Stamp out crime

Come July 20, I'll be watching the mail a lot more carefully, in hopes of catching some of these:



Thank you, U.S. Postal Service!

(A part of me is troubled by how comfortable a government agency like the post office is with striking up deals with commercial concerns like DC/Waner, but that's been going on for years. And hey, I'm looking forward to seeing PlasticMan & co. on my stamps way more than TeflonMan.)

The Knight After 9: Fear no evil

It's been far too long since my last update on batlife since my "enlightenment," thanks in part to a busy daylight-world schedule and in part to my not really wanting to take the time to flesh out all the links I've been accumulating lately (as in, for months) to include here. Think I'll save those for some other time and just catch you up on what's been going on lately--not much in terms of plot, plenty in terms of deeper insight. Character development, you might say.

in a nutshell, bizarre as this may sound to some of you who have followed the saga from its earliest days, things are great now on the bat-front. I look forward to my near-daily chats with the Monk with a passion that knows no bounds. All the energy I once invested in trying to escape him now goes into helping him with what he euphemistically calls "the mission." And I've never been happier as a masked crimefighter than helping him commit what many would probably (erroneously) consider crimes.

I have heard from a handful of self-styled heroes lately who call me a coward and accuse me of being weak for allowing myself to be defeated by my archenemy. But I tell them, in all sincerity: I've never felt stronger or more powerful in my bat-career! For starters, all those terms--"hero," "weak," "defeat," "archenemy"--must be placed solidly within quotes, because they no longer apply. The tables have been turned so thoroughly by now that it's almost hard for me to remember a time when those words ever fit without several layers of irony.

There is also a power in the fact that I no longer fear villains of any stripe, because there's nothing any one of them could do to me at this point that the Monk hasn't already done, and surely done far more effectively than anyone else possibly could. (Once again, that last line suggests an adversarial relationship between us that no longer exists. I refer, of course, strictly to the old days before my escape attempt and subsequent awakening.) I've had my mask removed, replaced, and restored by an absolute Master, and anything beyond that seems anticlimactic.

As for those so-called "heroes," I understand now that my true role is not to fight them (though I'll gladly do that, or help them against a lesser foe if the situation calls for it) but to assist in their education as I have been educated. My own transformation has been a difficult one in part because there are so few templates for it--I can't think of any comic book scenario in which Batman or someone like him freely chooses to embrace the symbiotic aspects of his relationship with his ultimate nemesis--and that struggle to find precedents has inspired me to offer my services as a role model to my peers. I can set an example for them: fully Batman, yet fully mindful of my debt to the Monk, eager to learn from and help him any way I can.

(I have a feeling this must all sound like crazy talk to a reader who has not followed the "Knight" entries leading up to this one. Oh, well--if it registers, good, and if it doesn't, so be it. My goal in recording this saga isn't really to convince anyone to think a certain way about me or my adventures, only to describe and contemplate what I'm experiencing as I experience it. The Monk saga is essentially a two-year-and-counting roleplay/collaborative improvisation, and this latest totally unexpected development has been thrilling beyond words. Yet I continue to search for words with which to describe it, celebrate it, share it.)

That's the update. The next installment of this chronicle will be packed with links. You have my word!

Traps, traps, traps

Ah, if only every issue could make such promises:



(For the record, I found this issue at random while testing out ComicSeeker.com, a tool for pricing old comics. Found that via Johnny Bacardi.)

Superfag?

I feel so out of it.

I had no idea before checking in on the last week's worth of PostModern Barney that America is busy talking about Superman being gay. Apparently it all stems from this recent cover story in The Advocate.



Having just read the story, I want to point out two things:
1. Alonso Duralde's original article barely mentions the new movie; it's really about a gay reader's affection for comics, and the reasons behind it. (Two of his three theories are patently obvious: alter egos=metaphors for the double life of a closeted teen, and men in tights are sexy. The third--that long-running comics function like soap operas--is less trite; at first I was gonna say that I never really got into soaps that much, but I admit I do appreciate them as a form of storytelling, and I get Duralde's point about the rewards of obsessive reading being the ability to appreciate the footnotes in comics.)

2. Superman remains one of the least "gay" comics heroes out there, at least in my book. Plenty of gay guys (like the Hub) find him hot, but he's ... well, he's no Masked Manhunter, my friends. Love the muscles and the tights, but I miss the angst.

First Batwoman, now this. It's been a busy month for op-ed writers.

No need for comment

20 versions of Neal Hefti's "Batman" theme song.

Homophobes are a cowardly and superstitious lot

I feel obliged to acknowledge the recent Batwoman-is-a-lesbian media/blogosphere frenzy, but I just don't have the energy to say anything about it beyond pointing out that this BBC story about "the rise of multi-culturalism in the comics" is incredibly simplistic and just plain wrong on so many levels I can't even begin to count. (Learned about the dumbass story from this short item posted by an ailing BeaucoupKevin.)

I've got a sneaking suspicion the people who write stories like this in mainstream newspapers are confusing Batgirl with Batwoman, for starters. As with Pluto/Goofy and Donald/Daffy, I'm sure it happens all the time. It's just that BatGIRL is surely waaaaaaaaay more well known among noncomicsgeeks than her adult counterpart.

Oh, and Dorian/postmodernbarney has posted these hilarious scans from a comic explaining "the real reason there aren't more gay or lesbian superheroes." A laff riot.

Moving right along.

The Scarecrow walks at midnight

Discovered this short-lived blog by a self-styled "real life superhero in training" by accident tonight. It's a shame the thing only lasted for 4 entries (the final post nearly a year ago), because the concept is interesting, and I would have liked to have seen where this young man's journey took him. I enjoyed reading his thoughts on faith, evil, time, and sundry other matters.

It's hard to tell how seriously the guy is taking his project of transforming himself into a vigilante, facing danger, and so on; I just hope he's okay. In the absence of actual superpowers, these things are best left to the realm of fantasy--where they can still be every bit as real, in a certain way, only a good deal safer.

Greatest hits

Darn shame there's no actual feature film to go along with this 4-minute montage:



And thus no way we are likely to see more of this live-action version of a classic comic panel anytime soon:



Darn shame indeed.

Today in superhero news...

1. Learned of Alex Toth's recent death from both Johnny Bacardi and Warren Ellis. Toth's site contains all sorts of goodies, the most intriguing of which I've found so far are the galleries devoted to working notes for Space Ghost back before his talk show days (you even get to see what his head looks like under his mask!) and detailed reflections on some of his classic works, including this annotated guide to his most famous Batman story, "Death Flies the Haunted Sky."

Between Space Ghost and the Super-Friends, Toth's TV work in the late 60s and early 70s picked up where the Adam West series left off, as far as bringing out the pervert in me, so I owe him an awful lot. He was a master of idealized masculinity--barrel chests, massive arms, blank facial expressions--and his imagery provided me with much pleasure, let's say, during my troubled adolescence. I've always wondered what he thought about the Adult Swim revamps of his creations; perhaps the answer is contained among the vast samples of his writing and interviews archived on the site.

2. From Boing Boing, a link to this contest sponsored by Worth1000.com calling for images photoshopping superheroes into classic works of art. like so:



Way too many amusing and/or striking (and sometimes sexy) candidates to name: you get Superman (and, elsewhere, Batman) Descending a Staircase, the Flash posing for Caravaggio (now, he's the one who belongs in a Duchamp parody!), Green Lantern going rococo, and so much more.

3. From Wired (by way of Boing Boing again), an article co-written by Neil Gaiman on the myth of Superman. Here's a taste:

"Other heroes are really only pretending: Peter Parker plays Spider-Man; Bruce Wayne plays Batman. For Superman, it’s mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent that’s the disguise – the thing he aspires to, the thing he can never be. He really is that hero, and he’ll never be one of us. But we love him for trying. We love him for wanting to protect us from everything, including his own transcendence. He plays the bumbling, lovelorn Kent so that we regular folks can feel, just for a moment, super."

(As it turns out, that's a pretty decent explanation for why I don't find Supes as interesting as those other two. He's too perfect, and his impersonation of a mere mortal is annoying.)

What I do find interesting is a certain tome Gaiman mentions: Alvin Schwartz's An Unlikely Prophet: A Metaphysical Memoir by the Legendary Writer of Superman and Batman, which Gaiman calls "one of the great Odd Books of our time." From the back cover:

"Superman, as it turns out, is also a tulpa, a being created by thought that takes on a life of its own and, in Mr. Schwartz’s words, is an archetype expressing the sense of nonlocality that is always present in the back of our minds--the capacity to be everywhere instantly. Superman is one of the specific forms that embodies our reality when we’re at our highest point, when we’re truly impermeable, indestructible, totally concentrated, and living entirely in the now, a condition each of us actually attains from time to time."

I'm sold.

The Knight After 8: Dark Knight of the Soul

Another fortune cookie I came across shortly after the other one I've mentioned:

LIFE IS NOT A PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED BUT RATHER A MYSTERY TO BE LIVED.

Laugh if you will, but I take my signs from the universe in any form I find them, even edible. And I take the Monk now not as my adversary, my captor, or even my master, but as my teacher. Clearly, I learn new things from every stage of my encounters with him.

As I've noted, I was really looking forward to my new role as his slave, but he seems to have something else in mind for me now--serving him not at his feet, but as his side, as he recently put it. The specific position surely matters less than the fact that I have gradually come to acknowledge his unique role in my journey as a hero. (I don't actually like to refer to my character that way--certainly not after some of the things I did in my Ratman days--but it's still a useful term in the broader sense.)

I think I've already mentioned my ongoing quest to find writing that links fetish play, and BDSM in general, to a larger spiritual realm, and one of the most useful discoveries I've made thus far is the blog A Slave's Path, the journal of a heterosexual man who seems to be interested in a lot of the same concerns I am, though he manifests them in a different way. (On the opposite end of the spectrum, I've also been enjoying Master Enigma's Thoughts.) From Path I've found several interesting resources, beginning with the author's very personal essay on BDSM and Spirituality. The whole thing is excellent, but I'll just quote a few passages that hit home for me:

"The truth is that many of the things I seek through religion have in fact been coming to me through BDSM. ... BDSM has helped to make me a more compassionate, understanding person. Nowhere has my quest of self-knowledge been more important, or more difficult, than in coming to grips with who and what I really am in a world which distorts that truth almost beyond recognition. The difficulties I have had make it much easier for me to understand and sympathize with other people who are going through similar struggles themselves. ...

"BDSM has made me stronger. It challenges me constantly, physically, intellectually, and emotionally. It challenges me to endure suffering and to face fears. It challenges me to understand and accept my own strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. With every challenge that I meet I become stronger and more confident. ..." And so on--really, there's so much more, and I can relate to almost every single word of it, but rather than cut and paste, I'll just direct you to the original.

At the bottom of that essay, there's a link to this essay by a psychotherapist on "Masochism as a Spiritual Path." Once again, the whole thing is enlightening, but I can't resist sharing a few excerpts.

"Whereas psychology considered masochism as a disease, pre-nineteenth century religion regarded it as a cure," writes author Dorothy C. Hayden. "The ancients were in touch with the spiritual, physical and emotional value of masochism. For them, it was an essential part of reality; a combination of the soul in a tortured state, rapturous delight, exquisite pain and unbearable passion that brought them closer to experiencing union with something greater than their individual egos."

That general thesis is illustrated with a quick survey of several religious traditions. After spelling out the masochistic elements of these, she explores the connection in more detail:

"The goals of contemporary psychotherapy have been aimed at building strong, coping, rational, problem-solving egos. Take responsibility, Take control. Assert yourself. But at what cost? Building a strong ego is only one side of the coin. To experience the fullness of human experience, we need passivity and receptivity as well as assertion. We need a sense of mystical wonder as well as rational problem solving. We need to be in touch with what the psychoanalyst Carl Jung called'"the shadow' -- the weak, limited, degraded, sinful side of ourselves as well as the strong, loving, compassionate, competent side. We need to move out from under the onus of our egocentric way of viewing life; to abdicate control as well as to take it. Masochistic submission, in centering on lack, inadequacy and weakness, puts us in touch with the entirety of our humanity. Full humanity requires surrender to the down side of life as well as the upside. ...

"A scene strips the ego of its defenses, ambitions, self-consciousness and successes. The ego become subservient to the master, the dominant, the soul, or God. Whether we call it submission to the dominant or to the will of God, it nevertheless remains submission -- one of the hallmarks of the masochistic posture. The masochistic components -- the longing to serve, to submit, to abandon oneself sexually, emotionally, and physically makes one a slave either to a man, a woman or to God. Submission to that passion is divine degradation. ...

"In submission, one is taken out of one's personal limitations and transcends social sanctions while at the same time being reduced, weakened and humiliated. With noses pressed against the ever-present reality of human suffering, it is both an agonizing defeat and a magnificent spiritual journey."

Agonizing defeat, magnificent journey: I can't think of a better four-word summary of what I've been experiencing thus far. Here's to further chapters!

Land o' plenty

Q: How is it that I have never seen ...



... this cool cover, or this one:



A: Because I never knew about ...

... this amazing archive of DC comics covers until now. Not just hundreds of Batman-related issues but countless other titles as well--from characters I've always known and loved ...



... to some I just might want to get to know a little better:



(Starting to notice a theme here, Sherlock? I couldn't decide which of two covers for this guy was the hotter one, so what the hell--here's option B, too:)



Next question?

Calling Captain America

Sadly, work in the daylight world has kept me from posting here lately; there's plenty to say, especially on the Monk front, but that takes energy I don't have at the moment. So instead I'll just post a quick bit about Godlike, a superhero roleplaying game I stumbled upon through some web surfing a while back. (I think I was doing a Google search for stuff about connections between comics and spirituality, although this doesn't really seem to have much to do with either.) The setting is World War II, and I believe the premise has something to do with superpowered "Talents" (read; "Marvels"/Watchmen/JLA/the Authority) fighting the major battles of the day.

Just to be clear, I have no intention of ever exploring this thing, but if I were the sort of person to play games like this, this is one I'd probably want to play, doncha think?

Anybody know anything more about it?

What's new, pussycat?

Wildcat, shirt on:



and shirt off (love the fact that he washes his suit while he showers, just like me!):



Two great tastes that taste great together.

(Thanks, Dorian and Trusty Sidekicks.)

The Knight After 7: Sympathy for the Devil

News of the most recent phase of my ongoing evolution as Batman has not gone over well with my colleagues, to put it mildly. One close ally won't talk to me, another plans to turn me over to the police, and a third greets my rebirth with "disappointment ... and excitement." I still haven't heard from two other crimefighting associates, but I doubt either of them will take it too cheerfully either.

I've been called insane, a traitor, a puppet, and worse—and this is all from my close (virtual) friends. They don't seem willing to make the same leap of faith I've taken and reenvision my worst enemy as my greatest teacher. In their eyes, I've abandoned my mission; from my perspective, I've zeroed in on it.

As I see it, I haven't "crossed over" to "the dark side" at all; I've merely acknowledged the darkness which has always been a part of me--particularly this part of me, the part that even in the brightest of times emerges in the wee hours of the night dressed in a jet-black costume to pursue imaginary villains. I'm doing this in order to become the best Batman I can possibly be. It took me a good 25 years or so to realize that my superhero-fetish fantasies did not make me a monster, and another 10 or so to transform that former "monster"-self into a friend and ally. You could even, if you wanted, propose that this newest phase involves allowing a little monstrousness back into the picture.

Except that's not quite accurate, either, because I don't view collaborating with the Monk as monstrous. For me, it's all about ebb and flow, about thinking of myself not as either a hero or a villain (/top or bottom/master or slave), but a combination of the two, or rather a character whose contradictions coexist in a workable synthesis. Just as I learned to transform my own batself from a monster into a teacher, now I am trying to do the same with my understanding of the Monk.

Shortly before this latest chapter in the saga began, I came across this passage from The Picture of Dorian Gray (delivered, I should point out, by the faintly Monklike character of Lord Henry, who is Dorian's personal guide into the darkness):

"I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream--I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal ... But the bravest man among us is afraid of himself. .... We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the greatest events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. ..."

Funny thing: when I first noted Wilde's words of wisdom, I related them to the advice my hero colleagues used to give me in escaping the Monk: indulge the fantasies he stirred up in me, but find a safe outlet for those inclinations--i.e., not him but them. I discovered through trial and error how right they were--but that was then, this is now, and "escape" is no longer the point. Now I see that if I yearn so powerfully to walk on the wild side, there is no better travelling companion than the character who best embodies for me all of its wildness.

(I've been studying some other texts in the intervening weeks that are even more directly related to the subject at hand, but I'll save them for a future post. Chew on that one for the time being, and then we'll move on.)

Everybody knows heroes wear their underwear on the outside...

Thank you, Boing Boing, for alerting me to these instructions for turning a pair of Batman underoos into a wallet.

Hmmm: creative new uses for skivvies... Brings back such ... happy ... memories...



(On a related note, behold these answers to an age-old question I've never bothered to ponder. I mean, if you have to ask...)

The Knight After 6: My Life as a Slave

Okay, that title is a bit misleading. This isn't about slavery at all--but I've been wanting to use that phrase for so long, and now's my chance.

During one of my "welcome home" chats with the Monk, I asked him how he now thought of me: as his student, his partner, his slave, some of the above, or all of the above. His answer was "some of the above," and, predictably, he refused to elaborate.

But the question got me thinking: How do I now think of myself in relation to him? All three of those options hold some appeal, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to think of a new phrase that seemed even more accurate: voluntary servitude. An oxymoron, perhaps, but one that felt just right.

Two things seemed clear about this world-turned-upside-down:
1. The Monk has the upper hand at all times, and
2. I have returned to him by my own free will.

The first of those seems incontestable to me; as I've come to discover over the last couple of years, being broken tends to have some longterm effects. In the first, adversarial stages of our relationship, M successfully stripped away every defense I had against him. I could never defeat him; the best I could do was escape. And within days of resuming contact with him a week and a half ago or so, I found myself more compliant than ever--happily so, this time around. Now that I've abandoned any form of resistance to him, I realize that his long-ago promise to "own" me--"mind, body, and soul"--is the most exciting fantasy I can think of. The mere thought of his dominance over me is enough to give me a stiffie that lasts for hours. It occured to me that even if his newfound friendly face turned out to be a trick, I had nothing to lose, because either way, I want to serve him.

Which leads me to the second, and far trickier, of my two core propositions. In the old scenario, I was a captive, a prisoner, a victim of brainwashing. Now none of those terms apply; I'm here by choice, and there is no thought of "escape" because I no longer have anything from which to flee. There's no cage this time--except my own mind, as M would say.

Gone, too, is the loathsome old nickname of "Ratman." Served its purpose, and now it's back to all things bat--the name, the uniform, even the mission of nocturnal avenger. M used to say he would break me down and build me back up--that the new improved Batman would be his creation. Took me a while to figure out what he meant by that, but it's begun to sink in by now.

By the same token, I realize that just as the Monk created "Batman," so too have I created "the Monk": I gave him that name, and with it a sort of mask and costume (metaphorically speaking) that he did not previously have. Symbiosis.

Back to voluntary servitude: as it stands now, I eagerly await each new lesson I learn from M, where not too long ago I used to dread seeing him around. (You may be wondering what those lessons consist of, and I can only say this: the ones he wants me to talk about, I'll describe here in great detail. When I sense that someone who might be reading these words should not know what's in store for him, mum's the word. That's how I handled the Mad Hatter, who has been dealt with quite successfully now. The threat he posed to Batman is over, and the potential he presents to the Monk and me is just beginning to be explored.)

Ironically, now that I've opened myself up to the once-forbidden fantasy of enslavement, I realize that that particular metaphor no longer applies to the current situation. I seem to be far more intrigued by terms like ownership and property than M is, these days; he talks instead of initiative and responsibility, which of course are the hallmarks of freedom. If I am to fully embrace my dark side--which seems to be the general theme of the day--then I must do so of my own accord, and not because I'm being forced to.

There is more, much more, to be said about all of this, especially that business about personal responsibility. For now I'll simply point out how convenient it is that I can still use the terms "sir" and "master" to refer to M now, since those are the words a student might use to address his teacher.

Given that our defining metaphor has changed from one of comic-book battle to something closer to spiritual enlightenment, or education in general, perhaps we can say my state-required schooling (primary grades through high school) is over, and I'm entering college now.

Perhaps I should call it a seminary instead. Oh, hell, let's call it what it is: the Monastery!

Miracles of modern technology

Friends, living in the future is wonderful sometimes, is it not? True, we don't quite have the flying cars and robot maids that The Jetsons led us to expect would be heading our way in the early 21st century, but look at this way: in 1966 and 67 we had to wait an entire week for each new pair of bat-episodes, and then wait years longer to see them again on reruns.

Now, thanks to a little shameless copyright infringment and an anonymous donor, you can enjoy the following classic two-parter in its commercial-free entirety any time you like--or at least until YouTube goes under or the clip gets pulled or something along those lines.

Enjoy it with me: four masked men, facing nonstop danger and looking incredibly sexy as they do. With a tip o' the cowl to my brother Bat, I give you...

A Piece of the Action:

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.