Batman Down: Cartoon Network Puts Beware The Batman On Hiatus

God knows that we have had our issues with some of the decisions that have come from the DC Nation partnership between DC Comics and Cartoon Network – we still bemoan the cancellation of Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and when it comes to replacing one of those shows with Teen Titans Go!, well, you know how we feel about that decision.

One bright spot to come out of last year’s cancellation turmoil, when both Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series were initially pulled from Cartoon Network’s schedule without notice toward the end of 2011 before running off their inventory of both shows, was the launch of Beware The Batman, the latest Batman animated show from Warner Bros. And while the new show really couldn’t hold a candle to the Bruce Timm / Paul Dini Batman: The Animated Series from the 90s, it’s certainly been entertaining enough to make a spot on our TiVo, and to catch at least half of the DC Nation shorts on a weekly basis. We try to catch the other shorts online, since there isn’t a force on Earth, including the marijuana that apparently allows most people to sit through it.

Well, that is we had Beware The Batman. Because in a case of history repeating itself, Cartoon Network has, without prior notice, pulled the show from their schedule with episodes still in reserve.

So… what the fuck, Cartoon Network?

Return of The Joker: New Commercial For Batman: Arkham Origins And Joker Voice Actor Does The Killing Joke

In April, Amanda and I completely redid the Entertainment Annex of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, and due to changes in layout and furniture, we haven’t reconnected my XBox 360 (My gamertag? You don’t want my gamertag. I shoot the Witches in Left For Dead 2, and I do it because I quickly reach a point where I don’t care if it’s my “teammates” or me who dies if it means I don’t have to hear about my mother’s sexual proclivities anymore).

And, in an effort to keep the newly-renovated room looking like adults live here, I have held fast in keeping it disconnected, despite having a yen to play my XBox Arcade downloads after a weekend of classic video games, and even through the release of Grand Theft Auto V, because I figure once either the XBox One or the Playstation 4 comes out, either will replace my elderly and slow Blu-Ray player in favor of a new one that will report my tastes in pornography back to Corporate Headquarters.

But I recently realized that, even if I need to balance the ol’ 360 on top of a speaker or run cables across the middle of the floor, I will need to hook that bad boy up, because Batman: Arkham Origins is dropping before the end of the month. And even though this one isn’t being written by Bruce Timm, and the main voices aren’t by Kevin Conroy or Mark Hamill, and it’s the first Arkham game not produced by Rocksteady Games, the first two games earned more then enough goodwill for me to pick it up on launch day.

And the ads are helping to get me excited… kinda. On one hand, this new spot that takes us, in just a few seconds, through Bruce Wayne’s journey from Crime Alley to Batman… but it also makes me concerned that we’re gonna be spending more time than I’d like with Bruce Wayne instead of Batman. Arkham Origins without the Batman suit or the streets of Gotham or familiar rogues stands a real chance of becoming Double Dragon… but the emotional beats in the video give me some hope that it’ll be right at the core.

And you can check the latest spot after the jump.

Bale Begins: Christian Bale’s Batman Screen Test

Busy day here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office – my taking part in the Day of Dredd a few days back reminded me how woefully undereducated I am about that character, so I spent a big chunk of the day jumping from my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to to refrain from offering to show them my rigid helmeted justice, to local book stores, to chain book stores, and finally to the Internet to obtain or order the first five volumes of Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files.

Further, Amanda and I are tired of our only contribution to the weekly Breaking Bad water cooler conversations being, “Blue meth? Bullshit! I’ve never seen blue meth… why are you looking at me like that?” and thanks to Netflix are very close to being up-to-date with that show, with only a few more TiVo’ed episodes to go from this current season before we are (hopefully) current for next week’s finale.

But still, we don’t want to leave you empty handed, so here’s a little video from the upcoming Dark Knight Trilogy DVD / Blu-Ray. Specifically, it’s Christian Bale’s audition video for Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins.

Supposedly Bale was wearing one of Val Kilmer’s Batman suits from Batman Forever, which might shed some light on why Bale was using that raspy voice: it’s possible that he was busily being infected by whatever form of mutant super herpes that have made Kilmer act like such a loon for the past… well, at least since The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Anyway, while we watch Walter White try to outwit Hank from about six weeks ago, you can catch Bale’s first work as Batman after the jump. And we promise, we will return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

All About The Brown: A New Dark Knight Fan Film

I started out this evening writing a review of Marvel’s new title The Mighty Avengers – and I will finish that up and post it tomorrow –  but I got distracted by, of all things, a fanfic film. And it wasn’t even a slashfic film, which is a thing that would normally distract me because that is something that many people would call porn.

Instead, this is a seven minute film called The Dark Knight Legacy, directed by Brett Register and written by Woody Tondorf and Chris Landa, set a year after The Dark Knight Rises, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character John Blake as Nightwing (and Daniel Vincent Gordh, the guy they have playing Blake, does a pretty damn serviceable Joseph Gordon-Levitt impression), investigating the murders of a bunch of well-known rogues like Scarface and Penguin, at the hands of The Red Hood.

Make no mistake: this is not a special effects extravaganza. The people who made it are trying to raise $30,000 on IndieGoGo make another episode, so you can probably take a guess what this one cost. But even on a short budget, these guys put together some pretty decent makeup effects, well put-together costumes, and a couple of nice shots to the face… which makes it sound like a slashfic film, but trust me: it’s actually pretty well done.

Oh yeah: and it features Stephanie Brown, which should make many fanboys and fangirls squeal with joy, and will be the most likely reason for Dan DiDio to blow an embolism and start screeching for a cease and desist order.

Either way, you can check out the film after the jump.

Since Then, I’ve Spent Most Of My Time Chasing Superman. So To Speak: Ben Affleck Cast As Batman In Zack Snyder’s Batman Vs. Superman Movie

Christ, you go out to dinner late on a single, solitary Thursday evening, and what do you miss…

Ending weeks of speculation, Ben Affleck has been set to star as Batman, a.k.a. Bruce Wayne. Affleck and filmmaker Zack Snyder will create an entirely new incarnation of the character in Snyder’s as-yet-untitled project—bringing Batman and Superman together for the first time on the big screen and continuing the director’s vision of their universe, which he established in “Man of Steel.” The announcement was made today by Greg Silverman, President, Creative Development and Worldwide Production, and Sue Kroll, President, Worldwide Marketing and International Distribution, Warner Bros. Pictures.

The studio has slated the film to open worldwide on July 17, 2015.

Okay, let’s all get our, “Oh Jesus, Affleck was in Gigli / Saving Christmas / Sum of All Fears / Jennifer Lopez!” panic out of our system. Feel better? Now settle down, huddle up, fetch your old Uncle Rob some more bourbon, and listen up: this is not bad news.

No One Can Pick A Nonexistent Lock: Detective Comics #23 Review

When it comes to Batman continuity in the post New 25 / Grant Morrison world, DC Comics really needs to get its shit together. Because for an editorial division that seems, based on constant hirings and firings and reports of last-minute story changes, to want to keep their hands on their creators’ throttles (assuming “throttles” is what we’re calling them now), they really don’t seem to know what’s happening in their own books at any given time.

Just last week, Morrison completed his story arc on Batman Incorporated. That series, as you might be able to tell somewhat by its title, is ostensibly about Bruce Wayne’s public financing of not only Batman, but an army of regional Batman around the world. The events of Batman Incorporated are, at least in part, considered canon throughout the DC Universe, given the sheer number of recent issues I’ve read about Batman moping over the death of Damian. The introduction to this series was a scene, written by one of DC’s most popular creators, where Bruce Wayne calls a press conference to announce that he is the man who finances Batman.

Welcome to Detective Comics #23, an issue where a significant plot point hinges on the idea that Bruce Wayne’s financing of Batman’s arsenal isn’t common knowledge. But the good news is that giant continuity flaw is almost enough to mask the other gaping plot holes in the issue.

Whacko Storage Facility: Batman Annual #2 Review

I have been reading Batman comics since I was five years old, and therefore, I know what the purpose of Arkham Asylum is: it’s to give supervillains a place to take a nice rest after the end of a starring turn, and a place to break out of at the start of the next starring turn. And that’s pretty much it.

Seriously: can you think of anyone who has ever been cured at Arkham Asylum? I mean, in theory, any insane asylum is actually a psychiatric hospital; here in Massachusetts, the local nuthatch is known as Bridgewater State Hospital, not the Southeastern Mass Whacko Storage Facility (however, that will be the name of my next punk band). And when a facility is a hospital, one would assume the application of some form of medical treatment… and yet at Arkham, no one ever gets better. Hell, no one ever tries; the only people I can think of who were released from Arkham are Harvey Dent and The Joker, and that was in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and it only happened as a way for Miller to mock liberals, and ended in the deaths of hundreds. If you believe the portrayal of psychiatry in Batman, the field only exists to clap you in a straitjacket and pump your full of antipsychotic drugs. Which is why I self-medicate with 30-packs of the Poor Man’s Valium. But I digress.

But if one stops to think about it, if there is a psychiatric hospital, there must be someone who went there under their own power looking for a little medical help, right? And what would happen if the place that that person went for healing became, over the course of years, the location where a city locked up its most dangerous and escape-prone homicidal maniacs?

It’s an interesting idea, and its the focus of Batman Annual #2, with a story by regular Batman writer Scott Snyder and new comics writer Marguerite Bennett, with the script by Bennett herself. And it is successful in giving readers a new point of view on comics’ favorite spastic hatch… even though it isn’t completely successful as a completely immersive and believable Batman story.

Live Forever: Batman Incorporated #13 Review

Editor’s Note: I don’t know if Batman’s dead or not. All I know is this. Parts of the city out there, it’s like Spoiler Year all over again.

Grant Morrison has been working on his Batman story since 2006. During that time, DC has gone through a Final Crisis and a full reboot, Batman has died and been reborn after traveling through history, had a son and lost him (despite a couple of stories predicting his future as Trenchcoat Gunslinger Batman), and I have been infuriated at least as often, if not more often, as I have been delighted by what Morrison has done with the character in the past seven years.

Seriously: for every awesome speculative story about a future Batman presiding over the end of Gotham City, there is Batman with a handgun shooting Darkseid. For each interesting revival of obscure Silver Age ephemera, there is a Joker story that is mostly text with the occasional odd computer-generated image (seriously, Grant: if I wanted to read a giant block of text, I’d read this Web site). And for every moment where Damian does something awesome, there are about 700 moments where Damian speaks, breathes and / or exists. I was not a fan of Damian, I guess is what I’m saying.

But Morrison’s Batman story is over now, completed in this week’s Batman Incorporated #13, where Batman finally has his last showdown with Talia al Ghul (who started this all by dumping that little rugrat Damian on Batman’s doorstep back in the first place), with the fate of Gotham and six other cities hanging in the balance. And in the issue, Morrison tries to have things a lot of ways, simultaneously tearing down and destroying Batman and Bruce Wayne while asserting that that could never happen, and pointing out the ridiculousness of the idea of Batman while also calling it timeless and classic.

All of which should be a filthy Goddamned mess, and in certain ways it is, as Morrison makes a couple of choices here that directly contradict other things that he did earlier in his run. However, there is no denying two things: while I don’t always enjoy or agree with his story choices, there is no question that Morrison is an excellent writer… and if you’ve been following his career since Animal Man, you know he can write one hell of a final issue when he wants to.

And while Batman Incorporated #13 might not be the best wrapup to an epic storyline I’ve ever read, it is, in fact, one hell of an interesting statement on Batman himself.

SDCC 2013 Odds And Sods, Part One: DC’s Meet The Publishers Panel

We are coming up on the final bits and pieces of coverage we took from this year’s San Diego Comic-Con – yes, I know the convention ended eight days ago, but it turns out we had a lot of video to sort through, and a significant percentage of that video needed extensive processing on an actual computer in order to make it into something that YouTube would recognize as a video file, as opposed to some form of data wad, or perhaps a Word file detailing our manifesto and list of demands.

But the computer has done its work and dinged like a toaster oven (as we all know computers do), so we are finally proud to present a series of videos from DC Comics’s Meet The Publishers panel, held on Sunday, July 21st and featuring Co-Publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio. And you can say what you want about, say, DiDio (God knows we do, repeatedly), but there is no denying that the guy runs an entertaining panel with an infectious enthusiasm, which even Lee gets caught up in.

This was a fun panel, and we’re happy to bring you, a day late and a buck short, a small piece of it, along with some art that was shown to crowd at the panel. You can check them out after the jump.

My Dead Canadian Girlfriend: Batman: The Dark Knight #21 Review

We haven’t spent a lot of time talking about Batman: The Dark Knight since its relaunch in September 2011 – honestly, we haven’t reviewed even a single issue. And part of the reason has been that the title has always existed on the fringes of the Batman universe – the main plots have been in Batman and, to a lesser extent, Batman Incorporated, but Batman: The Dark Knight has always kinda done its own mostly self-contained stories. And being a comics Web site, we’ve tended to pay more attention to the big, money shot stories while Batman: The Dark Knight has sorta chugged happily along on its own, telling smaller, more simple and self-contained Batman stories.

And in its own way, Batman: The Dark Knight #21 is no different. The conflict happening here isn’t one that I’ve seen referenced in any of the other Batman books. The conflict is based on a relationship that hasn’t been mentioned anywhere else. It features a B-List villain in The Mad Hatter, who is the kind of villain you normally dig up when you have a story requiring a nutjob and you realize that it’s only been three months since the other Batman books have used The Joker, The Riddler, or The Scarecrow… and frankly, The Mad Hatter only gets picked once the writer sobers up enough to realize that resurrecting Chandell continues to be a shitty idea.

So what you wind up with is a Batman comic that almost exists in its own little bubble universe where it can just tell a simple Batman story. And that’s exactly what it does: it give us a Batman motivated only by the events of its own story, filled with rage and showing a ton of iconic visual action, with a simple message to deliver about how Batman exactly is different from the monsters that he battles. And, not being a part of the greater ongoing Batman continuity, it is kinda doomed to be midlist that probably goes out of print pretty quickly. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a damn good and simple story, and one that’s well worth checking out.