Batman and Robin

This new series provides an excellent jumping-on point for new readers. There’s just enough exposition to bring new readers along but it’s conveyed with humour enough that established readers will break a smile rather than a groan (Chris Claremont, I’m looking at you).

With Bruce Wayne’s apparent demise (at least to his proteges and son – his living in the prehistoric past where he will no doubt bring justice to the dinosaurs is known to readers).

This new start with the first Robin taking on the heavy mantle of his mentor and Wayne’s son bearing the red and green of Robin is brought to us by the very lively team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. It’s a fresh excting style of writing with the wonderfullly dyamic (duo) wide-screen sweeps that Quitely does so well.

But… They’ve got a lot to live up to. With Spiderman’s Brand New Day and Brubaker’s run on Captain America with the new cap over the last couple of years… There have been other very high profile re-starts of a very high quality.

There are also echoes of the same team’s run on New X-Men. Which, while it started out as a fresh invigorating take on well established characters, proved comprehensively why Grant Morrison should never ever be given mainstream continuity characters to play with.. as, like a keen child at Christmas, he just can’t help breaking his toys. It ran well and was a fiercely enjoyable read but… Magneto really still being alive as a floating helmet in a crazy broken NYC while Jean Grey ascended Swamp-Thing style into some higher order of super-Phoenix’s? … Please, Grant, tone it down. Marvel has spent years trying to recover from the damage and silliness that series wrought.

So I’m excited to see a new Batman and Robin under his stewardship and I like change in comics… but please Grant… don’t break the Caped Crusader.

Great comic cover

No great reason for including this really. I’ve always liked the dynamic between Superman and Batman, even when it’s one-sided (like in Dark Knight Returns), based on admiration (like in Morrison’s run on JLA) or about mutual support (like in some issues of the World’s Finest maxiseries).

So, when I happened upon this cover from Final Crisis, I really liked it. Superman has saved the multiverse, defeated enemies that exist beyond mortal conception and smashed his way back to save his world… too late… and his friend is dead.

Batman, Testicles or Death? What should I blog about

The Machinist

… Odd film, or I had an odd reaction to it rather. Great cast, very well directed, edited, etc. Good production overall. But the plot (especially the hamfisted twist-in-the-tale ending) was derivative and plodding. It would have made quite a good half hour tv show as part of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits or similar. But it just didn’t have the ‘meat’ to stand up as a feature lenght. Christian Bale obviously went through tremendous physical suffering to make this film, which I think is a shame, as his efforts would have been better spent elsewhere.