You've probably seen the recent single issue reprints with an included figure, but have you come across the older-style figures of Batman, Superman, and Darkseid... and the appropriate Batwing and Supermobile vehicles? Check Walmart and maybe Target.

Saw Black Adam.

Best way I can try to describe it (up to a point): Ultraman Orb Meets Star Trek: Deep Space Nine!

I won't explain that unless someone asks cause I might run the risk of spoiling it.

I also see a small but less-than-subtle inkling towards a barely-remembered-but-still-infamous story arc from the '90s, though that's just a personal take and it could easily be a bad take.

Some choices feel weird or flat or ill-timed given the tenor of the times themselves. Still has plenty of fun moments.

That Moment had no impact for me! Just sayin'.

This description just sold me a movie better than Rock and all the trailers! Thank you.
In general, speaking of DC, while everyone is discussing who is the best Superman / Batman, I'm sadly waiting for the Question to appear at least somewhere.

With DC's Titans on Series IV in Mertropolis City is there a chance a variant of Lex Luthor and his dad would turn up in the Titans timeline out of curiosity? Also what others might turn up? The new episodes start this month on HBO Max.

Also I wondering if Titans and Supergirl from CW might be seperate dimensions maybe as well.

Crisis on Infinite Earth's made it clear that Supergirl is now on the same Earth as the other Arrowverse shows while Arrowverse adjacent shows, like Titans, Stargirl amd Doom Patrol, each have they're own Earth

Is Smallville from CW part of the Arrowverse? I did see that so I was curious.

No. Smallville is part of the multiverse featured in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but basically every show and movie based on DC comics is related to the Arrowverse on this level. But Smallville can in many ways be considered the father of the Arrowverse, as many of the tropes and approach to filming a superhero show were taken from it.

One of the defining voices of Batman, Kevin Conroy, has passed away! He was 66.

https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/...or-dies-at-66/

RIP Kevin Conroy. Such an amazing voice actor and kind human being.

Sad.

Currently watching the Bat Man and Superman movie lines on DVD.

Need to see Batman / TMNT soon.

Superman VI Man Of Steel is the next one I need with Man Of Steel 2 coming.

Very fun and cool movie. Mutated Gotham villains, Batman vs Shredder, Donnie and Batgirl... just a super crossover.

DC Movies 24 Film Set

Super Man I
Super Man II
Super Man III
Super Man IV
Super Girl
Bat Man
Bat Man Returns
Bat Man Forever
Bat Man And Robin
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight Rises
The Watchmen
The Green Lantern
Man of Steel
Bat Man Vs Super Man
Suicide Squad
Wonder Woman
Justice League
Aquaman
Joker
Shazam
Harley Quinn - Birds Of Prey

I own Wonder Woman 1984 which is the 2nd Wonder Woman movie. January to get the DC set.

Man this looks good. I have high hopes for this one and it actually seems like they delivered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS3_72Gb-bI

It's looking to be a perfect way of bringing my boy Jaime to the big screen with the exact look people were hoping for as seen since the suit leaked on twitter last year. I'm so fucking excited for this, I've waited years and I'm begging for this to be as good as it looks

And I wonder if they will ever remember Dan Garrett? It is clear that Ted Kord will be mentioned at least at the level of references, but still the story of the Blue Beetle began with Garrett.

You can see Dan's costume alongside Ted's in one of the shots actually!

DC's films outside the second SS movie haven't done much for me. The trailer looks cool, but it could end up being another let down. I didn't bother to watch Black Adam because the idea of Black Adam not being evil seems dumb to me.

That's fair, I have faith this will be good though as the suit looks great, it fits the comics version of the character and is so visually distinct from most stuff we get I feel with Jaime's power set

Honestly, I do not understand the love for the second SS. The film is too long, the action is average at best (Harley's battle with the guards is generally a repetition of her battle at the police station in Birds of Prey, even with the same stuntmen), I don't remember any funny jokes. King Shark appeared so little, as if he was paid by the second. Bloodsport, Peacekeeper and Flagg are essentially the same character type. The movie didn't even break its budget at the box office. The only positive is that it's better than the first movie, but that's a very low bar and doesn't make it a good movie. Both cartoons about SS are much better both as stories and in conveying the essence of the squad. So it seems to me that all the love for SS-2 is caused by sympathy for James Gunn.

I just want to watch the Blue Beetle movie because I like Blue Beetle. The trailer shows Blue Beetle doing Blue Beetle stuff so I dig it.

Like, they finally made a movie about a superhero I actually care about, they made the suit look good, they do awesome space-bug-Transformers-Buster Sword-shit while Toku posing, life is good.

That buster sword scene gave me New Den-O vibes. :lolol

A few months ago, legendary creator behind Batman: The Killing Joke and Watchmen Alan Moore said he will no longer accept royalty checks and wants them to be donated.

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/a...er-1235722210/

I know he's been a unique and occasionally controversial figure, but one of his lines on this stood out to me:

"I don't really feel, with the recent films, that they have stood by what I assumed were their original principles."

I'm not sure I follow his interpretation of "original principles".

Oh, I think this is typical old men stuff: the grass was greener back in the day and the Star Wars prequels better than the sequels. Speaking of comics, in the case of Batman, any work about him not created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane is essentially fan fiction. And the fact that some of these fanfictions are well paid and legalized by DC comics does not change this.
Also, as a fan of the Question, I doubt Moore was thinking about "original principles" when coming up with Rorschach. And in general, the entire ?British Comic Invasion? essentially achieved popularity due to its permissiveness and shock factor, so not one of them can be accused of betraying the original by modern screenwriters.

What about Superman or any other DC character?

Admittedly, it did take years for the actual creators to be acknowledged and credited. That is one of Moore's legitimate pecking points.

The same. And about Swamp Thing too. Marvel is a little more complicated due to the specifics of their method. The fact that many later works are significantly better than the original comics does not make them not fan fiction.
It seemed to me that in the above passage Moore was talking specifically about the original characterization of the characters. Either way, he's not the one who should be upset about this.

I'm not sure I agree.

It seems as though your interpretation is that a character made years ago had their truest stories by the original creator.

A couple of years ago, I read an article on Marvel's Miles Morales and a commenter called Miles fan fiction cause Miles isn't Peter and it felt needlessly judgmental.

Each person has a different take and different interpretation of a character. Some interpretations are good and some are bad. It's up to a reader to determine what is and isn't good. I know people who loath Frank Miller Batman, but who have little problem with Live-Action Adam West Batman and Animated Kevin Conroy Batman.

This also feels like it could apply to other franchises. Is any Optimus Prime made after 1984 a fan-fiction Optimus Prime? Is any Ultraman made after UltraSeven without Eiji Tsuburaya Not Ultraman? Is any Kamen Rider made without Shotaro Ishinomori Not Kamen Rider? Is Star Trek without Gene Roddenberry Not Star Trek?

In the World of Fiction, there is fan-fiction as well as fan-canon. What is and is not acceptable depends greatly on one's own interpretation. I myself know that there are many stories not made by the original creators that I like, and many stories not made by the original creators that I don't like and partly because I think the people behind them take too many liberties and made them too complicated by oversimplifying things. Fan-canon 'allows' me the right to accept or reject a story, whether it's crafted by the original creators or someone else.

The Multiverse concept exists to the point of oversaturation in the World of Fiction to account for such things. Batman and Superman have multiple origin stories. The bare bones elements exist amongst many of them, but in many instances the details change from time to time. Many different versions of Clarks adoption by the Kents, many different versions of how Lois and Clark met each other, and many different versions of Bruce's childhood trauma. It took years to reach what some might call a consensus on these events and what constitutes the bare bones elements. Granted, years of disparate elements which seems to contradict each other can get confusing at times even in a Multiversal setting. That's why Crisis on Infinite Earths even exists.

The original creators of many timeless characters have passed on. Should their characters exist solely on the weight of their original stories or can they have multiple versions with similar and dissimilar qualities and attributes? If a character has a new story with a non-original writer at the helm, is this new writer beholden to the characterization of the original or can they turn things on their head?

I believe they have that right, cause fans always try to craft their own versions of things, so why can't hired writers who started as fans do it on a professional level? Don't we all wish we could do the same?

All of that being said, I do believe that the original stories and the authorial intent of the original creators cannot be ignored or forgotten. It was their character, after all.

If the idea is to not conflate new iterations with the original interpretation, then it's a valid argument. If the idea is to maintain the 'original vision' over and over again, then it becomes not only repetitive but monotonous. What's the point of making anything new?

To quote John De Lancie, who played Q on Star Trek: TNG (and DS9, and Voyager, and Picard): "Are we trying to create, or recreate?"

I'm pretty sure 'original principles' refers to the narrative purpose Moore intended that the movies did not pick up on, the man has been very vocal about disliking adaptations of his work as a whole outside of the Justice League episode For The Man Who Has Everything. Haven't seen V For Vendetta nor read the original but I have read and seen the other two. For example, ehen The Comedian is about to rape Sally, the camera sexualizes Sally's body with certain camera shots, making her more 'alluring', the fact it is a rape scene should tell you all you need to know about why this is wrong. For the Killing Joke, at one point, Joker says "Why aren't you laughing?" In the movie, he angrily yells this while beating the shit out of Batman but in the comic he seems puzzled, confused, as if he was questioning if his 'one bad day' point was truly wrong before Batman appears out of a mirror, as if to symbolize shattering Joker's point of view. Moore was a man that was very particular with details like that


TLDR: I think he's massively upset that they missed the point of his work to the point he doesn't want association, feeling ashamed about the perversion of his work

I agree that original does not equal best. In principle, I did not claim this. My position is that there is an artistic difference between Frank Miller's Batman and the notebook drawings of a five-year-old fan, but in relation to the original they are identical. That is, fan fiction is not an insult to me, but simply an acknowledgment of its secondary nature (also not without an offensive meaning) in relation to the original. Without Finger's work, there would be no other version of Batman. As for legitimacy, canonicity and other things, this is dealt with by people of business, not art. If they decide that the drawings of a five-year-old fan will bring more profit, they will publish them in huge quantities and order a film to boot.
So Miles is a fanfic for me, just like Bendis' Spiderman in principle. But for all other versions of Miles, Bendis' Miles is the original and the foundation for further stories.

When I mentioned Moore above, I was referring to his work on Swamp Thing. He also strayed very far from the original idea and treated the main cast of characters extremely harshly. So he himself can be reproached for the same abuse of the original, even despite the approval of Len Wein, who was the editor of DC Comics at that time. You can always say that money was king.
I generally agree about film adaptations of Moore?s works. But here I can only repeat what I heard from one screenwriter: ?If you want the film to turn out the way you intended, you must shoot it yourself.? Directors are also creative people with their own quirks, and few are able to meticulously transfer a script to the screen without introducing something of their own.
What bothered me more was that Moore once said that Watchmen was impossible to film. This is already an exaggeration. It's impossible to film One Hundred Years of Solitude, but Watchmen is quite easy. Although, personally, I would make a series, entrusting each chapter to a separate director. Because Snyder's glamorous bombast really doesn't suit the story.

Alan Moore is someone that I have a lot of respect for even if I don't agree with him with everything. He views his comics as art and not junk food material. The guy simply does not be associated with a large captalist company. Marvel and DC have become so corporate that they lost their artistic vision and what their books fun in the first place long gone. After Marvel being bought by Disney and DC resetting their universe mutiple times made me stop liking them in the 2010s.

This particular moment brought me to certain thoughts. The fact is that such a sensitive topic is much harder to play than to write. I don't know the details of this particular scene in Watchmen, but I can remember similar moments in other films. For example, in Alien: Covenant, the dissected body of Elisabeth Shaw was supposed to have her eyes open, but Fassbender asked for them to be closed because he couldn't focus. Or certainly an unknown case. In the film "Pirates of the Twentieth Century" of the year 1979, the antagonist had to torture a captive woman. The role of the villain was played by Talgat Nigmatulin, a man with very strong principles. So hard that, being a martial arts master, he allowed himself to be beaten to death, because the attacker was older, and Nigmatulin did not beat old people. Of course, he refused to play in this scene and therefore the actress who played the captive lied that she was a masochist. So it is quite possible that in the case of ?Watchmen? the changes were caused precisely by the actor?s desire.

There is a world of difference between actors being uncomfortable and the camera work being done to put emphasis on Sally's breasts for a quick flash to get you in to Eddie's mind. Seeing as the flashy close up is not unique to that scene but shares a purpose, said purpose *also* being an example of missing the point of the Watchmen story, it's the director's intwntion

The Snyder take on things as always been a pecking point, but Grant Morrison believes that Batman doesn't kill not because "he can't", but because he chooses not to as both a personal code of honor and because of the childhood trauma that defined his life.

https://comicbook.com/irl/news/grant...er-than-joker/

I know many won't care for the source, but the breakdown is worth the read, as are the comments.

In short: Villains Kill, Heroes Don't.

Well, this is unique because most often childhood trauma is used to explain murders. In principle, I have nothing against this rule, but there are two significant ?buts?:
1) It is taken to the point of absurdity and even distorted when Batman is ready to allow the death of hundreds of innocents so that the Joker survives;
2) It is stated, but ignored when it is inconvenient, as in the Nolan trilogy. My favorite moment: when Bruce declared that he didn't kill, and then set off an explosion that killed about a dozen people.
It seems to me that it is sufficient to limit ourselves to the principle: ?does not seek to kill.? Because 100% Batman cannot know what old injuries a random back alley robber has. What about the evil ones who have heart problems?Not using lethal weapons, not playing the role of executioner, handing over criminals to the police is normal. But when Batman shields the Joker from a policeman's bullet, it's already too much.
But you also need to understand that this is the world of comics. Popular villains aren't going away. They will not be killed, and if they are killed, they will be resurrected. The Joker will always be in Gotham, whether Batman kills or not. Another thing is that in the case of Batman being a killer, this means that he cannot kill his archenemy. And in the case of the non-killing Batman - that he does not want to do it. That is, the second option clearly demonstrates that Batman is stronger.
And the stupidest thing in Snyder?s version is that he kills random bandits, but the Joker is quite intact.

Found a blog post that goes into the matter further.

https://www.dc.com/blog/2022/03/02/w...an-doesnt-kill

In short, Bob Kane and Bill Finger were not on equal ground with this subject. The No-Kill thing was to make the comic "kid-friendly" cause parental complaints were apparently a thing from the very beginning. Kane hated taking lethal force away, but Finger hated the fact that it was ever allowed in the first place.

One of the arguments put forth is the idea that Bruce has a darkness in him which could run wild if he doesn't keep it in check.

The other side is that the World's Greatest Hero can't kill the World's Greatest Killer lest he become the Greatest Killer himself.

Batman Vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I saw this today on DVD.

This movie made almost no sense.

Joker and Quinn becoming mutated?

WTF is this? TMNT 2012? Geeze.

This movie confused me.

After The Bat Man and the 90s movies I will have seen them
all.

I am so ready for this movie and Guy Gardner's bowl cut. LFG! :rock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhUht6vAsMY

It looks epic and atmospheric, although the cast is as inappropriate as possible, as if in an amateur project where there is not much choice (to make Crypto different is a decision). Plus, I don?t really like borrowing music from Donner?s movie, because in Justice League such techniques looked as ridiculous as possible. But the project looks much more lively and sincere than what is happening with competitors from Marvel, and those who criticized Snyder for the dark picture should be pleased (but haters of slow-mo should be furious).

James Gunn's Superman movie was dope. I'd watch it in theaters again if I could just to see if I missed out on any trivial things. :rock: