The Dark Knight returns, and Batfan60 is unmasked at last!

I see it has been even longer since I last posted here than I thought, so here's an update: My life as a secret superhero (may as well reveal what you have surely already figured out: I am Batman, in case you forgot) has had its ups and downs over the years. For a while there, when Recon had its chat rooms operating, it was a golden age for fetishists, because suddenly men from all over the world who were into superheroes, lycra, cops, or gloves (to name only the top 4 of my personal favorites) to find each other and interact--which could take the form of either the expected cyberplay or just basic conversation about coming out as a fetish or anything else they wanted to talk about. When that closed up its doors, I lost touch with at least 80% of the men I had met there, and since then, pickins have been mighty slim. For various reasons, I largely quit engaging in solo batplay at home in my batsuit or any other uniform (and I have plenty, these days).

But just today I got inspired to give Twitter a try--set up an account (@Batfan60), posted a tweet with the hashtags #superherofetish and #copfetish, and immediately started recognizing men from the good old bad old days. If you are one of them, welcome! As noted, I haven't updated this blog in years, much as I loved keeping it, but there are still many years' worth of words and pictures to keep you busy for hours. Go ahead: Get lost in my fantasies, at least the ones you share--and if you do share them, we should talk, either here or on Twitter.

PS. The "Breaking News" reports on the right side of this page automatically refresh, so please visit again to see what's happening in the Batfan60 multiverse.

PPS. I also have a long-running Bat-related slash blog for you to, uh, enjoy. Haven't updated it in a while (a lonnnnnng while), but I still think about it, because I love where I left our hopeless hero and his helpless helpers.

PPPS. And then there's my now-ancient main website (on AngelFire--don't make fun), which also hasn't been updated in years (notice a pattern here?), but is chock-full of dirty stories, kinky links, and other fetishy fun. Again, I dream of completely overhauling it someday, but lately I've either been fighting villains or trapped in their nefarious clutches.

PPPPS. If YOU, dear reader, are a villain in search of a new masked and gloved opponent to toy with (online roleplay only--the Hub is still a major and wonderful part of my life), find me as Batfan60 on Recon. My utility belt is restocked, the batcomputer has had a complete upgrade, and I am ready once more for BATtle.

A new year, a new leaf

When my British counterpart/colleague noticed I'd been posting more updates here lately, he asked if I was making up for lost time. Could be--though I've also promised myself that in 2009 I'm going to devote a little time each day to at least one of the many blogs and sites I'm involved with (as Batfan and in my Bruce Wayne existence). Go ahead, call it a resolution if you must. Lord knows I'm way behind with this one and especially this one.

To that end, I made quite a few tweaks to the sidebar on the right tonight. In addition to plenty more links and even a few new categories of them, you can now find the latest updates from the blogs I check most often for H&V-related info, subscribe to this one, and even become a "follower" of H&V. (Yikes.)

While I'm at it, here's more of my ongoing attempt to finally share some items I've been steadily bookmarking for years. (Just call me the Axl Rose of batbloggery.) No overriding theme this time, just odds and ends:

•If, like me, you sometimes take pleasure in obscure comic book heroes and villains from long-forgotten publishers, check out this regularly updated collection of them, which also includes new characters evoking the moldy oldies. The entire Flashback Universe blog from which that list comes is fun, and I've added it to the links sidebar.

•Here's a funny Conan O'Brien/Jim Gaffigan superhero cartoon. (True confession: I wouldn't kick either of these two out of my bed, whether in costume or out. Not sure I'd want them shooting deathrays out of their nipples, though.)

•Despite the horrendous reviews the new Spirit movie has been getting, I will naturally be seeing it. And I will always have a not-so-soft spot in my, er, heart for Sam Jones in the equally ill-fated 1987 tv movie, paid tribute to here. I mean, would you feast your eyes on this man, for the love of God?



•Nice collection of boot-fetish videos on YouTube, which will also point you to plenty of related works. Here's an enjoyable example of Stand & Model attitude:



Minimal, yes, but face it: Had Warhol shot this, it would be playing in museums the world over.

*A reader sent me a link to his 26-chapter BDSM-themed serial, which took him more than two years to complete. I've only dipped in to random chapters thus far, which means I have plenty more to ... chew on.

•Speaking of fiction, here's a reservoir of comics-related fanfic I found somewhere long ago, including some Bat ones. The broader-based home page of the site is now in my links list, too. Oh, and here's a weird, potentially hilarious assignment for your own ill-conceived fanfic.

•Courtesy of another online buddy, here's a Universal Studios Spider-Man getting dressed and doing his duty for the girls and boys, and a few of us oldsters, too. Bonus points for UnderArmour usage beneath the spideysuit:



•I forget exactly why I bookmarked this in the first place--I think it was for a post I was going to write (two years ago) about (male) rape fantasies--but now that I look more closely, I see these are all (?) women victims, so I feel kind of creepy sharing it with you sans political comment. Anyway, here's a semi-famous list, updated here and here.

This looks like a good place to stop for now, but trust me, I've got plenty more where these came from, and this appears to be one of those periods when I'm feeling the impluse to blog again, so stay tuned.

"Beginnings" begins again (tentatively)

Unlike the characters in my on-again-off-again saga "Beginnings" (which is on again as of this morning), I've been a very busy bat/man lately--so much so that I haven't had time to write here nearly as often as I'd like. I'm hoping (yet again) to change that, so stay tuned. It's been a very full fall, full in terms of both activity and creative potential. When I don't write here for a while, it usually means I'm spending all my time actually doing things instead of writing about them, which is certainly the case this time, but I want to make more room for blog entries again, because reflecting on one's activities can be just as important as having the adventures in the first place. The challenge is carving out the time to do a bit of both. Never easy for me, even in the best of circumstances.

Still here, sort of

Apologies for not posting more often lately. Between work and travel, there hasn't been much opportunity to do so, though my schedule does seem to be easing off in the near future, at least for a little while. (So much for summer being the slow time of the year.)

To try and ease back into the blogosphere, I just posted a couple of new chapters of my ongoing bat-serial, beginning with this one. Expect more in the days ahead.

Rest assured I continue to report to and learn from the Monk, much to my great joy; I'll have more to say on that in the near future as well.

Finally, a couple of bat-sightings you might enjoy as much as I have. First, an elaborate chalk drawing drawing by a street artist in action:



(I hope you can make out Bats' handsome mug to the artist's right; he's working on a Batman Beyond drawing in this shot.)

And here's a poster in a comic book store window I've been passing nearly every day lately:



Admittedly I've cropped it a bit in this image, but tell me that thing is not all about the crotch.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you.

Fans and fiction

Wonderful commentary on tonight's All Things Considered by Lev Grossman riffing on the subject of literary plagiarism. I highly recommend it to anyone seriously interested in fan fiction, because that's what it's primarily about. Grossman argues that writers like Melissa Jareo (who made the boo-boo of trying to actually sell her unauthorized Star Wars-related novel on Amazon.com) are the unsung heroes of contemporary fiction, fleshing out worlds originally created by other authors in innovative ways and doing it without any hope of riches or fame. Jareo's cease-and-desist order from George Lucas & Co. is contrasted with the recent Pulitzer Prize awarded to a novel that extends the story of the mostly unseen father from Little Women.

As a person who gets paid for some of my writing (under my real name) and doesn't get paid for some (including anonymous slash fiction), I found Grossman's whole take on the matter fascinating. It's sort of cool hearing a published novelist defend the amount of time that goes into writing a form of literature that has zero literary credibility. I imagine the majority of people hearing the radio story had no idea that fanfic exists before they heard the segment, and I myself had not heard about the Jareo situation. My heart sank a bit when I heard her fate--I do sometimes worry that one day my main site, my mega-epic batsaga, and even this very blog may be gone, since they're all devoted to characters owned by a giant corporation.

Though I must say Grossman's argument about doing it for love loses some ground when you recall that Jareo didn't just write about somebody else's creation, she actually tried to make some money off it.

And, let's face it, the vast majority of fanfic is crap.

But still!

The Knight After 1: Since U Been Gone

Regular readers of this blog (keep those e-mails and IM's comin', gentlemen) may be wondering what has happened to my batself after the "Knightfall" saga ended. The short answer? After a lapse of several months, it resumed and heated up again a while ago. I've been debating whether to continue writing about it here, or not--and, believe it or not, one of the main things that held me back was the absence of a good name for those adventures. I had already decided to retire the "Knightfall" title for entries on that subject, because that referred to a very specific era of my "career" as a masked (and then unmasked) crimefighter. I liked the idea of changing it to reflect a new chapter of my life, much as multi-part storylines in comic books now present themselves as miniseries. I just couldn't come up with the right one.

And then, a few days ago, the new series title presented itself to me. Welcome to the first installment of "The Knight After." And that pretty much sets the tone for the current era: like the hero of my "Beginnings" saga, I am rebuilding my career after a major blow that nearly ended it altogether. That process was quite slow at first, but after a few months back on the job, I can now say things are as busy as ever. The current cast of characters is larger, or at least different. Some familiar faces remain: a Tim Drake-styled Robin, a Dick Grayson-ish former sidekick who has changed his alias name and continues to work primarily on his own, and various superhero colleagues who still drop by from time to time. (Hello, Superman! Greetings, MotorMan!) But there are new arrivals, as well: on the hero front, we have a handsome Batman/Flash whose collection of superhero suits is truly astounding, sundry villains who pop in with threats every now and then, and one Jervis Tetch (batfans will recognize that as the nom de chapeau of the Mad Hatter) who is obsessed--like so many ne'er-do-wells before him--with capturing, unmasking, and enslaving me.

He'll have to take a number, though, because a relatively minor character from the Monk days (it was M who first introduced us, in fact) has come to play a relatively major role in the new era. Let's call him "the Ranger"--a name that reflects his past as a Good Guy, perhaps bearing a family resemblance to the Lone Ranger. If I remember correctly, M had assigned me to help him lead the onetime hero down the path of Eeeeeevil--and in the months since we'd last tangled, it looks like my old nemesis's mission was a roaring success. When we remet, the Ranger assured me he had cleaned up his act, gone straight, returned to the crimefighting biz...

... but this turned out to be a ruse designed to re-earn my trust. Once he had it, he mounted a fullscale attack on me involving an extraordinary arsenal of poison darts, mind-altering/will-demolishing gases, and the like. I fought back with every resource at my disposal, but he proved too smart for me. The turning point came when he captured me and worked me over during an on-camera session. I thought fast and used all his own weapons against him, ostensibly making him as submissive to me as I was to him. Moments later, when he ordered me to unmask, I resisted and made the same demand of him--and to my great surprise, he did as told. It was a brilliant strategy on his part: seeing my adversary remove his most treasured defense caught me off guard, and I was putty in his hands. More drugs came my way, and in no time I found myself unable to resist his next command to expose my face to him.

The rest, as they say, is history: a history of servitude to the Ranger. Whether I like it or not, I am his to be "milked" (easily the sexiest verb in the entire lexicon of superhero roleplay) whenever and however he pleases.

Okay, I realize this is all going to sound suspicious to longtime readers, but you'll have to take my word for it when I say this was not a fate (however temporary) that I freely chose for myself, but one that has been thrust upon me.The situation may similar to that with the Monk, but--and here's what makes this a worthy sequel--the circumstances are different enough to hold my interest. With apologies to Rod Stewart, the first cut really is the deepest, yet this new descent into enforced submission bears a couple of distinctive traits:

1. The Ranger has allowed me to continue to operate as Batman, and to make contact with other heroes and villains even as I agree to serve as his secret lover, and
2. He does not have the kind of taste restrictions that kept the Monk from interacting with my two key sidekicks (past and present).
Both of these cases mean that the situation will likely play itself out quite differently. (If it plays out at all--the Ranger has been mighty quiet of late, and it's possible he's lost interest in the scenario now that he seems to have won for the time being. Sometimes the battle is more exciting than the victory, you know.)

That's the backstory--what has happened between "Knightfall" and "The Knight After." I just wanted to get all that out before I discussed its significance, which I'll do soon. Meanwhile, you have my word that I'll keep you posted on future develoments as they occur.

To the batpole!

Knightfall 22: Enemy mine

I can't tell you how cool it is to have an archenemy.

One of the main things that has always appealed to me about the comic book and tv-series versions of Batman, as opposed to the films, is the fact that the villains stick around for years--decades, even. Oh, they may be sent off to jail every now and then, but their time in the stir only hardens their resolve to break out and return to their work destroying their nemesis with a renewed sense of purpose. The characters have a history together, a shared language. They're like forces of nature. And the intensity of their battles grows stronger with each encounter. Because Batman's moral code does not permit him to kill his enemies--and because I suspect they don't really want to do him in, either--they're stuck with each other for life.

Likewise, I've always been intrigued by the element of time in SM (or whatever you want to call it) roleplay: the longer the better, if you ask me. While it's not really in the cards for me, I'm fascinated by the prospect of a longterm master/slave relationship, or something similar. It's definitely the same in my solo batplay: when I get a weekend, let alone a week (or, on one glorious occasion ten years ago, an entire month) to myself, time to suit up and go wherever my imagination takes me for hours and hours at a stretch, I'm ecstatic--literally. There may be forays into the outside world now and then, but it's immensely comforting to know that I can return that night to an extended fantasy of my own design, and even more satisfying to know that I've been spinning an ongoing, albeit deeply private, saga for more than ten years.

So you can imagine how thrilling it is to realize that I now have a longterm cast of characters on my IM buddy list: the Monk, of course, but many others as well--fellow superheroes, current and past sidekicks, lesser villains, and a troubling number of "shifters" who tend to slide from good guy to bad guy without warning. Most of these characters know each other and have their own adventures that don't necessarily include me; sometimes two or more of them work in cahoots either with or against me. I'm not really interested in the brief encounter with a passing stranger, though there is certainly a place for those in the comic book world, too: the petty thieves and crossover cameos that add texture to the main storyline (or storylines, since my online saga is sometimes a bit different than the private one I conduct by myself, in the way that, say, Legends of the Dark Knight varies from Detective). The same is true of my Beginnings serial--unlike your average slash fiction, it goes on and on, with characters dropping out and returning from time to time, and having interconnected lives, just as real people do. I enjoy being able to incorporate the passage of real time as often as possible (and to imply that various things have taken place without my having to spell them out.) That's also been the appeal of soap operas as a narrative form for me--except in that case, the content is totally uninteresting. I just like the potential for a tale to span years, in the writing/telling/performing as well as in the reading/viewing.

As for the Monk, he's still out there, and resisting the sometimes burning desire to return to his clutches has become the struggle of my bat-career, the year-and-a-half-long battle that defines my very (fictional) character. He has long insisted that he is no mere outside force by this point but a part of me, and I'll be damned if I don't believe him sometimes. (And, er, perhaps I'll be damned if I do believe him, too.)

So stay tuned--the worst (or best) may be yet to come.

The imagination of disaster: 2 (Heroes without tights)

At the risk of trivializing real-life tragedy, I've thought of a few ways that several characters in my "Beginnings" serial will be affected by the Katrina disaster. It's been one of my goals to incorporate real-time events in that story, and this seems like one I can't ignore. (Actually, I've been planning this for a couple of weeks--ever since I heard a real-life friend of mine talk about his plans to lend a hand--but I've been too busy in the daylight world to add any new chapters. Sorry about that. Promise I'll make up for lost time.)

But that's only fiction. In our real, daylight lives, it seems to me that each of us--make-believe heroes and villains alike--have a responsibility to do whatever we can to help our fellow citizens in need. That can take any number of forms, many of which have little to do with costumed crimefighting. I am thinking of not only the people heading down to the Gulf Coast to provide direct assistance, but individuals like...

•These two otherwise hilarious gossip-crazed bloggers, who maintain a growing list of Katrina-related charities of all sizes that you may wish to support. It's the best-organized, most coherent, most appealing such list I've seen so far.

•This ad-hoc group, holed up in a building with their own generator in downtown New Orleans since the hurricane hit and issuing regular reports, publishing photos and videos of things you probably haven't seen on TV, etc. The earliest entries are the most comic-book-like; I haven't quite pegged the political sentiment of these guys, but at the peak of the crisis they seemed to be functioning like a cross between Sgt. Rock/Blackhawk/GI Joe and some kind of vigilante/survivalist group. Much talk of command stations and patrols and such.

•This woman, whose name happens to be Katrina, and who happened to own the "Katrina.com" domain before all the shit went down, who has subsequently turned her personal site into a clearinghouse for information since she's getting zillions of hits everyday anyway. (Though I gotta say, I just visited the site a few minutes ago for the first time in a week or so, and it appears she's gone pretty heavily into the god-and-country stuff lately. But hey--Wonder Woman's all about the red, white, and blue, too, right?)

These folks may not wear spandex (well, not that I know of, anyway), but they look like heroes to me, in a time that desperately needs us all to assume that role in our own idiosyncratic ways.

If you can think of any more examples, please add them in a comment!

Batz & Robinson

A few days ago I got an e-mail from a guy who's been reading BEGINNINGS and has started his own serial in blog form, called DETECTIVE'S LOG. The story is just getting started, but it's clear that he's doing with the hard-boiled/pulp genre what I try to do with my favorite superhero: creating a new version that includes the scenes we (as horny gay readers) have always wanted to see in them.

This is a particular treat for me, because (shifiting for a moment to the film adaptations of these stories) I'd much rather see Humphrey Bogart get it on with, say, Dick Powell than Lauren Bacall. I love film noir (and the novels of Cain and Chandler) mostly for aesthetic/cerebral/intellectual reasons, but I admit that the men tend to be pretty manly (with plenty of that five o'clock shadow that I've rambled on about before) and there's a good chance in lots of the films that the anti-hero will eventually find himself knocked out, tied up, and messed around with in some vaguely Batmanish manner. The relationship in DETECTIVE'S LOG between the "boss-man" and his sidekick/"Boy Friday" (as well as their names, indicated in the subject line above) explicitly refers to Batman and Robin, too.

If you like that gritty, smoke-filled, black-and-white world--and the lingo of the pulps--then you might just wanna get in on the ground floor of DETECTIVE'S LOG.

"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.

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!

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!

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 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.

Going public (Sort of)

A quick glance at my site-visitor-tracking-doodad a couple of days ago told me that my slashblog (how's that for neologisms?) "Beginnings" was suddenly getting a whole lot of new visitors courtesy of this entry in a vanilla comics blog. (Hmmm, "slashblog" is catchy, but I need to come up with something better than "vanilla comics blog" to describe the latter... "vanilla" and "slash" don't make very good opposites. Any suggestions, anybody?)

I'm not really sure why "those with weak stomachs" are advised not to check out my tale; that phrase makes me think of violence rather than the unconsummated lust and sublimated bondage fantasy that our heroes have been facing so far. Hmmmmm...

Anyway, if you're one of the people who has found his or her way here through "The Beat: The News Blog of Comics Culture," then welcome. As you've probably figured out by now, I write from a fairly particular point of view for a fairly particular audience, and if your stomach is, uh, strong enough, please keep checking back. Drop me a line, whether you're straight or gay, boy or girl, or anything in between any of the above.

On the other hand, if you're a regular reader of THIS blog and haven't yet checked out "The Beat," I encourage you to give it a look if you love comics. I'm really happy to have discovered it myself: the writing is excellent, and it's packed with info.

As for our boys in tights over at "Beginnings," I do believe the newly active Robin is about to find a new and unintended audience of his own, too. Let's just hope he's not getting in over his head...

Picture This

Fewer messages here lately because my posting time has been occupied with the BEGINNINGS saga--the 50th chapter of which will be posted shortly--and some improvements to the links pages of my main site. And, for the first time in about 10 years, I've been bitten by the IM bug.

I've always hated this particular technological innovation--the ability to be interrupted by complete strangers when I'm busy (I was one of the first people to sign up for the Do Not Call Registry)--and I really, truly do not enjoy communicating with people I don't know by means of little text messages back and forth....

Except, it has dawned on me of late, as a means of conducting bat-business with fellow travelers. There are limits to the torments I can inflict upon myself, and even batplay with the Hub has its limitations, simply because it doesn't carry the same soul-baring weight for him that it does for me. But the realm of shared storytelling with masked villains, that's a whole nother ballgame. (Obligatory proviso: I ain't lookin' for no real-life encounters. Perfectly happy on that front. Not even really looking for new villains--got my hands full with a couple already, who shall remain nameless. But if you think you've got what it takes to take me down, drop me a line and see if you pass muster.)

From time to time I get e-mails and IMs from strangers complimenting me on the single photo of my batsuit currently floating around online. (I envision a new page of self-portaits on the SECRET ROOM site, but haven't done much to make it happe yet.) It feels weird, mostly good but still weird, to be told I look hot, because in my Bruce Wayne existence, that doesn't usually happen except when the Hub says it. (Maybe it would if I were listening closer, but I had many years' experience shutting that side of me down.) I realize the positive comments come from fellow fetishists who are probably focussing more on the suit than the man inside it, but that doesn't bother me at all--I mean, I do the same, after all, with both cops and batmen. (Speaking of the former, here's another reminder that National Night Out is Tuesday, Aug 3. Get out there and get friendly with your neighborhood boys in blue!) (Then send me the pix!)

As I think I've often written here before, on some level my masked face is the real one. Unmask me and I look like anybody else. But by putting on a disguise, I become the man I really am: which is to say, the man of my dreams. The self I keep hidden from the rest of the world. And it feels ... okay, nice to have that self strike a chord in other men with similar dreams.

GRAYSON

There's yet another offering atthe Batman Fan Films site: the new one is called GRAYSON and it's a trailer for a film which evidently may never be made, about the further adventures of the title character after the death of his mentor. Man, if I had the bucks, I'd pass them on to director John Fiorella immediately. This thing looks great, has a stellar line up of comic book heroes and villains, and the writer/director/star is a total dreamboat. (We see him bearded, clean-shaven, in Robin attire, shirtless, chained up, you name it.) Plus there's a mighty hot older-man Superman, and ... ah, just go see it for yourself.

As in my BEGINNINGS story, Dick Grayson is not a kid but a full-grown adult. Surprisingly, the Robin suit doesn't look silly on him, even though it's so clearly the attire of a youngun.

Once again, I long for a world where GRAYSON would be hitting my local multiplex instead of the DAREDEVIL/PUNISHER/BATMAN film du jour.

Does whatever a spider can...

I'm still surprised how let down I feel about the new SPIDER-MAN movie. The trailers and stills I'd seen certainly whetted my appetite, to put it mildly: images of our hero in the clutches of Doc Ock, chained up, about to be unmasked, his outfit torn so badly there was barely anything left of it. (Stop me now before I shoot my spidey-webs on the keyboard!)

That's all there, and I'm sure the folks at the GaySpidermanFans Yahoo group will be posting plenty of pix in the weeks to come. But the movie itself was a tremendous disappointment: awful (yet not convincingly campy) dialogue, sloppy direction, one cliché after another. The first film still feels like one of the best comic-book movies thus far, even though I found most of the Peter-and-Mary-Jane business in that one really tedious. I've never been a fan of origin stories in any case, so I was really looking forward to the second installment, when we'd all be free to dive into interactions with villains without much set-up. (I think I developed my boredom with origins from the "Batman" tv show, in which we're plunged straight into the action from the very first episode--which, by the way, is also the only one in which Bruce Wayne's murdered parents and his subsequent vow to avenge them ever comes up, as far as I can remember. Who really cares WHY these hot guys suit up to do their business? Let's just see them in those outfits... and those deathtraps!)

No such luck with SPIDER-MAN 2. (Only minor spoilers in the rest of this paragraph.) First we have to deal with learning how the new bad guy comes into being, then Peter has to lose his powers and re-invent himself, which means MORE scenes of him training himself, blah blah blah. And that fucking Mary Jane! They're apart, they're together, they're apart, they're together, and so on and so on and SO on. Gimme a break. Leave the chick at home and go get yourself into the clutches of some supervillain bent on your destruction, Spidey hon. THAT's what we're paying the big bucks to see. Plus, by the end of the film--following a trend established by the BATMAN movies-- everyone and his brother knows who's under that mask.

A friend of mine said, "Come on, it's a comic book movie!" Pre-cisely. Comic books, for me--an old-school DC-er by birthright--are about the larger-than-life (and hotter-than-vanilla) interactions of heroes and villains fated to lock horns for years and years, not the mundane concerns of everyday people. If I wanted the latter, I'd watch "The O.C." This whole trend toward paying more attention to the Bruce Wayne side of a character than the Bat-self (see "Smallville," "Lois and Clark," "Daredevil," and, I fear, the forthcoming "Batman Begins") is for the birds, if you ask me. The problem with S-M 2 (oh, if only those initials were more descriptive of the actual film) is that it's NOT a comic-book movie at all, it's a fucking soap opera.

***

Okay, now if you've been keeping up with my OWN version of an origin story in the "Beginnings" serial/blog, you may be thinking to yourself, what's HE going on about? That thing is about as soap-opera as you can get without a cameo from Susan Lucci!

And maybe I am guilty as charged, after all. But all the Dick Grayson stuff early on is there for a reason. I'm really trying to retell a story we all know by heart, from scratch, with some serious revisions. I freely admit I'm fucking with some essential parts of the legend--all because I've been thinking about what conditions might lead to the appearance of a Batman in the, er, "real" world we all inhabit. ("We" being people -- like you, I assume -- who harbor fetishes about characters most everyone else discards after adolescence.) At the same time, I want to make it as sexy as the comic-book fantasies that have always gotten me hard. As of chapter 20 or so, I should have most of the basic framework laid out, and I have some major nastiness planned for our heroes, believe me.

But I'm eager to find out whether anyone cares. I've gotten a couple of encouraging and/or encouragingly horny e-mails so far, but I really want feedback--either via e-mail or the comments option below. I love plotting and writing "Beginnings" so much right now that I'll probably keep going for my own amusement/arousal for the next few weeks at least, but your response would be a great incentive to continue after that. So spill your guts -- or any gushy fluid of your choice.

Now it begins...

I've gone and done it: started a new blog to tell an ongoing bat-story that picks up where my story "Bystander" left off. Been mapping this out in my head for the last few days, and now the first words are out there. Hope you'll check it out and let me know what you think.