Knightfall 17: Return of the Bat

The tricky thing about recording developments in the Bat/Monk saga these days--now that so many other people have entered it in one way or another--is that I can't always write openly here about what's going without risking one or more participants learning things I don't want them to. That--in addition to a very busy schedule in the daylight world--is why I haven't kept up with those reports here very regularly for the last several months. But last night I took such a major step that I may as well be (more or less) open about where things stand; at this point, I have nothing to lose--or everything.

A little background: In my last "Knightfall" entry here I wrote about being assigned to trick and trap a fellow hero. Once that mission was accomplished, it became my job to "train" the new guy: I gave him a new, debased name (as I had been stripped of the title "Batman" and rechristened "Ratman"), and for several nights I subjected him to various humiliations, some modeled on those i had endured and others which simply came to me. This turned out to be a brilliant move on the Monk's part, because for the first time ever I was actually growing to relish the role of villain. I've played a top before in online play, sometimes as a bad guy, but I always just kind of tolerated it because the other player seemed to enjoy it. This was different: as I went to work on my own captive, I was starting to experience the same addictive thrill in demeaning him as I used to find being dominated by the Monk. (Yes, yes: the abuser becomes the abused. What else is new? As with everything else in this saga, I just never thought it would happen to me.) For the second time in this nearly year-long soap opera, I found myself on the verge of giving up every remaining shred of bat-identity once and for all.

But, just like the first time that almost happened (an event I don't think I wrote much about here, for the reason I've mentioned above), something snapped me out of it. I seem to go right to the brink of self-annhiliation and then bounce back. The first time, it was the miraculous (and simultaneous) arrival of two total strangers--readers of this blog, who, independently of each other, were genuinely concerned that a hero was really about to fall, so much so that they decided to enter the storyline themselves and rescue me. This time around, it was actually the Monk who pulled me back, albeit unintentionally.

One day, as I was beginning to report to him on my progress with the prisoner (and my own increasing addiction to the dark side), M revealed that he knew I'd broken a rule of his (about contacting another member of the "stable" without his permission). He was outraged, and punished me by banishing me from all contact with any other player. This meant, of course, that the training sessions came to an immediate end. At that point, the oddest thing happened: it was as if I woke up. The spell he'd cast over me for the last eight months or so was suddenly broken, and I came to my senses. As the next few days passed, I realized I felt absolutely nothing--no compulsion to torture the prisoner, no desire to report to my "master," nothing.

I'm making this sound like it happened overnight, but in reality (or what passes for reality in this shadowy fiction) I had been plotting my escape ever since the first arrival of the aforementioned strangers. For obvious reasons, I couldn't write about that here; I had to make it look as though I was completely and totally broken. And, in fact, that was almost true: there were times when I felt like I was 99% Rat and only 1% Bat--but there was always, always that one percent. The banishment simply bought me the time I needed once my head was clear to think through my options. And last night I appeared before the Monk in full bat regalia for the first time since last September or so, informing him that his plan had failed, that his prized Ratman had chewed through the bars of his cage, and that I was making my escape.

I'd been wondering in advance what his response would be; I knew from one past experience that there was a slight chance he'd confuse my character's awakening with some kind of anger on my part, and the daylight me didn't want to hurt the feelings of the daylight him. (Yikes, this terminology is getting mighty convoluted and/or cheesy right now, but so be it.) Fortunately, that didn't seem to be the case. (For the record, I felt no anger at all--I felt nothing whatsoever, remember.) He did, however, insist (of course) that he'd planned this all along--that this was merely the illusion of escape, and in fact the next stage in his mastery over me, the new post-Ratman persona I'd been asking for. He's a smooth talker, that Monk, but I say it's all talk--yet another mind game from an absolute master of the form.

There are, of course, obstacles aplenty to my "escape." The most obvious of these is that he knows my real identity, which means he has a number of ways to reach me no matter where I try to hide, and also that he possesses the power to expose me. For a very long time, that realization kept me in place. But now I'm ready to see exactly what happens next. (Long ago, when I resisted unmasking myself in front of him on the grounds that it would spoil the central conflict between costumed hero and villain, he pointed out that R'as al-Ghul and Batman have maintained a long and complex relationship for years well after the former figured out the secret identity of the latter.) He will always have the upper hand, but that doesn't mean I have to throw in my cards altogether. Not anymore.

Then there's the conditioning I've received from him. Hard to break away from that, and I fully expect some intense withdrawal pains--but my allies (who are not a part of his stable) have assured me they're standing by to lend a helping hand throughout wherever lies ahead. And what better journey for a hero than to build himself back up after a potentially devastating fall? I can't do anything about what M knows about me, but I can fight against the way I feel about him. It's true, too, that while under his control I've done things no hero would do--but that gives me a new mission: to take responsibility for my actions, and to undo whatever wrong I may have done to others. As for the humiliation I endured, it's all part of the process of becoming who I really am.

Finally, there's the simple fact that M really is the most talented adversary I've ever faced; next to him, the others are about as dangerous as mosquitoes. I've always respected his gifts, and I consider him a (certain, highly specific kind of) friend. I'll miss talking to him.

On the other hand, I'm under no illusion that this story is over. Odds are good we'll meet again, whether he tracks me down (which won't be hard) or--as he predicts--I come crawling back, begging to be allowed back into the stable.

At this point, anything can happen. And I find that tremendously exciting.

Stop the presses!

While looking for something completely different (ain't it always the way?) I stumbled across Google Talk, a random-phrase generator whose inner workings are a mystery to me, though you can read about them at the site. In a nutshell, you enter three or four words to start the thing, and the site takes it from there. Thus it was that I learned the following:

"Batman has a fetish for women s lingerie. and Underwear at terrific prices!"

Now we know.

Bonanza

As I've noted here recently, I've actually found myself following not one but two different storylines currently running in Batman comics, which is something I almost never do now that I'm, well, way too old for that sort of nonsense. It dawned on me that the final issues of both the Red Hood saga in Batman #635-638 and the revamped-Riddler tale in Legends of the Dark Knight #185-189 might be available by now, so I stopped by my local shopping-mall Waldenbooks today to find out. (In this era of instant gratification, there's something to be said for having to wait for a new issue of a comic, just like I had to in 1967.)

Found the Red Hood issue but not the Riddler one. That in itself is not particularly blogworthy (the long-delayed revelation of the Hood's identity is ... well, just kind of weird, and I'm pretty sure they've tried this one before, but... ah, I'll say no more; main disappointment is, there are no more images of the unmasked Batman that drew me to this thing in the first place, dammit). No, the exciting part is that when I arrived at the bookstore, I discovered they had put their entire selection of graphic novels on sale: buy 2, get 1 free. Fortunately, I found exactly three items I wanted: the second volume of the collected Hush, the first volume of the hardcover Dark Knight Archives (the first four issues of Batman from 1940-41), and the first volume of the new paperback Batman Chronicles (the first twelve issues of Detective from BM's first appearance, 1939-40). That last one contains the earliest Monk and Hugo Strange encounters, which I already own; in fact, I seem to have a lot of this stuff in other compilations, but at this price I'm not complaining.

Obviously I'm telling you this to encourage you to check out your own Walden; I have no idea whether this is a local thing or a chainwide phenomenon. If it's the latter, now's your chance to stock up on some goodies--DC, Marvel, manga, and more. (If you do find the sale going on in your town, why not post that news in a comment here?)

A riddle a day...

I first heard about the newly revamped, metrosexualized Riddler from a Dec. 27, 2004 post at PostModern Barney, but because the new look didn't do much for me I didn't seek out the comic.

However, I stumbled upon part 4 of the character's current 5-part storyline in Legends of the Dark Knight, which prominently features the kind of Batman I like to see: costume torn, cape removed, belt nicely displayed. The plot made absolutely no sense to me since I was entering 4/5 of the way into it, but I didn't really care. (Yes, dear reader, it's true: I really am that shallow, even--no, especially--at my advanced age.)

Still, I was at least mildly curious about just how our hero ended up in this disshevelled state, and why he was wearing a wristwatch on top of his gauntlet, and what the hell was going on in general, so when I found part 3 at a local grocery store that tends not to get rid of back issues very quickly, I picked it up. And remained equally confused.

That was several weeks ago. Today I sought out the first 2 parts, and, of all things, read them, and then reread parts 3 and 4. Lo and behold, there's a coherent story that almost makes up for the absence of a proper deathtrap or other fetishy pleasure beyond the torn suit. There's even a gay character --not the Riddler, as is made quite clear. (The gay angle, while slightly off-putting in a mainstream comic presumably intended for kids, comes straight out of the pulp fiction of the 1950s--shame, blackmail, etc.--which is a bit of a bummer.)

It's interesting that the Riddler's heterosexuality is stressed, given that he was essentially portrayed as a gay stalker in the movie. He's also probably a lot of gay readers' favorite villain, I'd bet, thanks in large part to Frank Gorshin and John Astin's form-fitting outfits in the TV series. And I know I'm not the only slash writer to envision him and Batman enmeshed in a quasi-consensual love affair. (I realize that recent versions of the Joker often imply he's a 'mo, but he just seems too psychopathic to experience any sort of human love or lust at all. And, for the record, I'm not suggesting that gay villains are any sort of sign of progress; as I've already pointed out, the equation between homosexuality and evil is not exactly a new one in pop culture.) I can't say I really buy the "new look" for the character--it doesn't make any sense, at least not so far, and it's in no way related to the way we usually think of the Riddler.

But hey, as long as the hero is looking this hot, I'll go along with pretty much anything on the villain front. And given the cliffhanger ending of part 4, I'm holding out mild hopes for a decent trap in part 5. Cross your fingers!

"Night collaborations w/ the infinite"

That's the name of the folder on my computer where I keep items related to my various bat-and-rat-related nocturnal activities. Even before things kicked into higher gear on the online front--back when it was just me and my imagination in the privacy of my own home--I thought of what I was doing while living out these kinky little fantasies of mine as a kind of ongoing conversation with the universe, and/or with my own subconscious. Here are two very different versions of what "collaboration" means to me in this context:

1. There's a literal collaboration going on over at my batslash blog right now. Lately readers have made suggestions about what they'd like to see happen in the story, and one in particular--I'll call him LycraMan--sketched out the current subplot in which Hugo Strange walks a (rather bloody) mile in Batman's boots. I've made some major changes to his outline for my own purposes and fleshed out the dialogue, but I owe most of what you see in chapters 143 through about 150 or so (I'm guessing that's about when it will end) to my perverse partner in crime.

I like writing this way sometimes. (Not all the time--I think there's also something to be said for a single writer plunging deep into his most personal fantasies, particularly in erotic writing.) After all, none of us owns these characters in the first place, and the comics and tv shows that inspired us are all the products of committees, too. Then there's the sheer power of finding the common ground between two or more people's private thoughts. (Even more than in conventional fiction, the readers of slash are collaborators in the sense that, if they didn't share the fetish on a deep level, they probably wouldn't be reading at all.) Shared hallucinations are often the most intense.

2. Then there's collaboration on a completely different plane. In a recent episode of the public radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge devoted to New Orleans, there's a fascinating segment on voodoo/vodou. The interview subject, author/researcher/store owner Sallie Ann Glassman (whose store site is here), clarifies what voodoo is all about--forget all those grade Z movies you've seen--and describes how spirit possession works, and even what it feels like. Her words really register for me in terms of what I call batplay. She talks, for instance, about how possession is less about shutting yourself down (as the popular stereotype has it) than about opening yourself up--which certainly resonates with my experiences of bottoming out at the hands of the Monk.

Glassman also points out how each spirit is easily recognizable when it manifests in any human body--practitioners can instantly recognize which deity is present because of its activities, speech patterns, and so on. Leaving aside any discussion of how "true" or "untrue" these claims are, or any skeptical explanations of what's really going on here, let me just draw a connection between spirit possession and online roleplay: when someone "becomes" a comic book character like Batman or Superman, certain traits have to appear in order for the performance to read for other people (or for the performer himself). Those of us who have devoted years of our fantasy lives to embodying a certain character--or several different ones--can slip in and out of those roles almost as easily as we "play" ourselves in the daylight world.

This also helps to explain how there can be multiple Batmen or Jokers in the world at the same time: the spirit of the character can manifest in many people at once. On other occasions I've talked about how Batman is a bit like Santa Claus: because he's not a real person in the conventional sense (only in the "Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus" sense), he can assume an infinite number of forms, can be at the North Pole and in a shopping mall in Duluth simultaneously. The voodoo metaphor provides a wonderful way to look at the same phenomenon.

Knightfall 16: Black Sunday

My boyhood comics collection really didn't contain many issues of JLA or similar magazines. (Neither does my adult collection, for that matter.) I've just never been that interested in large-group superhero sagas, with the possible exception of The Authority--and I would happily dispense with most of the characters in that one, too. It's the same reason I have no use for Batman's or Superman's extended families of fellow heroes: I'd rather see them work alone. (Those two are orphans, after all.) I know that in the post-modern era we're supposed to find it amusing to watch the individual members of the Justice League or Teen Titans or X-Men or the Avengers all bickering among themselves, but that thought strikes me as about as exciting as observing the day-to-day workings of a law firm or corporation. If I want office politics, I'll go to my office, dammit.

Even so, I do enjoy tales where a big bunch of good guys is brought to their knees--literally, if possible--by one or more supervillains. No surprise there, I guess: since I find the humiliation of one hero to be so hot, the idea of a whole truckload of them brought down is even hotter.

That's why the latest developments in my personal "Ratman" adventures hold such special appeal (if that's the right word) at the moment. In the early days of my encounters with the Monk, it was just me against him--and, later, me under him. But as more and more readers of this blog have joined in the storyline (and more are always welcome--M is hungry for fresh meat), the cast of characters has gotten far larger, and I find myself with a veritable Justice League of my own, with a suitably international ensemble: a British Batman, a Texan Superman, a Canadian Robin, and so on. From time to time I introduce these men to each other, forge alliances, etc. For a while, this gave me hope that I might somehow escape M's clutches.

But just as membership has its priviliges, it also has its down side. As Ratman, I am under orders to turn each of these characters over to my master, and he picks and chooses which of them he will work on. Thus, the Monk has a stable of his own, thanks in part to me. Last week, one of my closest comrades in this complex counter-world took me completely by surprise and administered a drug to me, designed by the Monk to make me both more subservient and more evil. Then the two of us were assigned to take down a third hero, one whose relationship to M actually predates my own by several years.

We did so a couple of days ago, during an event I've already come to think of as "Black Sunday." The unique torment of my present condition is that I'm fully aware of my past as Batman and thus how wrong it is for me to now be working for my former archenemy, and yet I'm powerless to resist. As a result of Black Sunday, I have now dragged another good man down, an act which looms heavy on my conscience (or would, if the drug would allow me to feel remorse). The same goes for Superman, my partner in crime. A further effect of the drug compels me to report any backsliding on his part--and I now risk our victim turning me in should I ever come to my senses. Thus, M has established a brilliant system of checks and balances, a self-policing triangle of helpless slaves.

In other words, I'm now living through yet another of those scenarios that brought me such dizzying pleasure in the comics: I am not just a minion, I am part of a cadre of minions, all former legends, now kneeling at the feet of the man who brought them down. Like everything else about my dreamworld saga under the control of the Monk, it's both repellent and irresistible.

Daredevil: Man Without Clothes

I'm sure you know I am a DC man through and through, but its age-old rival does have its share of hot heroes. And I swear to you, if something like the cover of Daredevil #70 had appeared when I was an adolescent, I might well have changed teams. (To Marvel, I mean; no amount of Batgirl exposure would have turned me straight, I assure you.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present a 100% butt-naked Matt Murdock standing and staring at his empty costume. It truly doesn't get any better than this. The issue itself doesn't hold much interest to me, but who cares?

Thank you, Marvel Knights. You've made my night, that's for sure.

Ransom Note UPDATE: Hold your calls, the demands have been met

I got the 5 responses I asked for--within 24 hours, no less (damn, I should have put THAT in the original challenge!)--so it's back to BEGINNINGS again. I had a very difficult week in the daylight world, and it was great to come home and read such nice comments about the story.

While it would have been nice enough to just get some basic "yeah, keep doing it" messages, the best thing of all was discovering exactly how thoughtful and articulate the writers were. I may only be writing for 100 or so people, but if even half of them are this cool, I'm happy. Just to be clear, I didn't really post the challenge because I was feeling unappreciated or anything. Obviously I write this stuff first and foremost for myself, and I already knew there were some like-minded readers out there who share my weird mix of raunch and intellectualizing-about-raunch. A few of these folks have become good (if virtual) friends, which brings me great joy.I also didn't do it because I had run out of ideas. (If anything, I have way too many, at this point in the story.) I only wanted to experiment with the unique possibiities of a blog as a vehicle for storytelling. Maybe I'll try other experiments in the future.

One of the people who wrote had this to say:

"...Using your own personal experience as an example, I would think this is not the conclusion, but rather the beginning. If I recall correctly one of your blog posts (about an early encounter with the Monk), this is where it gets interesting.

"I have strong reservations about killing either character off--or even leaving them in a vanquished state. For me, Batman and Robin are heroes; and despite the enjoyment I get out of seeing them in situations of distress, it's important (for me at least) to see them triumph in the end. (It's why I keep expecting you to write a follow-up to the Sadist story someday.)

"I would think this might be a real creative challenge for you; now that you've broken them, how do you imagine these men rebuilding themselves? How does this affect their future partnership? How does it change Batman to know that he's been broken?"

There is so much in this response that I want to comment on. First, there's the reminder that when it comes to broken heroes, I know what I'm talking about. (I hate to say it, but it really turns me on to have a complete stranger remind me that I am, in fact, a broken man. From the moment I started posting here about my adventures with the Monk I've been feeling an immense charge from making my defeat public. Like the original unmasking I endured, it's something that can't be undone, and that thrills me in a powerful way. When people other than the Monk refer to me as "Ratman"--a name I hate--it feels both awful and exciting at the same time. No matter what I may tell myself, there will always be certain inescapable facts I have to live with.) I'll have more to say about all this some other time, but suffice it to say I will certainly be drawing on firsthand experience of bottoming out in telling Bruce's story from this point on, just as I have already leaned heavily on my ordeal at the hands of my own (semi-)real life Dr. Strange thus far.

As for needing to see the heroes triumph in the end (two other writers expressed a similar wish): wow, yes, of course. I sometimes forget how loaded my main character is for other people, not just me. As every slash disclaimer notes, I don't "own" Batman any more than someone could own Santa Claus. My connection to him is obviously intense and highly personal, spanning most of my life, and when I read that someone else finds it "important" for him to survive and thrive, I realize how true that is, on a cultural as well as a personal level. (Not trying to get too big for my batboots here, but it's late and I am prone to big-picture pontification at such an hour.) As I've written many times here, the biggest thrill for me is to see Batman go right to the brink of annhiliation and then pull himself back at the last possible minute. (Needless to say, I blame the ritualized cliffhangers of the '66 TV show for this.) I've read a little superhero snuff fiction (ie, stories in which the hero does not escape at the last minute) and it always feels a little weird and wrong, albeit in a creepily enticing way.

On the other hand, the beauty of Bob Kane's creation is that at this point, no one can kill him off for long--he always springs back to life in another story told by somebody new. Doyle couldn't kill off Sherlock Holmes, DC couldn't keep Superman dead for long... Then again, there's the death of Jason Todd's Robin, which was final, and which (even if it started off as a cheap publicity gimmick) has brought great emotional weight to later depictions of Batman's saga. Now he has to deal not only with the death of his parents but the loss of his symbolic son.

Okay, back to my own story. I confess I rather enjoyed the brief break from posting chapters, and there's no way I can keep up that pace of adding new ones in the days ahead, but I'm also looking forward to starting up again.

And, yes, what has happened so far is ... only the beginning.

Ransom Note

After drawing it out as long as I possibly could (with apologies to those of you who open presents on Christmas Eve because you hate waiting), I just posted the climactic scene in my serial-blog Hugo Strange story. The money shot, as I've called it in other entries here.

And now comes a moment I've been contemplating for months: I've also posted a challenge to readers on the site. I'm perfectly content continuing the saga (which would pose new challenges since so many things have changed so radically according to the storyline), but first I want to hear from people who've been following it. As for everyone who writes fanfic or slash, this is a labor of love, or more likely lust, for me, and I'm curious about whether there's enough interest to make it worth my time. (Who am I kidding? If I don't write "Beginnings" anymore, I'll just start a new story sooner or later. But it might be nice to take a break.)

Naturally I have that whole "Death-of-Robin" publicity stunt from the comics in mind. But I also like the idea of the fate of these characters resting in the hands of the people who give them life by imagining them/reading about them/fantasizing about them. So all I ask is for five readers to e-mail or IM me in order to save the lives of Batman and Robin (or perhaps end them in a particularly delicious manner). Think of it as a hostage crisis--or the next step in reader-interactive literature. (On second thought, just think of it as a hostage crisis.)

I'll actually be perfectly happy if I don't hear from anyone at all--after all, you know how much I happen to get off on the concept of a truly broken Bat (they don't call me Ratman for nothin'), and there's something exciting to me about this particular version of the bat myth ending on so bleak a note. But really, now: do you want to see Batman meet his fate this way? Don't delay--cast your vote today!

Knightfall 15: Beyond Good and Evil

My online world has become well populated these days; a while ago, to help sort things out, I divided my "friends" list on Yahoo Messenger into--but of course!"--"Heroes" and "Villains." But it's hard sometimes to figure out who fits in which category. There are players who assume both roles as the mood strikes them, for instance. Then there are self-styled heroes who gloat about my downfall, which hardly strikes me as heroic behavior. And now that I've fallen under the control of a master villain, is everything suddenly turned upside down--should I consider the Monk my hero and Superman a villain? (That one's easy: the distinction is between heroes and villains, not friends and enemies. Superman, no matter how my master regards him, is still a hero... Or is he, now that he too has fallen under the control of the Monk? See how complicated it gets?) Then there's the issue of self-identification: if I am no longer allowed to call myself Batman, and if I now serve a supervillain, what camp do I fall in? I don't, for the most part, do villainous things myself, I simply serve a villain as a broken hero...

And so on. All of this reminds me of a certain aspect of my real-life family history. My late mother had a series of very close friends with whom she eventually had a falling out--you could say they went from Good Guys to Bad Guys. And both of my sisters, and two of her sisters (my aunts) also made a shift in category. Usually the move was from Good to Bad, but on a few rare occasions a Bad person became Good again in her eyes. Every member of my family was aware of this categorizing, and one of my sisters used to refer to it explicitly: "I was the Good Daughter and C was the Bad One; then something happened and she became the Good One and I was the Bad One," she said--in a direct but surely unintentional paraphrase of the Prodigal Son parable (which, as I read it, is all about the irrelevance of such distinctions).

As a result of all this, I've never had much use for such simple categorizations in my own adult life. I get bored and annoyed when Hollywood movies employ the good guy/bad guy dichotomy (a simplification which tends to flourish during Republican administrations, I've noticed), and I was outraged when our current president started trotting out the "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists" rhetoric. Never had much use for Reagan's "Evil Empire" mantra, either.

Granted, the Batman of the 60s TV show was a true-blue Good Guy who confronted a series of easily identifiable Bad Guys (except when the Green Hornet paid a visit to Gotham), but my own version of the character has long been far murkier. He may have devoted his life to fighting criminals, but he's a vigilante, working outside the law--and if he were a real person, he'd actually be breaking the law in several municipalities by virtue of his signature mask, to say nothing of his violent behavior. I prefer to think of him as unclassifiable--heart in the right place, but so obsessed with his mission that he's become a virtual sociopath.

Meanwhile, I continue to play with all this good/bad stuff in my online existence, almost every night. Part of the challenge is figuring out what I am deep down, and what to make of my partners in crime/crimefighting. And the line I've crossed--and crossed again and again and again--in my dealings with the Monk only makes the dichotomy fuzzier, and thus more fascinating, than ever.

I surrender

No, for a change I'm not referring to my struggle against the Monk (face it, I lost that one months ago), but to another vexing problem. When I started "Beginnings," my ongoing batslash story in blog form, I planned to write each entry in the voice of one of the characters. But over a hundred chapters in, I'm realizing that sometimes it's just too hard to convey certain things in that way--particularly actions that are only experienced by one or two characters, and followed immediately by other actions too quickly for one of them to race home and write about what's just happened. So beginning with chapter 115, I'm loosening up my self-imposed rules a little and allowing myself to introduce an omniscient narrator from time to time. Fear not; I'm not abandoning the first-person approach for good, just resorting to third-person when it makes things easier on me. Which means there can be a lot more of those deathtraps and unmaskings and other things I know you crave.

So everybody wins!

Hey Bulldog

I'd heard the sordid tale of "Jeff Gannon," the Republican shill who doubled as a gay escort, on the radio, but when I saw the Daily Show footage of him earlier tonight, I realized I had to hightail it to the internet to see some of his naked pictures. (They're here by the way, along with a detailed chronology of his saga. And given the lightning speed at which news travels these days, should anyone really be surprised that there's already a parody of the whole thing?)

Believe me, I'm no big fan of Log Cabin types,so I truly hate to admit it, but I still find this deluded soul to be pretty hot. Deep down, my biggest beef is not that he was allowed to waltz into a press conference and kiss Bush's ass, but that he's clearly shaved his chest.

Now, that's self-hating!

Knightfall 14: When the Rat's Away...

I was out of town for a few days recently. Before I left, I figured the trip might give me a little break from this whole Ratman-and-Monk saga. To my surprise, though, I found I had trouble thinking about anything else. (I've noticed that the Monk's hold on me is greatest when I'm not actually in his presence. The real thing--or the pretend-real-thing--can be too hard to take sometimes; it's easier to have a relationship with my projected version of him. Sort of like most people's relationship to a higher power, when you think about it.) In an aiport bookstore I came across a slightly sleazy looking paperback called Cannibal: The True Story Behind the Maneater of Rotenburg by Lois Jones, about a German man who literally and willingly offered his body to another man he'd found through the internet. The two men evidently got together, and ... well, here's part of the back-cover blurb:

"Bernd Juergen Brandes ... arrived at Meiwes's isolated country home literally to be eaten alive. Escorted to the 'slaughtering room'--equipped with meat hooks, a cage, and a butcher's table--Meiwes assisted Bern in a gourmet candlelight dinner of his own cooked flesh..." (Hey, I toldja it was a sleazy book.)

Now, I should say RIGHT HERE AND NOW that I am NOT into cannibalism, so please do NOT invite me to your home if you intend to serve me to myself. No, the one thing that intrigued me about the scenario (as you can guess, I ended up buying the book, but I haven't picked it up since) was this notion of one man knowingly submitting himself to another with such thoroughness--heading off somewhere to let the other man have his way with him. And that planted in my head a fantasy: the Monk summoning me to his home for some extended period of time. Early on, and again a few months ago, he asked if I was interested in getting together offline, and I said no. Well, sure, I'm interested, to put it mildly, but that would clearly be crossing a line in my real life relationship that I"m not willing to cross. (As hot as this complicated, multi-character online saga may be, I refuse to sacrifice my real-life happiness, or to hurt the Hub. I do worry sometimes that I've already compromised that pledge, but my instincts tell me that's not the case.)

I couldn't get the idea of a face-to-face encounter out of my mind for the entire trip (which was sort of boring, which probably explains why I kept obsessing on this far more interesting scenario). So I came home and proposed to M that I write the fantasy in story form and post it on the "Perils of Batman" Yahoo group, where I used to post bat-stories several years ago. It works like this: I told him the initial premise ("show up at this address in your street clothes; pack your ratsuit and nothing else"), then he gave me the outline for what would happen when I arrived at the compound. As each of seven days proceeds, he will dictate the action and I will write the text, adding in my reactions to whatever torments and treats he throws my way. (The process will surely take far longer than a week to unfold, so I hope nobody's impatient. Given the response so far, I don't think I have anything to worry about.)

There is, as usual, more to be said about all of this, but--as usual--I have too many other things to do at the moment (damn that daylight world!), so they'll just have to wait. Meanwhile, please check out the story and let me know what you think about it.

And, remember, NO flesh-eating, boys and girls. It's only a movie... it's only a movie...

Play ball

Never been a Superbowl fan (much as I enjoy the sight of muscular men in tight-fitting synthetic fibers grappling with each other), but I did happen to catch the new ad for Batman Begins, which provides the biggest glimpse yet of what awaits us in the spring. That tantalizing glimpse inspired me to revisit the official website, which has been beefed up significantly. The Superbowl spot is there, along with more video, pictures, interviews, and the promise of still more goodies in the future.

I really don't want to sound like a comic book and/or movie geek (let alone a comic-book-movie geek), but I'm a little nervous about the thought of the Scarecrow being the villain here. As with Bane (who made a way-premature appearance in the miserable new WB animated series), this is a character who forces the hero to re-examine his very existence, and you really can't do too much of that if you've only had your existence for a short time.

I'm pretty much convinced that movies aren't the best vehicle for comic book stories, unless Hollywood suddenly starts making Saturday afternoon serials again. I've said it a thousand times: comic book myths are ongoing, they rely on an audience's sustained awareness of a group of characters over a long period of time. Movies are all about compressed storytelling: they have to fit everything from the introduction of the protagonist and antagonist to their first confrontation to their climactic showdown to the resolution of that encounter into two hours. (Notable exceptions being multi-part sagas like The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, and long-running franchises like the James Bond series, though that one has seldom made much creative use of its longevity/hyperfamiliarity.) Somebody like the Scarecrow or Ra's Al Ghul (who I think is also in the new film) is intended to shake up the familiar routine of the narrative and shake the hero to his core, but that can't really happen very effectively if the audience and the hero are still learning the lay of the land. (To use an example from my own myth: If I'd met the Monk ten years ago, my encounters with him wouldn't hold anywhere near the force for me that they do at this point. If you're going to lose everything, then "everything" has to mean something first.)

End of sermon for now. On a related note, since we're talking geek now, am I right that the post-Superbowl Simpsons episode was the first time we've ever learned the real name of Comic Book Store Guy? (As you can imagine, I sometimes think he is my totem character on the show, unfortunately.)

Knightfall 13: Take It to the Limit, One More Time

One major thrill of my ever-evolving online relationship with the Monk comes from discovering just how far I'm willing to go in my interactions with him and still observe my real-life boundaries. There were two moments in my last few conversations with him that showed me I still have my limits.

Did I just refer to these roleplaying scenarios as "conversations"? Bad choice of words, since it implies we are equals, and that is completely not the case any longer. No, he's the Master and I'm his humble(d) servant. Anyway, one recent e-mail exchange happened shortly after I'd come home from a miserable day at work, and M's treatment of me resembled my boss's conversational/confrontational style a bit too closely to be in any way erotic. I think I've written here before that I'm intrigued by the parallel, but in this case it just felt like a joke that wasn't funny anymore.

A few days later, during a phone call, he ordered me to "paint" for him--ie, to produce a certain milky white fluid on demand--and to collect it in a container. (I selected one taken from the utility belt I'm no longer allowed to wear, as a reminder of his power over me.) Once I was done, he told me to drink it. Every last drop. On camera.

Something about this instruction backfired; it pushed me out of the fantasy and I just couldn't follow through. (I've never been a swallower.) I took two fingerfulls, which were unpleasant enough, but the thought of pouring the whole mass down my throat disgusted me, and--uncharacteristically--I refused. In both of these cases, something just snapped me right out of the whole Ratman saga and back to another level of reality a few yards to the right of where I'd just been playing.

I should point out that there was another part of the same call that took me by surprise and that I found quite hot: the Monk demanded that I sing while I was painting. I don't know how or if he knew how primally humiliating this particular request would be for me. Much as I love music, I can't sing, I hate the sound of my attempts to do so, and it's a major, major fear of mine to have to sing in public. (In church as a kid, I'd mouth the words to the hymns, or mumble my way through them, and ever since then I've hated those mandatory singalongs so prevalent at certain kinds of concerts.) Even so, I followed orders, and was deeply embarrassed and ashamed by the feelings evoked (in a good way, if there is such a thing). Turns out it's impossible for me to pretend to be a superhero when I'm groaning out the words to a pop song--and thus I was knocked down yet another rung.

So I continue to learn more and more about myself, the self under all the masks: the things I'll do, the things I won't. And that knowledge is what this is all about, isn't it?

The money shot

If you share my taste for images of Batman being unmasked and/or de-belted (and something tells me you do), then be sure to check out Batman #635, which opens with a terrific battle sequence featuring a new villain billing himself as The Red Hood (homage to one of the oldies but goodies, which seems to be some kind of trend at DC right now). From the get-go, one of Bats' gloves has been cut off, exposing a bare fist (a first in my memory), and in short order he loses his belt (hooray!) and suffers a rather nasty gash to the cowl (ouch!). This latter move enables Mr. Hood to simply tear the mask off B's face, which will surely inspire every other villain in Gotham to lament, "Damn, why didn't I think of that?"

Having so easily accomplished what everybody else has been trying to do for decades, this Hood guy says, "I guess we should keep it even" and removes his own ... hood, revealing a face which shocks our hero. Naturally (since this first installment of a four-parter) we don't get to see who's under there just yet.

I'm not sure I'll stick around to find out. I really don't keep up with current comics unless the imagery is really hot (and old-school bondage scenarios are few and far between these days) or the storyline seems really, really compelling. But frankly, I'm one of those old farts who got lost when all the storylines starting getting incredibly complicated and brought in all these young characters I've never heard of and don't care about. There are some allusions in #635 to the aftermath of one of those huge crossover "events" and I have no idea what they're talking about. Then again, I don't watch The Sopranos or The West Wing, either--I just don't have the energy to follow along. But more power to those of you who do.

If I were a true comics afficianado, I'd say something about the actual content of the issue in question, and make some reference to the story by Judd "Real World" Winick (whose graphic novel about his RW costar Pedro is quite nice, by the way), but you know I"m pretty damn shallow--I honestly just picked this thing up because of the sexy (to me) pix.

Earlier tonight I managed to find some downloadable images from the issue at the DC site, but now I can't figure out where they are online anymore. Besides, if you don't head there ASAP, they'll probably be taken down.

But trust me, my fellow perverts: just go buy the magazine. Best $2.25 I've spent in quite a while.

Batman Goes to the Mayor

I've become a fan of the Adult Swim cartoon Tom Goes to the Mayor. (It's not really related to the concerns of this blog, but here's the A.S. show site in case you're interested). Inspired me to seek out the website of its creators, where I found this collection of their short films.

I'm bringing this up here, in case you were wondering, because one of the films posted there is called Batman 2000, and I have a hunch some of you may enjoy it, if you've got a sense of humor about the masked guy. It would be interesting to see the response if it were posted at BatmanFanFilms.com (which has its share of parodies, none as funny as this one). Probably wouldn't go over too well with the purists...

...but then, it's the perversions of a myth, the ones that allow us to see it with fresh eyes, that interest me most (which is why I much prefer The Last Temptation to The Passion when it comes to Jesus Movies). Oops, I'm talking out my ass here. Actually, seeing Batman with a bong tucked in his utility belt really doesn't add much to my understanding of the saga. It's just kinda funny.

Incredible, indeed

I'm indebted to the bearblog "Bear in the City" (latest gay comics blog I've discovered) for this image of Mr. Incredible sans costume, which blogmeister Bill in turn found at this Japanese site.

While I think the movie, enjoyable though it was, is getting just a wee bit more praise than it may actually deserve, I think I woulda liked it much more if there were a bit more of this kind of Incredible flesh in it.

Thoughts on "adult"-hood

I've been rethinking the way that I've labeled this and my story blog as "adult" sites. To most people who see that word, it means one thing and one thing only: porn. And as you know if you've spent any time here, that's not really what this is about.

Don't get me wrong: there is a lot of sex talk here. As much as I can manage, in fact. I want to talk about the things that turn me on in part because I see so few other people talking about the same particular interests, and when I do speak openly about such matters, I hear back from other people who share those tastes, thanking me for doing so. But for me sex cannot be separated from the other concerns explored in these entries: politics, spirituality, comic book talk, and on and on. And the "talk" part is as at least as important as the sex part. I imagine that people who stumble upon these words wanting to get off probably just get really bored, really fast. And that doesn't bother me at all.

It's always struck me as funny that the word "adult" would be used in conjunction with fetishes so rooted in childhood. When I put on a batman outfit and roleplay with fellow costumed crusaders and crooks, we're all engaging in a kind of make-believe we first explored when we were 6 years old. What could be less "adult" than that? (I sort of prefer the word "mature" to "adult," but it pretty much raises the same problem.)

Nonetheless, I feel like it's important to take whatever steps I can to make sure that some actual child doesn't stumble upon this site while conducting google searches for "Batman" or any other G-rated term that happens to stimulate NC-17 feelings within me. I've made the site a public one via Blogger in order to help interested strangers find it, but I'm not that comfortable with somebody arriving here at random via the "NEXT BLOG" button at the top of the screen.

All this is on my mind while I get word that the company that used to list site referrers for free is now charging money to provide service for "adult" sites. (And if you claim you're no longer "adult" in order to keep getting the service for free, they say they'll fine you $100.) While I'm a cheapskate who hates having to pay for internet gewgaws, I'm seriously considering shelling out $15-25 to continue the listings, because it's just such interesting information to have: lets me know that I'm not just typing into a vacuum, for starters, and the list of referring sites also tells me (and you) about other relevant places to look.

But I don't know... Paying money for what once was free--it seems so ... adult.

Knightfall 12: Falling, yes, I am falling...

...and he keeps calling / me back again.

Last week I got another phone call from the Monk. It was the first time I'd heard his voice in at least a month, probably two. (Mostly been text-only during that time, and as our relationship has evolved, and as a result of work-plus-holiday-plus-illness, there's been less daily contact.) We'd been in text contact that morning awaiting a long-scheduled battle with a hero, who turned out to be a no-show, so M's focus turned to me instead. I made a slip, broke one of his rules, and the moment I was alone he called to reprimand me.

My heart raced when the phone rang, and the minute he spoke, I knew I was done for. When I answered him, the voice I used was completely different from the one I had employed back in my old bat-days. No longer brash, confident, and self-assured, I was now a snivelling, subservient, insignificant little (rat)man.

It was further evidence, as if I needed any, that I have indeed been broken. He used to swear he'd own the Batman mind, body, and soul, and I'll be damned if he didn't do it. Okay, I'm damned, period: nothing remotely resembling a "hero" any longer.

I find that unbelievably, almost unspeakably exciting, in part because it's just such a fucking obscene proposition: Batman, broken! There's no happy ending to the story, after all, just a hero who stared into the abyss and ended up falling in.

Does that make me a villain? Not exactly. As I've reported here, M has recruited me to help him break other heroes--more specifically, to taunt and prep them for him--and the simple fact is, playing the role of aggressor isn't really that exciting to me. I've often written that I don't accept the simple top/bottom dichotomy, and that when pressed I fall somewhere in between the two extremes depending on my mood, but in this particular subsection of the dreamworld, I--Ratman--am a total, unabashed mega-bottom. (My fantasy Batman is a bottom, too, but at least he puts up a stern public front.) Debased, humiliated, my dreams all shattered--and incredibly turned on by that prospect. Sure, I'll take down a hero, violate him, punish him... but only because M orders me to. It's not really something I'd do on my own. There's a degree of sadism in some of my fantasies involving heroes, but mostly in the service of a greater masochism.

By coincidence (if there is such a thing), as I write these words, I'm listening to an episode of the NPR show To the Best of Our Knowledge devoted to the theme of "Failure", which I recommend to anyone else who knows the erotic appeal of falling from grace.

What this particular period of my ongoing bat/rat lucid dream provides me with is a chance to explore some complex feelings stirred up in my daylight life these days, as I find myself employed in various jobs suited for people 20 years younger than me. Invariably, these trigger my desire (rooted in my youth in the South, I'm convinced) to be liked, to please other people. Power has always made me nervous; when I'm in positions that provide me with some degree of it (teacher, director, etc) I tend to do whatever I can to subvert it. And when I'm in positions where I don't have much power, or where I have to answer to someone else who does, I tend to bristle.

More to be said on all this later, I'm sure. For now, though, just noting another landmark in my dream devolution.

Spirit of The Spirit

I am delinquent in mourning the death of Will Eisner. Johnny Bacardi has been running a multi-part tribute (with illustrations and links to other eulogies), which starts here.

From one of the links at Eisner's official site, I found this great treasure trove of online Spirit lore, and from there I learned the (potentially) good news that plans are in the works for a Spirit movie. Actually, the apparent decision to set the film in the present day, as revealed in this interview in Comic Book Resources News, does not bode well. But hey, maybe the powers that be will come to their senses and make it a period piece, even if they're convinced Will woulda make it contemporary.

I may well be one of the few people who actually saw the 1987 TV movie when it aired, and I know I'm one of even fewer who spent the next 15 years trying to see it again. Eventually I found a bootleg copy for sale at some site whose name I can't remember for the life of me. If anyone reading this wants to know, e-mail me or post something here and I'll actually track it down for ya.

Anyway, that movie is set in the late 80s, and it just doesn't quite work. But I'm not complaining. Hunky Sam "Flash Gordon" Jones plays the title character, and holy shit is he ever hot, particularly when he's bound, shirtless, to some sort of torture device and flogged. I'm not making this up--fans of, well, Sam Jones being tied up have got to seek this thing out.

Not sure I'd recommend it to Eisner fans, though. All the major characters are there, but somehow little of the magic of the original. And the comic was magical: a perfect blend (for me, at least) of great writing, wonderful self-reflexive humor, and one of the sexiest heroes around. (A mask, a suit, and a pair of gloves: it's all you really need, isn't it? Oh, and a seemingly unending succession of deathtraps.) I know, I know: we're supposed to be mourning the passing of a great storyteller. And I do. But my interest in his most famous work transcends the purely cerebral.

Once I noticed I was on fire, I decided to relax and enjoy the fall.

Avoiding actual work again, I came across an amusing illustrated paraphrase of the first appearance of the original comic book villain called The Monk (Detective Comics #31/32, reprinted in The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told). It's from a blog called "Once I noticed I was on fire, I decided to relax and enjoy the fall". That name sounds familiar; I'm pretty sure I've seen it in other comics-bloggers' links lists.

This "Ezrael" guy has been keeping it for quite a while, and any time I find a blog that dates back 4 years or more, I immediately check to read entries from around September 11, 2001. Just sort of a reflex, I guess, but I've long been fascinated by people's responses to that super-charged time (which already feels so long ago, doesn't it?). There was so much bullshit being spewed at the time, between the kneejerk flag-waving and the talk about how everything would suddenly be different and we'd never again enjoy mindless escapist movies and Halloween was suddenly an inappropriate holiday and so on and so on. There are plenty of post-9/11 entries here, and although I confess I've just kind of skimmed them so far (as is my wont), I really like the basic sentiments expressed: initial shock/grief, followed by some beautifully sane stuff about the madness of national ID cards, war fever, etc., as well as the way they're expressed. Well worth reading--for different reasons than the Monk recap, of course, but I appreciate both the humor and the sober insight.

Skin tight

I see I've been getting a lot of new visitors from this page of "Lycra sites around the world." Naturally, as a devotee of the medium, I had to check it out and explore a few links. There must be at least 200 here, devoted to cycling suits, ballet tights, superhero fan films, etc, all in a giant alphabetical list. Lots o' dead ones, alas, and plenty of old classics I already know and love.

I guess the nicest revelation was The Masked Henchman's site, consisting primarily of shots of the M.H. in action, both in and out of spandex. I admit, I share his attraction to those ubiquitous thugs/goons in ski masks who are forever robbing banks and clubbing the good guy in movies. And, shucks, I guess at this point in my "devolution" I'm pretty much a masked henchman myself, so it must be purely professional reasons that draw me to his web page.

FYI, not to toot my own horn or anything, but if you found me through that Lycra links page and want more of the same, I should humbly point out that I have a somewhat similar page of my own on my SECRET ROOM website (which has been sadly neglected for months, alas, but I promise I'll update it sooner or later). Enjoy.

Calling Dr. Kinsey

Saw the movie Kinsey this past weekend. Certain aspects of it (the occasionally awkward/stilted dialogue, for instance) bugged me a teensy bit, but for the most part I liked it, particularly for the way it normalizes the whole subject of human sexuality. Dr. Kinsey is presented as this totally non-judgmental researcher, admittedly a little obsessive in his devotion to his chosen subject (but then what scholar isn't?), fascinated by the wide range of activities that turn people on and open-minded about all of them. There's this charming matter-of-factness to his relationships with his wife and kids, and pretty much everyone else he meets. Excellent cast, starting with Liam Neeson as the title character, as well as John Lithgow as his fundamentalist, body-phobic dad, and especially Laura Linney as his startlingly game wife. (Oh, and you get to see Peter Sarsgard's ding-dong, which had not previously been a priority of mine, but which I found quite enjoyable.)

I kept thinking of Boogie Nights and The People vs. Larry Flynt, with which Kinsey forms a mini-genre: films in which the characters' shared preoccupation with sex creates some interesting alternative family units. Rather than sensationalizing the subject, they're warm-and-fuzzy movies; in fact, I'd even go so far as to call Kinsey the first sex-based tearjerker I've seen, particularly in a fantastic cameo by Lynn Redgrave right near the end of the movie, playing a woman who sees her personal options as infinitely broader as a result of Kinsey's contributions to the field.

The site I linked to above is worth checking out, not so much for the usual movie-promo stuff as for such interesting features as a chance to place yourself on Kinsey's 0-6 scale (I went with a 5) and a list of myths about the good doctor's research. It strikes me that there's a common thread between what he was doing 50 years ago and what various bloggers are up to nowadays: making public what was once secret, with the intention of letting people know they're not alone in their desires. I know there will always be folks who think that's a bad idea, but I'm not one of them.

BATMAN BEGINS... to cross-promote

I was intrigued to discover that the home page of the official website for the BATMAN BEGINS film currently includes links to several organizations providing financial relief to the tsunami victims.

I've been thinking lately--okay, for many years--about how best to carry over this whole "hero" business into the daylight world. For me, that has meant activism (which, as we know, often resembles villainy in the eyes of some onlookers--the same way that, say, the Green Hornet/Batman/Spider-Man appears to be a bad guy in certain circles). But I guess this donation option could apply, too.

It's just sort of weird that there's no explicit conection between the site--otherwise designed solely to promote a new big-budget Hollywood movie--and the action of aiding disaster victims. I see an obvious one, as I've suggested here, but something tells me there may be a similar link on every Warner Bros site.

Even if there was a line on the BB site about how "you, too, can be a hero ... by donating money to a good cause" (which, BTW, strikes me as the B. Wayne approach, not the Bat one), I think I'd be a little creeped out by a major corporation promoting its latest product by exploiting a global tragedy. (Need I remind anyone of the post-9/11 consumer bonanza?)

I'm not suggesting that you NOT give money--and I still haven't figured out exactly how best I can do something, however small, in that regard--but I do worry about:
1. the notion that typing your credit card number and expiration date into a website can provide the illusion of quick and convenient personal closure to a giant, incomprehensible act of natural destruction, and
2. the concept of making an upcoming movie blockbuster seem virtuous by connecting it to said disaster.

A thorny situation, as so many are. And, again, the bigger question is: what can we, the handful of folks who dress up in comic book costumes and fight our pretend adversaries, really do to make the larger world a better place?

Any thoughts?

Backstage at "Beginnings"

My latest cold, and before that the over-full madness of late December (work, holiday, etc), have slowed me down on the batfront lately, as readers of "Beginnings" have surely noticed. It's not easy keeping up with new chapters of that story; ideally there would be a new one every day, but I decided long ago not to worry when that doesn't happen. I like the idea that the narrative moves along in real time, so if I miss a few days, then those days pass in the story, too. (Except when I give myself permission to cheat now and then.) Both a challenge and an opportunity. It's nice to be able to incorporate holidays and other occasions as they come along, for instance.

Speaking of which, apologies for shamelessly and perhaps tastelessly lifting a certain recent real-life crisis in Eastern Europe for a plot device in the last few chapters, but then so many world events lately seem to resemble the plots of comic books, don't they? (I'm sure I've already mentioned my Osama-as-Joker theory, right?)

Funny how that works. Frank Miller's initial "Dark Knight" graphic novel (along with several other developments around the same time) felt so fresh in the way it carried the comics world into "reality" (or at least televised reality--since so much of the story is told via news anchors, Letterman show appearances, etc) and nowadays it seems like the opposite is happening more often... the daily news looks like an issue of DETECTIVE.

Talk about crossover!

Knightfall 11: Through the Looking-Glass

Perhaps the single most fascinating aspect of my ongoing bat/rat saga is the way that other characters have begun to enter into it. At first it was just me, then the Monk entered the picture, then other people--heroes trying to win me back to the side of Good, villains eager to gloat at my downfall, and so on. These latest arrivals are almost all longtime readers of this very blog, which means there's this mind-bending situation where readers of my fiction (or whatever you want to call this role-playing dreamworld) are now entering into the story they're reading. As a writer in the daylight world, I wish I could find a way to create something similar. (I should note that all of us are merely borrowing scraps of a pre-existing fiction--the lore of comic books and their spinoff tv shows and films--that none of us can lay claim to, even if we are all fine-tuning it to suit our own purposes.)

I think of two parallels, neither of which I have any direct experience with. (Too busy living my own fantasy!) One is only a title: The Counterlife, which is the title of a Philip Roth novel I haven't read. Evidently it concerns a group of characters who slip in and out of various alternative destinies, drawn from their unfulfilled dreams and roads-not-taken. Me, I just like the concept implied in that title: that my bat/rat adventures are a kind of counterlife I can enter and exit at will, accompanied by a growing cast of fellow adventurers whose counterlives happen to intersect mine at the moment.

Then there's The Game, David Fincher's precursor to Fight Club, in which characters become engrossed in a live-action role-playing game that invades their "real" lives with fantasy elements. Once again, I haven't actually seen it (though I'm a sort-of fan of David Cronenberg's eXistenZ, which is also about a multi-player game that blurs the usual boundaries between reality and fantasy).

Another interesting parallel to what's going on in the bat/rat realm right now is the twist revealed back in chapter 17 of my "Beginnings" serial: that Batman actually began his crimefighting career as an online and offline fetish role-player whose virtual fuckbuddies started getting out of hand and committing real-world crimes. (Hmm, better point out right here and now that I'm NOT looking for that to happen in real life, folks. Let's keep this all in text form, please! There, THAT ought to make everything okay...)

Meanwhile, the man I've dubbed "the Monk" is developing quite a fan club of his own. I keep getting inquiries about him from people who read what I'm writing here and want something similar to happen to them. My counterlife identity as Ratman has become his number one recruiter--his "poster boy," as he calls me. I'm a little troubled to find out that so many so-called heroes share my desire to fall from grace. Aren't we supposed to be saving the world from the bad guys?

That last sentence only calls to attention the obvious question: which side am I on now: Us, or Them? Good Guys, or Bad?

Wait and see, friends and fiends, wait and see. Better yet, don't wait, just dive in to the storyline yourself. But beware: the water's pretty deep now, and the current is strong. If you're not careful, you'll either be dragged under or get carried away.

Knightfall 10: Kid in a Candy Store

I grew up in a warm climate, and I vividly remember standing in a department store at the age of 10 or so, staring in awe at the gloves in the adult men's section. No one in this part of the country has any real use for such an accessory--it just never gets that cold--and so I'd always associated them with my favorite heroes. I couldn't wait to be a grownup so I could move somewhere that would justify wearing gloves, and, by extension, to live my life on my own terms, which might well entail wearing a superhero costume for real. This--far more than IRAs, extended mortgages, or anything along those lines--was what adulthood meant to me.

As all regular readers of this blog know, I've pretty much come to live out that childhood dream, several decades later: I have a healthy, happy daylight life (about which you'll never hear much here) AND a fantasy one (that isn't always so happy, as when I fall prey to a mind-warping villain, for instance). True, my anecdote above is proof of what my shrink (let's call him Alfred) told me long ago, when I first started opening up about my long-suppressed bat-fetish: that most if not all fetishes are rooted in childhood fantasy. (He cited the example of the Village People--every one of those gay male types, the cop, the construction worker, the Indian, etc.--comes straight out of little boys' dress-up games.) But he, unlike his predecessors in the field of psychology and psychoanalysis, didn't define this state of suspended infantilism as a bad thing, just a thing. In theory, he pointed out, anything under the sun (and, who knows, probably the sun itself) can become a fetish object if the conditions are right. I didn't exactly embrace his insight at the moment--that wouldn't come for several years--but at this point in my life, I can truly say I cherish this lingering remnant of my youth. (Sooner or later, I'm going to write more about that youth and just how big a role Batman played in it, but let's save further flashbacks for a while.)

The newest stage in my evolution as Ratman has been a more public one. Not in the sense of dressing up with the undie mask on my head and walking the streets, mind you, but I've become--with the Monk's help--more and more proactive in the virtual world, seeking out heroes and practicing my budding villainy on them. In my Bat days (can I truly be putting them in the past tense?) I used to wait for villains to come to me, but now I ask for and then receive assignments from the Monk and carry them out. And, I should point out, people do continue to contact me first, many of them readers of this blog who know exactly what they may be getting into. Suddenly my bat/rat world is far less claustrophobic than it once was. First it was just me, then just the Hub and me, and then just the Monk and me, but now there are other characters. Many other characters; it really is like coming out all over again: when you're in the closet, you think at first you're the only one who carries your dark secret, then you open your vision (through reading or tentative conversation or whatever works for you) and you realize there are others somewhat like you out there, and then--only after you start to go public--you find yourself surrounded by peers, colleagues, friends, even enemies. In my twenties I used to walk into gay bars and feel like I really didn't belong there, felt awkward and out of place. Nowadays, on the few occasions when i go to them, I STILL feel all those things, to be honest, but for different reasons (hey, I'm not really into twinks or body-obsessed guys or Republicans....), but I feel something else, too, a far more powerful awareness: that these are my people. They're not my ONLY people, but I feel a connection to them.

Went through the same process with leather bars in my thirties--fear and self-awareness, followed by a gradual realization that I wasn't a freak among freaks. And now I seem to be going through yet another version of the process, in a different realm, but one that hits far closer to home than either of the last two. (After all, hero fetishists are a minority even in leather bars.) Right now I'm spending 4-6 nights a week in the (virtual) company of lycra-loving, bondage-crazy Batmen and Supermen and heroes whose names are of their own design. These are my people, through and through. Granted, I'm playing the role of their adversary now, which I would never have expected, but I'm loving every sweaty minute.

(PS. The downside of my going more public with the Rat/Batplay is that I'm now less inclined to divulge every little encounter and stage in my decline/evolution/reinvention, delicious though they may be. For one thing, villain or not, I don't want to violate anyone's trust. For another, I'm realizing that to fully carry out my current role, I can't reveal too many of my secrets. More and more readers of this blog are beginning to enter the storyline themselves, and I can't have them knowing what I have in store for them. So forgive me if I start getting a bit more sketchy in my descriptions here. If you really want to follow the twists and turns, it looks like you'll have to hold your breath and jump into the storyline yourself. You know where to find me.)

Knightfall 9: Falling Together, Coming Apart

Yesterday was a day of firsts in the bat/rat/monk saga--too many even to list here, but I'll try to touch on the major ones. (Before I do, I must confess how odd it is that my own personal semi-real-life "saga" is now moving so much faster, and is so much easier to write about, than my serial slash fiction, Beginnings. When I first began that story, there wasn't a whole lot of action on the home batfront, my solo adventures having hit a dead end. Now the situation is completely different--and the serial has suffered as a result. There is a major plot development going on over there, which requires daily updates, but I've been spending the majority of my limited writing/fantasy time over here instead. I'm sure the pendulum will swing back that way eventually, and I promise to any remaining readers of that story that the identity of "H.S." will soon be revealed. But I digress.)

There are many major developments on the bat/rat front, as I continue my slide toward the darkness. For the last few weeks--in a clear reversal of my old bat-tastes--I've been making myself available for IMs,usually when the Monk is not available but I want to stay/play in that world a while. And so I've been hearing from a few fresh heroes and villains, some of whom are regular readers of this blog and thus know the Monk and his role in my life, and they inquire about him. (It's always a bit unsettling when someone brings him up, because I feel partly like a biographer being grilled about his subject and partly like the author of a fiction whose life has begun to intersect with one of his main characters--but trust me, the Monk is no fiction!)

I recently mentioned this phenomenon--the Monk fan club, if you will--to the man himself, and he wanted names (mainly to find out if he'd encountered them under his, er, "real" pseudonym). I managed to put off divulging this information for a couple of days, but last night I succumbed. This was a major defeat on my part, because months ago, during a similiar situation when I still wore the cowl of the Bat, I insisted that a true hero never divulges such secrets. My acquiescence this time was one more sign of how far I've fallen.

By great coincidence (or, more likely, divine intervention), the primary individual in question sent me an IM at the onset of the Monk's interrogation. This one is a Superman, an old-school true-blue hero who insists my Bat-career can still be salvaged and that I'll always be the Bat, no matter what. (Naturally, a part of me responds, "Dream on!," while another part thrives on this injection of outside hope into my otherwise solitary despair.) What happened next was something I'd been fantasizing about for the last few days: I not only named his name, but brought the Superman and the Monk together into a three-way chat, where--after much of the usual hero-and-villain banter and bluster--the Monk proceeded to kick Supe's ass. (I, alas, could only participate in a portion of this showdown, since I had other plans for the evening. Holy disappointment!)

So I've done it: I've betrayed an ally, and even assisted in his (temporary) demise. (Though I truly hope I haven't seen the last of Superman--not only is he a valuable comrade, but the three-way interaction was unbelievably exciting to me.) Further signs of my descent into villainy: earlier the same day, I announced two potentially major decisions to the Monk. First, I said it was time I began referring to him, not myself, as Batman (oddly, since he'd been implying this was the direction things were heading ever since he started wearing a stolen cowl, he rejected the name in favor of "Bad Bat," refusing to be my "crutch" while I sort out my shifting identities). Second, I declared I would quit relying on a familiar habit of referring to my erotic impulses (okay, my cock) as a being separate from me--either "Robin" (when I was Batman) or "Mouse" (now that I'm Ratman)--and take responsibility for my entire self. Both of these strike me as important stages in my gradual re-emergence as a single unified being after months of the Monk playing on my split nature (Bat/Bruce/my real name) and pitting the various selves against each other.

There were other firsts last night, too, but these are the key ones. On one hand, I'm moving toward (re)unification, towards a wholeness as a single, as yet unknown, personality (or so it seems)--and at the same time, I suddenly find that the Monk and I have company in our little playroom.

Knightfall 8: All Hands on Deck

The other day I was describing the whole cyber-bat-fantasy realm to a friend, and I compared it to the Holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I'm not a Trek watcher, let alone fan, but I think I have the basic idea of the Deck: a zone where people can go to live out their wildest fantasies in a (usually) safe environment, sometimes alone and sometimes with others.

I presume crew members can use this zone to work out issues in their "real" lives if they wish, or just get off for a while. That's certainly the case with batplay, online or off. And one of the things I'm getting to examine in my encounters with the Monk is the tremendous attraction that failure holds for me--the notion of coming as close to defeat as humanly possible and then rescuing myself at the last minute (or, most enticing of all, NOT rescuing myself). With defeat comes shame, and the shame fuels my rebound. I'm one of those habitually late people who pushes a deadline way past its expiration date (a habit which is really, really bad in a writer, by the way), then beats himself up about it, and then produces something pretty good (though never as good as it should or could be). I've long suspected that my little dance of procrastination, self-hatred, and triumph was linked to the cycle of deathtraps and last-minute escapes that so thrilled me as a young BatFan, and as I'm playing out the gradual unravelling of my batself at the hands of the Monk, I'm beginning to see just how incredibly powerful are my fantasies of utter defeat/shame/humiliation.

Ironically--or more likely not--I'm only starting to play seriously with all this stuff in batfantasy at the precise moment that my daylight life is probably healthier and happier than ever. As a man in my mid-40s I've naturally been thinking a lot about what constitutes "success" in my life, and I can honestly say I feel pretty okay with where I am. It's not where I thought I'd be as a kid, but then maybe those expectations were a bit unrealistic to begin with. (For one thing, many of those expectations were grounded in an upper-middle-class heterosexual married-with-kids-and-high-income-job model that just doesn't match my daily reality; come to think of it, I probably picked up a lot of that fantasy from 60s television programming, too--other than billionaire crimefighter Bruce Wayne, my role models once included architect Mr. Brady and psychologist Bob Newhart. Mamas, don't let your babies watch TV!)

With all that in mind, here's another update on my ongoing debasement as Ratman. I was telling the Monk the other day that my transformation is not going the way I'd expected. All along I was envisioning that being "broken" would happen quickly, in a flash, or at least that there would be a single decisive watershed moment. (As I've written here earlier, I thought I'd reached that moment already, but it eventually passed and I realized I had a lot more Bat left in me than I thought.) That might sometimes happen in face-to-face s/m scenes, but in my case what's happening instead is that it's a very, very slow process, as more and more of the batself fades from my being day by day by day. Which is actually way sexier to me, when you get right down to it: some of my darkest batfantasies involve being held prisoner for days, weeks, even months at a time, as I slowly wither away. (I think, too, of the climax of one of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, in which Moriarty captures our hero and begins to drain all the blood out of his body, one drop at a time. Mmmmmm!)

I mentioned all this to the Monk not long ago; here's part of his response:

I respect your gradual
submersion into the abyss..in fact..I encourage
it...savor each and every sensation...the pangs of
confusion...the freedom of debasement..the sheer
eroticism of meeting your destiny at my cowled
control..we'll defeat each of those internal
villains..and create an even better one....

(The "internal villains" he refers to are an allusion to another part of my bat-backstory: in solo play, I have often confronted villainous impulses implanted in me by previous captors who have attempted to turn the Dark Knight over to the Dark Side.) As is the case a disturbing amount of the time, he's described the process with extraordinary precision--but then, that's why he's the master villain he is.

Not-So-Teen Titans

It's not like I don't have a gazillion Important Things to Do tonight, but I've been spending many hours doing the silliest of online surfing. In my quest to track down the specific quote which serves as the epigraph of Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis ("a rat became the unit of currency," from Polish writer Zbigniew Herbert--regular H&V readers will know why this is on my mind right now), I came across a review of the novel which in turn led me to discover Titans of Finance, a comic book based on the biographies of various real-life tychoons. Haven't read it yet, but I'm tempted to order a copy. After all, I find (many but not all) men in business suits only slightly less sexy than superheroes, even when their personal politics repulse me.

Anybody out there ever read this thing? If you follow links at the site, you'll find examples of the comic strip it's drawn from.

Hey look--I'm really not Batman, after all!

But is this better or worse:

Congratulations! You are TV's Superman, faster than
a speeding bullet, more powerful than a
locomotive, able to do pretty much anything at
all except deal with a little kryptonite! It's
amazing how many ways there are of working
kryptonite into the script, though. You're
smug, but what the hell, you're pretty much
all-powerful. On the other hand, it's not like
you worked for those powers. You just happened
to land on a planet with a different color sun,
so all of a sudden you think you're better than
me. You know what? Screw you!


Which of TV's SuperFriends Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Tip o' the cape to In Sequence for steering me to this quiz, an ideal way to avoid actual labor or sleep (even if the questions and answers are pretty transparent).

Now playing in the Batmobile (er, Ratmobile)

Been listening in the car to the audio cassette version of Andrew Vachss' 1995 Bat-novel, The Ultimate Evil. I was vaguely aware of the book when it came out, along with accompanying comic book adaptation, but I'd never heard of Vachss, and besides, the whole premise sounded like it wouldn't be my cup of tea. (I'm not a huge fan of those periodic incursion-into-the-real-world side projects where the Caped Crusader is recruited to deal with land mines, or whatever--mainly because the chances of catching him shirtless and/or bound seem mighty slim under such circumstances. And yes, I am exactly that shallow.)

But lately I've been getting into the books-on-tape phenomenon in a desperate attempt to liven up my daily commute to my soul-draining job. I don't wanna pay too much for these things, since they strike me as single-use items (unlike actual books, whose pages can be turned more effectively than tape can be fast-forwarded), so I limit myself to library selections, remaindered items at bookstores, and used ones. The book I listened to just before this one, as I've noted before, was Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis, which turned out to have some eerie conjunctions with my personal bat/rat saga.

I'm not quite done with Ultimate Evil--I have maybe an hour to go--but it has its appeal. On the downside, it's read by Tony Roberts (whom I always sorta liked as an actor in mid-70s Woody Allen movies), and it's a little disconcerting to hear "Max" from Annie Hall as the Batman and a host of other characters. His Batman sounds like a bad Bogart impersonation more than anything else, and that's just not how I hear him at all. It throws the whole thing off; our hero comes across as this slightly cranky, ultra-dorky old coot. Maybe Vachss' prose has something to do with that, but I blame Roberts more.

The story, though, is pretty compelling after all--considerably more interesting than the plots of any of the films, for sure. It's refreshing to see the character taken very seriously by a very adult writer of prose; the third-world child-abuse angle is less stilted and didactic than I might have guessed, at least in this abridged version (though it still has its creaky moments); and, let's face it, I just plain get off listening to detailed descriptions of my favorite fictional hunk and his wardrobe.

Vachss is really on to something with his complex stew of real-world childhood trauma, adult sexual fantasy, and the role of masked manhunters in both. (Added thrill: Batman undercover in a gay bar! In a Time/Warner-approved product!) I know for certain that it's various sad/scary experiences in my own childhood (nothing like the slavery rings depicted in the book, thank god) that inspired me to adopt the Bat as my hero and lifelong mythical counterpart (just as the murder of his parents led young Bruce Wayne to create his alter ego), so it's interesting to watch someone work with all that as subtext in a crime novel.

Masked and Anonymous

Found this passage interesting in light of what I'm forever going on about here:

It is curious, the term that [musicians in Rio in the early 1960s] used to designate one who didn't do drugs: "careta." Apparently this word, which traditionally had mean "mask" or "masked person," emerged among criminals as a jocose diminutive of cara, which means both "face" and "person." So if one abstained from taking a mind-altering substance, it was said that he had a "cara limpa," a clean face. And many times I heard musicians say that they had to deal with this or that awful situation "totalmente de cara," by which they meant "completely clean," not high. In this roundabout way, through the outlaw slang of musicians, careta came to mean the opposite of masked or disguised. But even this "pejorative" use, referring to those who did not do drugs, ended up bringing back something of the old meaning, since to do drugs was understood as opening up to God and to music--an unmasking of oneself.

That's from careta musician Caetano Veloso's book Tropical Truth, and I'm struck by the whole connection between removing a mask and "opening up to God"--and to the role that drugs play in both. Of course, you can't really take a mask off till you put one on, and that, for me, is where batplay comes in. Now that the Monk has deprived me of mine, the question is: to what am I opening myself? And what will my new face look like?

Knightfall 7: Death of a Mauve Bat

There haven't been many "Knightfall" updates here lately because both the Monk and I were otherwise engaged for much of the last month and a half. We resumed sparring in earnest a week or two ago, the Monk convinced that he would ultimately succeed in destroying the Batman and replacing him with Ratman.

And damned if he hasn't gotten away with it--or so it seems for now. All I can say is, in one of many moments of weakness a couple of days ago I finally did as I was told and replaced my cowl with a new mask constructed from the "flag" of yellow cumstained undies he ordered me to create back when he first broke me. I did so offline--not under his direct instructions but of my own volition, more or less--and then logged on and found him waiting to see the end result of his handiwork. All along I'd been expecting some huge, titanic confrontation, but it never really happened. I just felt my bat-self start to slip away and a new one take hold.

So I guess the unthinkable has happened: The Bat in me is--or at least damn well appears to be--dead. Long live the Rat. (Amazingly, it didn't dawn on me that I was actually born in the Year of the Rat until just a few weeks ago.) I can't believe that's completely true, but I'm willing to play this out and see where it takes me. For starters, he's now the one in the bat-mask, playing the part of The Evil Bat. And I presume he intends me to become a villain, or at least his henchman. But I can't say for sure--and I'm certainly not the one in charge now.

By coincidence (or divine providence), last night and tonight I watched the movie The Five Obstructions, in which crazy Danish director Lars Von Trier convinces his mentor Jørgen Leth to remake one of Leth's earlier films 5 times, in 5 different ways, adhering to a series of preposterous rules (examples from 3 separate "obstructions": no shot can last more than 30 seconds; it must be remade as a cartoon; it has to be shot in the most miserable place on earth). The relationship between the two men is surprisingly similar to that between the Monk and me: there is a root friendship and mutual admiration, but the surface interactions are straight out of s/m, with Von Trier as the Top determined to humiliate his victim (and convinced that he knows Leth better than Leth knows himself), and Leth as the humble bottom gamely agreeing to one demented rule after another (using each as an opportunity to further his own craft).

For the last few weeks I've also been driving around listening to Don Delillo's book Cosmopolis on tape, read by ultra-cutie Will Patton, and I just finished it the same day as my downfall. Here, too, there is a Top/bottom dynamic, though I won't say too much about it for fear of revealing too many late-chapter plot developments. (Another coincidence: rats serve as a recurring motif throughout the novel.) If you're interested in the deeper ramifications of s/m-style interactions, I recommend both works to you. I'm not totally crazy about either one, but both have their interesting qualities.

Now that my bat-self appears to be dead, I've been toying with the idea of ending this "Knightfall" series of blog entries and beginning a new one, with the working title "Diary of a Bottom" or something like that. (Maybe the title will focus on my new role as villain instead... if that's what the Monk has in mind for me.) But who knows what the future will bring? The last time I thought I'd been beaten for good proved to be only temporary--I donned the batsuit many times in the intervening weeks, as soon as I had the opportunity to spend a few glorious hours by myself once again. Something tells me (okay, the MONK tells me) this time will be different.

But we'll see. The bat within me is too strong a driving force, for too many years, to be exorcised in a few months of online roleplay. He's bound to return sooner or later, in some brand-new state. Or so I hope.

The politics of ... ooo, feelin' good

Must admit I got a little nervous when I visited GlovdCopSF's beautiful website for the first time in a while, and discovered this prefatory text:

"Forget about advancements of technology, social progress... We have entered into a forced regression to uber-Christianity rule, rivaled only by the Dark Ages. Galileo - hide yourself, and your ideas. This is the new Amercian Theocracy."
--Anonymous

Was it a warning, or a boast, this talk of a New Theocracy? I assumed/hoped for the former, but I've always been a little wary of the webMaster's politics--even if he is a permanent resident of my Top Ten Top Men list--based in part on his "disclaimer for PC shitheads" accompanying his description of the rather rigid qualities he looks for in a sex partner. (I mean, I've been known to find both Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly disturbingly hot under the proper lights, but in reality I don't particularly want to share a room with either of them.) Granted, GlovdCopSF has always been quite clear that his site is entirely about sex and NOT about his own personal politics or any other aspect of his life, but even so, I tend to be put off by other people's brushes with authoritarianism (just as I am by my own attraction to jackbooted thugs).

Fortunately, any misgivings I might have had about the true meaning of the "New Theocracy" quote were immediately cleared up when I visited the site's November 2004 "Fetish of the Month" photo gallery. I make a point of checking this one out every 30 days or so, because 9 times out of 10 GlovdCop's taste resembles mine. (Damn, not only is he a hot number, but he's got a good eye for beauty in others, too!) This time around, the images themselves don't excite me as much as the explanatory text, which begins

So what does the Bush Administration have in common with this month's gallery? A bunch of assholes...

From there you get a staggeringly vast collection of pictures of "leather breeches with a zipper down the ass." Highly specific, and not exactly my cuppa drool, but I applaud the man for providing "105 assholes for you, but the kind you actually like" in response to our countrymen's recent regrettable reappointment of one of the biggest buttholes around to the highest office in the land.

GlovdCop may claim his site is politics-free, and the blog you're currently reading tends to focus on sex over the other issues that matter most in my life, but sometimes the cold light of reality falls on even the deepest, darkest places.

Come out, come out, wherever you are, Galileo. Don't let the theocrats and assholes get you down. We need you, dude--and that goes double for you, GlovdCopSF.

Four More Years... of kinky fantasy! (Shhh.... Don't anybody tell the Red States)

Fantasy is mighty tempting these days, given the rather dreary state of reality following Tuesday's election results. I could go on and on about that, and I certainly have in my Bruce Wayne self. But real-life Heroes & Villains are not my focus here.

Nope, this site exists mainly to alert my fellow perverts to kinky bat-images like these, which I learned about from my budding blogbuddy (say that 3 times fast), Teresa at InSequence.org. She came across them indirectly, thanks to an article on the photographer, Terry Richardson.

As all batfans know, there are plenty of folks creating this kind of thing on the internet; they're just not art-world provocateurs, and their work doesn't end up in L. A. Weekly. On the other hand, to be honest, a lot of the truly underground slashpic stuff is not as fun--or as appealing--as Richardson's. Give me a bat in a tight black top and leather chaps over a photoshopped porn star any day! (The young Robin is another story; I directed a friend to Richardson's pix and he said they almost looked like kiddie porn, something I hadn't noticed, which just goes to show that I'm more of a Bat-man than a Robin-lover.)

Needless to say, my favorite fine-art/fetish crossover remains Mark I. Chester's stunning portraits of Robert Chesley as Superman, KS scars and all. I'm pretty sure I've already written about those here long ago, but if you haven't seen them, you've gotta check them out.

Speaking of the overlap of art and fetish, I've only just begun to explore the treasures at this tribute site devoted to the gloriously lurid work of pulp/men's mag/comic book artist Norman Saunders, which appears to be maintained by his son. While his biggest claim to cult stardom is probably his Mars Attacks! bubblegum card series, immortalized by Tim Burton, all kink-minded batfans owe Saunders a tip of the sweat-drenched cowl for his legendary bubblegum card portraits of Our Hero, which are by far the most fetishistic of officially sanctioned bat-art (and just plain beautiful, too). The site is packed with images and informative text; whether you find the bat-pix as hot as I do or not, if you have any interest at all in fantastical pop imagery, Saunders is your man. (Bonus: from the gallery of men's mag covers, I learned where Franz Zappa got the inspiration for 90% of the title "Weasels Ripped My Flesh.")