Category: Batman


First off, I’m glad I went to the The Dark Knight Rises on Friday AFTER the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado. I would hate for this film, with its strong anti-terrorist message, to suffer at the hands of a real-life terrorist. Secondly, the latest word is that, during the midnight showing on late Thursday/early Friday, it nearly outpaced The Avengers by 10 million to set a new record!

Okay, now on to the film. Here’s the official description: Eight years on, a new terrorist leader, Bane, overwhelms Gotham’s finest, and the Dark Knight resurfaces to protect a city that has branded him an enemy.

From the beginning until the last sequence, this film is a worthy successor and satisfying finale to the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale Batman trilogy. There are so many interesting story lines taking place that my attention was gripped the entire way through. Even the “slower” character parts contributed to the movie in significant ways, so I’m sorry it’s now a part of history (in a good way)!

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Christopher Nolan‘s Batman trilogy of films has been a blockbuster one, breaking records around the world. Now the finale, The Dark Knight Rises, is about to swoop into theaters on Friday, July 20, and the soundtrack is widely available as of Tuesday, July 17.

One of the components that has made the movies so successful has been Hans Zimmer‘s dynamic scores. His “Mozilla” from Batman Begins still gives me goosebumps. And the music from the final film is just as moving, if not more so.

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I just couldn’t decide which of the three top books that came out this week to highlight, so I’m going to review them all in alphabetical order!

1. Batman #11. The Court of Owls epic building for the past year comes to its stunning conclusion as Batman brings to light the mad machinations of the mysterious organization.

Batman finally faces his “brother” (Owlman?) and then has to pick up the pieces before moving forward. At the end of the issue, Bruce has a great discussion with Dick Grayson, and they talk about what’s been revealed about them. Great job!

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With digital very likely to be a major player for comics in the future, many comics companies are getting an early start on the entire “revolution” that may see us downloading issues from an FTP site rather than going to our local comics shops … sooner than we think!

DC Comics has been putting their toe in the water a lot recently, with some books like Batman Beyond Unlimited and Smallville Season 11 appearing in digital format before they are collected into a monthly comic. (I do love that first one especially, by the way!)

Recently, the company revived a previous Batman title with Batman: Legends Of The Dark Knight, which can only be purchased online … so far. Here’s the description: “On Thursdays beginning in June, a new digital Batman series will showcase stories of the Dark Knight outside of regular DC Comics continuity and feature artists and writers such as Ben Templesmith, Steve Niles, B. Clay Moore, Nicola Scott and Joshua Hale Fialkov. One all-star issue teams writer — and Lost co-creator —Damon Lindelof with artist Jeff Lemire (Animal Man, Sweet Tooth).” Each chapter retails for .99 cents.

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“I’m giving away free money!” shouted Jack Nicholson‘s Joker in the first Batman movie with Michael Keaton starring as the Dark Knight. People often want to get something for nothing, and it happened recently in a town in Pennsylvania.

Here’s that intriguing story at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette website:

>>Thousands of dollars went missing this afternoon after the doors of a bank courier van opened, causing bags of money to spill out onto the road and people to gather in a frenzy.

Upper St. Clair police Lt. James Englert said people had pulled alongside the road and were trying to collect money when police arrived on Route 19 near Boyce Road to help a driver from Fidelity Courier Services in Sharon, Pa., collect the cash at about 1 p.m.

The courier driver stopped after another driver flagged him down and told him cash was flying out of his car. Police suspect all of the cash, which came in various denominations, was lost in that intersection.

Police recovered about $400, but Lt. Englert said several bags containing “well into six figures” remained missing Wednesday night.

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The economy continues to spiral downward, and people are getting more and more desperate. Here’s a good case of that where a Philadelphia area woman dressed as a clown robbed a bank.

>>With her polka-dot clown suit, rainbow wig, red nose and candy-cane socks, Carolyn Williams looked quite a picture when she strode into a KNBT Bank last August.

But it was no laughing matter when she told tellers at the bank in Bethlehem Township, Pennsylvania, that she had a bomb before making off with more than $7,000.

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Since comics are big in the news recently (both with new films and renumbering of books), I thought this weekend I’d highlight some of the wonderfully funny bits done by the “I’m A Marvel/I’m A DC” folks from YouTube.

First up is their latest one, with Green Lantern talking with characters from the new X-Men prequel film:

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Now that the San Diego Comic-Con is history for 2010, it is time to look forward. Where will comics be in five or ten years?

Every once in a while, someone comes along and announces they are going to “save the comics industry.”  They usually start up a company that does well for a while.  But comics are an expensive proposition, and eventually even the wealthiest of investors cuts his or her losses, then disappears.

Also, occasionally the word is that comics are all going digital.  One comic I can think of in particular is only available online.  And some of the older comics have been available on PDF for a while now.  Will we make our weekly trek to the local comics shop to pick up a disc of the comics we want on it?  Or will we download them from an FTP site and save ourselves the trip?

Predicting the future is always a tricky thing.  I’m always amazed at the project that appears “out of the blue,” taking people by surprise, and being a big hit.  I always refer to the Harry Potter books as a good example.  Since most of you know that story, I won’t repeat it again here.  Let’s just say that J.K. Rowling went from abject poverty to being the richest woman in the U.K.  And no one expected it.

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Only bad writers.  Or at least, writers who don’t know what to do with the characters.

How many times have we seen comics characters go down in flames, even die, only to see them rise up again “because you demanded it?”

My favorite examples of this come from the DC Comics universe—Green Lantern, The Flash, and the Justice Society of America. (We’ll ignore Superman and Batman for the moment.)

It was about 20 or so years ago that the good folks at DC decided that nobody could write The Flash.  After all, he’s so incredibly fast that he could solve any problem as soon as it happened.  It was impossible to challenge him.  Or so we were told.

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In honor of the San Diego Comic-Con, I thought I would revisit some of my articles from SciFiPulse.Net, which recently was voted one of the top 45 Sci-Fi Book Blogs. This was one of my first “Comix Portal” columns on the site:

I spend a fair amount of my time and income on comics and comic-related merchandise. For example, as I write this, my computer screen is surrounded by Justice League Unlimited figures, staring at me intently.  And I can’t let them down–or else!

Ever since I was young, I’ve been fascinated by the possible.  Even if something is very unlikely, it could still take place.  And that has always tickled my imagination and drawn me to things beyond the commonplace.  This is also probably why I love science fiction so much.

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