Stranger in a Strange Land

I visited a new (to me) comic book store in the hinterlands outside Gotham this afternoon. The classic scenario: all male, geek central, lots of insider talk about specific issues of specific comics and how there were problems with the color separation or some such, followed by some sort of misogynstic rant about somebody's wife. All very, very loud. Everybody seemed to know everybody, except me, of course, and I wanted to keep it that way.

Even though I am now a paragon of well-adjusted perversion, I still get a bit self-conscious in this setting. Deep down, I still feel like I'm visiting a porn store, albeit one whose contents don't hold the same charge for the other customers. I can't get past the feeling that if I were a "normal" 45-year-old, I either wouldn't be in the store in the first place, or I'd have graduated long ago from the superhero comics to the indies. And it's true, I always make a point of lingering in that section of any store for a while, partly out of genuine interest and partly as a cover for my true motive, which is invariably to check out what kinky situations my #1 hero has gotten himself into lately. I truly wish I could relax a bit more in these stores--I mean, god knows the other 45-year-old who inhabit them are just as weird as I am, and none of us are probably all that weird deep down--but it's just some kind of reflex action.

A store employee eventually asked if I wanted anything, and I got all nervous and fumbly, said I was "just looking," then decided my half hour of browsing was up, grabbed the debut of Frank Miller & Jim Lee's All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder," as the vanilla cover to what I was really there for: the first 4 issues of the 6-part Batman: Jekyll & Hyde. A tip o' the cowl to my online pal LycraMan for not only encouraging me to seek this one out, but passing along some sample panels to explain why:



(You will notice, as LycraMan did, that Batman's cowl fits so snugly in this one that you can actually see his ear, which is a rarety in the comics, and one we'd both like to see more often.) Then there's this delightful taunt...



and finally, one of my favorite villainous threats: the ever-enticing "I won't unmask him, I'll make it so bad for him that he removes the damned thing himself"...



From what I've seen so far, this mini-series ranks up there with the much-reviled Batman: The Cult (and the less well-known but highly recommended The Last Arkham trade paperback) in fetish appeal. If you share my taste in bat-ventures, this one is worthy of braving the trip to your own local geeketeria. (There, I've just alienated all the healthy, well-adjusted adult readers of comics who may read my blog from time to time. Sorry, guys.)

Another missed opportunity

Damn, it's National Night Out again--tonight!--and my schedule is so damn full I can't do much more than post the link here and hope that my fellow cop fetishists make their way to a police station nearby for punch, cookies, and maybe more. If you do, send me the pix and I'll thank you profusely.

Knightfall 19: Walking on a wire

Two months have passed since my last Monk update, and almost three months since my "escape" from his clutches, so you'd be forgiven for assuming that that particular chapter of my batlife is over. In fact, I even thought for a while about renaming this series of reports something more optimistic, since I wasn't feeling particularly "fallen" anymore.

As it turns out, though, I am still prone to relapses from time to time. Had a close call with near-disastrous results around Memorial Day, which strengthened my resolve for a month or so, and then last week I felt the strong desire to put myself in M's path again. Can't say that impulse has quite left me yet. (As always, I'm mindful that M is a regular reader of this blog, so I can't reveal too much about specific strategies here.) I keep expecting--hoping for?--a phone call or some other invasion of my space. Suffice to say I'm torn--yet again--between the desire to be a free man and a strong hero, and the yearning to submit to the depths of degredation. M is well aware of this ambivalence and exploits it at every possible opportunity.

It occured to me the other day that the overt antagonism between the two of us is something that distinguishes our fantasy relationship from the conventional master/slave dynamic (and, yeah, I'm aware of how odd that phrase sounds), at least as I understand that. When I see men on leashes wielded by other men in leather bars, I assume the leashees are there by choice, not because they've been captured, held against their will, stripped of all their secrets, and transformed into something they abhor. (That list of abuses belongs in quotes, of course; in earlier entries here I've described my superhero-downfall saga as being "consensually non-consensual," or words to that effect. I know full well this is all a game, but I do put my whole self into the playing of it, which often entails fighting back as hard as I can.)

Built into the Monk/Bat saga is the notion that I don't want to be defeated by my mortal enemy, that what has happened to me is a degredation, an obscenity. And throughout the events of the last year or so I've noticed that when I'm not in contact with M I long to be, but the minute I actually encounter him, I don't feel particularly good about it. It's an intense feeling, to be sure, and enormously enlightening, but I can't say it's a happy one. I don't enjoy, at least not in the conventional sense, being the servant of another man, being the bad guy, the loser... but those fantasies are still very strong for me. As I've noted before, I generally feel most vulnerable to M during periods when my daylight-world self esteem is low, or simply when I'm feeling drained. Fleeing him was accompanied by an upswing in my mood--I felt good about myself again because I'd broken free of him, and I was probably able to break free because I felt good. Lately the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction again, so it's no surprise that I feel the familiar pull of the gloating nemesis who gives voice to the very things I'm so used to telling myself about myself.

It's often said that art comes from pain and unhappiness, and it's true that stories about happy people are usually not very interesting. So the question becomes: is it better to be a happy person with no story to tell, or a miserable one with fascinating adventures?

Linkfest

I have Johnny Bacardi to thank for calling my attention to part one of Logan Polk's handy dandy recap of Batman's onscreen adventures from the serials to the new movie. Needless to say, I don't agree with every single thing Polk says, but it's a nice summary, supplemented with reviews of some recent comics.

The line that caught my eye was the one where Polk notes that Warner Bros. is preparing special-edition DVDs of the 2 Tim Burton movies. I had a funny feeling something like this was up when I started noticing the boxed set of those 2 plus the 2 Schumacher films (which--heresy alert!--I don't actually hate as much as the rest of the universe does) priced to move at Target, Media Play, and elsewhere, presumably as a tie-in with the new film. I've had my eye on the box ever since I started seeing it going for 30 bucks or so, but I'd been holding off because there are next to no bonus features. Now I guess I'll wait, or buy the 2 Schumachers at the current sale prices (though those should be pretty easy to find even cheaper, given their notoriety).

Oh, and lookie here: from the Google ads accompanying Polk's article I also found this compedium of New York Times coverage of the caped crusader--including another critical retrospective, this one a spiffy multimedia bonanza narrated by critic Manohla Dargis. Enjoy. Maybe I will, too, someday--though I tend to spend more time posting links than actually pursuing them myself, these days.

Technology triumphs at last

Hey, wow, can I really post images here now for the first time? If so, let the games begin with a couple of mementoes shot earlier today:


and:



A little blurry, yes, but I took them on my phone (god, I love the 21st century), on the sly, and in a great hurry. Poorly cropped butt shots don't really bother me, and I hope they won't bug you, either.

Dear friends, we stand on the verge of a new era in H&V history. Such treaures I have in store for you in the days and months ahead...

Charge of the Bat Brigade

I happened to catch Adam West discussing Batman Begins on G4/TechTV's increasingly annoying Attack of the Show. (Come back, Patrick and Leo, we miss you!) I don't have the energy to find out if a clip is available online, but here's a discussion of the segment on AOTS's blog. In his generally positive review of the new film, Mr. West (who is certainly starting to show his age) says the kinds of things he usually says, which is comforting, I guess, and there's some tomfoolery involving the interviewer suiting up and fighting (don't ask why) a cute, nontraditional Superman (by which I mean a guy who looks nothing like the usual Superman but totally like someone I would sleep with, particularly if he had that outfit on).

There's also plug for a Batman Credit Card, which is indeed available at www.adamwest.com, though it's not quite what you might expect, and probably not worth $25. Oh, and one of the show's hosts makes a reference to reading some fan fiction online, which strikes me as noteworthy for some reason.

It's weird: the humor on the '66 TV series was truly sublime, and yet pretty much every time in the intervening decades that someone has had West appear on a talk show to discuss the program, they feel obliged to emulate/parody/salute the series in some way that totally misses the mark. A friend of mine says he learned post-modernism by watching Bullwinkle; for me it was the '66 Batman (and Green Acres) and Bullwinkle, of course) and it's just irritating to watch such subtle, self-reflexive wit transformed into such corny, broad, embarassing crap.

On the other hand, don't think for a second that that's gonna stop me from eventually purchasing my very own DVD copy of Return to the Batcave, which may be a perfect example of what I've just complained about but which features some delightful footage of hottie Jack Brewer as a young Adam W. trying on the batsuit for the very first time. I don't mind cringing at a bad bat-homage when it's accompanied by something like that.

Super readers, double agents, and other "guilty" pleasures

Here's an interesting article on modern-day superhero comics from the Boston Phoenix by Douglas Wolk from a few months back. Lots of sensible observations, mainly about the way that the readership of comics has aged and grown more sophisticated over the years, leading to the rise of the "super reader"--the kind who gets all the inside jokes and external references in every issue of, say, Superman. Superhero comics now cater to these readers, which means you have to know all kinds of backstory in order to follow a storyline. (Wolk theorizes that this explains the recent popularity of translated manga among American kids: stories that stand alone, no baggage you're expected to know from the outset, etc.)

In a sidenote, he mentions a book I don't know but want to check out: Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips’s Sleeper, which he describes this way: "superhero joins the villains’ team as a double agent and becomes so morally compromised that he no longer knows what side he’s on." My favorite theme! Anybody know this one?

Batz & Robinson

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

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

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

The reviews are in...

Okay, so I saw You Know What tonight. And I kept finding the insatiable bat-fetishist in me getting brushed aside by the trend-tracking sociologist. Here's the instant response--and I guess I should insert a spoiler alert here, although I don't think I'm giving away anything major:

1. Damn, is that thing LONG. I was convinced four hours had gone by--three, easy. (Surprise: it's just over two.) Given how much the filmmakers have taken on (Bruce's missing years, complicated gangster saga, multiple villains, etc), I don't see how they could do it in any less time or any faster (those cuts in the combat sequences are migh-tee fast as it is), but it just seemed to go on and on. (I had the same complaint about the second Spider-Man movie, which everybody else seemed to love, so maybe it's just my Attention Deficit Disorder actin' up or somethin'.)

2. Interesting, isn't it, how so many blockbusters these days strive for such epic sweep--and ask for such major investments of time and attention span from audiences, even though we keep hearing that nobody has much of either any more? And not only are individual films longish, they tend to be single installments in trilogies (Star Wars, Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, and now, apparently, Batman). Which actually works pretty well for modern-day comics, since--as in lots of recent TV series--storylines generally unfold in long, multi-issue arcs. (BTW, thank god some of the bad guys actually get away in this one; the tendency to kill them all off was my number one beef about the earlier batmovies. How can Batman be locked in lifelong struggle against an archenemy if the poor sap dies after two hours? Whatever happened to dragging them off to jail, only to have them escape a year or two later? That always worked well for me...)

3. Fun to watch the screenwriters weave together so many threads from various comics--not just the Year One and Long Halloween stories I figured would be there, but also The Last Arkham, elements of the R'as Al Ghul mythology, even a little of the texture (if not the actual plot) of the whole post-earthquake-Gotham-as-war-zone stuff from a few years ago. And hey, a shout out to Mr. Zsasz! (What, no naked body shot?) It's a giant hodgepodge, but somehow it works.

4. New suit: hot. (Still miss the spandex, but I guess we'll never ever see that in an official batfilm--though I notice the new Superman seems to be sportin' the lycra.) Wish we could see more of the outfit. But maybe that's what the next 2 movies (and the inevitable collector's-edition DVDs) are for. Side note: have you seen the accompanying toys? There's a utility belt I would kill for, if only it came in an adult size.

5. Speaking of kids, this really doesn't seem to be made for them, which suits me just fine. For starters, there's that length issue. But then the whole approach to the character is pretty adult--and it's ABOUT TIME.

6. Christian Bale: cute. May even replace Val Kilmer as sexiest movie Batman. But it's weird, having seen him as a little kid in Empire of the Sun not so very very long ago, to watch him play a character I've always taken to be older than me. It was one thing when I realized some of the movie Batmen were my age or slightly younger, but I'm not sure I can handle being closer to Alfred than Bruce.

7. The new car: silly. I like the basic idea, but when it starts leaping from rooftop to rooftop, and the only way in and out of the batcave is via a waterfall, we're talking Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, people. Might not bug me so much if the filmmakers didn't go on and on about how they've taken a realistic approach to the story. (The aforementioned chase sequence was the moment where I felt like the filmmakers had lost me. Though they got me back eventually, I guess.)

8. Bruce's spiritual quest: naturally I like this. Okay, so he's attended the School of Star Wars Philosophy, but it's still nice to see a film deal with this stuff. And I love the twist that it's Bruce himself (more than the criminals) who's afraid of bats.

9. Overall, a very successful job of relaunching the, ahem, franchise. (It always bugs me when folks discuss this as a revamp of the film series. This character has been around for over 70 years--in comics, newspapers, radio, serials, live-action tv, animation, etc. Making a new film about him is not exactly like doing a remake of The Dukes of Hazzard.) The new film is every bit as fresh a re-invention of the bat saga as the Tim Burton movies were, and I actually like it a lot more than those, even if it didn't quite blow me away the way I hoped it might.

10. Oh, yeah: I've already vented many times about my aversion to origin stories, but I must say, that aspect of BB didn't bother me too much. The basic strategy seems completely of a piece with the Star Wars prequels (which I didn't really like any less than episodes 4-6, since I didn't care for them too much to begin with): take a series of iconic characters and show, in sometimes painstaking detail, how they came into being. Everybody knows how the story is going to end, so the challenge is to make the journey something special. So the filmmakers get a chance to investigate aspects of the saga that aren't particularly essential to the narrative, but that still shed light on the larger story. In this era of DVD commentaries and bonus features (and special edition double-disc repackages of classic albums, for that matter), it's like the entire prequel is a bonus feature. That could easily be overkill, but this time it just doesn't bug me. It's safe to say that if this were the first time I encountered the Batman character, I'd still be intrigued.

11. Bonus: thank you, thank you, THANK you, Chris Nolan and company, for resisting the urge to have your characters spout wisecracks every few minutes. And I'm not just talking about the last two bat-films, by any means: for the last two decades or longer, EVERY big action film and horror film (and BB is a bit of both) has been plagued with this tendency, and it ruins many a movie for me. There are a few one-liners in BB, but they don't appear for at least an hour or so, and they're totally welcome, since the film is otherwise so relentlessly (and deliciously) sober and serious.

So that's my take. How about posting yours below?

Batwatch 2

Nope, I still haven't seen the new movie. (The only batfilm I've ever seen on opening night was the first Burton/Keaton one--although it's likely I was in a theater the night the 1966 movie hit my town; I just don't remember.) But I hear good things, and I'm sure I'll see it soon when I am just a teensy bit less busy. Feel free to post your own reactions to it here.

In the meantime, let me steer fellow batfans toward Entertainment Weekly's detailed collection of articles on the bat-phenomenon from the last few years.

Oh, and I thought I had already written something further here about NPR's heavy-duty coverage, which at last count included four stories in a two-day period (what, is the beleagured Corporation for Public Broadcasting now a subsidiary of Time-Warner?). Every one of those stories included the same soundbite from the film, in which the future Caped Crusader tells Alfred about his quest to stir people from their apathy, how as a mere man he can die, and how he therefore needs to transform himself into a symbol. Wow, Bruce Wayne must have taken the same semiotics courses I did--sounds like the making of an ACT UP member, circa 1988!

Speaking of those NPR stories, this interview with Frank Miller is particularly informative. And, yep, it includes the soundbite, too.

Batwatch

In case you're awaiting the new batmovie with bated breath, here's an interesting interview with Christian Bale from the NPR show Fresh Air. There's a bit at the end where he reveals he's not doing publicity in his actual Welsh accent so as not to call attention to his own nationality while playing an American icon--meaning his "American" voice becomes kind of a disguise of his own.

Sympathy for the Devil

From a strictly fetishistic point of view--which is probably not the demographic they're aiming for--the WB's animated series The Batman has gotten a lot better in its second season. Way more death traps, injections of deadly substances, near-unmaskings, etc., and ample portrayals of our hero in the batsuit sans mask, gloves, etc.

Don't get me wrong: the show is still prrretttttttty bad in all other respects, like plot, dialogue, voice acting, etc. But I'm fairly shallow when it comes to getting my cartoon-superhero rocks off, and the first season was so thoroughly devoid of kink (and remarkably awful in every other way) that just about anything would be an improvement.

They're already into self-parody, with the episode "The Laughing Bat" featuring the Joker running around pretending to be the Batman (true to the show's ineptitude, it's never made clear exactly why he's doing this, or even if he's aware that he's not really Bats), then dosing the real BM with a poison that makes him giggle uncontrollably at other people's misfortune, thus reversing their time-honored roles. And, yes, this one features the obligatory Adam West cameo. (This time he plays the mayor; needless to say, it's not nearly as clever as his casting as The Grey Ghost in the beloved B:TAS, but we all know how left out Adam feels when they don't invite him to drop by.)

Another recent episode alllllllmost pulled off something truly surprising and moving. (Spoiler alert, for the five of you out there who actually might care about this show.) In part one of a two-parter, Joker captures one of those two police detectives whose lives have been intersecting with Batman's since the beginning of the series; J tortures him until he breaks, then gasses him with an untested compound that seems to mess up his complexion pretty badly. In part two, Batman has a brand-new enemy: Clayface!

Never mind that this is only the 200th completely different origin story for CF (and the cop is only the 201st person to assume the role). The big problem is the poor guy's abrupt (and, once again, badly explained) transformation into a sci-fi villain. The writers have provided some interesting tidbits, like CF's inability to speak coherently, leading everyone on the police force to assume he's simply a run-of-the-mill monster instead of a once-trusted colleague, and the police commissioner's longstanding war on "freaks," which includes both BM and CF, but these don't really go anywhere. And the dude also seems to figure out his poorly defined powers mighty quickly. Let's just say it pales in comparison to the origin story for Mr. Freeze in Sub-Zero, which remains the most single moving tweak to the classic Rogue's Gallery. Even so, there's an element of tragedy to this revised Clayface (the episode ends on a particularly poignant note) that is far beyond the usual grasp of the new series, and that's gotta be worth something. It's cool that they've taken a recurring character and completely pulled the rug out from under him.

Speaking of humanized super-villains, I still haven't seen Revenge of the Sith. (Let's face it, I'm just not that big of a Star Wars fan--and I get a little nervous every time one of these new movies opens and everyone laughs at the geeks who dress up like their favorite characters--little too close to home for moi.) But it certainly fits in with a larger trend in popular culture: bad guy as fallen hero, i.e., tragic victim rather than malicious perpetrator. As a reader of Paradise Lost in my English Major youth, I ain't gonna claim this trend is in any way NEW, but it does seem to have a distinctly twenty-first-century urgency nowadays. Film noir brought us the Anti-Hero and the concept got refined in the 60s and 70s, only to vanish during the Reagan era; now we have the Good Man Who is Driven to Evil Even Though He Knows Better. Episode Three is the only one of the SW movies, old or new, that I've actually been eager to see, because I can't wait to see Anakin's transformation into Vader.

If you've followed my own exploits in online bat-fantasy as chronicled here, you can surely guess why I'm so fascinated by this trope: because I've lived through it myself (at least in the virtual realm). As of this writing I've been Monk-free for about two months and my "Ratman" days are but a distant memory--but there's no getting around the fact that I was indeed broken, turned to the Dark Side, did things I'm not proud of and can't undo, yadda yadda yadda. But maybe I'll save the update on that front for some future "Knightfall" installment (or not: there really haven't been too many developments in the saga for a while, thanks in large part to my overly busy B. Wayne schedule--not much bat activity 'round these parts in weeks, sad to say).

What I find most interesting about the Bad-Guy-as-Good-Guy-Gone-Wrong scenario is how much more ethically complicated (and therefore more realistic) it is than the whole rhetoric of the Bush administration--you know, that "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists" malarkey. Oh, and I've neglected to mention that the cop who becomes the shape-shifting, identity-borrowing Clayface, is a black man, a premise chock full of possibilities you just know the creators of The Batman cartoon won't even begin to explore.

Read all about it...

The countdown to Batman Begins continues, and for the last month I've been meaning to post an entry here about the "Batman Movie Issue" (#164) of Wizard, which is still on the stands as I write, though no longer hot off the press. It's a must-own, if you ask me.

In the process of looking for a URL to post for the issue, I came across this story from 2003 in which three out gay comics writers do a "Queer Eye"-style makeover of several characters, which is also worth checking out. I have a funny feeling I already wrote about this, but it seems unlikely--I only read fanboy magazines when it looks like there' s going to be something major about something that really excites me. And the couture of the Martian Manhunter is not one of those subjects.

But the release of this new bat-movie is, so I'm eagerly scanning the magazine racks for more, like the recent cover shot in Premiere. (Accompanying article doesn't strike me as essential.) Thanks to corporate synergy, there should be branding aplenty in the next few weeks. Bring it on, I say!

Knightfall 18: I've Got You Under My Skin

I keep thinking I need a new title for these recurring reports on the Monk saga. After all, I'm free of his clutches at last; I'm a new (Bat)man!

At least for now. I feel absolutely great--stronger, clearer than ever regarding my identity as a hero. But--as I expected--there are still lingering traces of his influence over me. While withdrawal hasn't been nearly as painful as I'd assumed it would be, it's still a struggle sometimes. And I've been lucky to have been so busy in my daylight life that I haven't had much chance to think about the other one. Sooner or later real-world obligations will let up, and that's when I'm most vulnerable. (To the Monk, at least. But actually I've noticed that the "ratself" tends to be strongest at precisely those moments when I'm most stressed out--tired, open to self-doubt, etc.)

Tonight I suited up, as I've been doing as often as possible lately (and let me tell you: it feels damn good to be back in that uniform), and one of my colleagues--the one whose capture by the Monk I am directly responsible for--wanted to see me on camera. "Man, you even look like him now," he said.

That was creepy, because I'd had exactly the same thought when I looked at myself in the mirror with the mask on a few days ago. The new one is a tight fit, and it contorts my features in a way that distinctly recalls my archenemy's face. It was almost as if I was looking at him--as if he really was "inside" me, as he'd insisted was the case. I told myself at the time that it was just my imagination--after all, the Monk's parting words to me were intended to fuck with my head and convince me that this newfound "freedom" was really just a new form of captivity, that I was simply doing exactly what he wanted me to do by reclaiming my old identity. But I admit it's an effective mindfuck.

Speaking of which, have I ever unleashed my spiel here about how amusing I've always found those classified ads that demand "no game players"? While it's true that I don't really want to be jerked around by a real-life partner, in this particular fantasy realm, what I'm looking for is an excellent game player--since this is, after all, a game at its very core. And when you get right down to it, aren't most human interactions one sort of game or another? In any case, the man beneath the Monk is one of the best--no, the best--I've ever encountered, and obviously I miss the regular interactions with him I once enjoyed, as I figured I would. But something tells me he's not gone for good.

Batsignals in the air

I must say I've really been enjoying gazing at the cover of the current Entertainment Weekly for the last several days, what with its tantalizing glimpse at the new movie batsuit. (I can't find an image of it to link to, but here's an illustrated excerpt of the article inside.)

I'm looking forward to the new film, though not the prospect of sitting through another origin story. (As I've written here many times before, those are my least favorite plotlines in general, and I haven't been totally happy with any of the big-budget batfilms thus far, although each has had an appealing aspect or two.) I just read somewhere that Bale has signed on to do three movies, which bodes well, even if I haven't seen anything resembling the batmania that preceded the first Burton/Keaton film in advance of this one. Which may not be such a bad thing.

Speaking of the Burton version, it's interesting, isn't it, how everyone now seems to take for granted that the outfit must be black rubbery stuff rather than the tights of old. Time for another mini-rant about how I wish for once a studio would cast a buff stud, preferably an unknown, and suit him up in spandex. I'm too tired at the moment to flesh out this argument for the millionth time, but let me just say that I've never bought the argument that a heavy, cumbersome rubber body armor ensemble is any more "realistic" than a skintight lycra unitard. For one thing, I'm not really looking for realism here, folks. (And, for the record, do you really want to be wearing a getup that weighs a ton, severely restricts your peripheral vision, and causes you to sweat like a pig when you're out there fighting the baddies?) For that matter, call me a traditionalist, but I'm way less interested in the B. Wayne side of the character than the Batman side (which is one of my many beefs against the earlier films, too--more attention paid to Wayne and the villains than to the title character). Face it, if this guy didn't lead a double life as a masked vigilante, his story would not carry much interest for anybody. I prefer the notion perpetuated in the '66 TV show and innumerable comic book versions, that his Wayne guise is simply a convenient means to an end--it affords Batman the bucks to pursue his night job, and gives him access to certain realms he wouldn't otherwise possess.

But enough of this talk. Since we live in an age of corporate crossover, a new batfilm brings with it the promise of tie-ins aplenty. (Starting with that EW cover--a wholly owned subsidiary of Time/Warner, of course.) In the last few weeks I've come across a new paperback reissue of classic Scarecrow stories, a pricey hardcover compilation of comic book cover art (with an entire chapter devoted to deathtraps old and new), and--most exciting of all--a trade paperback Batman Handbook along the lines of the recent fad for "Worst Case Scenario" books. Gone are the days of disclaimers warning purchasers of batman costumes that they are not Batman; this thing actually tells you how to do what your favorite fictional superhero does, detail by detail, lawsuits be damned. (Speaking of costumes, Halloween is bound to be more interesting this year.) Rest assured I'll be snagging a copy of the Handbook myself soon and surely writing about it here. The illustrations alone are worth the price.

In the meantime, I can't get enough of the glimpses of the new Caped Crusader popping up in other magazines, too. Gonna be a hot summer, yes indeed.

Knightfall 17: Return of the Bat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop the presses!

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

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

Now we know.

Bonanza

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

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

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

A riddle a day...

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Night collaborations w/ the infinite"

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

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

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

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

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

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