First Look At DKR's Bane's Costume

From here

Movies I've Seen: Captain America

So, I watched the new Marvel movie, Captain America, and colour me suprised, it actually turned out to be really, really good.

For those who somehow don't know, the film is based on the iconic comicbook character created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, not Stan Lee as his cameo in the movie implies, who is a regular, albeit small, guy who is given a suepr soldier serum in order to give him the chance to fight Nazis and, later, their better equipt replacements Hydra.

Going into the movie, I was at most cautiously optimistic. Chris Evans, the actor playing the main character, Steve Rogers, hadn't really filled me with confidence in his last Marvel superhero outing as the Human Torch back in the Fantastic Four movies, and I was worried we might be in for a modernised and edgy take on the character.

And, to my shock, Evans actually does a really, really good job. His Captain America manages to come across as sincere, eager to help and heroic, without becoming detached like some depictions of Superman or overly jingoistic, as was the risk in a movie like this.

Really, all of the cast in this movie do a really good job with what they're given. Hugo Weaving does his standard good turn as the villain, the Red Skull, even though he isn't really given that much to do for the most part. Hayley Atwell, as Steve's love interest British Army Major Peggy Carter (not an anachronism, suprisingly) does a good job as the main leading lady, though it was kind of bemusing that she was really ONLY main female cast member. Tommy Lee Jones stands out as Colonel Philips, on his sarcastic and hilarious best.

And these are just a few of the people in this movie.

I know that a lot of people has complained about how the shift of the main villains of the movie from the Nazis to Hydra, which is kind of explained in-movie, but I think that by about the first quarter, I think that you could safely put the movie in the alternative history segment of period dramas.

This isn't our world's version of World War Two, it's the comicbook universe's version of it. It might start with the SS and references to Hitler, but as soon as the Red Skull gets the resources to build all of the wacky weaponry that the Nazis lacked due to them not having the time, power etc. to build we go into a whole weird area.

But at the same time, the movie seems to include a lot of details about the War that seem to be left out of other movies. About how Japanese American soldiers fought in the European Theatre, for example, the aforementioned female British army majors, or the fact that the friggin' Blitz happened! Sure, some things could argueably have been changed for political correctness purposes, but they could be covered within the movie's internal logic for the most part.

For example, the team that Steve creates for secret missions includes a British paratrooper, an African American soldier, a Japanese American soldier and a Free Frenchman. This movie taking place when the army was still segregated means that two of these guys normally wouldn't be allowed to joint he group, but it being a request by Cap probably got that ugly bit of legislation bypassed.

Anyhoo, this was a fun, well put together movie, and I urge people to go and see it.

Cringeworthy Comicbook Moments!

A couple of Comicbook Moments that make you cringe, because they're disturbing, sexist and generally haven't aged well!

Firstly, Josie and the Pussycat's Melody Valentine being not just a racist, but one that makes horrible puns at the same time!

Artemis: Feminist heroine of compassioness!

Kevin Smith ruining Batman: Year One for everyone,

The team-up we've all been waiting for! RacistWolverine and Emma Frost's horribly drawn boobs!

Bomb Queen's plot to keep Obama out of her hair revealled!

Stealing Barack's sperm from a donation place he visited in college, so she robbed the place to keep him from sending superheroes after her, those who want context.

From Final Crisis, ...the Gods of Evil are gross.

Flashpoint's Zatanna costume... why does she bother even WEARING those trousers? Seriously.

Roy Harper's grief induced erection disfunction!

And finally... Every. Single. Thing. In. This. Comic.

Walking Dead Season 2 Trailer

Enjoyed the first season, and definately benefited from not following the plot of the original too closely. If they had done that it would have been so depressing that they probably would have lost most of their audience half way through the season.

Anyways, here's the trailer,

DC Announce the Introduction of more Female-Friendly Books!

After the vocal complaints from fans, and even the likes of ComicsAlliance, DC have decided to includea wider range of comicbooks aimed at women in the reboot. They have said that they are going to be bring back some previously shelved series, though which ones those will be remains to be seen.

And it's all, or in the very least partially, down to the one Batgirl cosplayer and companion of female creators and characters in comics Kryrax2! Give her a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen!

News from here,
At Bleedingcool.com

And DC's official statement on their increased numbers of women friendly books,
At their blog, The Source

CT: Reaction to DC's ComiCon Panels, And an Interesting Essay on Didio's Comments There

And here is an interesting essay over at ComicAlliance about Dan Didio's response to someone asking him,

"Why did you go from 12% in women [creators] to 1% on your creative teams?"

Leading to him saying, in an apparently overly aggressive way,

"What do those numbers mean to you? What do they mean to you? Who should we be hiring? Tell me right now. Who should we be hiring right now? Tell me.

Essay found here,
Link Text

Awesome Disney Cosplay

From Here

Preview of Bruce Timm's new Green Lantern Series

To be honest I was somewhat sceptical when I first saw the footage for the new GL series, thinking that it looked like those Batman games for the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 2.

But in time it seems to have grown on me. Admittedly, it doesn't seem to be as fluid as Bruce Timm's 2D stuff, but it has a kind of semi-Incredibles feel to the animation albeit on seemingly a lower budget.

Will await this series with interest.

If you are interested in Bruce Timm and Co's previous outtings with Hal Jordan, you could click on the Amazon links below. Personally, I recommend Crisis on Two Earths first, even though it doesn't feature Hal prominently. It has a stellar cast, including James Woods as the main villain, Owlman, and contains enough cameoes to keep the average DC fan happy.

Then I'd recommend First Flight, as it makes Hal a lot more interesting than the current comicbook incarnation, as well as redesigning the costumes in numerous neat ways. Also, it has Michael Madsen as Kilowog!

The newest one, Emerald Knights, I haven't had the opportunity to see yet, unfortunately, but when I do I'll be sure to review it.

Knights of Badassdom Trailer

Here's the slightly NSFW trailer for the upcoming fantasy comedy, where some LARPers accidentally raise a real demon whilst in the midst of their game. Looks like it might be good, though it still has the possiblity of being utterly terrible. Better than that one that said that LARPers would go crazy at the drop of a hate and start murderin' folk, like in that movie, the Wild Hunt.

Red vs. Blue Season 9 - episode 6

Legend of Korra: Concept Art and Screenshots

A Promo Picture for the Second Half of Doctor Who Series Six

Intruders Trailer

Doctor Who Season 6.5 Trailer

SDCC '11: Legend of Korra Trailer and News!

First off, the trailer,


Secondly here is some news about the show, cribbed from various sources such as this one,
http://avatarthelastairbenderonline.com/airbender-legend-korra-panel-news/

Republic City is now called "United Republic", founded by Aang and Zuko.

The firebender in the poster is Mako, the earthbender is Bolin. Mako and Bolin are brothers. Mako is the brooding one (not as as much as Zuko), Bolin is the younger, goofier brother. He's kind of naive. Paboo, the red panda black footed ferret will be Bolins buddy, and is known as a fire ferret in the series. There's a new species of Lemur, won't see much in first 12 but play bigger role in second 14.

The polar bear dog is named Naga. And it's a girl!

Aang finds a herd of sky bison after the war!

Tenzin is very serious, but when his kids are crazy, he can be really funny, tries to be the "zen master" but loses his patience sometimes. His wife is Pema. He also has three kids (like his father) one of whom is named Meelo. One is Jinora, bookworm, oldest of Tenzins kids. Last is Iki talks a mile a minute and is really fun and crazy. All are Airbenders, but Pema is not.

The Big Bad, possibly called Amon, though it was hard to hear apparently. He runs an anti-bender group called the Equalists.

These are his henchmen.

Either Avon or Oman is the name of the masked man. His disciples are called Chi Blockers, who learned from either Ty Lee or students of Ty Lee.

The city's chief of police... Toph's daughter!!!

THE COPS ARE METAL BENDERS. TOPH BECAME A WORLD TRAVELING TEACHER. TOPHS DAUGHTER IS CHIEF OF POLICE, no idea who the father is. They have spools on their back that release and contract metal cables so they can zip around the city.

There are also the arena fights that may or not be legal that have two teams of three benders (one of each non-genocided kind) fight against each other. For the arena fights they're bringing in mixed martial arts styles for pro bending, brought in professional fighter, influenced from "tricking" flashy martial art styles.

The music is supposed to be like if Chinese invented jazz.

Mega-excited about this. Loved the animation, the concepts involved, and both the heroine and the villain.

We'll see how this pans out. ^^

SDCC '11: Legend of Korra Posters

Cool, Korra's got an Appa all of her own!

"Still Alive" - The Theme Song from Mirror's Edge

Here's a good song from a good game. Enjoy.

The Amazing Spider-Man Trailer

Not really that Amazing to be honest. And why do they seem to be giving it a weird Twilight slant for some reason? Also, the end of the trailer copies Mirror's Edge.

Atop the Fourth Wall: Rise of Arsenal 3 and 4

Red vs. Blue Season 9 - episode 5

The Dark Knight Rises Trailer

Ultimate Wonder Woman

A while ago, I posted some of Wizard Magazine's reimaginings of the DCU cast if they were redesigned in the style of the Ultimate Marvel Universe.

One of the designs as kind of obscured in the pictures, namely Wonder Woman, and some nice people have forward on a larger, individual picture of the superheroine.

So here she is!

Stitched Trailer

A trailer for Garth Ennis, one of my favourite comicbook writer's, new short film, 'Stitched',

Inside the DC Writer's Meeting that Killed off Stephanie Brown

AWRF2011: Graphic Novels, Comics and Cartoons from Auckland Writers & Readers Fest on Vimeo.

The transcription of what Dylan Horrocks, writer of Cass' Batgirl series at the time, had to say about the experience,

" It was one of the most depressing weeks of my life, because we basically spent the whole week in this horrible office planning how to kill this poor teenage girl who I really liked, I thought she was a great character and she was one of the few friends that my character had, and I tell you the whole thing about her being Robin, was simply a trick.

The whole way through it was planned purely as a trick to play on the readers, that we would fool them into thinking that the big event was that Stephanie Brown would become Robin but we knew all along it was a temporary thing, and she was then going to die at the end of this crossover story.

It was really seedy, and I think about two days into it, I basically said look, I don’t want… because they planned this big long torture scene, I said I don’t want to really have anything to do with that. And there was another scene which was… I was Pilate, I was Pontius Pilate, I don’t want any of that in Batgirl, in effect what I did is I wrote my comic out of the key events in the story, cos I said I didn’t want to have anything to do with the big shoot out at the high school scene, so it was a really strange experience, for me that was the most depressing…

So when there was that big online debate about Stephanie Brown’s death I felt kind of really pleased and vindicated, and the other person who I think was probably happy about that but I don’t think she’s ever said so in interviews was Devin Grayson who was writing Nightwing at the time… she raised several issues during this meeting, she was one of the other writers in the meeting who said how come we’re always killing off the girls, and also how come we’re killing off the ethnic characters,[Karen mentions Orpheus], there was a lot of debate in that meeting, well ultimately it all came down to this is what we’re going to do. The editors I was working with were nice people,…[INTERRUPTION] no they weren’t all white, they weren’t all straight…[Karen asks if they were all men] yes, they were all men, but the writers weren’t all men, but I think the thing is the industry is much more diverse and much more liberal and much more politically liberal than the comics necessarily imply, but there are these kind of commercial expectations on where the stories are going to go and we do get these directives from the head editorial office, the tone of the whole industry has dug itself into a hole, and it means that really decent people who would love to be good stories end up writing these whole…"

Found here,
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/07/15/%E2%80%9Csome-kind-of-gang-war-in-gotham%E2%80%9D-and-%E2%80%9Cspoiler-was-gonna-die%E2%80%9D/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BleedingCool+%28Bleeding+Cool+Comic+News+%26+Rumors%29&utm_content=Twitter

Nostalgia Chick: Grease 2

'Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists!' Poster and Trailer

The new movie from the creators of Wallace and Gromit,

Trailer-pa-looza!

The Howling remakey thing, where they've made it into a tg version of Twilight. Woo.


The Thing prequel, confusingly called the Thing, which I think actually looks good,


And the trailer for the John Carter of Mars movie, which I'm sure will draw Avatar comparisions because people are dumb and don't know which came first.

Marvel/DC Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parody

How 300 Should Have Ended

BleedingCool.com Trailer For Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

Dark Knight Rises Poster Up, and so's the teaser...

Firstly, the poster,

Secondly the teaser, I'm not going to link it until the official one comes out, which should be during the weekend I'd imagine, but I will give a brief recap.

It had Liam Neeson giving a repeat of the speech he gave about fear from the first movie, as clips from Batman Begins and the Dark Knight play. Then it alternates between shots of Commissioner Gordon in a hospital bed, cropped images of Bane's face and shots of Gotham disintegrating to make the above skyline bat symbol. Gordon talks to Batman, who is offscreen, about evil though the words are hard to make out, and it then ends with a brief clip of Bane looming over Batman as he strides towards him.

Overall it was atmospheric, and I'm really looking forward to seeing one of better quality.

OH! And those viral videos I posted a while back WERE real! HAHA! Validation!

Interesting Discussion Over the New Starfire Costume

Link here,
http://fanboywatchtower.tumblr.com/post/7541693323/the-princess-new-clothes-my-take-on-starfires-new

Cover for Red Hood and the Outlaws 2

What Red vs. Blue's Caboose got up to in the break between the current season and the last one

Cute Cartoon based on Greek Myths

Well made, though it may be a little NSFW,

Mytho Logique (ESMA, 2010) from Gom Poitel on Vimeo.

The Shade Finally Gets His Mini Series

THE SHADE #1

Written by JAMES ROBINSON
Art by CULLY HAMNER
Cover by TONY HARRIS
1:10 Variant cover by CULLY HAMNER
On sale OCTOBER 12 * 1 of 12, 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US * RATED T+
Retailers: This issue will ship with two covers. See the Previews order form for more information.
James Robinson returns to the world of his acclaimed STARMAN series with a new 12-issue series starring the antihero known as The Shade! An attack at the Starman museum kicks off a globe-hopping, centuries spanning quest that will irrevocably change The Shade's life, and ultimately shed light on his true origin! Artist extraordinaire Cully Hamner (RED) kicks off the series, and upcoming issues will feature art by such luminaries as Darwyn Cooke, Javier Pulido, Jill Thompson, Frazer Irving and Gene Ha!

Dear God, I've been waiting for this comic for literally YEARS.

The Shade is a Golden Age Flash supervillain who has control over shadow, manipulating them like a be-tophatted negative Green Lantern. He was given an extensive revision by James Robinson during his excellent Starman series, in which the Shade went from being a kind flat, old fashioned supercriminal to being an ally and friend of the lead character, Jack Knight, and eventually becoming the main hero in their town, Opal City.

He's appeared a couple of times since, in Green Arrow and in the woeful Cry for Justice series, for example, but him being written by the guy who brought him to the fore without the distractions of other people's stories getting in the way is really something I've been looking forward to.

Can't wait.

Batgirl 2 Solicit

BATGIRL #2

Written by GAIL SIMONE
Art by ARDIAN SYAF and VICENTE CIFUENTES
Cover by ADAM HUGHES
On sale OCTOBER 12 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The nightmare-inducing brute known as Mirror is destroying the lives of Gotham City citizens seemingly at random, and an explosive confrontation between Batgirl and Mirror leads Babs to question wearing the cape and cowl at all!
The riveting adventures of Batgirl continue in stunning fashion, with script by fan-favorite Gail Simone and stellar art by superstar Ardian Syaf!

Nice cover, and the story is interesting. Gail Simone does make and write very good villains.

Outside Aperture

Atop the Fourth Wall: Rise of Arsenal 1 and 2

Batman: Arkham City - RIDDLER TRAILER

BioShock Infinite E3 2011 Gameplay Demo

Terry Pratchett's 'Snuff'

WANT!

According to the writer of the best selling crime novel ever to have been published in the city of Ankh-Morpork, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse.

And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe, but many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder.

He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, occasionally snookered and occasionally out of his mind, but not out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment.

They say that in the end all sins are forgiven.

But not quite all…

Publication: 13th October 2011

Batman: Year One Trailer

Get More: Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

Gail Simone On Cass Cain and Steph

By Marcus To

"Right.

Well, I have never talked about this specifically, but...I feel like I owe Cass. First, I didn't warm up to her character immediately. I'd been asked to write her in a Bop issue but hadn't read her series, and the reference they sent me wasn't great (it was not an issue of her regular book, and she was written out of character). So I used her and I did not write her well. Later, I picked up her own series and HOLY SHIT IT WAS SO GOOD that I felt TERRIBLE that I didn't write THIS Cass.

I still think those earlier Cass issues were just fantastic comics. I feel, and I think editorial does as well, that even though it was a cool evolution as she became a bit more mainstream, that something kind of awesome was lost, as well. I thought those first issues just kicked ass. I loved the later stuff as well and I was happy for her triumphs, but that outsider Batgirl just really spoke to me.

Later, when the book was losing sales they asked me to think of ideas for it, and I tried to come up with something that kept her history and made her an outsider again, for a while. That was the ANGEL OF THE BAT pitch a lot of people have seen.

Anyway, it's always grinded me that I didn't get her right. I take this shit seriously, I respect characters' history and the hard work of other writers and I'd gotten it wrong and it's always bugged me even this many years later.

Anyway, I became SUCH a Cass fan that it was ridiculous. I wasn't a fan of Steph because I just didn't care for her costume or name, I didn't really give her a chance (I'm talking about when she was Spoiler). Then I read the story where she was killed (I'd missed her as Robin), so I didn't really see the good stuff and the killing story was horrible, I hated it. So I wasn't really giving Steph a fair shot.

Later, when she became Batgirl, I was a little ticked off as both a reader AND a writer. People were asking, why is this incredibly cool Asian Batgirl whose book still sold well being replaced by a white blonde girl? I didn't get that, and it bothered me. Enough so that when the book was offered to me, I turned it down. I didn't think Steph had enough juice as a character to be Batgirl, AND I thought it was a betrayal of Cass and Cass fans.

I'm not saying any of this is right, mind you, it's just the stuff that was in my head.

But then Bryan Q. Miller took the book, and he totally overcame my grumpy stubbornness about Steph. He made me a Steph fan almost single-handedly, and now I love her. That is the power of a great writer. I've said it a million times, but me turning down Batgirl at the time was the best thing that could ever have happened to Steph, because Bryan ran with that ball so beautifully. It is NUTS that he's not writing one of the relaunch books yet. I just don't get that at all. He should be doing a high profile gig immediately.

Anyway, Bryan on Batgirl is both a reason why I SHOULD and why I SHOULDN'T take the book. One, big shoes to fill, and I loved his book, and I felt really bad he wasn't going to be doing the relaunch. We've talked about it, he's been incredibly gracious, but it definitely stung.

The other factor was, he also proved that someone new could be in the suit and write it so people would love her. I mean, his run is as pure an example of making a tough situation into a polished gem as you are likely to find.

By the way, I still think it's a fair question, why DID they replace Cass with Steph? The fact that the book is great doesn't change the fact that it was a successful Asian female lead, replaced by a white blonde girl with no proven sales record.

Anyway, I feel I owe both characters, really. I tried to use Cass many times, my editor of BOP and I had an evil sneaky plan to get her in as a BOP, make her visible and viable again, and then get her her own series back. We had approval, and then we DIDN'T have approval. It happens, it sucks, but it happens.

Like I say, it's not a Cass/Steph team-up book. But it relates heavily to this thread and will make a lot of people very happy, if it happens. It's always dangerous to talk about this stuff so early but I should know for sure by SDCC and hopefully will have something to announce very soon after. "

From here,

Batgirl 2 Cover

Catwoman Short to be included with Batman: Year One Movie

Joining ranks along with the Spectre, Jonah Hex, and Green Arrow, Catwoman'll be getting a 15 minute cartoon to accompany the main movie on the DVD.

The synopsis,

In Catwoman, the femme fatale tangles with crime boss Rough Cut (a brand-new character created for this short, voiced by Futurama‘s John DiMaggio) in a breathless and brutal 15-minute chase through Gotham City tracking down a mysterious cargo shipment.

http://www.themarysue.com/batman-year-one-catwoman/

Yet Another Cameron Stewart Catwoman Picture

Abandoned Legend of Korra Picture and Strip Script

Panel from an abandoned Legend of Korra strip I was doing, but left off when I couldn't get the character designs right. I will include the script though.

Korra is walking down a street in Republic City, various posters are on the wall, advertising various businesses and political groups.

As she is eating a Fire Nation-flavoured candybar called Flameos, she notices someone calling her from behind.

Merchant: Hey, are you the Avatar?
Korra: Well, one of them. Who are you friend, you look kind of familiar?

Merchant: The name is Choy! I come from a long line of produce merchants, but I decided to make a break from tradition and get into a new line of work.
Korra: Oh?

Choy: MERCHANDISE!
He unveils his handcart, which is stuff with items like an old looking sword and boomerang, a clown mask, a blindfold etc.

Choy: Each one of my stock is a GENUINE relic from your preincarnation's adventures. Each 100% authentic!
Korra: Huh, cool. What's that sword?

Choy hands it to her
Choy: Ahhh, the Legendary Black Spacesword of Grand Master Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe! He forged it from metal that fell from the Heavens and can cut through anything! He lost it in the final battle with the Fire Lord Ozai's forces, but was given to me by some wandering historians who were excavating the battlefield!
Korra: Can I see?

She looks at it, while Choy continues to waffle
Choy: ...priceless... antique... part of your heritage... etc. etc.

She runs her fingers along the blade, and then holds them up angrily!
Korra: Hey, this sword isn't the spacesword! You're a fraud!
Choy: Yes it is, look at the blade, all good and black!
Korra: It rubs off!

Choy: Well... it IS old, maybe spacesword so that when they get older?
Korra: Grrr...
Choy: You're not buying this are you?

Korra: No.
Choy: *Sighs* Look, tell you what...

Cut to Korra, her arms laden with the sword and the rest of Choy's crap
Tenzin: ...Why did you spend all your money on that stuff again?
Korra: I DON'T KNOW!!!

Why Catwoman's Current Originstory Is Important...

...At least to me.

Catwoman drawing by the excellent Cameron Stewart

Personally I think that it shows how far she's come, as well as demonstrating why Batman was needed in Gotham, how the Wayne's death lead to the overall erosion of the city's policeforce and social services, as well as reflecting on how Selina is Bruce's opposite in a lot of ways.

To expand on this, Selina being born in a poor part of Gotham, while Bruce was born into what is effectively American Royalty.

Both their parents died when they were young, but whilst Bruce's parents were murdered, Selina's parents' deaths were self-inflicted (suicide and booze respectively).

BUT, while Bruce was cushioned somewhat by his family's wealth and the care of his surrogate father figure, Alfred, Selina had no one except her sister, Maggie, and was abruptly stuffed into "the system" by Gotham's social services. This meant that, at least subconciously, while Bruce relies on people to support him either emotionally or as actual help in his crusade, Selina is MASSIVELY independant because there was no one else to back her up when she needed it most.

From 'Catwoman 89'

Bruce was able to train in his skills in order to fufill a mission, while with Selina everything she had to learn she learnt in order to survive. Bruce learned how to hunt people in France, whilst Selina learnt how to steal in order to feed herself.

Similarly, her drift into prostitution was a result of the apathy of Gotham's social structure at the time. When the Waynes were alive with all the charity work that they did the chances are if they lived then Selina and Maggie would have been helped by them, either first or second hand. And after Bruce came back to help the city as both Bruce and as Batman, he also put in place things to keep people from just falling through the cracks like Selina did.

But in the gap between those two events, there was no one avaliable, meaning that Selina and Maggie had to do what they thought that they had to to survive. With Maggie that meant falling upon religion and becoming a nun (both her parents were implictly Catholic, what them being Cuban and Irish respectively), but with Selina her independant streak meant that she wasn't able to accept the support that her sister's path provided, so she had to go her own route... which lead to the aforementioned way of having to steal and sell herself in order to live.

Selina's belief that she had to look after herself, was both her best and worst feature, and argueably in keeping with her favourite animal.

Before the advent of Batman, the idea that she could just dress in a costume and attack all those that kept her down never seemed to occur to her. She had stolen from gangsters before, but she knew that the risks outweighed the rewards for the most part. She had the skills, learnt from the Fagin-figure that ran a gang of child pickpockets that she ran with when she was young, and from the armed robber Stark when she was in her teens, but she didn't have the inspiration yet to set it into motion.

Her seeing Bruce take out the SWAT team etc. was what made her realise that, yes, one person COULD go up against the mob! One person could go up against the police! One person didn't have to put up with their crap any more!

This acted as the catalyst, no pun intended, to make her put the things she had learned into use, climbing out of the gutter (bringing her friend Holly Robinson along for the ride), and through shear hardwork, determination and grit she made herself someone who could could move in the same social circles as Bruce without looking out of place.

THAT is inspiring! But... again the independant streak rose up again, and the tole of what she had to do in order to get to become Selina Kyle, multimillionairess and international woman of mystery, caused her to get a massive chip on her shoulder and something of an entitlement complex.

She no longer had to steal to survive anymore, she did it for her amusement, or because she felt that she deserved it more that the original owners did. Selina wasn't a bad person... at least, not entirely, but just as Bruce has/had his amount of baggage, so did she. This drive to do what was best for her, in turn lead to her making a lot of bad decisions and selfish choice, such as dumping Holly like a sack of potatoes, resulting in Miss Robinson ending up back on the game and developing a heroin addiction.

Eventually, coming up to the Brubaker era, Selina had undergone something of a identity crisis, wondering just how much of the front she put up as Catwoman as her and how much was actually Selina? So she travelled back to Gotham, and found that things in her old neighbourhood still sucked, and that children were having to deal with the same garbage that she had, but without the intelligence, opportunities and determination to work their way out of there.

So she decided to use her skills to help out the people of the East End, and make the place somewhere where an orphan wouldn't be forced to steal and prostitute themselves in order to do something as simple as get food.

Selina by this point had grown emotionally, to the point where she was now mentally and emotionally an adult, loosing the idea that "society owes me!" that caused her initially villainous behaviour.

Personally I think that this journey has a lot more emotional punch to it than the "she's a rich person who steal for fun" versions that are waved around occasionally.

I do admit that the prostitution angle isn't absolutely necessary to the character, and in the hands of a bad writer it could be used in an exploitative manner (like with the women in Frank Miller's Sin City, for example), but if handled correctly it won't take away from the character either. This isn't to say that Miller isn't a good writer... most of the time, in fact her was the one who laid the groundwork for Selina's current version, but in some of his latter work it seemed that a lot of characters were depicted as being involved in prostitution in a way that seemed unrealistic and an amateurish attempt at being edgy.

An example of another DC character having a similar backstory to Selina's current one would be the current Speedy, Mia Dearsden. After she ran away from home after her dad was abusing her, she ended up on the streets, falling victim to drug addiction and becoming a prostitute herself. She also was inspired by the appearence of a superhero, in her case the mysteriously resurrected Oliver Queen aka the Green Arrow, to break from her life, and make her life better.

The difference between the characters may be that while a huge part of Selina's personality is her attempt, at first, to distance herself from her past, Mia was pretty much stuck with it. Both in the terms that the writers brought it up every twenty minutes, and that Speedy had to deal with the long term effects of being forced into that situation via her contracting HIV, and even in this case that bit of character development appeared to be there to have Mia provide a PSA while Ollie acted as if it was a personal slight against him. But that's a topic for another time.

Anyways, that's all I have to say about the subject at the moment. I'm sure smarter people than myself can find flaws in my judgement, but there it is.

I'm a sucker for characters that have to work to achieve their happy ending, which may be where my dislike of the Jeph Loeb reboot of Supergirl comes from, but, as I said above, that's a subject for another time...

Torchwood: Miracle Day Clips

With the new Torchwood miniseries just around the corner, here are some clips,

Red vs. Blue Season 9 - episode 4

Red vs. Blue Season 9 Started Without Me!

Hrrmph, hrrmph I say!

Here are the first three episodes.

Little Mermaid recut with the audio from Transformers 3

...the result is weirdly badass.

That Guy With the Glasses: Suburban Knights - Part 7

Casstoons: Gates of Gotham 2 pt 2

CT: Gates of Gotham 2 pt 2 by *EspanolBot on deviantART

That Guy With the Glasses: Suburban Knights - Part 6

That Guy With the Glasses: Suburban Knights - Part 4 and 5

Batman Arkham City Catwoman Gameplay