Posted by Richard Pulfer on Jul 22nd, 2008
If you haven’t seen The Dark Knight yet, well, I’m surprised you’re even reading this column. Go see it, because not only will you see the new Watchmen trailer on a big screen - but you’ll also see one of the best superhero movies in recent - and total - history.
Don’t believe anyone who tells you the praise is just “fanboy hype.” The Dark Knight is an outstanding picture of Gotham City - it’s citizens, its defenders and its enemies. Heath Ledger does deserve an Oscar - his mannerisms resemble a silent picture star like Charlie Chaplin and Ledger himself seems entirely unrecognizable.
While I’m not surprised about the slight amount of controversy surrounding the film (this movie is NOT for kids), I am a little frustrated to some of the comments. One Yahoo! blogger said the movie was more based on the “alternative” Frank Miller vision of Batman, and not the true version - Adam West. Didn’t we do this song and dance once already with Batman 1989, and now, six movies and twenty years later, we still have complaints there’s no Bat-Shark Repellant?
On to the comics. Secret Invasion continues in Avengers: The Inititative #15, which has one cadet - and possible Skrull infiltator - making a huge decision, while also promising a new low for Ant-Man. I didn’t think the irredeemable Ant-Man could get any lower, but I guess he wouldn’t be irredeemable then. 3-D Man - whose glasses could detect Skrulls until they were tampered with - is also supposed to gain a new “krew” of some sort.
New Avengers #43 has hero vs. hero in the Savage Land. Spider-Man is fighting Captain America (probably an imposter, but not THE imposter in Captain America’s own book. Confused yet?) We’re supposed to get more backstory on how the Skrulls launched the invasion, but after already getting that in Mighty Avengers, I’m starting to wonder if New Avengers will wear thin.
New Warriors #14 also has a Secret Invasion tie-in . . . as well as a Civil War tie-in. Apparently the new Night Thrasher wonders if the old Night Thrasher didn’t die in the opening salvo of Civil War, but in fact, was a Skrull imposter! I know - I’m confused too. This does set up a new team to fight the Initative’s answer to the New Warriors - Counter Force, made up of many old faces in the New Warriors.
She-Hulk #31 ties into X-Factor AND Secret Invasion! She-Hulk’s partner Jazinda is a Skrull - so we could kind of guess where this is heading. No clue how X-Factor ties into the proceedings, but it should be interesting regardless.
Thunderbolts #122 also ties into Secret Invasion, when the renegade Skrull Captain Marvel mysteriously attacks Thunderbolt mountain, only to be attacked by the Thunderbolts. Norman Osborn is leading the charge, and though he’s kept it together so far, rumor has it good old Green Goblin will be surface sooner or later.
Uncanny X-Men #500 debuts a new team fresh after Messiah Complex and Divided We Stand. Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction are teaming up with Greg Land and Terry Dodson to provide the creative team. The team is reformed in San Franciso, with the X-Mansion no more. This has been a hotly anticipated comic, and since it doesn’t tie into Secret Invasion, you practically have to buy it anyway!
There’s also a new Wolverine: First Class out this week, which has Wolverine apparently defecting back to Alpha Flight - and taking Kitty Pryde with him. This is such a good series, I really don’t care what the premise is - I’m sure its worth reading.
On the DC side, loser hero/villain Ambush Bug has a new series out by Keith Griffen and Robert Loren Fleming. The solitication reads “Cats and dogs will live in sin . . . Live heroes will die and dead heroes will live . . . Okay none of that actually happens but join us anyway.” A funny book in DC? I’m sold.
Robin #175 ties directly into Batman RIP. I included a link to the powerful cover, which has Tim Drake holding Batman’s body ala the death of Jason Todd. The solitication reads this two-part series will change both Robin’s status quo - and his future of Batman. Written by Chuck Dixon, you better believe this is worth picking.
Superman #678 by James Robinson features Superman taking on a long-vanished hero named Atlas in the streets and the results - painted by Alex Ross on the cover - look pretty impressive. I’m a huge Robinson fan from Starman, so I think this just might be the series Superman fans have been waiting for.
After every other member of the Bat-cast has gotten a Year One, it’s Two-Face’s turn - and just in time for the movie. Written by Mark Sable, the series charts both Dent’s rise in the D.A.’s office as well as his horrific fall as Two-Face.
Plenty of stuff this week to pick up - and probably more Secret Invasion then you ever wanted. See ya next week!
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Devin de Gruyl
July 22, 2008 at 12:09 pm
The sad part is, that ’60s Batman series is still, after all these years, the most pervasive form of the Bat-mythos in American pop culture. Even the Tim Burton movies didn’t totally shake it.
Maybe it’s just because television is a far more ubiquitous medium than comic books. Wonder Woman has a similar hurdle to overcome in that the popular image of Wondy is still Lynda Carter doing slo-mo pirouettes and running around in a bathing suit. Ditto for Spider-Man, who among those of a certain age is still most associated with the cheesy theme of that ’60s cartoon (”Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can”). Endless reruns of these and other superhero-based series during the heyday of syndicated television in the late ’70s to early ’90s helped perpetuate these images.
In Batman’s case, it’s far worse - because the Adam West series is still celebrated today as the very definition of “cult classic,” and it was a meteoric hit during its first year or so on the air. Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you I am not a fan of that show, because the truth is I did enjoy it for what it was - a campy, Expressionist parody of comic conventions, disguised as a TV action/adventure series. But its own success on that level has ensured it a place in the American zeitgeist to this very day, long after the joke had run thin, and to a certain extent the spoof has become, for some people, “the real thing.” They have never read Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, A Death in the Family (itself noteworthy, as the hype surrounding Robin’s reader-dictated death conveniently failed to mention that Robin, in this case, wasn’t Dick Grayson), or any of the other iconic attempts during the “Comic Renaissance” of the ’80s to steer the Batman back to his Gothic roots and away from the overwrought camp of the TV series and of Superfriends. Many of them probably can’t name more members of Batman’s Rogues Gallery than the Joker, the Penguin, Catwoman, and the Riddler, or they believe TV villains like Egghead and King Tut were ever in the comics (to my knowledge, barring any one-shots during the TV show’s height of popularity, they weren’t). And they certainly aren’t aware that the more recent incarnations of Batman are actually far closer in spirit to Bob Kane’s original creation than anything William Dozier ever touched.
I’m sure it was never planned that way, but that’s kind of what we ended up with. As a result, you have movies like The Dark Knight being gigged by parents’ groups for not being kid-friendly enough - when the plain truth is, Batman was never supposed to be “kid-friendly” in the first place, at least not as that term is defined today.
[Reply]
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Good points, Devin. TDK definitely isn’t a kids’ movie, but I can see where these groups are coming from. I’ve noticed that this movie is being marketed to kids, specifically with the toys and other child-appropriate merchandise I’ve seen out there. Gordon McAlpin of “Multiplex” said it very well in the comments for his latest comic…
The level of violence bothered me not in the context of the film, but in how the film was being marketed. Toys are a hard one to gauge ages for, because adults collect action figures. (I do think MacFarlane Toys’ products — while often disturbing — are generally and plainly aimed at older collectors/hobbyists, not children.) But I saw children’s picturebooks unquestionably aimed at grade school aged kids at a Borders the other day — not just generic Batman picture books, mind you, but Dark Knight-specific picture books, with a sanitized version of Heath Ledger’s Joker — and my soul died a little.
Marketing a film like Dark Knight to kids that young is simply inappropriate. Even though it is (of course) the parents’ responsibility to decide if their child is ready for a PG-13 or even R-rated movie, little-kid merchandise gives parents the impression that the movie is appropriate for younger kids, whether that is the case (as in Iron Man) or not (as in DK, in my opinion, anyway).”
I think Gordon summed it up pretty well. I guess it all boils down to one thing — money. Kids love Batman, and will spend tons of cash (their own or their parents’) on movie-related materials, even if they shouldn’t actually see this movie. I know after seeing it, I would not encourage any child of mine to play with a TDK Joker toy.
[Reply]
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:17 pm
To be honest, I think TDK has taken on a very sinister subtext because of the Heath Ledger tragedy. It gives me a really weird feeling knowing that there are now action-figure effigies and other kid-oriented paraphernalia of a dead man. Not only a dead man, but a dead man who, in what proved to be his final role, played a deranged psychopath.
In one of the chapters of Watchmen, in supplemental material supposedly taken from the desk blotter of Adrian Veidt, there’s a dummied-up catalog page for a line of toys based on the “costume heroes” of that world (apparently, the fact the identities themselves had been outlawed in Watchmen’s version of America didn’t stop Veidt from trying to profit off them). One of the figures in the set is of Rorschach, the ruthless and pitiless vigilante who prominently occupies a permanent spot on New York’s most-wanted list. The ad copy even includes a mention of Rorschach’s signature weapon, which (in story terms) had just been used to kill a cop during an altercation. …That’s the only thing I can even begin to equate this feeling of seeing little Heath Ledgers hanging off pegs in toy departments around the country. It’s just… whoa, man. On some level, that’s just royally screwed up.
TDK was already not exactly a kids movie. The fact its most celebrated star will now have to accept any honors for his work posthumously, quite frankly, gives me a major case of the skeeves.
[Reply]