sarahthecoat reblogged
My cartoon for this week’s Guardian Books
sarahthecoat reblogged
i noticed that the Riddler page layout is set up very similarly to how it is in Watchmen. i'm not familiar when the Riddler page came out, was this an intentional reference or a coincidence?
It was the only nine panel grid page in the story -- I think it had more to do with me wanting to get through as much dialogue as I could, with the beats and pauses in the right places.
You can read the whole thing here, online:
wow, this. i watched the original batman tv show with adam west as a kid, and loved it. just the right amount of Peril for me. the movies started coming out at a time when i wasn't going to movies much, so i haven't seen a lot of them. i think i saw two? of the christian bale batman movies, the first one and the one with heath ledger (such a huge loss when he died). they were so unlike the tv show, i too wondered, what happened? (superhero movies in general now have zero interest for me) recently i watched a documentary on kanopy about adam west, which was just wonderful, really took me back, i remembered what it was like to enjoy something cool and wholesome and fun. i'm so glad he finally got his star, and seems to be doing ok after some very lean years.
hmm, it occurs to me that cool, wholesome, fun, and just the right amount of Peril also describes good omens.
sarahthecoat reblogged
“Isn’t that what’s-his-name playing the Hohner whatchamacallit?”, M. Hohner, Inc., 1966
Now here is a Justice League movie I REALLY want to watch.
free the reeds!
sarahthecoat reblogged
Goodbye, Caped Crusader.
Adam West, who played Batman/Bruce Wayne in the 1960s Batman TV series, has died of leukemia. I was born in 1969–too late to catch the show as it aired, but in plenty of time to watch it in syndication as a child. West was my first Batman, and this show is the only form of Batman that I ever loved. When they started making the Dark Serious Batman films in the 1980s, starting with Michael Keaton, I found it just scary and depressing and completely without magic. It was probably important for my future fan life that at such an impressionable age I was exposed to this level of camp. Everything on Batman was larger, brighter, and goofier than it was in real life. The villains vied to outdo each other in the fabulousness of their outfits and the insanity of their plans. The sheer range of ridiculous things to steal that their writers came up with was impressive. Everything was labeled, from the Giant Lighted Lucite Map of Gotham City in the Batcave to the Waterproof Loot Sacks the villains used for underwater bank robberies. All the gadgets Batman used had names that started with “bat,” including the batphone, the batmobile, the batarang, the bat-utility belts, and of course the bat alphabet soup container (“the right tool for the right job, Robin”). Nobody used guns, no one ever really got killed, and whenever Batman and Robin were put in peril at the end of the first episode you knew they would get out of it in the first five minutes of the next one…but you didn’t know how!
West’s Batman was completely different from the later interpretations. Instead of being a Byronic vigilante with a penchant for going over the edge, West’s Batman was a perfect square–an embodiment of all the civic virtues, lecturing his young ward on everything from the importance of studying world literature to the real reason why you should feed the parking meter even if the cops are never going to give the Batmobile a ticket (because the money goes to build Gotham City’s roads and bridges, Robin). Batman was funny because in the middle of an obviously insane universe aminated by epic goofiness, Batman took everything painfully seriously. The villains were laughing at him; the writers were laughing at him; but his singleness of mind and purity of heart were invincible.
TV acting is funny. The better you are at it, in a way, the worse your career gets. If you really make your character a household name, then nobody’s ever really going to want to see you do anything else. Like other TV actors who became identified with iconic characters, West had trouble after the show ended. And yet, at the end of the day…becoming identified with that one iconic role is the only way that TV actors become immortal.
Well, West is immortal now–joining the pantheon along with Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Jeremy Brett, and all the other TV actors who will always live with me. Goodbye, Adam West. I’m sure you had days when you thought you had the most ridiculous job on the planet. But actors never really know what their work really does for people, or how far it reaches. Safe home, Mr. West. I’ll light up a giant lucite map of Gotham City for you tonight, to help you find your way.
i watched as a kid when the show was new, only i was a little young to understand camp at the time. I should really look for a way to watch it again. I didnt see most of the batman movies, but they were verrrry different. Im so glad my daughter went to a con a few years ago and brought back his signed photo for me. :)