Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Well the jury's still out on whether the post-IC era will be lighter or darker (it doesn't look promising!) but an interview with editor Peter Tomasi actually provides a light at the end of the tunnel for...of all characters...Batman!

For an old Batfan like me, who hasn't bought a Bat-title in over 10 years out of disgust for what he's become, a quote like this is music to my ears:


Quoth Tomasi:



Could this mean the end of the "Dark Knight" approach to Batman?

Can it be that for the first time since Steve Englehart worked on "Detective," someone finally remembers the real Batman?

Is it possible I will actually buy a Batman comic in 2006!!??

Tune it tomorrow, same bat-time, same bat-channel!

If it's any good, let us know.

:s:

Urge to say...I told you so...overwhelming...must fight...to...hold...tongue...

 8)

This is what happens when you get, not just talented people, but people that understand who the characters ARE. I have every faith in a post-INFINITE CRISIS DC Universe, for no other reason than the miniseries that is laying the groundwork, IC proper, is just so great in and of itself.

Judging by the above comment, that guy knows who Batman is as well.

As embarassing as an old Englehart fan like me is to say it, I have not bought Englehart's recent Bat-miniseries. If ANYBODY could save Batman though, it'd be Stainless Steve.

And, we've got Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns BOTH writing Superman. I mean, as Gambit was fond of saying, "life don't get much bedder dan 'dis."

See, I'm still going to buy only All-Star Superman until you tell me it's safe to come outside.  :D

I have a friend who is really into comics. He recommended a bunch of things for me to read, and I ended up with stuff like Watchmen, Crisis, and The Dark Knight Returns. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy...but I got him to buy "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" for me from his comic shop, and then I forgave him.

So I do not trust the new things in the comic shop (see my comic shop thread.) I'm content to keep buying back issues of old Superboy comics...I still haven't read all of my Marvel Star Wars.

Never have I more wanted to say I told you so than here - if I turn out to be right and comics are DC books are exiting this dismal period, nobody will be happier than yours truly.

I can't BELIEVE I say I like a Grant Morrison comic. Naturally, I'm an effervescent individual, but the praise the Morrison fanboys throw on anything he does is so unbelieveable never has the urge been greater to SHOUT that something stinks. Yet...I can't.

On the CBR forums, there was a thread about this book, and the thread for the book was so gushing that it borders on the homoerotic. I *SWEAR,* the Morrison fans are self-parodies. There was this one guy that used his actual photograph in the picture. He had hipster Weezer glasses and a poster of an underground comic behind him. It was like a stereotype in human form had risen to torment me.



He actually...recommended DKR and CRISIS? Aw, man, you need to get cooler friends. Like me, for instance. :D

Try Englehart's AVENGERS. Especially the story where the Vision is menaced by "Human Bombs," the Celestial Madonna arc, and the Serpent Crown.

Or try Gardner Fox's JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA. They're now out on $10 SHOWCASE editions, so actually, you can't NOT afford to buy them!

Heck, isn't all of the Busiek/Perez AVENGERS out on TPB in some form?



Good choice - Roy Thomas is still a star, just like back in the day.

Pay special attention to the issue, penned by Chris Claremont, which is set in the Clone Wars, which shows that Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker's Dad are clearly two different people. This puts humbug on Lucas's claim that it was he, not the brilliant Leigh Brackett that wrote the screenplay for EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, who created the idea that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father.

Roy Thomas left STAR WARS because he claimed that he was sent a phonebook thick "suggestion" guide that was filled with what to show and what not to show. And in those hundreds of pages, NOT ONE was "don't show Luke Skywalker's father?"

George Lucas is the John Byrne of directors.

I don't know how that guy got my picture, but I wish he would temper his Morrison enthusiasm a bit.  The guy's okay, but he's no Stewart Home.

I don't care what anyone says, making Vader Luke's father was the single dumbest plot twist in modern cinema.  Not only was the pay-off not worth it, but it ruined what, in the first film, had been the greatest movie villain since Goldfinger...or maybe King Kong. In 1977, Vader could give you chill bumps and have you yelling "Boo, Hiss" with glee.  Now you look at the same film and think, "Poor, lost Annakin."  BLLEHHH!

And without that little brainstorm we also wouldn't have had the execrable episodes I-III.  God save us from prequels.

Especially because it makes Leia kissing Luke look incestuous and Luke falling for her less of a tragedy.

Do Jedis get married?

Then again, with a name like Luke he was bound to end up kissing his sister.

Of course his sister should've been named Luanne.

I liked the surprise that Darth was Luke's father (or at least he -said- he was), but Darth being Leia's father as well just never did it for me.

Agreed. Some villains work because they are able to create sympathy: e.g. Frankenstein, King Kong. Other villains work, though, because they are able to create absolute terror, because they are pure evil: e.g. Dracula, Hannibal Lecter.

Both types of villains were on display in the Mantlo/Englehart/Isabella run of SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM UP which placed the former type (Namor, the Sub-Mariner) with the latter (Doctor Doom).

However, if Leigh Brackett had lived, it is likely that this plot twist would have been carried in such a way that it was honest to Vader's cinematic evil. Why? Because in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, Vader tells Luke he is his son...and then chops his hand off and leaves him for dead. Now, with a scene like that, you get a sense that Vader has many things on his mind, but redemption isn't one of them.

For the record, Episode III could have been totally redeemed if they had done something like this in the last scene:

VADER: "Where is the Queen?"
EMPEROR: "I'm afraid you killed her."
VADER: "Good." [/list]

As for the plot twist that Luke is Leia's brother...well, "left field" doesn't even begin to describe where this detail came from. Not the least of which because they had romantic tension. But also because...Leia was in a room with Vader for hours and hours in the first picture when he tortured her for information. Wouldn't he be able to TELL she was his kid?

What it was, was a lazy way out of what was potentially one of movies' most interesting love triangles.

(I don't know who Leia would have picked, but Luke was kind of a punk. Give me the rugged, five-o-clock shadowed Harrison Ford anyday.)

George Lucas is a revisionist  hack.

Leia was 16 and Luke 18.  Anakin Skywalker  and Darth Vader were two seperate beings.

When Star Wars first came out, there was a set of trading cards with offical data on the characters in the movie.   The age difference between Luke and Leia was one of the things I can recall, as is the seperation of Vader and Anakin.  

This is as bad as Batman never found out who killed his parents, Superman was never Superboy, Vision is nothing more than a toaster, and so on.

IMPO the only true official continuation of Star Wars was the infamous Holiday Special.

Absolute agreement here. And for those fans who prefer Empire cause its darked theres only one true SW - and thats SW77. They even got medals, The End.

Not to mention uncedited swipes from ERB, Flash Gordon, etc, etc.

I would add Alan Dean Foster's original SW sequel novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye to your list.  It was the first SW sequel, before Vader was Anakin and before Lucas had a big budget.  It was also by the same author as the SW novel.

:s:

I forgot about that novel.  Yes, it is also a sequel to the original spirit of Star Wars.

We're off track.  Batman's brightest days are not in the comics, but in the cartoons.  I have yet to see The Batman, but I'm quite sure it isn't going into Vertigo territory.

Aww, c'mon. EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was fortified with 90% more Han Solo, and that can't be a bad thing. Harrison Ford is one of those actors that have a real gift for comedy, that because of typecasting they never had an opportunity to demonstrate.

I blame A VIEW TO A KILL for delaying Christopher Walken's ultimate career as the greatest comedy genius since Bill Murray.

Now that Richard Chamberlain is older and no longer has to play "hearthrob" parts, it would be interesting to see him do some comedy. Like Billy Zane in TITANIC, he was the only one in KING SOLOMON'S MINES that "got" just how cheesy the movie was, and had a grand old time. He was grinning and goofing off all the time on screen almost assuredly because he was having loads of fun making the movie.

(Although darn Carrie Fischer to hell for what she did to Paul Simon. I love the original STAR WARS, but I love Paul Simon more.)



Yeah, darn EMPIRE STRIKES BACK for ruining what had up until then been one of the most original science fiction franchises ever.  :lol:

Back to the topic...

The new creative Team for Detective Comics has been announced:

Paul Dini and Rags Morales


Sweet lordy, someone check Nightwing's heart!

This is great news!

please see these links to learn more about these two:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Dini

http://www.comicfoundry.com/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=57

Paul Dini?  Now that is awesome.  It's been a wild week for Batman, to be sure.  I just heard Neal Adams has signed on to draw a bat-book for the first time since the Nixon Administration!

Unfortunately it's "All Star Batman" with Frank Miller writing.  And if I was already on the fence about Neal given his annoying political screeds lately, teaming him with Miller is really pushing me to the "don't buy" camp.

Neal Adams on Batman?  And me not sure I want to support it?  The 21st Century's turning out to be a strange new world, indeed.  Now, if it had been Dini and Adams together, you really would have needed that defibrilator.

I really have to wonder exactly what it was that Neal Adams said about politics that sounded nuttier than all his "amateur geology" theories.  :D

Neal Adams assigned to a regular title? Alriiight! He's had on his website some grand old ideas for a Batman costume redesign which would be interesting to see in play. Although I'm still not picking up the title because Frank Miller is terrible (and kind of always has been; remember that blind guy from DAREDEVIL that taught him not to use his Radar Sense? Wha?)

Like Michael Jackson, I'm well aware that Neal Adams is an eccentric weirdo. I can tolerate the hyperbaric chamber and pet chimp as long as the work produced is great (although in Michael's case, it sure stopped being so circa Shout). As long as Neal keeps on drawing the way he did his power packed AVENGERS covers, he can talk about Seafloor Spreading all day and night.

Well, since you've been to his website you should know what I mean.  For a kid who grew up thinking Neal was a god, I've certainly soured on him in recent years, and a lot of that's due to Neal himself.  When he isn't putting forth those crackpot theories about the genesis of the Earth (message to Neal: WHO CARES?), he's posting some leftist tract or other blaming Bush for rainy days, missing socks and short days in winter.  I half expect him to pull off his Neal Adams mask, Mission Impossible style, and reveal himself as Sean Penn ("Bush makes me smoke!").

Apparently Neal shares my old opinion that he's a god.  Annoying enough when he's just bragging about how everything good that ever happened to any character is all thanks to him (Burton's Batman films?  All stolen from Neal's work...Singer's "X-Men" films?  Clearly an adaptation of Neal's run on the book.  Yadda Yadda) but when he gets Streisand-itis and decides he can also out-think geologists and heads of state, it's time to move on to the stronger meds.  And don't forget his "gift to fans," the online store offering art-o-graph tracings of his past glories for thousands of dollars.

Funnily enough, I think I could almost stand all this if his site wasn't such a headache-inducing eyesore. For a self-proclaimed graphics genius, it's easily the sloppiest, most hideous mess on the Web.  I can only assume the old man just isn't into the Web and handed the chores off to one of his talentless but no less egotistical kids (I never met "Spyda" but the name alone is enough to make me want to smack him).

Glad you like his recent stuff, but even there I'm let down.  I haven't bought his "Batman" collections, but I saw a re-done version of "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge" in a TPB at Target, not just recolored (his passion nowadays) but also re-inked...with a Sharpie, no less...and it was gruesome.  If that's a sample of what's in the three fancy hardbacks, count me out.  So to Neal Adams, my one-time hero, I hereby utter the cruelest phrase an artist can hear; "I liked your old stuff better!"

Nightwing,

Sit down relax and read this:



some quotes:

"and he just loves Batman. Absolutely loves Batman."
http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=c4959841fa67e7f6922039d45f94d1e3&threadid=57023
“Detective Comics was one of the books that I used to read regularly in my early days as a fan, mainly because I loved the detective aspect of the stories. Batman was the superhero book, and Detective was the crime title. Paul is one of the few people that I believe can go in and tell those kind of stories, so that’s what we’re going to have him do.

“Part of Paul’s own agenda on the series is to go in and tell single-issue mystery stories. Every issue is a standalone mystery. There may be an overarching story that runs underneath everything, but every issue has a beginning, middle, and end of a detective mystery. That’s something that we haven’t seen in a while, and it takes someone of real talent and ability to be able to pull that off on a monthly basis.”


http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=c4959841fa67e7f6922039d45f94d1e3&threadid=57023

Could someone provide a direct link to these ideas of Neal's?  I've looked around on his website and can't find any mention of it.

:s:

I'd like to check 'em out too...

Thanks for the link, Super-Monkey.  Yes, it's starting to look like Detective will be everything I look for in a Batman comic, so count me in.  Dini is tops with me...in the 90s he helped make the Animated Series the one place on Earth you could find the real Batman.  And Rags Morales is a pretty good artist even if he does have a name more befitting a pet dog. Looking forward to this one.

But what a shame they can't pry Miller's hands off ASB.  And for Adams to come back at this late stage and sully his otherwise spotless record on Batman is a real shame.



Well-organized site, eh?  That, plus the semi-literate text and eye-injuring "design" make it a real treat all the way around.  Well here it is anyway:

http://www.nealadams.com/news2.html#anchorcomic

Short version: more weapons.  Oh, and blades, gotta have blades.  Neal Adams, 60 going on 14.

I can live with egotism as long as the work is great. By all accounts, my hero, Stainless Steve Englehart, is the biggest egomaniac this side of Shatner.

It is something of a tragedy to watch childhood icons spiral into madness: the worst example of this is professional wrestler the Ultimate Warrior, who after his firing, legally changed his name to "Warrior" and began to refer to himself in the third person.

Stainless Steve started to go into a nose-dive circa NEW GUARDIANS, but thankfully he was able to do STRANGERS and THE NIGHT MAN and thus pull up just in time.



Why the hell do artists do this to themselves?

"Exhibit A" would have to be my old boyfriend, Johnny Redbeard, who, if he was to be believed, created Wolverine and the X-Men right after he lassoed a tornado and domesticated the dog.

Englehart on his own website, takes credit for the Burton Batman movies. Now, if the movies HAD been inspired by Englehart that would have been SOMETHING. Circa 1983, there was an idea for a Batman movie based on Stainless Steve's stuff that was going the rounds, which featured a slim, urbane Penguin and a prominent role for Silver St. Cloud rising from the water like Ursula Andress.

This Bat-movie, like Cary Bates's script for SUPERMAN V that involved Brainiac and Kandor, is one of the first DVDs I will buy once I visit an alternate universe.



Well, the "pop-out waterproof breathing mask" is going a little too far, but the idea of the utility belt being a toolbelt sounds intriguingly utilitarian. It always bugged me that all of the pockets of the Bat-utility belt were equally sized and equally spaced. What does he keep in there? Jellybeans?

Can Neal make a deadline when he couldnt when he was younger?

(http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/5460/jasonnealadams4xm.th.jpg)

the next regular writer of Batman is....



Grant Morrison!




In an unexpected announcement at the DC panel (though not coming as a complete surprise), it was just announced Grant Morrison will be the next regular writer of Batman, following James Robinson’s eight-part story arc running through that title and Detective beginning in March.

Though not announced or even confirmed, popular rumor and speculation still holds that one of the DC exclusive Kubert brothers will eventually be announced as his artist.

Morrison said that he’s already plotted 15 issues, and in his first issue alone, he has 15 ninja man-bats as well as Talia, and the story is called “Batman & Son”. Morrison said Batman coming out of 52 OYL will be a more of a “fun guy, more healthy”, more like the “Neal Adams, hairy-chested, love-god” version of Batman.

http://www.newsarama.com/WonderCon2006/DCU/besttocome.html

Hah!  I knew that Batman Through the Ages! would lead to something good!

I hope this means that Bats will also get his yellow-circle chest logo back.

:s:

My favorite gag in a recent Plastic Man is when Ras Al Ghul took his shirt off and challenged Plas to "some hairy chested shirtless fighting!"

Just like the good old days........

(http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/141/400/141_4_0000244.jpg)

The single greatest slam I have ever read in anything ever.

The earth's circumference isn't large enough to give a long enough plane ride where I would consider picking up another Clancy book. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER movie, like LORD OF THE RINGS, made a boring, glacially paced book readable.

Though why would I bother with this book at DC when nearly every single title at Marvel now has more or less this description? Is spy-esque comic books now the refuge of the hack writer that isn't cut out to write standard superheroics? And I have no intention of forgiving Rucka for his Superman run. Oh, no.



Good choice of words, because I already feel like I'm in physical pain.

So far I like the latest issue of Detective One Year Later.  Some nice moves and maybe, just maybe, a return to the good old days.