The Knight After 5: When the Student is Ready...

Early conversations with the Monk in this new phase of our acquaintance went smoothly. Extremely smoothly, in fact, which probably should have told me something was up. Not on his end, mind you, but on my own.

The program we were using to chat employs little icons for each speaker, which meant that each time I got a new message from him, I saw a tiny photo of him--one that I happened to remember quite well from our very first encounters. Happy memories, you might say. And I noticed they were starting to make me very, very ... happy.

Now, I realize how easy it would be for you to say, "Come on, Batman, don't you see he's getting his hooks in you? You have to fight back! Don't let him get away with this! Resist! Resist! You've done it before, and you can do it again!"

But something had changed. I had resisted before, and where had it gotten me? In the clutches of other villains, ready, willing, and able to face the fight of my life again. Only it never quite worked out that way. Either my adversaries turned out to be disappointing opponents, or--worse--they'd take me to the brink of utter defeat, make me putty in their hands, and then disappear for weeks at a time. There was no "next level"--either they were afraid to take me there, or they had other priorities, or something just came up.

Meanwhile, all along I was fighting to rid myself of a villain who had none of those qualities. When he'd had his hooks in me, he wouldn't dream of letting go. He was tailor made for me, and I for him, and we both knew it. The Monk had often referred to ours as a symbiotic relationship, in the classic Batman/Joker sense. We had a history, and--when you get right down to it--shared the same goals, deep down. There's no denying the truth: I didn't get into the bat-business in the first place to catch bad guys, I got into it to be caught by them, and no one in my experience has ever done a better job at it than him.

So I started to think: why run? Why not find out what happens if I take the Monk at his word and simply accept him as ... not my adversary but my teacher? My partner in crime(fighting)?

I've never followed the tv series Alias (my mistake, I'm sure, since I find both Michael Vartan and Bradley Cooper incredibly hot), but I gather that on at least one occasion, a plot twist inverted the whole premise of the show--up was down, left was right, black was white, and so on. Intrigued by that notion, I decided, pretty much overnight, to flip the script of the Bat/Monk saga. Instead of running from my fantasies of enslavement, I'd embrace them--with the goal of discovering what that very powerful desire had to teach me. I would return to the cage he had built for me (only to discover it was no longer a cage at all, but I'm getting ahead of myself).

It's a simple fact: every single prediction the Monk has made about my future actions has come to pass, sooner or later. To cite but one example, in one of our last conversations before the reunion he insisted I would one day return and willingly do the very same things he'd once forced me to do. I balked and took off--only to find myself fulfilling the prophecy, almost a full year later. Anyone who knows me that well, it seems to me, is worth a listen.

Skeptics are welcome to chalk this up to expert manipulative skills on M's part. Go right ahead; in fact, I myself thought of him when I saw Aaron Eckhart's lobbyist character in the movie Thank You for Smoking, who could probably talk a priest into Satan worship. But it's a moot point: I began to acknowledge and admit that the Monk only "manipulates" me into doing things I really do want to do. It was growing clearer and clearer to me that the only power he has over me is power I have freely and happily given to him all along--

--only now I was finally ready to admit that fact.

My only friend, The End

Homophobic, or mildly amusing? You decide:



No matter what, the special guest SuperFriend at the end is pretty hunky, is he not?

Crimewave

I"m almost positive it's a rebroadcast, and I may even have written about it here before, but the most recent episode of This American Life, titled "Allure of Crime," is pretty interesting.

In the world of heroes and villains, I'm usually far more turned on by the heroes--the only way I can ever be bothered to watch a cop show is for the cops, and I've always longed for more attention to Batman/less to his foes in the recent movies--but it's true that the bad guys' stories are more interesting than the good guys. Me, I had no idea that that sweet Julia Sweeney, she of Saturday Night Live and God Said, "Ha!" fame, had stolen over 10 thousand bucks in her misguided youth, or that even sweeter widows were leading such active social lives as senior-citizen shoplifters. What's most disarming about the interview subjects on the show is how nonchalant they are about their criminal activities. No angst, just matter-of-fact observations about how good it feels to do very bad things. (But, uh, isn't that the definition of a sociopath?)

The Knight After 4: The Return of the Repressed

So, I was reading a fortune cookie fortune the other day. It said:
PROGRESS ALWAYS INVOLVES RISK.

And that's a pretty good summary of where things stand right now in my ongoing batsaga. When last I updated this account, I was in the clutches of a certain Mad Hatter, who had figured out I was Bruce Wayne and was holding me hostage in Wayne Manor for an extended interrogation, the second phase of which would surely entail some further disclosures on my part.

They say desperate times call for desperate measures, and, encouraged in part by that fortune and a similar message from the cosmos (as I may have explained, in solo play I have long made use of chance, coincidence, and other instinctual devices), I took the biggest of all possible risks. Reasoning that the enemy of my enemy is my friend (am I quick with the proverb/clichés today, or what?), I contacted an old ... friend for assistance.

Regular readers of these accounts already know who I mean, and I imagine they're already smacking their foreheads in anger and/or frustration (or saying "told ya so"). It's true: more than four months after our last conversation, and almost a year to the day after my escape from his clutches, I got in touch with the Monk.

My motivation was as simple as it was outrageous: I did not want to become the Hatter's victim. And I knew that the man behind this villain harbors another side: a hero who longs to be defeated. My plan was to surprise the Hatter by introducing the Monk into the Hatter storyline and letting the chips fall where they may.

I figured I had gotten every last drop of the Monk's influence over me out of my system. That was a safe assumption, given that I had successfully transferred my craving for defeat from the Monk to the Ranger, and then from the Ranger to the Hatter. The third time around, it felt clear to me that my masochistic side does not really care who is after me, as long as it's someone good at being a bad guy. And those three men are all very, very good at being very, very bad.

By the time I contacted the Monk for help against the Hatter, I felt nothing for him as a character other than a vague disdain. I hadn't obsessed about him in months, that energy having been directed quite successfully toward the other two. Our initial reunion was cordial, considering that we have been mortal enemies since Day One (not counting the period immediately after he broke me, during which the Stockholm Syndrome kicked in and I spent my days gladly doing his bidding before I returned to my senses and began plotting my escape). We caught up on old times, and I filled him in on my plan. By chance (?), he already knew the Hatter--or rather his hero side, whom I'll call "HW"--and was delighted by the golden opportunity with which I was presenting him.

I was fully aware that if my plan worked, I had just invited my greatest nemesis back into my life and would have to face the consequences. And I felt I was ready to face that challenge.

But--believe it or not--I never saw what was coming next.

Of Super-readers ... and mortals like me

Not much of an entry here; I've just been cleaning up old randomly bookmarked items that I long ago intended to write about here, like this survey by Douglas Wolk in an April 2005 Boston Phoenix of recent trends in superhero comics.

One of the things Wolk touches on is the outing of Matt Murdock as Daredevil, a development I've been hearing about but have not bothered to read. As you may have noticed, I am really not too up on my comics reading: Infinite Crisis? What Infinite Crisis? I hear Hal Jordan is back (well, I hear he went bad, then became something else, then came back), and I'd love to find a trade paperback that encapsulates the saga someday, but between you and me, I'm mainly excited about that because Hal Jordan is one of my lifelong crushes. And this Daredevil unmasking has me intrigued because I am a sucker for ... well, unmasked heroes whose careers have been irreversibly affected by that. (Though we have surely all learned by now that nothing is truly irreversible in comics. Superman dies! Superman's back! Jason Todd is dead! Jason Todd lives! No, he's really dead! No, he's really back!) In short, I am not what Wolk calls a "super-reader." No, I'm a guy who still, in his mid40s, will from time to time buy a superhero comic and beat his meat to the images contained therein, regardless of how well or badly written the story.

In any case, I have long enjoyed Wolk's writing, not all of which is about comics by a long shot. Here's his blog.

And here's a picture of the hottest blind guy in red tights the world has ever known:



There, I've done my duty for the night.

Hiding My Candy

Saw the movie Hard Candy tonight. (That link is to the system-slowing official site; IMDB page is here.) Ended up going alone, because I knew none of my friends were interested in this story of a 14-year-old girl and the 30something man she meets online. This only heightened the intense creeeeeeepiness of the experience. It is by no means a feel-good film, and I felt increasingly numb through most of it, from the opening scene through the last of the half-dozen-or-so twists and turns. (Spoiler alert: I will try not to reveal anything you don't find out in the first 30 minutes of the movie or won't discover from any review, but if you want to see it, you might not want to read this entry till afterward. And by no means should you take a peek at the following officially released still, which has been fairly widely disseminated by now:)



A friend asked me why I wanted to see this thing, and I told her I'd heard good stuff about the film and the female lead, Ellen Page and that I am always interested in films about what I euphemistically referrred to as "shifting power dynamics." All true. But because I'm writing anonymously here, I can say what you probably already know, which is that I was titillated by the prospect of seeing that cute Patrick Wilson from the HBO version of Angels in America tied up and tortured, no matter who was doing the tying and torturing. The pedophilia theme held no interest for me, intellectually or erotically--although I did recently finish listening to the audiobook version of Lolita, which is something I've been meaning to write about here for ages and still might, but I digress.

The same fascination with film depictions of fairly extreme states has previously led me to watch the recent horror movie Hostel and the reeeaaaaaally bad Nicholas Cage/Joel Schumacher thriller 8mm (both accompanied by horror-fan friends); I'd like to see the two Saw movies someday, too, even though I have a feeling I won't like them very much. Many years ago I tried to watch the Spanish film In a Glass Cage (another tale of someone seeking revenge on a pedophile, this one a Nazi pedophile), but I walked out in revulsion after the first 45 minutes or so.

Part of me feels like "What's this world coming to / all these escalating images of torture and depravity / it's all basically a form of mainstreamed fetish porn [etc]," and another part of me confesses that I'm a member of the very audience i'm decrying. I don't particularly like rollercoasters, but I do (sometimes) enjoy the thrill of a good suspenseful movie that isn't afraid to go into very dark territory. I'm just a little concerned that our culture is so willing to keep amping up its definition of "very dark territory"--shades of the fall of the Roman Empire, you know.

As for Hard Candy, I must admit that Roger Ebert has a point; a lot of the concerns he raises in his (essentially positive) review passed through my mind as well.

But I want to suggest an alternate perspective that occured to me about an hour into the film, which is that it can be viewed as a superhero movie, about a Batman (or more accurately Punisher)-style vigilante dishing out homegrown justice against criminals whose evils would probably go underpunished by the justice system. It's all there: dual identities, copious research and training, arsenal of specialized weapons, you name it. The fact that the "hero" is such an unlikely individual, and the "villain" elicits such sympathy, only demonstates why it's so much more interesting than any actual superhero flick I can think of.

Foaming at the mouth

For a while now I've been wanting to include some BDSM/fetish-related blogs in the blogroll to the right so that I would remind myself to check them regularly and be able to recommend them to other readers. I'm always on the lookout for some gay male blogs that explore dominance and submission, roleplay, etc., along the lines of what I'm trying to do in my series of "Knightfall" and "The Knight After" entries here, but I really haven't found too many that fit the bill (come back to the five and dime, LeatherEdge!). Most of the best known ones tend to go on and on about the webmaster's pets and/or his S.O.'s most recent trip to some faraway city and/or theme park, at least when I peek in on them, which isn't very often.

Also, I am a firm believer in the premise that kinky impulses transcend gender boundaries; I am open to learning what other people think about their fantasies, no matter what body parts those fantasies involve--provided the writing is articulate and interesting and ideally fun. (Moreover, I am mindful that some of my closest online buddies are heterosexual and bisexual men, and I'd love to be able to pass along stuff they might be into.)

So tonight I did a little searching around for likely candidates. Here's the trail I followed, aspects of which may or may not be of use to you in your own explorations:

1. This far-too-brief link list at Beauty in Darkness brought me to ...

2. Inside the Mind of Gloria Brame, the blog of the woman behind the classic book and internet resource site devoted to kink, both called Different Loving. From IMGB's blogroll I found many possibilites for further investigation, among them...

3. Figleaf's Real Adult Sex, which on cursurory examination looks pretty interesting, especially this entry on "heteronormativity," this one on the word "kink", and this speculation on the "Target-ing (and WalMart-ing?)" of fetish culture. I'm pretty sure it was also here that I found out about ...

4. Sugasm, a "devilish digest" of kink-related blog entries of various sorts,updated on a weekly basis. Lots of leads here, and I've only followed up on a few so far. I found several that were the journals of self-identified Masters or slaves--again with the pets and amusement parks! One other thing I've noticed from some of the entries I checked out is that people writing about sexual fantasies tend to write lonnnnnnnng reams of prose. (Okay, I will be the first admit that I suffer from this tendency myself from time to time.) Two discoveries stand out:

5. This story about "Milking a Man" from a blog called Dirty Couple in Virginia. Hetero story (and so long I just started skimming after a while), but who doesn't love a good man-milking machine, regardless of who's using it? (No offense, my lesbian amigas.) Then there's ...

6. Master Enigma's Thoughts, a blog by a ... well, a Master. Who is an Enigma. Yes, the entries are epic length, and they seem to lapse into that variety of pompous/portentous BDSMspeak that rubs the English major in me the wrong way, but some of the writing here gets me seriously excited. It's boy/girl, but you can easily reassign the genders any way you want in your own imagination. (If you lack that ability, I have nothing more to say to you.)

7. Oh, yeah: in tracking down the URL for LeatherEdge to use in the link above, I discovered that when you visit what used to be his home page you can click on a link and instantly download his promised treatise The Book of Edge: Being one leatherman's journey, an encyclopedic compilation of resources, essays, fantasies, and much more, beautifully laid out in a 96-page PDF. Hallelujah!

I hope you find at least one site in all of the above that speaks to you, either directly or indirectly. Needless to say, if you know of any good sites that meet those criteria I mentioned above and you are not a spambot, please post them in the comments section. Sex (like spirituality) is the most private of concerns, but that doesn't mean we can't share our thoughts about what it all means.

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!

Bats with accents

The acting is frequently cringe-worthy, the fight choreography is awkward, the dialogue has a few too many references to old comic books, and the southern accents are alternately amusing and distracting, but the new fan-film Batman: Formulas has a lot going for it, namely:
1. a very sexy batsuit,
2. a man who fills it very well, and
3. ample footage of said man chained to a cross, thusly:



Hubba, hubba!

***

As if moving Gotham City to the deep south wasn't enough action for one week, a second (shorter) bat-fan-film has also made its debut recently, too. In Batman: The End of Nightmare (sic), our hero is reinvented yet again ... in Español! This one does not currently bear subtitles, though that's not really a problem for those of us whose Spanish is nonexistent or ended in high school about 30 years ago--except when you get to the ending (which I gather is not quite as bleak as it sure as hell appears).

More amateur acting, but another nice looking Batman (not quite as nice) and a few shots of him in peril--not bondage, but things are not good, in any case (much darker than Formulas).

This time, you don't have to take my word for it; thanks to YouTube, you can watch it right here and now, in two parts:



and



Thoughts, anyone?

Remind me one more time: when did irony die?

Can't believe I never knew about The Comics Curmudgeon until now. This daily recap of the cheesiest of comic strips (we're talking Gil Thorp, people!) is hilarious and addictive. The main focus seems to be on both soap-opera style strips like Mary Worth and purportedly humorous fare like B.C., but there is plenty to be found on those two spandex-clad hunks of the daily paper, The Phantom and Spider-Man, much of it concerning their rather unsuperheroic domestication. (My local paper does not carry The Phantom, so I did not realize he was now ... married with children. Horror of horrors, Mr. Walker!)

I've gotta be checking this out on a regular basis.



(On a related note, I've been thinking about beefing up the links to the right; right now they are mainly the ones I myself check as often as possible, but I have been tempted to add several more that might be of interest to readers. No matter what, you can always find cop and superhero links galore on my "Secret Room" site, even if I don't do the best job of updating them.)

The Knight After 3: Careful What You Wish For

My fantasy universe continues to expand and contract. One of the things I most enjoy about this counter-life, now that I've been involved in online roleplaying for more than two years (on top of the nine or so years of solo play before that), is that I actually do have a sizable Rogue's Gallery of villains, people with whom I have a history. There's a Riddler, a Catman, the Ranger, and so on, some of whom I've been battling since the beginning, and some of whom have evolved into completely different characters. Then there are the colleagues and sidekicks, and the newcomers who drop by for a skirmish or two and then vanish. It all feels very much like the world of the comic books that fuel this fantasy in the first place.

In my last "Knight After" entry, I noted that there had been a late-breaking shake-up in the otherwise slow action. It's true: during my third or fourth extended encounter with the Mad Hatter, he had me cornered. Both Robin and my former Nightwing who now works under a different name and identity (call him "Gray Fox") happened to be online, so I called them in for backup, and all three of us somehow ended up falling prey to the fiend. This was an interesting development; I've been involved in larger-group scenes before, but somehow this one felt different, perhaps because the action was more exciting and the stakes seemed higher. In our brief acquaintance up to that point, the Hatter had established himself as a significant adversary, and he certainly proved that when he took on all three of us--and kicked our collective ass(es). In short order he had Robin in captivity, Gray Fox revealing his secret identity and removing his mask, and me about to do the same before our session ended. In fact, he did succeed later that day in getting me--on my hands and knees, no less!--to reveal myself as Bruce Wayne and remove my cowl. Robin managed to escape and dosed him with a blast of amnestics, the drug (loosely based on a real-life substance) designed to wipe out a person's short-term memory, and that's where that day's adventure ended.

I've always been fond of the amnestic solution to such dilemmas; without them, unmasking is an irreversible step in a storyline. Once a villain knows who you are, all hell can break loose: he can blackmail you, can enslave you, or--perhaps most dangerous of all--he can simply slip away into the darkness, armed with priviliged information, never to return. (For the record, I've never been a fan of too many people knowing who Batman is underneath his disguise; it becomes an open secret, like Liberace's homosexuality during his lifetime. At the same time, unmasking is an extremely powerful dimension of the bat-fantasy for me, and the temptation to indulge in it as often as possible runs quite strong, which opens me up to the open-secret situation. The more times I do it, the less powerful it ultimately becomes.)

In the Hatter's case, this is all a moot point, because--exactly as I feared/hoped he would, he managed to hold on to the JPEG of my unmasked face he'd made me send him, and it helped him recall exactly what had happened that fateful night. This all became quite clear to me during our next encounter, last night, which involved him forcing an invitation into Stately Wayne Manor, where I was subjected to an interrogation on camera, commanded once more to kneel before him and address him as "Master," and placed under house arrest, where I remain until our next meeting in 48 hours.

(I admit I feel a teensy bit silly being a 45-year-old man prattling on about all of this as if it is a matter of life and death, but to some degree it is--to the extent that it's a metaphor I use to make sense of my day-to-day existence. The things that happen in the bat-world I construct in collaboration with like-minded roleplayers mirror events and feelings that I fear/desire in the daylight world. That should go without saying at this point, but I feel I need to spell it out from time to time lest I sound exactly like a D&D fanatic or one of those people who dresses up like Darth Vader 24/7. Okay, so there is no line between them and me when you get right down to it, but let's overlook that point, shall we?)

There are a couple of points I want to make about my latest adventures:
1. The Hatter makes such an extremely good adversary in part because he too possesses the same fantasies of unmasking and enslavement in another portion of his own fantasy life where he is a superhero rather than a villain. In fact, I'd say (and he would surely agree) that he's really more of a bottom than a top, but he's very, very good at playing a top because of it. This is a rare phenomenon, from what I've seen, and I feel lucky to experience it. (It may also play a role in my eventual escape plans.)

2. After my encounters with the Monk, which pretty much affected every aspect of my bat-fantasy, I've pretty much decided, at least for a while, to compartmentalize my adventures, so that I can have parallel storylines wih multiple adversaries. Thus, in this storyline Batman is currently the captive of the Hatter, but in other realms I am/he is still free to roam about and fight other villains. I'm not sure how well that will work for me--it's cleaner and less personally confusing when a single narrative unites all the independent threads, plus I really love it when a single mistake has numerous inescapable consequences--but I feel like giving it a try for the time being. Happens in the comics all the time, after all.

Flash points

1.
I always find it amusing when, at least twice a year, someone who only knows me in my daylight existence tells me that I am clearly a superhero. Today, for instance, a friend at work took one quick glance at the bright yellow shirt and red t-shirt I was wearing...

... and said, "Okay, so you're the Flash. Do you have to announce it to the world?" (or words to that effect).

I have to say, this is the first time I've been mistaken for the Scarlet Speedster, and I'm flattered. Given that I have the worst time management skills on the planet, superspeed would certainly come in handy. And lord knows, Barry Allen is one hot number in that outfit. (Needless to say, I am first and foremost a batfan, but I wouldn't kick the Flash or the Green Lantern or a few other members of the JLA out of my bed, believe you me. I'm an equal opportunity enjoyer.)

Guess he could also have gone with Daredevil, but maybe he's a DC guy and associates Matt Murdock with Ben Affleck's leather jumpsuit rather than the comic book character's incredibly sexy tights.

2.
On a completely unrelated note, tonight I stumbled upon Fred Hembeck's (somewhat old, I think) series of pages paying homage to some classic superhero comics covers of bygone days, mostly DC characters but a few Marvels thrown in for good measure, featuring hand-drawn parodies and witty, detailed analyses of what's going on in each.

Since I just brought up the Flash a (nano)second ago, I'll direct you to Hembeck's "Classic Cover Redo" of this beauty--



--as a prime illustration of the artist's fondness for cover art of the early 60s that had as little as possible to do with the story inside. (I mean, who doesn't love a good bait-and-switch?) I know several of you regular readers share my own fondness for unmasking scenes, so I thought you might particuarly enjoy this one, but there are plenty more where this baby came from.

You're fired... out of a cannon, maybe?

How did I manage to miss hearing about Stan Lee's new, ahem, "reality" show called "Who Wants to Be a Superhero" until now?

The Knight After 2: Brotherhood of the Bat

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Up, up, and away

Sure, the whole thing reeks of corporate synergy, but the April 14 issue of Entertainment Weekly does whet my appetite regarding the upcoming Superman movie (a product of the parent company, natch), starting with that very nice cover shot featuring a verrrry nice-looking suit. The man wearing it looks a little too airbrushed/photoshopped for my taste, but as a true fetishist I've got my priorities, and that outfit is looking migh-tee fine in the limited glimpses I've seen of it thus far.

The centerpiece of the issue is the annual "Great American Pop Culture Quiz," which this time has a very heavy super-vibe about it. Among other things, you are required to match the color of kryptonite with its dangerous properties and the lyrics of various superman-themed songs with the people who performed them. There's also an interview with Super-star Brandon Routh and director Bryan Singer, and the last page of the magazine features a bonus quiz challenging you to match the closeups of various emblematic superhero costumes with the men and women who wear them and "have an odd weakness for skintight spandex outfits." Not so odd if you ask me, but then no one's asking. (Not sure how long that link will remain current, mind you, so don't blame me if you click it a week from now and find something completely different taking the place of Underdog's chest emblem.)

Meanwhile, the EW website features this capsule summary and review of all of DC's current "One Year Later" titles. I haven't read any of these yet (skimmed the Batman one in a store, saw it contained no bondage, deathtraps, or unmaskings, then put it back), and in fact I have thus far completely ignored the whole "Identity Crisis" storyline or whatever it's called, but I agree with Ken Tucker that this is one cool cover:

Mo' Better Beefcake

Hard to believe that in all these years of blogging about batfaggery I've never thought to include the single panel that, more than any other, definitively turned me into a young homosexual. You know it, you love it, and now you can revisit it here anytime you like:



Okay, it's actually the cover of that issue that got me so turned on, but the above variation from the actual issue is just as nice. After the damage was done, I came to long for images like this one:



(Note: both taken from our hero's early adventures with R'as al-Ghul. The tunic also comes off in a memorable episode of the animated series retelling the same saga. What is it about this ultimate adversary that brings out the shirtlessness in Batman?)

Both images were brought back to my attention (not that they've ever entirely left my imagination in the nearly 35 years since I first saw the first of 'em) thanks to "The Male Body in Comic Book Art," a swell collection of costumed hotties past and present, part of the always-reliable Gay Comics List site. (For the record, I was directed to the image gallery by way of this entry at Man's Adventure, the blog which has quickly become one of my favorites, even if new posts appear almost as slowly as the ones right here.)

Elsewhere in beefcake news, I recently checked out Dorian of PostModern Barney's archive of past "Men of the Moment" and discovered that not only do I enjoy his writing and appreciate his ceaseless labor as a blogger, I also share a lot of his taste in men. (This means you, ScissorSisters' BabyDaddy, Patrick "Tick, We Miss You" Warburton, Bradley "Naked in a Bathtub" Cooper, and Thomas "Lt. Dangle" Lennon.)

Speaking of Dorian and PMB, I love his recent post "My Trip to the Comic Shop". And I think I need to start shopping where he shops, instead of joints where everybody looks like a certain character from The Simpsons.

I leave you with one final image from that glorious issue of long ago, because that's just the kind of guy I am--specifically "a gay guy very smitten by Batman and various fantasies associated with bondage," according to the (very welcome) link to this blog from the GCL's amazing page of links. Take it away, Bruce and Talia:



Late-breaking update: I've been waiting since February for GlovdCop SF to update his photo gallery, and just when I'd given up and assumed he'd abandoned his site for good, I figured out where he was hiding the March gallery. Turns out good things come to those who wait, because it's devoted to 100 pictures of superheroes, in the flesh, in the comics, and in that painted-on-flesh phototrickery that holds no appeal to me but must work for somebody out there.Bonus selection of links, too. All is right with the universe, once again.

Guess who

I was thinking the other day how ironic it is that the heart of the blogging phenomenon is all about self-disclosure, while this one is just as much about concealment. I am willing to reveal all sorts of innermost fantasies and desires here, yet I closely protect some of the most basic aspects of who I am, like my name, where I live, or where I work.All the things you would know about me if you "knew" me in the daylight world, in other words. In my bat-fantasies, the mere act of showing my naked face to someone is a giant, giant thing (sometimes an act of trust, sometimes a marker of defeat) with potentially major consequences.

A short while later, I happened to hear an episode of the NPR show To the Best of Our Knowledge devoted to the subject of "Identity Crisis." (Sadly, the DC series of that name never came up.) I'm pretty sure it was a rerun, and I could swear I wrote about this very episode here over a year ago, but what the hell, I'll bring it up again and save us all a trip to the bat-archives.

Nice interview with the media/performance artist Lynn Hershman Leeson about (among other things) creating a fictional alter ego for herself and then living in and out of that persona for years, eventually hiring actors to play the part instead. (She even sent the character to a shrink at one point.) And an interesting segment on Edward Castronova's research into online roleplaying games, too--though it was less about the obvious issues of pretending to be someone else and more about the implications when real-world economic exchange enter the picture.

I spend a significant amount of my waking hours surrounded by pretend cops, make-believe superheroes, and imaginary criminals--and I don't really see anything wrong with that. For one thing, TV, movies, and video games (or whatever they're called these days) offer the same promise of fantasy, only in a far more passive way. The same could be said for fiction and drama for centuries; I think all of these things, like our dreams, offer us access to an alternate universe (or two, or a thousand alternatives), where we can conceivably learn things of use in consensus reality. I was about to use the term "escapism" in there a sentence or two ago, but then I remembered that I don't really use my batlife to escape so much as to confront things that I'm either too scared to deal with in my everyday life or would never otherwise encounter.

As the student revolutionaries of the sixties and the surrealists before them used to say, "All power to the imagination!"

If we cannot conceive of better, more interesting worlds, then we are doomed to spend our days toiling away in the "real" one, right?

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!

What if Batman were one of us? Just a slob like one of us?

This is how we do it around here: I don't post a damn thing for weeks, months, and then it's bam bam bam, one entry after another...

Just got an e-mail alert from the ever-reliable Batman Fan Filmssite about the latest completed project featured there. (Seems like every day there's a new teaser, trailer, or script, but those usually just don't cut it. I want the real deal in all its full-length, batsuited glory, not some promise of things to come!) It's a movie called The Bat Man--and the space between the words turns out to be very important indeed. It's not a flawless work by any means, and not the best fan film I've ever seen, but it's well worth a viewing.

The premise tosses out one of the most fundamental aspects of the whole Bat myth: that Bruce Wayne is an enormously wealthy man with no day job who can afford to take years off to train his body and mind, and to purchase all those gadgets that make up for his essential mortality. In this version, things are very, very different, and the result may well be the most "realistic" (if that's the right word) spin on the story I've come across (aside from my own sordid fantasies, that is). It's actually scary, in the sense that you realize just how dangerous this guy's obsession really is, and how vulnerable it leaves him. (He's more like Peter Parker than the Bruce Wayne we know and love--only he's got no spidey powers to protect him from the gun-wielding bad guys.)

I didn't find the movie in any way erotic, mind you (and I admit that's normally a big part of the appeal for me, as you've prooooooobably noticed by now), but it's certainly thought-provoking--sort of in the way that The Last Temptation of Christ tweaks its core material just enough to make you look at the story of Christ through new eyes. I had a socialist friend once who turned his nose up at the Bat-saga because it revolves around a rich capitalist, but I've always seen the hero as more politically complicated than that. He can be embraced by the left as well as the right--and written off by both camps, too.

Normally I would post a link to the film and you'd click on it and be directed to some other site to watch it, but through the magic of the internet, or at least the magic of vmix.com, you can watch it right here. Enjoy--and please post your comments on the movie below, if you're so inclined. (If you want to reach writer/director/star Oliver Ferrasci with your feedback, head to the main BFF site.)



Videos by vMix Member:
oliverferrasci


Moral of the story: who needs years of study in the Mysterious East when you've got Google?

Men without shirts

When it rains, it pours, batfans. Follow the ongoing trail o' links in its latest twists and turns:

First, a return visit to Man's Adventure yielded only one new illustration, but one of the homo-licious links to the right of the main text brought me to ...

Brian's Drive-In Theater, a spiffy site packed with tributes to B-movie stars and character actors, beefcake and cheesecake shots, film noir stars, beach movie cast members, and so much more. We're talking lavishly illustrated filmographies and links to DVDs, batfans. Pure gold! I dove straight into the section devoted to "Low-Budget Superheroes", where I found shots of Tom Tyler (the Phantom in the 1943 serial) and Reb Brown (Captain America in two low-budget 1979 movies), among others. Re Reb, if you love the lycra and the Cap as much as I do, you owe it to yourself to rent (as cheaply as possible) at least the first of his CA films. (I thiink the first one is the, ahem, "better" of the two, and features a nice bondage shot or two, but then it's been over 10 years since I saw either one). Come on: it may not exactly be standard issue, but how can you resist this... package...



... especially when you know this is what lies beneath that tight-fitting uniform:



And speaking of beefcake (and the bare flesh of superheroes), the same section of Brian's Drive-In also features a tribute to Van Williams, the very Green Hornet whose praises I was singing just two entries back. Here I found not only a dense collection of GH/Lone Ranger stuff but the first shirtless shots of Van I've ever seen; bear with me if I go overboard on posting these, but I'm beside myself with joy. Let us begin with a technicolor treasure in which not only the backdrop but Mr. Williams' entire body appears to be 100% airbrushed for your viewing pleasure:



Next, here he is doing a bit of yardwork. That's right: no matter how pumped you may be, you still have to break out the lawncare implements every now and then. May I fetch you a glass of iced tea, Mister Future Green Hornet, sir?



Finally, say hello to Captain Van (and his treasure of a chest):



I'll stop there, but trust me: Mr. Hornet seems to have been called upon to remove his shirt at least as often as Jim "Wild, Wild" West (though not in his crimefighting days, alas).

There are several other low-budget superheroes on the site, but we must move on to the obvious piece de resistance. In case you're wondering, there is a shirtless shot of Adam West, but to be honest, I've always been a little disappointed by that particular hairless wonder ever since I first saw it exposed in the final episode of the Batman series. No, the real treat on West's page is a link to video footage of a 1977 showdown between the (un)caped crusader and Jerry Lawler (in one of the least erotic Superman-based outfits of all time). Adam is wearing a bizarre but sexy all-black variation on the batsuit that seems to foreshadow the sort of ninja get-ups favored by Christian Bale in early sections of Batman Begins:



Okay, time to wrap this up before I sacrifice an entire evening of my life to photos of manly men baring their hairy, muscular chests.

All right, so it wouldn't be the first time. But still...

Bruce Wayne, Lapsed Episcopalian?

While doing a little background research for a certain supporting character whose easy-to-guess alter ego was just revealed in my Beginnings story, I came across this site devoted to "The Religious Affiliation of Comic Book Characters." (That link takes you to a page of text; if you want to make a more dramatic entrance, check out this far more visually interesting one, which groups the gang by faith, making for some wacky juxtapositions, like Black Lighting, Rogue, and someone named Playback as part of the "Legion of Baptist Superheroes.")

There is a voluminous amount of information and speculation here, both about the fictional characters and the real-life religions they may or may not be affiliated with. Needless to say, I had to check out the entry on Batman right away. Evidently the big controversy is: lapsed Episcopalian, or, in the webmaster's words, "an exquisitely bad Catholic"? Along the way, there is talk of the character's creator's Judaism and the years that young Bruce Wayne spent studying Eastern religion. Much is made of panels like these:




which I, of course, include here not for their theological content but for their depictions of the sexiest man on Earth in his Tibetan skivvies.

I've long contended that there is a strong spiritual dimension to my own bat-centric fantasy life, so it's interesting to see someone devote so much time to actually mapping out the beliefs of these characters. It's a variation on those "Superhero Science" books and TV shows, and it reminds me that I've seen a couple of books on the philosophical and religious lessons of comic book heroes that I mean to pick up some day. I'd provide links to them on Amazon, but the last time I set out to do that I got distracted by a bunch of other fascinating-looking volumes and never quite found the ones I had in mind.

And that's a lesson I've already learned.

Follow that bat-link...

It's been a great evening for bat action on the web! First, my British batfriend told me about this Yahoo group devoted to the Adam West batsuit. Photos, links, trivia, audio clips, the works.

From the links page there, I came across this message board devoted to the 1966 show. Too much stuff to mention here, but I must call your attention to two items of interest:

1. Green Hornet fans will want to check out the section of the Bat-board devoted to GH. From there I learned--be still, my beating heart!--that Starz's ACTION channel is currently broadcasting the TV show. Hip, hip, hooray! The last time I am aware of that this was on the air, more than 10 years ago, I didn't have cable, and couldn't lure my friends into taping every single episode for me. But the TiVO era changes everything. Word is, the episodes are uncut and (I think) shown in original sequence. (The board also led me to this nifty site devoted to the costumes and weaponry from the GH series.)

2. The cool comics blog DIAL B FOR BLOG did a six-part retrospective on the "Secret Origins" of the legendary series a couple of months ago to mark the--gulp!--40th anniversary of its premiere on January 12, 1966. It begins here, and is a profusely illustrated, trivia-packed account that actually taught me plenty of stuff I didn't already know. (Were you aware, for instance, that the Batmobile actually appeared in this movie before it was transformed into the vehicle we all know and love?)

Somewhere in there, I came across...

...this shot of Lyle Waggoner in an early version of the batsuit, from his screen test. (Heretical though this may sound, I wouldn't have minded him in the part. I always enjoyed him on Wonder Woman, which also called for lots of bondage fun. Plus, come on, he's just fucking handsome in that shot.)

Finally, from the final installment of the DIAL B six-parter, I discovered this site where you can buy all 120 episodes of the series on DVD for $36. They are bootlegs, of course (from the TV Land airing of the series, which I think may have been edited a bit as I recall), and the packaging is ultra-minimal, but the episodes are presented in sequence, and I can finally get rid of the endless half-labelled VHS copies I made of random episodes. Besides, at that price, if an official version EVER comes out, I won't mind shelling out a second time if there are any worthwhile extras. So, needless to say, I bought 'em immediately.

And set my TiVO for Tuesday morning's 6 a.m. airing of The Green Hornet. Life is good, batfriends, life is good. (Thanks again, BritBat--I owe ya one.)

Hooray for superheroes!

Talk about answered prayers: Just as I was trying to think of something quick and simple to write about here as a subtle way of pointing out that I still exist, along comes Johnny Bacardi directing my attention to the artist Bone's blog called "Man's Adventure". All drawings of manly men, all the time. Lots of superheroes lately. And I was delighted to learn that Bone was responsible for this funny yet sexy satire about Batman's penchant for getting into bondage-y situations. (It's all the bad guys' fault.) I hope Mr. Bone will forgive me for infringing copyright and reprinting a panel:



"Fruit-Bat" appeared in a copy of Love in Tights, an indie comic whose other contents also pulled off the difficult feat of juggling amusing satire with hot imagery. I gather it no longer exists, and I treasure the lone copy I managed to find a few years ago.

You can be sure I'll be revisiting the Bone Yard often, especially if he continues those discussions about superhero chest hair and drawing JLA members like Tom of Finland models. To the batpole, indeed.

More sickboy TV talk

Still under the weather, still finding my share of kinky stuff to watch:

•Finally caught Blade: Trinity after hearing that Ryan Reynolds spends a significant amount of the movie shirtless in chains. It's true! It's true! Behold:



Oh, hell: here's a whole page of stills from the film. I actually fast-forwarded through a lot of it, since I'm not a big fan of ultraviolent vampire flicks and wisecracking heroes, even if they are embodied by the recently beefed-up Mr. R.

•Also fast-forwarded through Hostage. I think I only really watched about 15 minutes of the movie at its intended speed before jumping ahead to see Bruce Willis (in uniform) handcuffed, and later stripped naked. You get two Bruces in this thing: first, with full bushy crazy-person beard in the preface, then with shaved head in the body of the movie. Neither one quite does it for me, but they're still nice looks. I admit I have this major Bruce Willis problem, ever since Moonlighting: He's got a whole lot of physical features I find really appealing, but he's also incredibly obnoxious. (A common problem with men, come to think of it.) The whole macho Republican fratboy vibe is a major turn-off. And yet, tie him up and I tune in. (Trying to remember what early-90s movie has him handcuffed and bound to a chair at the climax... Surely more than one. And Moonlighting had no shortage of bondage scenes, as I recall.)



•Looks like I'm not the only horny gay guy looking for still photos of Matt Lauer in a luge suit. (Damn, first he's Batman, now he's squeezed into skintight lycra--I have got to start watching the Today Show!) There seems to be video footage here, but once again I doubt I can see it on my Mac.

All quite enjoyable to watch, but I'd really rather feel good again than lie around filling my head with such sights.

Make it work, slave

Been home sick all week, which has meant lots of sleeping, not much bat-activity, and a HUGE amount of television, including two mini-marathons of season two of Project Runway. Okay, I know what you're saying: "All well and good, Batfan60, but what does this have to do with the stated mission of your blog?" It's true, Runway is simply not about cops or costumed crimefighters--well, unless you count the passing mention of superhero-themed lingerie in one episode, but the proposed relaunch of Underoos for adult women (emblazoned with words like "BAM!" and "POW!" on the crotch) did not make it too far.

No, the thing about the show that I want to mention here is the strong undercurrent of SM in pretty much every episode. In the fantasy dynamic of the series--a multicultural dream world that seems to consist entirely of heterosexual women and gay men--everything revolves around dominance and submission. Sure, the contestants are competing against each other, which involves the usual amount of reality-tv gameplaying, but more interesting is the way they have to answer each week to dominatrix Heidi Klum, prissy taskmaster Tim Gunn, and a revolving panel of hard-to-please celebrity judges. At the same time, each contestant has an accompanying "muse"/model, and these lovely ladies are at the very bottom of the pecking order, who suffer the injustice of being traded in slave-auction-style rituals. (We hear them speak when they're kicked off the show, or--very rarely--when they get up the nerve to complain to their Masters about some especially uncomfortable or humiliating outfit.) Much of the show is devoted to people getting chewed out by their superiors, their faces charged with silent shame or suppressed rage. All that's missing is the "sir, yes sir."

I've come to detest 98% of the "reality" shows that have sprung up in the wake of the first season of Survivor ( a show I did think was amazing for its time), but this one really is pretty addictive. Of course, it helps that I find a lot of the male cast members fairly sexy in one way or another (including the aforementioned Tim), but the appeal is greater than mere cuteness. The kinky dimension doesn't hurt, either.

Bonus TV talk: As I type this, Bravo is airing what I assume is one of many endless rebroadcasts of its 3-part Ultimate Super Heroes, Villains, and Vixens mini-series, narrated by Adam West himself. Not very informative (Stan Lee saying what he always says, plenty of clips for recent movies spun off from DC and Marvel characters, and lots of those ubiquitous talking-head interviews with people who do nothing but provide commentaries like this for cable channels), but it's yet another pleasant distraction from sniffling and sneezing. If you've ever wanted to know what Dee Snider has to say about Batman, now's your chance.

Next up: the Winter Olympics, every lycra-lover's dream. 400+ hours of luge and "skeleton" suits. Hallelujah!

Jack U Off

Not since the Oliver North hearings have I been this turned on by a real-life creepy political bad guy. (Okay, so there's my thing for Ari Fleischer, but he wasn't really the bad guy so much as the mouthpiece for the bad guy.) It's true: I have the hots for Jack Abramoff.

I love that trenchcoat, and I'm nuts about this shot of him in a full beard. Or (in case you don't want to bother clicking the links) this one, which is not as cute as the other one, but will do in a pinch:



Just thought I'd share. After all, that's what blogging is for, ain't it? If you can't anonymously confess embarrassing attractions to objectionable individuals, why bother, right?

Cleaning out my closet

Today's one of those days to sort through stuff I've bookmarked to write about here and have forgotten for months, sometimes years:

This AlterNet story on gays and comics dates back to 2003, but if you haven't seen it, it's still worth checking out.

An insanely detailed guide to the '66 TV show and accompanying movie, listing clues, gizmos, Robin's "holy" expressions, trivia, and so much more for every single episode. (And people call me obsessive...)

The Land of Nod is a site devoted entirely to images of characters who have been chloroformed or gassed by members of the opposite sex. (Of course there are Batman shots! Need you ask?) Hasn't been updated since 1999, but if you go for this sort of thing, you won't leave disappointed.

Beauty in Darkness is a blog on the history of BDSM, in conjunction with a work-in-progress book on that subject. I found it, oddly enough, through a Google search long ago for "Batman + Midnighter" (the Batman-esque leatherman hero of The Authority), and that reference does indeed appear, but I think I will be exploring the rest of the site in more detail, so I'm adding it to the links list on the right.

More to come, but surely at least one of the above will float yer boat in the meantime.

Oh, and you'll be happy, if not shocked, to learn that I've actually updated my "Secret Room" website for the first time in over a year. It's mostly just adding the above, and I certainly have much more to add and subtact, but at least it's a start.

Officer, arrest this man!

Fellow cop-lovers may want to join me in viewing Sheriff, a new documentary in the PBS series Independent Lens, which follows a small-town sheriff through his daily routine. While I'm looking forward to the film for its insights into law enforcement and its cinematic qualities, I confess I have another investment in the show. I mean, take a look:



It's hard to properly assess the hotness factor from one b&w photo, but I've got a good feeling about this.

Airs at 11 p.m. tonight in my area, but the series tends to run on different days and nights around the U.S., plus there are rebroadcasts, and you can even purchase a copy if you're that into it. If I remember, I'll post a response here after I've actually seen it.

Back in action

Guess I'd better get busy and post something pronto lest you all think I've thrown in the towel, or the cape, or what have you. Alas, daylight-world responsibilities keep rearing their ugly heads, though I've managed to keep busy on the bat-front as well. To make up for lost time, here's a big string of stuff I've found online of late that may be of interest to some of my fellow perverts--and regular old comics fans, too:

Lycra Sites
www.lycrasuit.nl/lycra-sites.htm
Found this through my new automatically generated list of sites that link to this one, near the bottom of the sidebar to the right. Months can-and probably will--be devoted to exploring the treasures these lycra-lovers have cataloged. Several of the next few entries come from the list, either directly or indirectly.

League of Heroes
p086.ezboard.com/btheleagueofheroes
This bulletin board contains vast amounts of info about making and buying superhero costumes, with photos of completed suits, consumer advice, even workout suggestions so you'll look your best in your new suit. I think this led me to...

FanBoy Theatre
www.fanboytheatre.com
News about upcoming fan films, many of which look promising, including...

Captain America: Freedom's Fight
www.fanboytheatre.com/id49.html
Stills from an upcoming fan film about Captain A, with a nice (non-spandex, but still hot) costume.

The Death of Hero-Man
www.manta-ray-productions.com/heroman.html
Here's a short film I found through FanBoy Theatre, featuing a hero in an INCREDIBLY tight, attractive outfit. (I like the villain, too.) Wordless, which gives it the feel of a silent movie.

Heroes Alliance
www.heroesalliance.com/
Wish I'd had this idea myself--or had the nerve to pull it off. This is a group of folks who own and wear superhero suits who have found a way to turn their ... hobby into actual good-guy work in the daylight world by making public appearances for sick kids, at fundraisers, with local police and fire departments, etc.

That's it for now. Soon as my schedule clears up, I"ll try to get back in blog mode again. In the meantime, the links above should keep you busy for a while.

Knightfall 23: The end of an era

It's over.

I honestly never thought I'd say this, but the saga of Batman and the Monk, or at the very least this particular manifestation of that saga--this specific graphic novel or multi-issue comic series, if you will--has reached its logical conclusion.

I've spent one day short of 5 weeks avoiding any contact with M--a struggle that felt sometimes like it would tear me apart. There were days when I wanted more than anything to turn myself in and return once again to his clutches, but somehow I always held out. This meant that Batman was effectively forced completely underground, able to go visible in Yahoo Messenger only in the very late hours of the night, for more than a month.

Believe me, this is a very, very odd way to maintain a "friendship." And ours has been a most unusual friendship from the get-go. (This might be an appropriate place to note the distinction between the virtual friendship of two real people, chatting in cyberspace, and the epic struggle between the two mortal enemies we played. Those lines get fuzzy sometimes, which is partly what this entry is about.)

Tonight--feeling empowered and not at all ready to succumb--I signed on to Messenger (that is, Batman walked into the familiar alley where he knew his enemy would find him), and within two minutes he pinged me (that is, the Monk made his presence known). It was quite clear that, while the last several weeks had been every bit as charged for me as when we chatted on a daily basis, my silence had not carried the same intensity for him as it had for me. Far from it: he'd lost "the spark" and had moved on to other victims, other interests, and assumed I had done the same.

We spent the next two and a half hours chatting, not as Batman and Monk, but as the two real people beneath those guises. I think we both, fairly quickly, understood the other person's perspective--and we both acknowledged that our story had come to an end, at least for now. (As I noted in my last entry on the subject, the beauty of an adversary in the comics is that he never really goes away, just gets sent to jail for a few years and then resurfaces, sooner or later--or could, at any minute. Keeps the hero on his toes, which is always a good thing.)

And as Ii wrote in the very first chapter of this "Knightfall" saga, I hit a point a few years ago when my solo "batplay" reached a dead end--there was only so far I could go, playing both villain and hero, tying myself up and breaking free. That was fun and/or enlightening for a good ten years, but I needed to explore territority I couldn't cover by myself. I craved an element of surprise, a real sense of an adversary outside myself. The Hub was more than willing to suit up and play good guy or bad guy for a night, which was/is always fun and sometimes remarkable, but for the most part the whole business does not carry the same intensity for him as it does for me. So I turned to the online community to deepen my bat-adventures. Problem was, I've never been in this simply to jerk off. (When I want to get off, it's way less work to grab a video or even a comic book than to have to type a scenario for some horny semi-literate guy I'd probably never want to talk to if I met him in real life.)

Enter the Monk, who seemed to grasp exactly the kind of longterm 24/7 fantasy I was into and who was more than willing to create it alongside me, enjoying it as fully as I did. As I've documented here in great detail, that ultimately involved my being unmasked, broken, humiliated, and transformed into a lowly slave he dubbed "Ratman"--until I eventually came to my senses (or, to hear him tell it, fulfilled the destiny he had always had in mind for me)--and broke free of his clutches, reclaiming my old costume and mission once more. All of this unfolded on a more-or-less nightly basis over the course of a year and a half, and it was one of the most powerful experiences of my adult life. That is to say, the fantasy taught me as much about myself as any real-world experience.

Alas, "powerful" does not always mean "pleasant," and there were times when being beaten and broken just made me feel ... beaten and broken, or, at the very least, like I was conducting some kind of torrid affari behind my Hub's back, even though that was clearly not the case. I wrestled with my attraction/repulsion to the Monk, and weighed my major options:

*I could return to him and surrender forever, which did not feel like a wise thing to do on any level (given how crappy my earlier subservience had me feel), or
*I could leave the online world altogether, never to return, which also did not seem like something I really wanted to do. (For one thing, I've made some really nice friendships in that world, and I didn't want to leave all of them behind.)

Between those two extremes lay a middle ground: I could go cold turkey and wait out my "addiction" to his charms until he no longer held such force over me. Thus the 5 week hiatus. Alas, the real person behind the Monk persona was not privvy to any of this, and simply lost interest in waiting for me to resurface. In short, we'd both reached another dead end: I couldn't defeat him or reclaim the secrets he'd stolen from me (my unmasked face and identity), but neither did I want to continue living with the less than pleasant feelings this whole saga conjured up for the real-life me, and the Batman in me was similarly left in limbo, unable to fight other villains and unwilling to submit to the one who had defeated him. In the course of our discussion, we mutually agreed that our adventure, or at least this version of it, was over. I called it a victory,he claimed it as a draw. And we both expressed our high regard for each other, as adversaries and friends alike. As he put it, "Monk found Batman to be the ultimate prize...and ___ found ___ to be the ultimate roleplay chat bud." (The ____s being real names, of course.) I couldn't say it better myself, and the phrasing makes the stalemate clear: it's hard to keep the "ultimate" going continuously for an unbounded amount of time. Again, a dead end--which is in no way a complaint or shortcoming.

He asked if Batman would seek out other villains, and I reminded him that that's what Batman always does. I just can't say whether those will come from the online world (not too likely, since I really do find the vast majority of opponents from that realm are not into the same thing I am), from my own imagination once more, or from some as yet undiscovered realm. I only know that I treasure the saga that unfolded and the friendship of the man who helped unfold it, and I'm happy to move on. After our talk tonight, I feel pretty certain that the friendship is still intact, even if the circumstances that first brought us together have now changed. Until this evening, I had not figured out a way that could happen--so, for me, the "battle" is over, and both of us have won.

It's thrilling to me on some deep level to fantasize that the Monk could resurface at any time--online, on the phone, even in person. Like any great archenemy, he's always out there, plotting his next move. And it's also exciting to realize that, like any hero, my own work goes on--on other fronts, in other battles, against other adversaries.

It's funny: in the daylight world, I have all kinds of problems with endings. (I could devote an entire blog to that last sentence, but then you'd want to charge me for your services, and I already pay a shrink.) This one, while hard won, feels exactly right. I have a feeling I'll have more to say about the Monk in the future, and our paths may even cross again, but at the moment it feels great to close the book on this particular case. I can even call it a happy ending--something Batman seldom allows himself to do.

In case you were wondering...

The fact that I've taken another couple of online personality profiles can only mean that I have work to do in the daylight world that I'm avoiding. But here goes:

Imaginative, erotic, passionate You prefer to have one partner and to try everything with them. You have an enormous sexual appetite, and you often create sexy scenarios to play out with your significant other.

Take this quiz at QuizUniverse.com

Truth be told, the questions in this quiz were annoyingly simplistic, as they so often tend to be--WAY too binary, no room for any gray areas, multiple answers, etc. Even so, I'd say the capsule summary of me was fairly accurate. (Unfortunately, it doesn't appear properly onscreen above for some reason.)

From there we turn to...

The Assertive Sub You scored 57

You are assertive, yet still maintain some level of submission. You stand your ground firmly most of the time, and are fairly level. You may not identify with being submissive or dominant, and it's possible that you're a switch (someone who alternates between the two depending on circumstances and/or mood).

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 28% on domsub

Link: The Are you Dominant or submissive Test written by nahemah on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

("Assertive sub," eh? Sounds like somebody putting a positive spin on the dreaded "pushy bottom" category.) Once again, infuriating questions, although this time there were at least more options than two for most of them. The problem was, lots of them were based on assumptions that were completely off base.

Finally, lest there be any doubt whatsoever...

You scored as Batman, the Dark Knight. As the Dark Knight of Gotham, Batman is a vigilante who deals out his own brand of justice to the criminals and corrupt of the city. He follows his own code and is often misunderstood. He has few friends or allies, but finds comfort in his cause. Batman, the Dark Knight 100% James Bond, Agent 007 71% Neo, the "One" 71% Lara Croft 58% Indiana Jones 50% Captain Jack Sparrow 50% The Amazing Spider-Man 50% William Wallace 46% The Terminator 46% Maximus 38% El Zorro 29% Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

(Re my runner up identities, I'm flattered by 007, mildly appalled by Neo and Lara, and surprised to find my Zorro Gene was practically nonexistent. In any case, I'm delighted to have this particular bat-pic on my blog now, since I've always liked it.) For the record, I found all of these elegant time-wasters via this blog by a like-minded stranger (friend of a friend) I should probably contact sometime.

Odds 'n' ends

1. This interview at COMICON.com with Paul Pope about his BATMAN YEAR 100 project makes the book look mighty interesting. Batman looks pretty hot, and I am intrigued by Pope's comments, some of which sound just as fetishistic as stuff I would probably say:

To me, the classic Batman is the most visually interesting and the most believable - the little gloves, the gray jersey, the mask with the severe 'V' shaped design cut across his cheekbones - the strange, scary slits for eyes - that kind of thing from his original appearances... He has real boots on. There's no generic foot shape on my guy. a Ken doll foot, you know. Generic superhero foot. ... I don't know how others draw Batman's boots, but mine look like actual boots.

My other pet peeve has always been his utility belt. It seems like it's often portrayed as kind of this Deus Ex Machina thing with everything in it. I want to wipe that campy Batman shit off the board. There's no Bat Shark Repellant in here. He just has a few essentials in this utility belt. Since it's the future there are some tricky weapons like this sonic dog whistle thing, a machine that confuses people, rope, a torch cutter, lights, and a few other simple devices.



2. I've been TRYING to remember which comics blog did a tribute to Dorian's semi-regular "Subtext? What Subtext?" feature (which I dearly love) sometime last month, but I can't find it. In the process of trying to track it down from Dorian's own site, I came across this brilliant and hilarious entry about "How To Get Your Boyfriend To Read Comics." It's great, although I don't think I'm ever gonna try it with the Hub. I've already got him dressing up like comics characters and doing various kinky things with me in costume, which is way more fun, so why put him through actually reading real live, ahem, "monthly comics periodicals"?

3. To make up for not finding the item I was looking for in #2, here are two of the pics in that entry I was gonna link to. I won't even bother to come up with smirking text to accompany them, since that's been done by minds far wittier than mine. (I just can't tell you where.) Me, I just want to enjoy the pix. Click on 'em to make them--and maybe yourself--get bigger:



and



4. I still have more to say on that SuperDickery treasuretrove, but it will have to wait. Ah, how I tease...