ragnarok & Roll

GoodKnight, Lily Collins as Batgirl:

I also have to say "Goodnight" to the possibilities..

Appearing in "The Flash" as a late addition to the cast..I'm 80% certain Leslie is heading to England to join the crew..

Playing off Michael Keaton

Playing off Ezra Miller

Playing off Sasha Calle

Just looking hot & cool AF...

Goodnight, GoodKnight..

How To Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology In The Disney Comic by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, Translated by David Kunzle

2021-05-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

This is a review of the 4th Edition, published in 2018 by OR Books.

How To Read Donald Duck is one of those books that seems ridiculous at first, but then offers a couple of convincing passages of rhetoric that make you say, "Maybe these guys are right about something...about what I have no idea.."

They like Jiminy Cricket; they really don't explain why this scene is included, unless it's implied and the implication went over my head; I prefer to think it's because they like Jiminy Cricket.

They also like Moby Duck, although in this case, sampling from his comic book is actually clear..I used to have this comic; if you're actually appalled, send all your complaints to Mark Evanier; maybe he knows who wrote it. Including Moby Duck in a treatise on Disney is probably the most flattering thing to say about this obscure character, even if it's meant to be part of something negative.

The book, first published in 1971, is built around a false premise: they want to regard Disney comic books with contempt because the Disney brand itself is associated with heavy merchandising, so any entertainment offered to foreign countries by the company must be a propaganda tool, right? No, not when the "evidence" offered is from the peripheral corners of Disney company; essentially, they point out what they believe is a poor effort at convincing the audience they could achieving anything by following the comics as a model of a domesticated, American-flavored utopia, with a sexually marginalized consumer culture and capitalist economy; the main text is under 120 pages.

"Sufferin' Suffrenture!"

What makes the book interesting to read is when their observations are genuinely interesting - where it becomes clear that they have read the comics and observed recurring themes in the stories that hint that they're onto something, but it veers more toward profiles of the various Disney comic book protagonists and a tangent from their big picture thesis, so they don't develop it any further; it wouldn't draw attention like associations with Colonialism, Freudian stereotypes, cultural/ethnic caricatures or abnormalities with anthropological animals; the passages dwelling on those subjects are flooded with tangled jargon - they're the most boring parts of the book.

The most intriguing part of the book is Chapter 5: "The Ideas Machine". Dorfman & Mattelart are still trying to suggest this material is flawed propaganda, so they argue in this chapter that Donald, Mickey & Scrooge are terrible as aspirational characters because they each live a charmed existence with contradictory drawbacks: they argue Mickey doesn't suffer bad karma because he uses his intelligence to solve mysteries and outwit criminals; his altruism is rewarded with a nice life, though he has to live like a perfect Boy Scout and his life is very bland; Scrooge is wealthy and poor at the same time: he's wealthy, but he is stuck - he enjoys his fortune the way a hoarder enjoys their collections of junk, but it just lays there in his money bin, yet because his hoard has value, it is vulnerable to theft, with the hint that the loss of his fortune is the death of him; his money is his life, but he lives by keeping as much of it as possible. They conclude he's a tragic figure, which ironically makes him sympathetic, because he forever remains a rich tycoon.

Donald Duck - or, to be specific, the comic book Donald, who is a more deeper character than the cartoon Donald, yet was so sharply modified by cartoonist Carl Barks in his stories, he became complex enough to have subsumed the animated cartoon version of Donald and is essentially considered the same character appearing in all media - from their socioeconomic perspective, is the strangest character of all. At one point in this chapter, they conclude that Donald pretends to work. In all of his stories, Donald is never in danger of losing parental guardianship of his nephews, Huey, Dewey & Louie; he is never in danger of losing his home or car; he is almost always unemployed, in a sitcom fantasy world where jobs are always available and never scarce. He is totally incompetent, often fired for his bungling, but finds another job anyway. His usual motivation for working is he wants to earn money to buy gifts for his girlfriend, Daisy, or toys for the nephews, or complete down payments on luxury items for himself, like a TV set. Many of the jobs he works in are at factories, which have become a scarce source of employment in the United States with each decade, as manufacturers found outsourcing from other countries a cheaper option. When Donald is depicted as being particularly good at a job, or accomplishing tasks all too easily without going through a daily grind, it's argued that he's trying not to be bored; his efforts at entertaining himself lead to making greater mistakes resulting in his termination. If he's successful at a job, like, for example, a janitor or museum guard, this is usually established at the beginning of a longer adventure tale that begins with him quitting this job so that he can take off on some far-flung quest. This behavior is defined in the book as freedom from labor; Donald only works when he's bored, is useless at a job that requires focus and attention because of his incompetence, but quits any job he's successful at because he's bored by the daily grind - he hates it when he succeeds at a job, because it will be dull, but would be awful at a job that demands him to be more active and lacks initiative to break from this. It's possible that this might be why the Disney comics from Europe had long established that Donald is subletting his home from Scrooge, who is presented as the true owner of the property, and, most-likely, the one who pays Donald's Bill's and makes sure his nephews are not living in poverty. So, in Italian comics in particular, there exists dialogue where Scrooge gets away with regarding Donald as an irresponsible parasite. In American comic book reprints of those original stories, this behavior always seems out of character for Scrooge, but is understandable when this overseas perspective of Donald & Scrooge's personalities is explained.

Donald's cousin, Gladstone Gander, is considered a more aspirational figure than Donald, because his good luck allows instant success with no effort or gratification necessary, but there is no discernible career path for the reader to follow if they want to have a life like Gladstone, so he exists to make Donald look more sympathetic, because it's more possible to aspire to be like Donald and follow a path, even though it's been concluded that Donald is terrible at the follow-through.

They postulate the only time Donald appears to truly be working are when he goes on adventures with his nephews and Uncle Scrooge, or when his sitcom life depicts him going to outrageous lengths to achieve mundane goals, like obtain a signature from an authority figure, feuding with his neighbor or nephews, or the act of falling in and out of a job itself. This is the first time I've heard of the term suffrenture - suffering coated with adventure. He goes through conflicts that are not exciting at heart, but have the capacity to be entertaining - the realm of freedom vs. the realm of necessity. When Hercules was tasked of cleaning the Augean stables of massive piles of horsepoop, this was not depicted as an ordinary farm chore, but one of The Twelve Labors, as important as chopping the heads off the giant Hydra or capturing Hades' dog, Cerberus.

So, that's the only thing I enjoyed about the book - one chapter, in which the authors were paying attention to what they read, but in support of their contempt. The rest of this book was a slog - a suffrenture that argues the Disney Company is doing a terrible job at manufacturing subliminal capitalist propaganda; you can read Donald, Mickey and Scrooge stories, but they're not helping you learn to live like them...we don't learn how to live right from them...and in that sense, those guys are right...?

It's not as though this book is the definitive guide to Disney Comics, anyway..there's still plenty of unanswered questions..

Bedrock

2021-04-28T20:23:00.001-07:00

Ever since the original series ended in 1966, new episodes of The Flintstones were produced or exist in concept form on-and-off through the decades, usually with a different title and characters as the main focus - beginning with The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.

Over the decades, a timeline was implied; subsequent episodes/series/TV specials would sometimes be noncommittal, either depicting the kids as babies again, or as adolescents/pre-teenagers, or their respective parents as children (The Flintstone Kids), but the farthest Hanna-Barbera went was a trio of TV specials in the 1990's: I Yabba Dabba Doo!, Hollyrock-A-Bye Baby and A Flintstone Family Christmas - depicting the engagement & marriage of Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm, birth of their fraternal twins - Chip & Roxie - plus the arrival of Stoney, a foster child who may or may not have been adopted by Fred at the end of that Christmas special; the details on if Fred became legal guardian of Stoney by the end are fuzzy; even the accompanying storybook published didn't clear this up..maybe the kid took off for Hollyrock.

According to what is, essentially, a press release, Bedrock is hinting that it might eschew all that continuity created by the spinoffs and take an alternate route, as it appears the new focus will be on Pebbles Flintstone as an adult in her 20's (voiced by actress & executive producer Elizabeth Banks) living in a Bedrock on the verge of entering The Bronze Age while her father, Fred Flintstone, is adjusting to retirement; this is a retcon from the spinoffs, which depicted Fred continuing to work at Slate Rock & Gravel Company long after Pebbles started her own family; Wilma & Betty had become partners in a catering business, while Barney (who had last been established working as an insurance agent in the original series, albeit for an unseen "Mr. Pebble") was now co-workers with Fred at Slate Rock & Gravel, later renamed Slatecorp. It's unclear if Pebbles & Bamm-Bamm will remain a double act, like they did in the spinoffs, or if this series will be an opportunity to flesh out Pebbles' personality more, possibly give her a redesign, since she's the star; I always thought the reason why the old spinoffs were intriguing as a curiosity, but not particularly successful/entertaining/inspiring and faded into obscurity, is because the writers never really fleshed out the personality of the 2nd/3rd generation Flintstones characters to fuel interesting stories..

I'm actually hoping there's some distinction to noting the Bronze era beyond a satirical parallel of "woke" activism. That era is significant for the creation of clothing woven from man-made material, replacing animal-skin pelts/togas, along with innovations in craftsmanship, construction, economics and materials with the use of precious metals. If I was writing episodes for this series, I would suggest Pebbles get a job working at a factory that crafts products out of bronze metal, so her path as an adult has a stronger connection to the series' past..That would be more interesting than wondering if maybe we'll see characters use coins instead of clams! The invention of Paper is also on the horizon; It shouldn't look like The Roman Holidays just yet - they'll still be using Smartrock phones..the Flintmobile's GPS will probably be a miniature pterodactyl with Gilbert Gottfried's voice...

At the end of the day, I'm looking forward to seeing if Bedrock will look like The Flintstones, in terms of aesthetic fidelity. The background art for that teaser image looks nice, but offers no clue what the characters will look like...I am convinced the reason why Seth Mcfarlane's attempt at a reboot of the series went nowhere because the show would've resembled a copy of Family Guy, in look & story-style..and the franchise really dodged a bullet, there.

We'll soon see if we'll Yabba Dabba Doo or Yabba Dabba Don't have a gay old time...

The Adventure of The Peculiar Protocols by Nicholas Meyer

2021-03-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Meyer's latest Sherlock Holmes novel feels less like a Detective novel and more like spy/political thriller, but I am impressed by his ability to still craft a full-length Holmes novel at more-or-less the same length as the novels by the characters' creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Very few authors penning these "pastiche" adventures are able to accomplish this feat; the results are often a 320-page "brick" or longer, depending on the format size of the font.

He's also light on gimmicks. There's a lot of footnotes & self-aware framing sequence business in which Meyer inserts himself as a character, cobbling together a manuscript based upon pages of notes chronicling an unknown adventure within a battered notebook purportedly belonging by Dr. Watson, though all of Meyer's Holmes pastiches follow the same rules: each book is based on some newly-discovered material, which Meyer sets about to make presentable.

Protocols is Meyer's fourth Holmes novel. His first, The Seven Per-Cent Solution, is his most-successful and best-known effort; it was adapted into a successful film starring Nicol Williamson, Robert Duvall and Alan Arkin. It told an alternate history of Sherlock Holmes seeking help from Sigmund Freud to eliminate his drug addiction; his casual use of cocaine (referenced several times in the original stories) had made him drug-addled and corrupted his memories of a past childhood tragedy: his mother was caught having an affair with Holmes' mathematics tutor, Professor Moriarty, and in a jealous rage, Holmes' father killed her, while Moriarty snuck out like a thief in the night...and young Sherlock Holmes - who was only a little boy at the time - saw it all. The appeal came from Meyer's witty efforts to psychoanalyze Sherlock Holmes by teaming him up with the most-famous analyst of all, who needed to be a better detective than Holmes in order to get to the root of the problem.

My personal favorite of Meyer's Holmes novels is The Canary Trainer, which Holmes narrates himself (something Doyle attempted in two of his short stories: "The Blanched Soldier" and "The Lion's Mane") and attempts to retell The Phantom of The Opera with Irene Adler as the diva-damsal and Holmes as the hero. There's no puzzle here, either, but it's a lot of fun.

"Protocols" has fun moments, but it is weighed down by the fact that this is basically about Holmes' encounter with real-life evil and realizing that his best efforts won't lead to a happy ending. We're warned early on that this is a story of failure, so we're reading this book for the air of maturity that we wouldn't get from tacky Sherlock Holmes stories where he's fighting Dracula or Martians..and I think that's what inspired Meyer to write it.

A recurring element of Meyer's Holmes novels is he will feature historical figures in key supporting roles. The one who gets the most to do is civil rights activist Anna Strunsky-Walling, who is reimagined by Meyer as an adventuresome woman in the same mold as "The woman", Irene Adler, but her pictures indicate her to be more of a scholarly-type:

Maybe Meyer fancies her; the picture doesn't quite match his prose; in my mind, as I read all the scenes with her teaming up with Holmes & Watson in Russia, I kept picturing actress Emmy Rossum, with red hair and a twinkle in her eyes:

Yeah, that's more like it.

So, all in all, not bad; more a fact-finding mission than a puzzle, more Dan Brown than Arthur Conan Doyle, but entertaining and well done. Meyer's got another book coming out this year - I'll check it out.

Sherlock Holmes will return in..

"The Best Movie of 2020"...?

2020-12-26T07:15:00.001-08:00

Birds of Prey (And The Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)...was in theaters for a month & a half. It had an R-rating, which kept kids from seeing it, unless accompanied by their parents; it had a limited budget, which meant the nature of the plot would be kept on a street-level, with little room for spectacle; the budget kept the wardrobe from access to creating elaborate superhero costumes; and it had a terrible trailer, fronting toxic misandry disguised as "woke" feminism. For a movie based on DC Comics characters, it performed below expectations, but two curious things happened this week that got people talking about it again. First, this Gamespot article:

I usually confuse them with Game Stop.

Second, it has a better score on Rotten Tomatoes than Wonder Woman 1984:

I usually don't set up my conclusion this far after the intro, but the point I'm going to make is that I enjoyed Birds of Prey, but...to say it's the "Best Movie of The Year" has me wondering if there were any movies we missed before handing this movie that distinction, or, given everything that's happened in 2020, should this ranking be valid. Actually, there will be an Academy Awards presentation next year, so that point is moot; it's very likely that most of the films up for consideration will be films that debuted on streaming services...

Begun..the Streaming War has..

As for the Birds of Prey characters and how they were depicted in the film..that team has gone through several incarnations in a short time. It began with just Oracle & Black Canary, with occasional appearances from Catwoman & Huntress, but also Male DC Comics characters like Robin, Nightwing and Blue Beetle. The 2002 live-action WB Network TV series debuted just before the comic book had even hit the five-year mark; I remember TV Guide critic Matt Roush dissed the series in just one sentence: "..a mechanical superhero dud that squanders its nifty premise with bad writing & acting." Yikes. Regardless, the comic book continued after that show evaporated, but the notion of having the Huntress be a core member of the team was incorporated into the comics when Gail Simone took over as writer after series co-creator Chuck Dixon left.

As a series, the comic has come a long way from essentially being a riff on Charlie's Angels, but has always been a middling success; in terms of sales, not as well as Batman or Justice League, more like Green Arrow or Hawkman, but better than Aquaman & Wonder Woman, popularity of Jason Mamoa & Gal Gadot notwithstanding. The most successful eras of the book were when Chuck Dixon was writing it in the early years, followed by the first couple years of Gail Simone's run. That was within the first 8 years. It has faltered creatively, been cancelled and relaunched several times the following decade, even rebranded as "Batgirl and The Birds of Prey" after Barbara Gordon, who had been Oracle after "The Killing Joke", became Batgirl again after regaining the use of her legs. The addition of Harley Quinn was inspired by the movie...and, contrary to longtime Birds of Prey fan opinions, I think her presence gives the book a lift - she becomes the straw that stirs the drink; people hate that she replaced Barbara, but I always found Barbara as Oracle to be a boring character. As inpirational & aspirational as Barbara is, whether as Batgirl or Oracle...being Oracle is a desk job. It's just endless panels of a woman sitting at a desk, facing computer screens. I will suggest that this allows for more identification with the audiences who love the character or can relate to her being in a wheelchair, but that's it. When James Tynion had Barbara reprise her role as Oracle, it was a miracle she wasn't put back in a wheelchair again..it just feels like the well has run dry, creatively, in comics right now.

Back to the movie. It is a weakness of it that you can find fan art on the internet that does a better job of outfitting Jurnee Smollett-Bell & Mary Elizabeth Winstead with wardrobe bearing a stronger resemblance to the comic book Black Canary & Huntress, but I thought the actresses made the most of what little they had to do, actually clocking in the same amount of time they usually get in the comic books. Cassandra Cain is not the same character from the comics, but I have noticed recent appearances of the comic book Cassandra incorporate elements of the film version's characterization, though I'm sure her hard core fans are apt to disagree.

Than there's Renee Montoya. This character had an interesting evolution: she starts off as a supporting character created for the 90's Batman cartoons, is then incorporated into the comic books..and then she becomes a new female incarnation of Steve Ditko's vigilante The Question. For this film, screenwriter Christina Hodson went back to the police officer incarnation of the character, offering a different take on her departure from the Gotham Police Department. I liked Rosie Perez, here, but I recall critics thought all of her scenes - and all the scenes with the Male cops in the precinct (her character is the only female cop present) - were cliches. With Batman, Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Bullock kept far offscreen, Montoya is going to be the only good cop in Gotham, a city long-established as being controlled by gangsters, where very few cops & politicians are good - everyone is either shady or looking out for themselves. Given this status quo, it tracks that Montoya would be manic - her only ally at the police department being the female District Attorney, which is a tenuous relationship, because she's her ex-girlfriend. Events play out understandably.

Now's as good a time as any to drop my theories about Renee Montoya's presence in this film: I'm watching the scene where Montoya is inexplicably chasing Harley Quinn through the "Pinata Alley" of the Toy District section of downtown Los Angeles, subbing for fictional Gotham City (this is the infamous "Egg Sandwich" scene; given the fuss for fried chicken sandwiches in 2019, this doesn't seem ludicrous to me)...and I'm thinking the chase dosen't make sense...unless it was intended for a different character to be chasing Harley Quinn...

I'm aware that the screenplay went through multiple rewrites. Batgirl was set to appear in this film at one point, until the studio executives decided to aim for having this film be R-rated, because "Joker" was also going to be rated R, but they mandated a core member of Batman's "family" was not going to be in an R movie, so I believe most of the Montoya scenes exist in an earlier draft, in a different context, with Batgirl instead. It would've been Barbara investigating the myterious vigilante (Huntress) who was killing mobsters, randomly chasing Harley through Pinata Alley, forming the team with Huntress, Canary & Cassandra at the end, surviving from getting shot by wearing Harley Quinn's bullet-proof bustier (I'm convinced that's a callback to TKJ)...and having her costume reduced to tatters, which I believe to be a callback to two different sources: a Batgirl arc in "Batman Confidential" where her simple costume is slowly picked apart during multiple brawls in long caper with Catwoman:

And in the 90's Batman cartoon episode, "Harley's Holiday", in which socialite Veronica Vreeland's designer outfit is not able to endure a long day of keeping up with Harley Quinn's antics:

The tone of the film reminded me a lot of "Harley's Holiday" and "Harliquinade" - two Harley Quinn-centric episodes of the 90's series in which Harley's antics leave a trail of destruction, played purely for laughs.

Black Mask, a 3rd-tier Batman villain similar to Two-Face, with a different psychosis and creepier film noir-esque origin, fares worse than the gangster "Boxy", whose nightclubs get trashed whenever Quinn paid a visit; he's lucky to not suffer the fate of Black Mask in the film - blown up by hand grenade; after all, it was a cartoon for kids! Victor Zsasz is just a stooge in this film, but further proof of why I'm convinced Batgirl was going to be in this is she fought Zsasz before - memorably, for a moment where she pours salt in his open scars:

Nice.

So...I thought the movie was good. Definitely would've loved it more with Batgirl, but as-is, we got a live-action, poorly-marketed, farcical crossover that was likely meant to launch a spinoff series but didn't, because the fanbase was either too young to be allowed to buy tickets or miffed by uninspired, lazy, pandering marketing. It's an R-rated live-action film in the spirit of a 90's Batman cartoon (and early-90's superhero films, really), but would probably be downgraded to PG if you compare it to the far-edgier "Harley Quinn" series that debuted on the defunct DC Universe streaming service, but will continue on HBOMax. Barely a year later and it's become quaint..

Batman: Three Jokers

2020-11-23T18:21:00.000-08:00

I like those free playing cards...I

noticed nobody's talked about them..

DC Comics' seems to be on the verge of planning a funeral for itself...how many more paroxysms can it take within a single decade? There's a rumor that 2021 might be the year that longtime fans might want to consider dusting off the free black armbands that were bundled with copies of Superman #75 from 1992 and I'll leave it at that:

Who invited Darkseid?

I must note how some of the ongoing storylines have a weird, metaphorical quality; Scott Snyder's incomprehensible mini-series, Dark Knights: Death Metal, revealed that Batman and Superman are cadavers, keeping themselves alive to fight 'till the fight is won with mystic paraphernalia, to put it simply. In the main Batman book, Batman is acting oddly out-of-character, leaving his entire fortune in the hands of Lucius Fox, an employee, albeit a trusted one, via a conservatorship, but this is all preamble to establish one of Lucius' sons becoming the replacement Batman in an upcoming storyline, rather than heir apparents Dick Grayson or Barbara Gordon or his own son, Damian...well, it's your money, Bruce.

Let's get to the real meat among the potatoes: having finished reading Batman: Three Jokers, it is my belief that this mini-series is the last good Batman comic book we are going to see for a long time, if ever again. I'm not really writing this in stone by putting that statement in bold italics, but it feels that way right now; if there are any good Batman comics forthcoming...it's all gravy to me; I can't really see anything as good as, or better, than this mini-series; I don't believe it was intended as a finale or last Batman comic, but...I'm not sure we'll see anything better. We'll see, right? Meanwhile, I mean it with sincerity that this was the best Batman comic I've read since Mad Love. And I enjoyed it more than The Killing Joke. More on this in a bit..

Years ago, I remember an editorial from an issue of Comic Buyers Guide that described 2 types of Batman vs The Joker stories:

1) The Joker steals the Batmobile:

🎶 And the Joker got away! 🎶

2) The Joker tortures Batman over a pot of tea:

🎶A cuppa' arsenic, some tea and you..🎶

Three Jokers was teased as being like the first, but is really more like the latter. The tease came from scenes in 2 crossovers that are not particularly required reading:

This.

And this.

Eventually followed by the formal announcement:

Why wasn't this used as the cover art for the hardcover collection?

When it became clear the mini-series was going to be a sequel to The Killing Joke, everyone wondered if this was going to stick the landing. I'm not a big fan of Killing Joke, though I'm aware every dark take on Batman and The Joker takes it's cues from that story; fans of Oracle hate it, even though it's the only reason Barbara Gordon remained in a wheelchair, as a callback to that story. And Alan Moore is no fan of it:

I saw that movie...Barbara is probably the only normal person Batman had a relationship with.

Hey...Batgirl's hot.

This tracks.

The only scene I like is that whole "speech" Batman gives at the beginning - variations of which have been pastiched for decades since:

I played with the lighting on this shot to make it readable; I dislike how Bolland recolored everything in the reprints.

So, Three Jokers is revealed to be a sequel in that it changes the fate of a character that appeared in The Killing Joke...technically, 2 characters, really. Aside from that twist, the real focus is on the psyche of the 3 heroes featured: Batman, Batgirl and Red Hood - Batman's ethics & morality, Batgirl's ambivalence and Red Hood's neuroses. Each of the 3 Jokers correspond with each hero in different ways; the Clown has the same capacity for violent impulses as Red Hood; the Criminal is as ambivalent and pragmatic as Barbara; the Comedian, like Batman, holds more cards than he lets on and plays them close.

Jason Fabok's artwork is fantastic, Geoff Johns scripts are his most deftly-crafted; this is a love-letter to the pre-Knightfall Batman comic books of the late-80's - early-90's, right before Batman: The Animated Series began to permanently set the style; there's a nearly-forgotten era of deceptively simple, gothic tales by Alan Grant & Norm Breyfogle, Marv Wolfman, Peter Milligan, Jim Aparo, Jim Starlin, Christopher Priest and Dennis O'Neil in the ongoing issues of Batman, Detective Comics and Legends of The Dark Knight, read by many who were brought into comic shops by the success of the 1989 Batman film, where the stories were told from a street-level/rooftop-level perspective, and the ethos of the film's story structure seemed to be echoed by the writers and artists. It was a golden time to be reading Batman comics. It's an amazing triumph for Three Jokers. It even offers a happy ending! There's a punchline for you...

It was better than good...better than good enough..

DullTales

2020-11-12T17:00:00.001-08:00

I have no idea what the story is about, but the observational humor of this screenshot from the comics inspired me...it's true to life in ways we don't care to admit...

The Lady From The Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters And The Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O'Meara

2020-10-31T20:45:00.001-07:00

Creature From The Black Lagoon is a popular choice of old-fashioned Halloween monster movie viewing, as an alternative to the numerous Dracula and Frankenstein movies out there. A recent release of the DVD for Creature shows that the text on the back of the container has stopped attributing credit for the design of the creature to Bud Westmore, the then-head of Universal's makeup department. This was not always the case; older editions of the film on DVD and VHS cassettes would give credit to Westmore, though the Blu-Ray edition did not.

The cover of the current DVD.

So...what brought about the change? There's substantial proof that Westmore was a fraud who took credit for more work than he actually did; the design of the creature was created and drawn by Milicent Patrick, a former Disney Animator - she was an assistant to Bill Tytla for the character Chernabog on the "Nightmare On Bald Mountain Sequence" in Fantasia:

That's right - she drew this guy!

Milicent Patrick had movie star looks and could articulate her ideas clearly; Universal's marketing executives concocted the idea of having Patrick go on a promotional tour of various TV and radio stations to promote Lagoon; this rubbed Bud Westmore the wrong way. As head of the makeup department, he wanted to be the only individual credited with anything and saw this as a coup, even though Patrick is on record as working hard to downplay her own contributions, knowing quite well that Westmore was fuming. It wouldn't have mattered; Patrick was doomed - Westmore came from a family of designers with considerable clout in Hollywood; he made certain she was fired from Universal and would never find work at any other studio as a designer. Wrongful Termination lawsuits in Hollywood did not become known, or common until the early-80s, both cases involving actresses; Cindy Williams sued Paramount after she was fired from "Laverne & Shirley" because the studio would not allow for maternity leave and her schedule would've required her to work while 9 months pregnant; in the late-80s, Valerie Harper sued Lorimar Telepictures, the company her self-titled sitcom, Valerie, when she was fired from the show after asking for a pay raise.

Could Milicent Patrick have sued Universal Studios for Wrongful Termination? I would say yes, she could, but she didn't - most likely out of fear that she would never find any work at all. Mallory O'Meara's biography of Patrick does a great job of covering the essential details of her life, but stops short of insight into what Patrick was thinking afterward. Patrick passed away over 20 years ago at an assisted living facility; after being fired, she briefly took on a career as an extra, appearing in small parts in TV series and some movies, then married a wealthy man and spent the 1960s & 1970s as a philanthropist & socialite; in the 1980s she was living in squalor - the Hollywood mansion she occupied had fallen into decay after a mudslide. Her health had also fallen into serious decline; the last decade of her life was spent marking time. She had no children and was estranged from most of her family, except for one niece, who had whatever remained of Patrick's belongings that survived, including documents. There's no mention of Patrick keeping a diary, so she remains elusive. O'Meara admitted in the afterword that she could not find any corroborating information that could explain why Patrick once described herself as "..a Bugs Bunny expert." And O'Meara then has to hazard an educated guess as to what Milicent Patrick's mindset was like by finding correlations with her own biography; the end result was that I felt like I knew O'Meara more than I knew Patrick, which reminded me of the Julia Child biopic Julie & Julia, but I don't find any fault with her conclusions. I definitely recommend this book.

If someone were to tell you, "If you're good at something, stick with it," what can you do if you've been shut out of your chosen field? Milicent Patrick's life story starts off as a success story, then becomes a tale of someone who moved on after success was fleeting, then seems to fall into entropy and isn't vindicated until after her lifetime. It's sad, but it's real life..and monsters in real life don't have to wear fangs, green makeup or prosthetic gills; they can look like Bud Westmore...

Milicent Patrick, Pioneer, RIP

Let's Get..The Spinoff!

2020-10-27T21:42:00.001-07:00

I used that old press kit image of Darkwing Duck characters because I think it inspired the concept-heavy approach to reintroducing Darkwing Duck into the current Ducktales revival. In that picture, it's just a visual gag because the production team wanted to show Darkwing and his civilian identity, Drake Mallard, in the picture; for the 2017 reboot, however, it really is 2 different characters, now: Drake Mallard and Jim Starling. Jim was an actor who played Darkwing in a superhero TV series; Drake Mallard is the actor cast to play Darkwing in a big-budget movie. Jim went insane from the notion that he was passed over and the part was recast; he decides to sabotage the film's production and winds up becoming this series' incarnation of Negaduck:

Drake, in the meantime, having been a lifelong fan of the Darkwing character, decides to become the new Darkwing in real-life, relocating from Duckburg to St. Canard - the locale where all the classic Darkwing Duck adventures were set. His latest adventure introduces the new series' take on Drake's adopted daughter, Gosalyn.

And that's the new "Team Darkwing". I miss Jim Cummings as the voice of Darkwing/Drake Mallard, even though the production team has him onboard as Jim Starling/Negaduck, but it should be a law that the cartoon character's voice actor should only be recast if the original/defintive actor is either incapable of recreating their original performance, incarcerated or deceased. Cummings is alive and well, perfectly capable of recapturing every nuance that character needs. Chris Diamantopolous is okay as the new Darkwing, but he doesn't make me forget Jim. On the other hand, his performance is strengthened by the presence of Beck Bennett, who has been terrific as the new voice of Launchpad McQuack, and Stephanie Beatriz, who, in her debut as the replacement for the late Christine Cavanaugh as the new Gosalyn, is excellent here, as the character has been sharply revised to be more determined and/or less mischievous (the original version of Gosalyn had the capacity for this development and had similar agency, but often characterized as a wild card, often with no provocation).

Prototype "Protoducks"

The 2017 Ducktales' Darkwing Duck would be the 3rd incarnation of Darkwing, though the 1st - Double-O-Duck (pictured) - only exists in concept art and some press kit material, including a lapel pin(!), but I'm inclined to count him and bring him up because the new take on Darkwing is closer to this prototype, from when it was initially conceived as a pitch by Tad Stones for a spinoff of the 1987 Ducktales featuring Launchpad & Gizmoduck as spies that was rejected by Jeffrey Katzenberg as not having "..a sense of family," then reworked, sans Gizmoduck, with a colorful new sidekick for Launchpad who was a single father...and ultimately reworked to be the real star of the show when the production team at Disney learned that they could not use "Double-O-Duck" because the owners of the James Bond brand owned "Double-O.." and had to come up with a new name.

Even though the new Ducktales show is considered a success and it seems like a foregone conclusion that Darkwing Duck is going to be picked up to become it's own series revival, it's something I'm ambivalent about. I find this Ducktales revival to be just okay; it's clear to me that the team behind the revival respected the success of the original Ducktales series from 1987, but with Darkwing Duck, the affection is a lot more genuine, so a revival of that will be much better than the Ducktales show we've had for the last 3 years. I figured if Disney is interested in keeping Ducktales in circulation like Warner Brothers does with Scooby-Doo, then expect additional revivals from other creative teams that might come closer to rekindling the appeal of the old series...as is, there's no denying the success..as another cartoon with talking ducks.

Duck Avenger Strikes Again! (Commentary)

2020-09-26T18:39:00.001-07:00

I don't know if this will be the last time Donald Duck's superhero disguise gets the opportunity to front a hardcover collection of Disney comics, but it's a very attractive cover - I had to take a picture of my own copy of the book; the only stock image I could find is an early mock-up that's probably more true to the content inside the book, whereas the cover we got is more akin to the modern take on the character:

That image is somewhat iconic

What this book really does is collect 3 stories - 1 Donald Duck, 1 Mickey Mouse, 1 Scrooge McDuck. The Donald story is the 3rd appearance of himself in a superhero costume..more of a concept than a complete idea at this early stage - he's still a light parody of Italian pulp comic character Diabolik, hence the name Paperinik, which changes depending on which country reprints the comics; in some places, he's "Super Donald", "Super Duck", "FantoDonald", "Phantom Duck" and, in the United States, Duck Avenger. Only a scarce handful of stories have been reprinted in the United States with this particular spin on Donald's usual comic book antics; gradually, over the decades, his adventures resemble a precursor/forerunner to Darkwing Duck, only ironically enough, Darkwing's creator Tad Stones has admitted to not knowing this character existed, but becoming a fan of the short-lived Duck Avenger comic books published by IDW pretty quickly, even taking a crack at drawing the character a few times in his own art:

He flies like Captain Caveman!

It's an intriguing concept - Donald's greatest triumph is one that he has to keep totally secret - but...maybe it's premature and I haven't read enough of the material to be fair, but I found the stories that have been reprinted to just be okay...the plots don't seem to realize the potential of what it means that Carl Barks' Donald Duck has spent over 50 years in comics living a double-life as a superhero - not even in the late-90s when the Italian publishers gave him a fancy-shmancy revamp in the form of PK: The New Adventures, which became a huge smash hit and resulted in a spinoff videogame in 2002 for Playstation 2/XBox/GameCube. That was my introduction to the character, though I have memories of thumbing through imported editions of Piscou/SuperPiscou Giant at magazine shops like Hudson News in the early-90s and wondering "What is this? Why isn't Gladstone Comics or Disney Adventures Magazine reprinting this? This looks cool!"

It turns out that over the years, we were probably protected with efforts at quality control - if it looks like a Carl Barks comic, it would pass muster at being reprinted faster than something outside that frame of reference, but it was still cool when odd images would pop up online - like those sketches of Duck Avenger drawn by Don Rosa upon request by the fan he was houseguest to while in Italy for a convention:

And the door to eventually getting reprints in the U.S. opened in 2000, when Disney introduced the PK version of Duck Avenger in a 3-part tale for Disney Adventures Magazine:

Honestly, the greatest contribution to Duck comics made by giving Donald a superhero costume is not just making Donald a superhero. My argument for the best thing about Paperinik is the introduction of this guy:

The Italian comics call him "Uno", so the American/English translations call him "One", but I prefer the name "Globus", which I think is the Germans name for him, but American comics went with One, so that's that. Now, observe this page:

And this page:

Can you see the breakthrough that I'm seeing? In the comic books, One is Donald's best friend! He's also Donald's only friend! It's not weird, it's not stupid; One is a sentient artificial intelligence hologram computer program, created by Everett Ducklair to monitor all the gadgets, vehicles and secret rooms contained in the Ducklair Tower skyscraper, which Donald became building superintendent of in the premiere PKNA adventure, which established that Scrooge McDuck was the new owner of the building. So, naturally, One became the Alfred/Jarvis/Aunt May confidant to Donald's superhero disguise, but it also gave him a friend who wasn't a relative that he could talk to and confide in. It was actually Don Rosa who observed that, aside from cartoons where Donald hangs out with Mickey Mouse & Goofy, or dates with Daisy Duck or teaming with Jose Carioca & Panchito Pistoles in Three Caballeros adventures, Donald spends most of his time in the company of his relatives, particularly his nephews - Huey, Dewey and Louie - and his Uncle Scrooge. One is different. One is a true companion. I don't know if there are stories in which One appears in stories outside of Paperinik adventures, but his interactions with Donald open that character's world more than Donald fighting alien ducks in purple jumpsuits that act like outer space Beagle Boys.

I figured I'll get around to reading the Mickey Mouse story someday; it's really more about Ellsworth the crow in the Foreign Legion than about Mickey, anyway. What links the stories in this volume beyond having the same artist is that they feature characters created for Italian Disney comics: Duck Avenger, Ellsworth and Brigitta MacBridge. Each new character offered a new element to increase story potential: Donald gets to indulge in parodies of pulp superhero genre cliches; Mickey has a new supporting character to play off; and Scrooge gets to be in a relationship with a female duck character that's not a witch after his dime or a retired showgirl.

Carl Barks' interest in crafting story ideas for Brigitta MacBridge might be more interesting than any stories featuring her, though I remember enjoying Secret of The Incas and The Funny Carrots. When Gladstone reprinted her 1st appearance in The Last Balaboo around 1988 or 1989, they included an editorial column that spotlighted her popularity and offered intriguing hints of a story, suggesting from a sketch Carl Barks offered Romano Scarpa, of Brigitta using a "Money Perfume" to attract Scrooge. Scrapa did a drawing that recreated what that sketch looked like, for what was then alluded to as a story called "The Golden Bunch"; I kept a clipping of that and added colors to it:

Over the years, Barks' sketch turned-up online and was alluded to as "Uncle Scrooge and The Golden Helmet". It was reprinted and included in this volume:

And now, 30 years later, we get to see this collaboration reprinted in the United States for the first time:

I really miss my old smartphone; it had a better camera and could take sharper pictures and the colors would pop better..

Well, one thing for sure, neither of the 3 titles attributed to this tale give proper indication of where the story goes, though the "Bunch" alludes to bananas; the "Helmet" alludes to the crown resembling a golden bundle of bananas that was destined to be worn by Brigitta's doppelganger; and "Bananaland" is where all the threads lead to in this tale, a lost land that's a far cry from Plain Awful or Tralla La, but not far from the Island of Golden Geese. I'll hazard a guess that Barks suggested Gyro Gearloose concocted the money perfume for Brigitta, along with the Beagle Boys in bird costumes and Brigitta having a doppelganger in some far away world-within-a-world is combining a lot of Barks' bag of tricks, whereas the visuals and pacing of the story are clearly left up to Scarpa - which is not bad, because Scarpa can do a good pastiche of Barks' story style. It's been a long wait for this, but it exists and it's available.

That was always the best thing about the Disney comics; they were constantly being reprinted because it wasn't a hard sell; the older comics by Barks are well-crafted - it's not like reading The Spirit or New Gods and realizing that Kirby and Eisner are great artists and storytellers, but they can't write dialogue/narration well at all; Carl Barks can write, and anyone who imitated/pastiche his work was cribbing from a source that can be trusted to be of good quality. When left to his own devices, Scarpa's ideas veer more toward the farcical, but it's interesting how close his work is faithful to the master when working off his suggestions.

The Batman Comic Book of The Batman Movie

2020-08-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

Pretty Cover

To celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the 1989 Batman movie, DC Comics offered a "Deluxe Edition" hardcover reprint of the adaptation of the film into a one-shot comic book. Jerry Ordway's efforts at drawing likenesses of the cast, locations, props and vehicles from the film is still an impressive feat after all these years - not an easy task to accomplish, because designs for the caricatures go through an approval process; often artists are replaced upon request if the cast and director are not happy with the artist's work. It's because of Ordway's achievement with this assignment that the book is considered a classic. Unfortunately, you wouldn't know this from reading the book. To understand that, you need this:

A back issue of Back Issue Magazine devoted to development of the film's screenplay, graphic novel adaptation, newspaper comic strip tie-in, plus, the Batman comic books during the late-80s into the early-90s, which are still considered a golden time for sales of Batman comics, with sales figures reaching the millions...the comic book market really wishes these days were back again.

Twomorrows Publishing, which publishes Back Issue, along with other pop culture nostalgia magazines, offers copies on their website, since the shops tend to order conservative numbers of copies. It's not hard to get and I reccomend it for the commentary - particularly the sections featuring interviews with screenwriter Sam Hamm, writer/editor/legend Dennis O'Neil and Jerry Ordway, where it felt like I was learning new things about the making of the film that hadn't been revealed before. People who wonder about Michael Uslan's contribution to every Batman movie ever will learn from his interview that he pitched the idea of a "serious, dark" Batman movie for almost a decade, but he stops short of revealing why his name is rubber-stamped on a lot of films, yet he doesn't have anything to do with the production at all; you need to dig deeper to learn that this is the result of a deal in which he relinquished creative control for a percentage of the net and a flat fee with a "Producer" credit on every Batman film...to this day, he's very cagey about that, because he still does interviews about comic book history, but it's not a secret; it's just details that you need to dig for to get clarification, like this article from Den of Geek:

Check Den of Geek for the full

article.

At the end of the day, it's a sweet lifetime deal for helping development along during a fallow period.

As for the comic book of the movie, the appeal of having this in 1989 was that you get a peak at plot spoilers if you hadn't seen the film, or you haven't bought the film on home video, or your parents hadn't bought it - that's if you were a kid at the time. Anyone who remembers the videocassette will recall that it contained a heavy amount of videotape that asked for a lot of muscle from the VCR's rewind function - the rewind feature on the VCR was always the first component to cause the machine's motor to burn out from overuse fairly quickly, which is why separate machines called "tape rewinders" were popular, but were cheaply made and burnt out even quicker. This is the primary reason why VHS/Beta cassette recorders/players have not been revived like vinyl records, regardless of their clunkyness. So..having the comic book saved you from trying to watch the film more than once - at risk of ruining the family VCR by rewinding a heavy spool of videotape.

Another draw was deleted/alternate scenes. The comic was produced under a tight deadline. Ditto the novelization - even the bubble gum cards, so you'll find scenes depicted in the tie-in material that did not make the final cut. For example:

That scene was only partially filmed, but it was sandwiched into a "making of..." documentary for the 10th Anniversary DVD, which appears in the Blu-Ray and future anniversary editions, thereafter.

Another insight that I realized from reading the magazine interview with Sam Hamm...and I don't believe this has ever been brought up...from this film onward, the recurring theme is that Batman/Bruce Wayne is crazy, but the plot of each film has him encounter someone whose interactions with him result in him becoming sane, but he needs to rediscover his insanity in order to become effective at bearding an even bigger psychopath. I don't know if they'll ever shake off this theme, but this starts with Hamm's take - which he saw as "Batman's First Big Case", conceived before Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, which is partly why the film doesn't draw inspiration from it, perhaps superficially, the crooked cops and gangsters, but Hamm reveals that came from Steve Englehart's Batman stories, which implied Gotham City was controlled by the mob.

There's been recent talk of re-releasing an expanded edition of Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever, which would recover almost an hour of unseen footage from the cutting room floor, although I'm inclined to think it will be more of the dull stuff with Bruce Wayne and Chase Meridian, talking shop about his sanity, though that would reinforce my observation about Batman's arc in these live-action movies, which sounds less like a proper character arc and more of a beat for the actor playing Batman to play with.

Killing the Joker won't make the

pain go away, Batman...

That's a cool re-edit from the Batman Again YouTube channel, which remixes Han Zimmer's music into scenes from the 1st Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher Batman films, but in the video that shows a deleted scene from Batman Forever, the video includes footage from the 2 Burton films in a montage mixed with bits of Zimmer's score from Batman Begins to the tune of Val Kilmer's soliloquy: "..killing won't take the pain away..you make the kill, then you'll run off into the night..and find another face..and then another..and another..until you wake up one day and realize that revenge has become your whole life..." and that's with edited clips of Joker, Penguin and Catwoman - each encountering Batman before meeting their demise in the 2 films. Matt Reeves' The Batman, allegedly has 6 Batman villains, though we only know of Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman..which is still impressive. It'll be interesting to see if his film continues the observance of having a Batman whose greatest challenge is overcoming sanity.

So...yeah. Batman. The comic book of the movie. It's good. For extras and commentary, though..some assembly required.

Before The Comeback Is Set Back By A Rollback...

2020-07-15T22:30:00.001-07:00

In New York City, comic book stores reopened under "Phase 2" in June, so there's been time to slowly catch-up on what was postponed over the last few months.

Months of buying nothing means that what I did buy looks like a batch of books, but had there been no pandemic, I realized I would've only picked out 2 regular-sized comic books a month on average. On one month, I would've purchased 3 regular-sized comic books a month. And the purchases weren't particularly adventurous - it really looks like I'm just keeping tabs on what new adventures Batman and Batgirl are up to.

I was able to flip through the pricey "extravaganza" issues of Catwoman, Robin, The Flash, Joker and Green Lantern - the Green Lantern one was, surprisingly, the one worth buying, while the rest looked superficial with empty calories.

Justice League Dark features on-the-rise new writer Ram V. working the script off of James Tynion's plot and is serviceable, if very middle-of-the-road. It'll be interesting to see new storylines entirely by V in the future and how they fare, because the only distinction that made it worth checking out the next issue is that he has a good grasp of pacing, dialogue and characterization.

Now, on to the new Adventures of Bruce & Babs. It was nice that I was able to get the issue of Batman with the Stanley "Artgerm" Lau cover of Punchline, because there was a lot of hype surrounding it, even though her story reads like weak tea compared to the stories that introduced Harley Quinn in Batman: The Animated Series, although, to be fair, I remember not thinking anything of Harley until after Paul Dini wrote "Harley and Ivy" - that episode was her breakthrough, so it's possible that Punchline will probably have her moment in the future, while her first appearance and "origin" (which, honestly, was really sketchy and lacking meat to feel definitive) are just perfunctory things for posterity right now. Like, for example, if Eiza Gonzalez is cast to play her in a movie, then these early books become hot. Right now, it's empty calories.

Speaking of Batman: The Animated Series, two new comic books were launched to coincide with an expansion to a popular line of toys. Batman: The Adventures Continue and reprints of The Batman Adventures comic book from the early-90s. Ironically, the reprint comic is printed on better-quality paper than either the original issue or the trade paperbacks that reprinted the issue, offered at 79 cents more than the cover price of the original. It's actually a better deal than when it was offered 27 years ago. It's also a good issue that sets the style early. The Batman vs. The Penguin story is told with the same complexity expected of the traditional Batman books, but not the ones sold at the time. With hindsight, the approach in these early issues has more in common with Steve Englehart's 70's Batman comics, but I look back fondly on my memory of reading that 1st issue when it debuted, with the Danny Devito Penguin voiced by Paul Williams.

With Batman: The Adventures Continue, I thought the story was let down by the artwork. Ty Templeton's art style feels pretty basic compared to other artists I've seen work in this "animated" style, which is really just a way of saying it's drawn the way Bruce Timm might draw it, except we've seen him not draw it this way - check out the Mad Love comic book and you'll see his drawing style is more exaggerated, with more influences and a wider frame-of-reference informing what he's doing. If they couldn't get Bruce Timm back, I would've liked to have seen Rick Burchett, Tim Levins or Dario Brizuela try it. Otherwise, the book is a fun, safe bet.

Opinions on Batgirl comics vary wildly. I always rooted for Barbara Gordon to get out of the wheelchair and be Batgirl again, whereas the people who claim to prefer her replacements - Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brow - well, the sales of those books really needed to be there to not make anyone in editorial agree that they were great. Dan Didio's decision (typical of most of the decisions he made to reboot books) to make Barbara Batgirl again was based on sales possibly being better if the character headlining the book wasn't a 2nd/3rd generation character. In the long run, sales turned out relatively the same, but this time the title character is consistent with how she appears on merchandise and television, so you can argue that Barbara wins by seniority and experience, brand-wise. If they replace her again, well, I have one less book to buy, plus I'm still rooting for Lily Collins to play Babs in the movie...

The resemblance is incredible.

I'm certain Cecil Castellucci's Batgirl scripts have been all about increasing the suspense and threat with bigger villains, but I have half-jokingly suggested on Twitter that her inspiration for story ideas comes from tropes found in folklore & mythology. This makes her stories more interesting than most of the Batgirl storylines we have had in a long time since the "Batgirl of Burnside" arc, five years ago. Castellucci's first arc, "Oracle Rising" has Barbara re-encounter her first villain (Killer Moth), plus The Terrible Trio - villains that appeared in the previous arc by the former writer of the book, Mairghead Scott, but the real villain of the piece is the evil Oracle android, whose origins have no explanation, but we get visual clues that she might be a construct of Superman villains Brainiac & Lex Luthor as part a line-wide crossover, The Year of The Villain, so, essentially, Castellucci is offering us Batgirl vs. Evil Twin, a common trope in mythology. Unfortunately, there's a huge continuity problem: Castellucci seems to be writing this as if "Oracle" was a sophisticated artificial intelligence system that Barbara employed, akin to the TV series, Person of Interest, which is a huge retcon, since Oracle was just an alias Barbara used when she became a computer hacker, offering Intel/communications/tech support to Batman and the Justice League in the 1990's. Was anyone in editorial aware? Cecil's main Batgirl reference is the Bronze Age Batgirl comics, which explains the presence of Jason Bard as a would-be love interest in her book, even though he had previously appeared as a villain in Batman Eternal (and within that story, it was Barbara who was responsible for the crippling injury that damaged his leg; she threw him off a rooftop). Anyway, if you can get over these hurdles, it's good, Stan Lee-style superhero spectacle and the art is fabulous.

The next arc in Cecil's run was literally Batgirl vs. A Dragon. In mythology, dragons represent greed - the monomyth of the greedy dragon who collects treasures and virgin princesses and hoards them in his castle or cave, but doesn't do anything with this stuff; he's just a hoarder. The heroic knight has to journey to slay the dragon and recover the dragon/treasure. Well, if Batman can be seen fighting dragons and hanging out with dinosaurs around the same time, then Batgirl can fight a dragon, too. This is also the first time Batgirl is regarded as equal to a Knight in shining armor, a parallel usually reserved for Batman.

So, we've seen her fight old villains, fight an evil twin, slay a dragon...and then, in the short arc that just wrapped, Cecil has Babs fight another new villain, but it's a villain that's a pastiche of a classic archfoe - Auric Goldfinger.

Okay, not really, the adventure is clearly a parallel of Goldfinger, with KGBeast standing in for Oddjob and Batwoman standing in for Felix Leiter. It's a classic trope in superhero stories to have the hero fight a villain whose schemes ape established pop culture characters from books, movies and TV shows. The Batman villain Ra's Al Ghul was always compared with Fu Manchu and James Bond villains like Doctor No & Ernst Stavro Blofeld. With Batgirl, Cecil Castellucci created a James Bond-style female villain for Babs and, as a bonus, tossed in an underused Batman villain as her henchman and included a team-up with guest-hero Batwoman...who might also be standing in for Pussy Galore in addition to Felix Leiter, since the original solicits for issues 45 & 46 claimed this was going to be a 2-part team-up with Catwoman, but it's possible that character was removed because she appears prominently in the main Batman storyline, so, ironically, inserting Kate Kane in her place makes the Bond analogy even more crystal clear, because in the Goldfinger book, Galore was also a lesbian.

Whether or not my theory is a deliberate approach or a subconscious one on Cecil's part isn't really important, but I found it amusing that it fits well. Her next issue is another trope: an encounter with the Devil:

This issue isn't out yet. I hope I'll get a copy.

I'll wait for the trade to check out what Harley Quinn's romance with Booster Gold looks like...same deal with the Batman Beyond comic book..

How will Poison Ivy & Blue Beetle react to this?