Put On A Happy Face: Batman Panel at SDCC 2012

Editor’s Note: I acknowledge that these pictures suck. We’ll upgrade our cameras once we receive your subscription check. Oh, you don’t pay for this? Then fuck you and enjoy the pictures you got.

Last year we kind of wandered into the panel for Scott Snyder’s American Vampire, mostly to make sure we’d have a seat for the DC New 52 panel that followed directly afterwards. Don’t get me wrong, we were following American Vampire in kind of a general way, but I had fallen away; the initial hype around one of the early stories being written by Stephen King hadn’t been enough to keep me in the book except in a “flip through when I happened to see it on the shelf” way. The point is that last year, we were able to walk right into Snyder’s panel without having to wait around in a line.

That was 2011. This year, Snyder’s writing Batman, which has consistently been one of the best books of DC’s New 52 and the source of the first post-reboot DC crossover event. So this time around, for the Batman panel yesterday? Yeah, we waited in line.

The Batman panel covered all the Batman family books, from Batman to Red Hood And The Outlaws… meaning walking in Amanda and I steeled ourselves for exciting news running the gamut from Batman’s post-Owls Joker encounter to Starfire’s post-Red Hood stranger’s penis encounter. However, weird former Teen Titan sex revelations or no, Snyder started the panel off with a laugh: “Avengers Vs. X-Men, who wins? Batman.” I hate it when my comic writers are funnier than I am. But I digress.

Instant Panel, Just Add Discomfort: Fifteen-Minute Dark Knight Rises Featurette

As we speak, we are en route to San Diego for SDCC 2012, enduring a combination of planes, trains, automobiles, TSA groping and hideous nicotine fits. So expect quiet for the remainder of our broadcast day.

But in the meantime, please enjoy this fifteen-minute featurette on The Dark Knight Rises. You can use it to simulate being at a big SDCC Hall H panel! Simply stand outside the room containing your computer for ten, maybe twelve hours. Try to fart copiously and often to simulate the smell. Maybe you can invite a neighbor kid in to irritate you during the process! Then sit across the room and watch the video! It’ll be like you’re actually at SDCC!

Just remember that you’re not allowed to urinate while you’re waiting in line.

Elseworlds: Batman: Earth One Review

Editor’s Note: In Crisis On Infinite Midlives, super-heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places – some that have existed, and others that can’t, couldn’t or shouldn’t exist. The result is spoilers that make characters who are as familiar as yesterday seem as ruined as, well, yesterday.

I want to start out by stipulating that Batman: Earth One, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Gary Frank, is a damn fine graphic novel in almost every way. It takes characters and situations from the long history of the world of Batman and re-imagines then in ways that are generally compelling, interesting and ingenious. It adds a real-world feel to Batman that, while robbing the character of some of the most thrilling and stylized elements of the finest Batman tales, also grounds it and makes the stakes for Batman and everyone else in the story feel higher. And interestingly, it provides complete-feeling and satisfying story and character arcs for more than one character… Batman not necessarily being one of them. And the art is realistic and spectacularly detailed, to boot.

With that said, there are two character moments in this graphic novel that I had significant problems with, to the point where I feel that they irretreivably changed the nature of the character. For the better? Fucked if I know. It really depends on how much of a traditionalist you are… or how much you like Spider-Man. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

Faced: The Joker Returns In Batman #13

With San Diego Comic-Con literally right around the corner (we fly out a week from today, and I have my first airline system nicotine fit one week and three hours from today), I’d been expecting a dearth of actual comic news until then, since the big stuff usually gets held until the appropriate convention panels, giving fans good reason to attend and creators a wide sampling of attractive people in superhero costumes upon whom they can hit. Protip, creators: steer clear of anyone in a Batgirl suit. There may be… ulterior motives.

So here I was, thinking I’d have a week to recharge my batteries and prepare for the sensory overload that is SDCC by doing some quickie reviews and getting my drink on at a reasonable hour for a change, when DC Comics went ahead and announced yesterday a tiny little news item. Y’know, nothing anyone would be interested in. Just the course of the Batman main title (at least) immediately following the Night of The Owls event and opening up the New 52’s second year.

Starring The Joker.

New Dark Knight Rises Promo Unveiled During MTV Movie Awards

Something wonderful happened at the MTV Movie Awards last night – and it wasn’t just that Jennifer Anniston was named “Best Dirtbag“, an honor that’s been overdue to her for years now. No, no. A new promo trailer for The Dark Knight Rises aired. This time with some new footage of Christian Bale in a humorous exchange with Morgan Freeman, more Selina Kyle/Catwoman, and Bane vs. Batman throwdown goodness. Check out the awesomeness!

The Dark Knight Rises hits US theaters on July 20th, 2012.

Play From Your Heart: Batman Incorporated #1 Review

Let’s start with the thing about Batman Incorporated #1 that stuck out the most for me: the next time some comics writer namechecks Bill Hicks for the sake of namechecking Bill Hicks, I’ll fucking glass them. Yes, the man was a genius, but that was twenty years ago; to put it in terms music people might understand, referencing Bill Hicks is the equivalent of trying to look hip by dropping Queensryche references. It’s irritating hipster behavior. Stop it.

Other things that should probably be avoided in order to prevent raising my ire include, but are not limited to: referencing old stories, some of them classics that were never meant to be part of current continuity, as a wink and a nod to the reader… and coming up with another “Bat{$animalName}” just because you thought that shit was cool when you were twelve, even if that new animal is pretty fucking funny.

Little things like this press my buttons, and they expose an endemic problem I am likely to have whenever I review a Batman comic written by Grant Morrison. He has been riding on gimmicks like this since the start of his run years ago, and they thoroughly turned me off. Because of this, I have an inherent bias when I read his Batman stuff; I expect to not like it, and therefore I start looking for things in the book to support that hypothesis. When the reality is, if I’m honest, there is a potentially decent Batman story at the core of Batman Incorporated #1… the only question is whether it will survive the comics hipster references that have collapsed Morrison’s prior Batman work under its own weight.

Feets Don’t Fail Me Now

Things are a bit busy today here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. Between an upgrade we need to run on a major site component on the Web server, and putting the finishing touches on our application for press credentials for San Diego Comic-Con, we are simply balls-out today.

So please forgive any outages you might see as we run the overhaul, and in the meantime, here’s the latest released television spot for The Dark Knight Rises, as well as three banner posters recently released by Warner Brothers for the flick.

And not only that, but we’ve got a sooper seekrit hidden The Dark Knight Rises one-sheet poster that could only be found by scanning the QR code at the bottom of one of the official one-sheets WB released last week. It’s a different kind of image than we’ve seen associated with the movie, and one that should appeal to foot fetishists and… well, probably just foot fetishists. Let’s just say somewhere, Quentin Tarantino is probably taking a break from firing off the cast of Django Unchained to look at this poster to do a completely different kind of firing off.

All are available after the jump.

Third Dark Knight Rises Trailer – Now With More Intelligible Bane Audio!

In case you haven’t seen it yet, the newest trailer for The Dark Knight Rises is out. Not only do we get to see more of Batman, Catwoman, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s John Blake, we also get to hear Bane’s voice more clearly as he menaces Batman. Yay! Complaining about stuff on the Internet works!

The Dark Knight Rises opens in US theaters on July 20, 2012.

Winning Friends And Influencing People: Grant Morrison On Batman

Grant Morrison was in Playboy this month. He was young, he needed the money. Thank you folks; I’ll be here all week… I live here.

But seriously: one month after featuring Michonne’s origin story from The Walking Dead, Playboy’s latest issue features an interview with Morrison that’s based around short blurb quotes about characters Morrison has written. Playboy seems to have a sudden enthusiasm for comics these days; perhaps Hef has realized that comic book fan are amongst the only people actually buying printed periodical magazines these days… although it’s more likely that he saw a picture of Rogue by Jim Lee and wheedled, “Get that big boobed girl for the centerfold! And someone change my diaper! We are at full boom-boom alert!” But I digress.

Morrison has some interesting things to say about characters he’s had a hand in – particularly King Mob and Fanny from The Invisibles – but he saves his most… shall we say, interesting… comments for Batman:

Gotham State: Batman #8 Review

I have said before that the Court of Owls storyline in Batman has followed a familiar and well-trod path that was previously laid down in stories like The Cult: Batman is overwhelmed by an implacable foe and imprisoned. Batman is psychologically broken down. Batman escapes and returns to his cave to cower for a while. The villain that broke Batman begins to run amok in Gotham City. Batman mopes around and listens to The Shins until Natalie Portman teaches him what it’s like to really feel. Wait, something there’s not quite right… I meant Batman returns to his cave and snivels. I think. Maybe. Whatever.

Anyway, Batman #8 continues following that classic old chestnut of an arc by starting the part of the story where Batman locates and reattachs his balls, and begins his counterattack against the villain who broke him. Based on what has come before, both in this story arc and in the similar stories that preceeded and clearly inspired it, this is expected and as predictable as night following day or Natalie Portman being introduced in a meet cute in any movie in which she appears that doesn’t include ballet or lightsabers.

Just because it is predictable, however, does not mean that it is boring. Because Jesus Christ, this is an intense and fun comic book… provided you can stop yourself from saying with every page turn, “I read this when it was written by Jim Starlin, drawn by Bernie Wrightson, and Natalie Portman was meeting cute with French assassins and posssibly the occasional delighted sweaty ‘fan’  in a stained raincoat.”