Expanded Guide to Cosmic Horror Script

M.A.N.C. - When is a Fridging Not A Fridging?

Or the balance between a character's death being an example of them being "shoved in a refrigerator", and the death making sense within the narrative and context of the story.

Contains spoilers for the most recent issue of Batman Inc. (#8), and Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, so be warned.

How I'd Do It: the Batman Film Reboot

With the Justice League film not uncertain, what with Warner Bros throwing out the most recent script in addition to the previously mentioned thing of how they won't approve it if Man of Steel doesn't do well, it now seems that the post-Nolan Batman reboot might be off the table for the time being. As in they might not make it until 2019 kind of off the table.

The question then rises as to how a post-Nolan Batman film would be made? Would it try to recapture the style of the billion dollar grossing Dark Knight Trilogy, or will it attempt something a bit more "toyetic" like the change in style from the Tim Burton Batman films to the Joel Schumacher ones?

The Move from Magic to the Mundane in the Avatarverse

Police Corruption in Gotham City

From 2000 to roughly 2009, it was something of a golden age for me in regards to the kinds of stories in the Batman universe that were being published. There were the Cassandra Cain Batgirl stories, obviously, but with Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker and the like at the helm of the Bat Books, Gotham really began to shape itself up into being like an actual city, rather than being merely the backdrop where Batman punches bad guys. Stuff happened in the background when the superheroes and villains weren't present, and one of the best series in this regard was Rucka and Brubaker's Gotham Central.

If I Wrote for DC: How I'd Do the Dick Grayson TV Show

So the new DC Comics-based show 'Arrow' is approaching us quickly, it got me thinking of the show that Warner Bros. was initially going to make before canning it even in the pre-planning stages. This one was a show based on the teenage years of Dick Grayson, "DJ" in the show, called 'the Graysons'. Needless to say, the amount of ire directed towards 'Smallville' naturally caused something of a lack of goodwill towards even the every idea of a similar show centred on the Batverse, but really, I think that it could have had a lot of potential for a number of reasons...

The Justice League Movie: How I'd do it.

With the Avengers movie having just been knocked off the top of the US Box Office after several weeks and several million in ticket sales, the creators have shown that it is in fact possible to both make an ensemble superhero movie and to make it actually WORK. But, over in Warner Bros, they've been having a bit of trouble getting a film of their own property, DC Comics' Justice League, off of the ground for some years now. Partly this is due to studio interference, partly this is due to the creators raising issues in regards to loyalty, and partly it's due to just a simple clash of personalities between the guys producing the different franchises.

But, using the Avengers as an example, how might a Justice League film actually work? Providing they had a decent budget, good production team, writers and actors, as well as unlimited access to DC's library of characters?

Well I decided to write up a rough pitch as to how I'd make a Justice League film,  using the Avengers as an example and numerous pieces of DC history as background. It's kind of a stream of consciousness, but I hope that people find it interesting...

Four Cartoons With Very Odd Aesops

When it comes to animation, it's a frequent tool by the creators to get some kind of message across, be it one from the actual creators, like the Simpsons episode 'Lisa the Vegetarian', or one thrust upon the creators by someone "higher in the creative process", like the Kim Possible episode 'Grande Size Me' which was intended to be both a parody of the documentary Super Size Me while preaching about healthy diets at the same time.

But sometimes the moral of the story just comes across as either kind of bizarre or just out of place for the series it's in. Sometimes the moral is mishandled or unintended, or just plain unintentionally offensive. I've picked out four examples of these kinds of Aesops to poke fun at them, and to show how sometimes the lesson you're teaching people can be kind of distorted by how it's taught.

Spoilers!

Similar, Yet Different: The Three Moriartys

With the recent Guy Richie Sherlock Holmes sequel, 'a Game of Shadows', and last Sunday's conclusion of Stephen Moffat's second series of 'Sherlock', I was struck by a number of things I thought were interesting. Namely, the ways that they portrayed Sherlock Holmes' archenemy: James Moriarty.

Now, the original one from the books was interesting in his own right: a celebrated mathematician and author of an early book on astrophysics who, at the same time, controlled all crime within the city of London. Every pickpocket, burglar, blackmailer or armed robber in town made sure that they gave the Professor a cut of their loot, in exchange for support setting up their capers as well as money for additional expenses if required.

Now both big and small screen incarnations of the character bear similarities to both each other, and their original source material, but how much so?

Here I cover the similarities and differences between the characters, and see whether sticking to source material effects the portrayal in a postive or negative manner. Is being original better than being being faithful to the books.

Now this contains spoilers for both Guy Richie movies as well as seasons one and two of Sherlock, so beware all ye who enter here. And, just to say, this is kind of my opinion, but if you have a different one, please let me know. Discussions are interesting.

Avatar: the Promise - Recap and Review

19 Out of 80 Pages: Spoilers

EspanolBot's Opinionated Bests and Worst in Comics of 2011

Due to moving house, I unfortunately have been unable to make any Casstoons to cover this, so here is a prose semi-list of things I thought were good and bad about comics (mainly DC) that happened in the year 2011.

If I Wrote Actual Comics: the Bad Samaritan Comes to Gotham

One of the things that I've always liked about superhero comics is the wide range of characters that, though obscure, could change the playing field if used in the correct manner. An example of this in recent comics could be the current Madame Xanadu binge that DC is currently undergoing at the moment, what with her appearing in two main books at the moment, Demon Knights and Justice League Dark, as well as numerous appearances in things like the Batman: the Brave and the Bold tie-in comic.

So I as I was musing about storylines for Casstoons, I wondered if there was a way to incorperate the character of the Bad Samaritan, a character from the first series of the Outsiders way back in 1986 who later made another appearance in Checkmate a lot more recently, into the current continuity?

Well, I thought of a story concept that I thought might be interesting to explore or possibly write out in full later on if I have the time which involves the Samaritan, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain and other members of their respective casts.

It's still kind of vague, but the basic idea is behind the cut.

If I Wrote Actual Comics: Arkham Asylum, Brought to you by Batman Inc.

I was pondering as to what things could be made into comics, and I came up with an idea for a new twist for the Batman comics.

Basically the premise is, that with the launch of Batman Inc. Bruce decides to use to not just crime fight in a detection capacity, he's going to keep an eye on them once they're in the system as well.

He'll do this by buying Arkham, and rather than donating money to guards and directors who half the time are to corrupt or inept that they can't do their jobs correctly, he'll use his resources to monitor his enemies while they're in their cells, keep them correctly restrained, or actually getting them proper treatment so their conditions can be improved or at least not made any worse.

They could get the Grant Morrison rejigged version of Mr Miracle in to make things modernised and harder to escape from, as the place a lot of the time seems to not have been updated internally since the 1800s or early 1900s. Norman had actually done a similar thing to a supervillain prison in California prior to Seven Soldiers, which was actually referenced in-story.

With Arkham, and possibly the conventional prisons like Blackgate, under Batman's control, he'll be able to respond to escapes faster (they have to happen because of plot, just not as much) and the rogues can be made formidable by them having to up their game in order to escape from the now superadvanced facility. Plus, there'd be more at stake for Batman personally if the Joker was to escape for the umpteenth time, as Batman'd be more directly responsible for the Joker's actions, instead of the bumbling guards or cops.

There would then be the sequels and things that you could get into along the line, as the threats are escalated. For example, it's already canon that Bruce Wayne has put large spacestations in orbit that functioned as the JLA satellites. Why not adapt the concept to a supermax jail that is also a spacestation, which could only be accessed by shuttle or by the JLA's teleportation beams? Maybe the sppacestation branch of Arkham could be for the repeat escapees, like the Joker, Two-Face etc.?

By making Arkham actually difficult to break out of, it would make criminals such as the Joker more threatening, as they'd have to go back to the evil genius aspect of the character, as opposed to him just being really, really stabby. Also, the writers would have to think up more inventive ways for the villains to escape, as opposed to them escaping offscreen by going all Shawshank when no one was looking or something.

That's an idea anyways.

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