POLL RESULTS! CONGRATULATIONS STRAWHAT!

Hey!

Results are in, and StrawHat's Honorable Mention from the Quibbler Headline Contest has come from behind to win Dr. Smashy's (George's) coveted second TR shirt. There was a total of 19 votes, and I apologize if anyone had trouble seeing the poll--Blogger's got cyber-cooties or some shit.


Roland of the Tower started off strong with: PERVERTS HOLD VIGIL AS HERMIONE GRANGER'S 18TH BIRTHDAY DRAWS NEAR. He lead the pack for several days only to be overtaken by a single vote after topping off at 7.

Green Lambkin's DUMBLEDORE'S DUMBLEWHORES came in 3rd with a total of 4 votes, and finally, StrawHat took home the prize when his DUMBLEDORE AND GANDALF MEET FOR THE FIRST TIME, REALIZE THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON, PROCEED TO MAKE OUT scored 8 votes.


So, Good work, StrawHat!

I'm afraid I don't know you personally, but come by anytime and join our community of merry wackjobs.

In honor of this occasion (and as a pitifully flimsy pretense to post more images of awesome boobage), here's a selection of Genderswap'd Harry Potter Cosplay Pics...Like this one:

This one's adorable--but the more..."ample" ones are after the jump (just thought you folks deserved the option--perhaps not all my readers are as keen on HP cosplay cleavage as I am)

Ta,


He Who Must Not Be Scoot

Happy Birthday Smashy!

HI GEORGE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Here's Christina Hendricks!

Hey Colleen here! Well the DoctorSmashy that we all know and love turns 23 today. Yeah he's way younger than me and James and probably much cooler too. So if you stumble over here tonight, George, after a night of Birthday/Halloween debauchery, with friends, a hot French Chick, & random people, here's a picture of your favorite girl!

Nighty Night!

SUPERFRIENDS! ASSEMBLE!

(blowing into conch shell)



SUPERFRIENDS! ASSEMBLE!


Hmm...not that simple, huh?


This article is directed at a very specific group of people--a collection of like-minded souls who found my little blog and made it their virtual second home. They came not only to shoot the shit and occasionally comment on whatever nonsense I happen to post, they started to contribute, sharing their unique perspectives and talents with my dear readers. They became almost a family.


And then...They disappeared.

Where did they go?





Now for some of you, I know the answer:

Colleen is still here, we just spent 7 hours straight chatting. She's been here almost every day, and we love our conversations, but we greatly miss the rest of the family.

Robbie, along with being absurdly busy, has been without Internet for the past few weeks--completely understandable.

Myriam and Abraxas are busy as hell with school--Ok.

Joltess recently touched base--she's been occupied with her horses and Canadian Thanksgiving. That's cool. She should be back if we don't lose her to World of Warcraft.




Differences in time zones make it diffficult for many of the Superfriends to communicate at the same time, I know:

I've no idea where our Imperial Ambassador, George, is hiding himself.

FadR has apparently FadEd into oblivion.

I've seen Fabi on the TR boards, but she hasn't graced us with her presence in some time.

I really hope my theory that Aussie Superfriend Doctragon was eaten alive by dingoes is false. You've got the best taste in music of anyone I've met in years--we need you!(you're also kinda cute, I'm not sure why that's important--but there it is)

New Superfriend, but longtime fellow Topless Roboteer Rickicker finally caved in to my repeated begging and showed up at SOHB--and then disappeared. WTF?




And Zorrt1! Where the hell are you? You live like two hours from me!



Look, I know you guys have jobs and school and lives outside of the online world. I'm not trying to get on your cases here. My goal is not to pester or guilt-trip anyone into coming back to the fold.



I just want you all to know: Colleen and I love you and miss you! <3 As much fun as the two of us have chatting, we'd rather have you folks with us when we're having a 7 hour bull session--there's only so much two people can do!


Come back as soon as it's convenient for you:

You guys will always have a home at SOHB. We're not going anywhere.


I'll let Joey Ramone speak for us from the beyond...




See you soon.


The Family Scoot

Smashy Review: Spider-Man 3

Hello! Hello, you sexy devils. I know I've been gone for a while, but I still love you all and if there's anybody I trust to run my empire, it's you guys. I thought I'd celebrate my comeback with another review, this time of a film significantly lower on the Badassometer than Scott Pilgrim. I speak of course, of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3.


Now, I don't want to jump on the bandwagon and rip this movie to shreds - ahh, hell, of course I do. THIS MOVIE SUCKS MAJOR ASS. As both a movie fan, a comic book fan and a human being I can safely say that this is one movie that actually distresses me, keeps me awake at night, because there are bad movies and then there are movies that COULD have been awesome but, for whatever reasons, aren't. Spider-Man 3 fits into this category perfectly.

First of all I will outline its good points. The fight scenes and special effects are, quite simply, spellbinding and the best I've seen in any comic book movie. The effects on Sandman and the symbiote are brilliant. The acting is, for the most part, good, especially from the man I believe is J Jonah Jameson incarnate: JK Simmons. The Spidey movies have always had great music, and this installment is no exception. And finally, it is extremely funny when it wants to be. Those are the good points. Now.... *clicks fingers* for the bad.












This movie is rife with plot holes. The first is Harry Osborn's transformation. Throughout these movies, the main continuous story arc has been the relationship between Harry Osborn, Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker. Harry starts as a troubled young man with a crush on MJ, an evil father and a superhero for a best friend. He then becomes a jackass alcoholic businessman, without a crush on Mary Jane, without an evil father and with a superhero for a best friend. By the beginning of the third, he is a supervillain without a crush on Mary Jane, without an evil father and with a superhero for an enemy. Seems plausible enough right? Well, barely ten minutes into the movie he hits his head and gets what I refer to as 'Conveniencenesia', losing all his memory. For the next hour or so he becomes 'old Harry', but instead of turning into the troubled young man with a crush on Mary Jane, he becomes this preposterously nice, goofy, happy character without a care in the world. Seriously, it's so weird. There's a scene when Mary Jane calls him up and he's in the middle of painting some kind of masterpiece. It's just a split second, but it confuses me to no end. Why did a bump on the head make him this way? I am reminded of the Futurama episode where Fry gets worms and becomes a charming, artistic hearthrob, except it makes far less sense than anything Matt Groening has ever dreamt up. Forgive me if I'm wrong about this, but I was under the impression that people who suffer from amnesia generally become depressed, scared and confused individuals, unable to remember key details from their lives, constantly forgetting and misunderstanding things that are common knowledge to their friends and family. But whatever, I'm sure Raimi and co did there homework.

It may well be down to the performance James Franco gives. He's a fine actor and a.... *sigh* a beautiful man, but somebody should have told him to tone it down a little. He's so damn happy, I don't think you seem him frown once during his 'Conveniencenesia' period. That's what's so wrong with this freaking movie, it's full of over the top performances. Ehhhh. Anyway, Harry touches a mirror or something and Willem Defoe's face ZOOOOOMS towards the screen, causing Harry to 'remember. Remember EVERYTHING!!!' He turns evil once again, but now of course he's a DIFFERENT kind of evil from earlier on, this time becoming a scheming, grinning, pie-eatin' pantomime villain rather than a brooding, revenge-seeking, neglected son. Then at the last minute he turns into a generic good guy again. Seriously, Harry Osborn goes through about one hundred different personalities in this trilogy. LET'S COUNT THEM SHALL WE

There's Troubled Harry from Spider-Man 1, then there's Angry Harry from Spider-Man 1, then there's Yuppie Harry from Spider-Man 2, then there's Alcoholic Harry from Spider-Man 2, then there's Vengeful Harry from Spider-Man 2, then there's Goblin Harry from Spider-Man 3, then there's Conveniencenesia Harry from Spider-Man 3, then there's Magnificent Bastard Harry from Spider-Man 3, and then finally 'Awwwwww' Harry from Spider-Man 3. What is that, 8 different Harrys over the course of three movies? Dayum. Look, I realise it's important for characters to develop over a trilogy's story arc, but by the end of it all Harry Osborn is several different people. Ughhh. Let's move on.

Sandman's entire character is completely fucking ridiculous. So we have an escaped burglar with 'bad luck' who has some kind of dying adorable child and a wife who lives in Elwood Blues' apartment 'in the presence of great truth' whatever the fuck that means. He falls into a giant sandpit (you know, the kind that are just lying around in fields with no safety rail or anything all over America) in which some scientists are testing the effects of sand when spun around real fast. They assume he's a bird (you know, one of the many man-shaped birds that occupy America) and start up the experiment. He turns into some.... some kind of.... SAND....MAAAANN!!!!!! but his little necklace thing manages to stay intact, despite being with him the entire time. I guess because it was in his pocket it stayed alright, but then there are scenes when he's floating around as a cloud guy and the necklace thing stays with him.... maybe it was floating with him, I don't know.

He wants to kill Spider-Man, because apparently he won't let Sandman take care of his sick daughter. Rather than, you know, explaining his situation to Spider-Man, a fellow superhuman, and asking for his help, he clumsily destroys a street in an attempted robbery. Smooth.

Now, I like Thomas Haden Church, I do. He seems like a nice guy, but the only movie I've ever liked him in was George of the Jungle, and this is no exception. His entire performance is so weird. He always looks kind of pained and frustrated, like his face is being stretched over his skull. There's a scene in which Spider-Man rips a water pipe apart, the camera zooming sharply in on Sandman's face with each screw that pops out of the pipe. The last time this happens Church sort of does a little face quirk, like he's thinking 'Daww, nuthin ever goes right for me! Guess I'm just a born loser. Here we go again!'. I know I'm shamelessly nitpicking, but I don't care, I'm fresh from watching the DVD and I have been living on Fruitella for the past five days and I feel my brain may be dissolving or something and I needed to get these thoughts off my chest. At the end of the movie, Sandman asks Spider-Man for forgiveness after pounding him into the ground seconds earlier, then floats away to a life of.... uhhh.... floating. His character sucks, and he was never a fantastic villain in the first place. Give me Vulture or Mysterio or Lizard next time, characters you can actually give depth and interest to. Some say without Venom this film would be great, but that's just not true. Sandman is only slightly better a character. Not to mention the fact that he is preposterously shoehorned into the franchise as Uncle Ben's 'real killer' in a pathetic attempt to give him a reason for even being in the fucking movie. EDIT: After watching the end, I find myself wildly cackling at the flashback of Uncle Ben's murder. Sandman just sort of raps on the window and helps the old man out of the car, politely asking if he can borrow the vehicle. He ponders whether or not he should proceed with the robbery and then accidently shoots Ben to death and gives a 'what have I DONE???!!!!' face. I lol'd.
Blleerrrghh, let's move on.

Venom, played by Topher Grace, is perhaps the worst and weirdest fictional antagonist I've ever come across in all my life. A meteorite falls from the sky with no explanation or reason and splurges out a black liquid (the symbiote), which attaches itself to Peter Parker's scooter and lives with him unnoticed for a while. When he's at his lowest, it crawls all over his costume and turns him into Black Suit Spider-Man. Even though later, he's got the black suit and the regular suit seperately in a cupboard, even though the black suit IS the regular suit, just covered with the symbiote, because we see it envelop the regular suit earlier on, except then the symbiote comes off and Spider-Man is completely naked underneath.... um. Anyway. Spider-Man gets rid of the symbiote (after some bizarre dancing, which is not so much funny or rage-inducing as it is baffling) and it plops down onto Eddie Brock's face. Yes, that's right, Spider-Man's parasitic liquid drips onto Eddie Brock's gazing face as Spidey writhes naked above. In a church. Abraxas, feel free to make of this what you will.

Eddie Brock is not evil or crazy, he's just an annoying douche who, for reasons unknown, wants Peter Parker's job. Or IS he meant to be crazy? There are certainly signs of this. He frequently makes weird comments about Gwen, first saying they are dating and later claiming he plans to propose despite them only ever having coffee. He has a complete breakdown after being fired from a job he didn't even have yet and asks GOD to kill someone he screwed over in the first place. However, these don't strike me as the actions of an insane supervillain, more the actions of a complete fuckwit. AAAAAAnyway, Spider-Man's black suit/symbiote/sperm envelops Brock and he turns into Venom, who somehow knows everything about Sandman and Peter and gets Sandman to team up with him in a grand plan to..... humiliate Spider-Man. Not murder or destroy, just humiliate.




Yeah.





Anyway, he is only ever Venom for about five seconds at a time, because every time we get a glimpse of him his spookyface peels back to reveal the oddly fanged Topher Grace (who, once again, is naked under the suit despite being fully clothed when he transformed. Weird) in all his not-at-all-threatening glory. He is incredibly easily defeated by Spider-Man banging poles together around him and making him bug out. He then explodes or something, I don't know (I stopped watching because Hot Fuzz had started on ITV 1 and is the far superior flick). So, that's Venom.

The worst part of this movie is the character of Harry's loyal butler, 'Bernard', who has had about three off screen lines throughout the trilogy until now. He pops up persuading Two-Face - I mean, Harry to turn good again by telling him his father died by his own hand. Gee, Bernard is a great guy. Not only was he fully aware that BOTH the Osborns were murderers and madmen, but he could have saved Harry countless times by telling him how his father died at ANY point in the last few years. Is he fucking CRAZY?! What the HELL were they thinking?! Why didn't they just have GOD appear from the heavens before Harry and tell him what happened? That would have angered me less. This is the worst fucking deus ex machina I have ever seen, and I am shaking with rage as I type this. Good God. Fuckadoodle doo. CuntburgerfucktwatterlycumquatfuckbraintrollsuckingarsewipeANAL JIZZ CLOWNS! WHY THE FUCK DO I BOTHER???!!! THEY COULD HAVE ENDED THIS FUCKING STORY TWO MOVIES AGO! WHY WOULD BERNARD WAIT TILL NOW TO TELL HARRY?!! WHY WOULDN'T HE TELL EVERYBODY STRAIGHT AFTER HE FOUND OUT! WHAT POSSIBLY REASON COULD HE HAVE HAD FOR KEEPING SHTUM? IS HE A FUCKING ASS?!?!?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Somebody, please tell me! Tell me how I fix this! How do I calm down! HOW?! HOOOOOOWWWW

This is THE DOCTOR, signing out, deeply sorry for the nonsensical bullshit posing as a movie review, incredibly glad to be back and FUCKING angry about the shitfest that is Spider-Man 3. I am truly apologetic for the above article's shittiness. Goodnight. Now WHERE THE FUCK IS MY FRUITELLA?!

Smashy Review: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

Ahhh, Edgar Wright, you magnificent bastard. You've done it again. Every single piece of film you have directed, I have loved to bits. To this day, Spaced remains my favourite Britcom *shudders at the use of the word* of all time. Shaun of the Dead is perhaps the only film involving zombies, Queen and the use of the word 'cunt' in the first two minutes I can think of. Hot Fuzz deserves praise if only for the line 'Stabbed in the hand by a man dressed as Santa Claus'. And this brings us of course to the director's latest, greatest and most Hollywood-y directorial achievement: Scott Pilgrim Vs The World.
I was introduced to the Scott Pilgrim books through Empire magazine. Already a rabid Wright fan, when I heard that he would be adapting a comic book series before completing his 'Blood and Ice Cream' trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and the upcoming The World's End) I was curious. Then ANGRY! Then hungry. Then kinda sleepy.... Then I think I got drunk for a while. THEN I logged on to the Empire website and read an article by the magazine's primary Pilgrim fan, Helen O'Hara, all about why we should love this weird little book series called Scott Pilgrim. Described by Joss Whedon as the 'Best Book Ever', the Scott Pilgrim series is arguably just that. I love it to pieces. Truly, I do. Some day I may release seperate reviews of each book, but since this article is about the movie, I'll simply say this: Scott Pilgrim is fantastic and if you haven't read it, you must stop what you're doing, slap yourself twice in the face for being silly and pick up the phone, screaming 'GET ME THE COMIC BOOK STORE!'. Well, I guess you could dial first. Or just go to the store.
Being such an uber-mega-awesome Pilgrim fan, I was of course skeptical about the movie to begin with. It's never easy to hand your favourite series over to Hollywood, even if it's in the hands of such a director as talented as Wright. Coincidentally, the first thing that sprung to mind when reading SP for the first time was Spaced. Spaced has that kind of atmosphere where a character can be lazing on the sofa moaning about their unemployment one minute, then battling a ninja the next minute without a major shift in tone occuring in between; the kind of atmosphere Scott Pilgrim has in spades. Michael Cera was announced for the title soon after I finished the second book, and I was pretty BLURG about it, moaning to my friends, my relatives, and homeless guys on the bus about how he wasn't right for the part, and played the same character in every movie and all that crap.
By Jove, I was stupid.
The thing I feel the movie really excels in is casting. Every character is so perfectly lifted from the pages of the books, I can't help but feel some kind of voodoo was involved. It is TOO perfect. Kieran Culkin just kicks all kinds of ass as Wallace, which, seeing as he's my favourite character, I just want to HUG the actor for. Mark Webber is UNCANNY as Stephen Stills. Ellen Wong is the exact blend of adorable and insane as Knives Chau. Johnny Simmons as Young Neil is hilarious, despite only having about three lines. Each evil ex (excluding Roxy, but we'll get to that) was spot-on, particularly Brandon Routh. Mary Elisabeth Winstead was.... actually, I didn't like her that much. I don't think she was very charming. She didn't have a whole lot of chemistry with Scott. They only really got to show the crappy parts of their relationship. Due to the time constriction Wright and co had adapting a six book series into a 112-minute movie, quite a few of the 'standing around talking' parts of the books had to be cut down. We never quite got to see Ramona and Scott really have much relationship-y time. They never really had fun together.
There were some things I would have LOVED to see in the film. Almost all of my favourite scenes were cut from the film for time constraints, and a lot of characters (Kim and Envy in particular) are extremely watered down, reduced to the core elements of their characters. But that's okay, because above all, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World has captured the SPIRIT of the comics. Every time the little 'Rating: Awesome' boxes popped up, my heart sort of swooned with love for this film, with happiness for how right they got it. It looks exactly like the comic books, but not in the way that, say, Watchmen does. This isn't a panel-for-panel adaptation, but at the same time it is a lot more faithful to the source material than even the slowest slo-mo action sequences Zack Snyder's computer can conjure up. It is just pure awesome. I honestly can't think of a more creative way of describing it.
One thing I want to talk about is my favourite of the books, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together. The fourth in the series, this book has a distinctly summer-y feel to it. From the colour pages at the very beginning to the whole getting a job, hanging out at the mall, staying up really late kind of atmosphere, it really captures summer in the subtlest of ways, I think. Scott's life kind of goes down the crapper in this one, but the way he resolves everything in a single scene is one of my favourite moments in the whole series. Come to think of it, most of my favourite series moments come from Gets It Together, from Scott hiding in Ramona's purse during a fight (his cartoon head poking out and saying 'Yeah!' to everything she yells at the enemy) to Roxy's wonderful line 'You punched me in the BOOB!' (followed by 'puking sounds' from Scott) to Knives' father attempting to murder Scott on several occassions with his antique samurai swords ('Man, my dad is so lame!'), this is by far my favourite book. However, it is also the one they cut the most out of. I guess it's because the movie takes place over a MUCH shorter time span than the comics, so the summer feel is already right out. Roxy Richter, the evil ex-girlfriend of this book, is also my favourite ex, and ironically the character I thought was the worst portrayed in the movie. Some of her best lines ('Prepare to die, obviously....' and 'AGH! Forget it! Never mind! *teleports away*') were either missing or performed.... incorrectly. I know I can't judge, because Bryan Lee O'Malley himself was heavily involved in the movie so he probably thought the lines were delivered perfectly, but I just didn't like her. Also, why didn't she explode into bunnies, pigs and tweety birds?! Regular coins? What the hell, man?!
Anyway, I close by saying that Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is an excellent adaptation - it is not nearly as literal as some (*cough*Watchmen*cough*) and not as distant as others (*cough*The Dark Knight*cough*) from the source material, but it doesn't have to be because above all, it FEELS like Scott Pilgrim. It has the atmosphere and heart of the comics, even if they had to cut out a whole lot. Perhaps it would have worked better as two seperate films, with the first ending on The Infinite Sadness and the second beginning with Gets It Together. But no, Scott Pilgrim is its own masterpiece. If Hollywood ever rams a sequel down the series' throat, I will personally track down EVERYBODY in Hollywood and ram eleven copies of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen down their asses. You heard me - DOWN THEIR ASSES.
Anyway, normally I would say 'See the movie', but instead I ask of you, read the books. The movie's fine, but my heart truly lies with the little comic book series that started it all. The movie is hella tight, though.

Peace, goddammit!

Why Everything Is Bullshit (or, The World According To Smashy)

This is my first post, and after Colleen and Braxy's quite excellent attempts, I am feeling intensely nervous. You can tell, can't you?! The topic I have chosen to discuss (or rather, yell at you all about) is the first in a series I call Why Everything Is Bullshit (I have no plans to continue this series. I just liked the idea), and will be about the surge of what I call Buzzword Comics - namely, any comics, TV shows or films that include the words 'Dark', 'Gritty', 'Realistic' or any variations of those Big Three in their premise.
The main subject is Batman. The general opinion is that Batman is a lot 'darker' (at this point you may like to begin the Buzzword Drinking Game, in which you must drink a Smashy Spritzer every time any of the Big Three are mentioned in this article) than other heroes in the world of superhero comics. I mean, he wears black, all his villains have plausible motivations and gimmicks, and he basically lives in a city that's so dark it's like a Tim Burton wet dream, where the sun almost never shines and the streets are composed entirely of shadowy alleyways. So, he's pretty 'dark' and 'realistic' and 'gritty', right?
Well, ha, no. At its prime (referred to as the Silver Age of comic books), the DC universe was as campy, outlandish and fucking spectacular as Marvel is (or was, but we'll get to that). I mean, this was a time when KITE MAN was a tougher than the Joker.
Batman was awesome back then. Who needs a growly Christian Bale voice or a perpetually angry old Frank Miller jerk when you've got a Batman that bitch slaps his own apprentice when he talks back and dresses like a FUCKING mirror just to outsmart an enemy. Goddamn he was cool. Who needs a deadpan, eye-stabbing Heath Ledger or a 'super-sane' transvestite Grant Morrisson.... thing when you have a gleeful Joker who threatens to turn all of Gotham's water to jelly. Jelly. Just think how many problems that would cause. More than raping some henchman's wife to spite him (all these things I mention have happened, btw). The Silver Age was like, WOAH.
Frank Miller (a writer I'm sure you've all heard of, who, like M Night Shymalan and Tim Burton since, has got worse with each piece of work) once wrote a book called The Dark Knight Returns. People loved its gritty, dark and pissed-off take on what could be the future of the Batman world. It was shocking and wonderful because it demonstrated a world in which Batman had retired, and quite simply, everything had gone tits-up. Weird monster gangs ruled the streets, all the supervillains and heroes have retired or been killed, and the worlds' finest (a certain Mr Kent) was now a mere pawn of the US Government. Times were hard. That GN worked so well because when The Dark Knight actually did return, you felt it. Miller took time to introduce the future Gotham and shock us with it - the scenes of rape and violence (comitted mostly by teenage gangs) aren't as gratuitous as they seem. They just add to the feeling of 'FUCK YEAH!' when Batman comes to fix his city.
But a lot of writers didn't see this when they read it. All they saw was 'OOH RAPE! KIDS AS CRIMNALS, BELOVED SUPERHEROES DECONSTRUCTED, BELOVED SUPERVILLAINS KILLING THEMSELVES - THIS IS MY KINDA SHIT!' For the next few years, almost all comic books followed this tradition (Batman: A Serious House on Serious Earth is perhaps the best example of this), and pretty soon people began to try so hard to be like Alan Moore and Frank Miller that comics became campy once again. Rob Liefeld and many of Miller's more recent works are a good example. However, recent years have shown that the time of dark, gritty, realistic comics are far from over.
The much-praised Christopher Nolan Batmovies are a perfect example of people not quite understanding it.
Now please, don't get me wrong - one of the great things about comics is that anyone can interpret them however they want, but it's the writers and artists that take this idea and completely screw up by making comics that aren't fun, orginal or even interesting for the readers.
Anyway, the 'Nolanverse', as fans have dubbed it. Many, many people view it as the greatest ever incarnation of Batman and his world, but that is simply not true. The Nolan films are less 'brillaint Batman films' than they are 'brilliant films that include Batman'. The Dark Knight is not a great Batman story, it is a great story featuring Batman. Heath Ledger's performance is not a fantastic portrayal of the Joker, it is just fantastic. But no, pretentious assholes who have never read a single Batman comic ignorantly label themselves as Batman fans simply because they like to dress up as the Joker on Halloween or write 'Nolanised' fan fiction, then post their crappy DeviantArt illustrations online. They don't understand and love these characters the same way Paul Dini and the Nolan brothers (to an EXTENT) do. They call the classic Penguin character 'lame' and 'not special', and prefer the current 'realistic' interpretation of him simply being an ugly and cowardly club owner who provides Batman with information, rather than the colourful, rich jerkass who had the class of Joker, the gadgets of Batman and the complete obnoxiousness of the Riddler. It's insulting, and an example of writers too lazy to stay true to the character. It's like if they made a Star Trek movie in which Spock was a young, blonde action hero with no Vulcan ears, no fringe and no crazy eyebrows because the original depiction was 'too boring' or 'too unrealistic'. Fuck that, I want my Penguin back.
The Brian Azzarello GN Joker was released fairly recently, to rave reviews. It has been called the best depiction of the Joker since Killing Joke, and when I heard Lee Bermejo was pencilling I was ecstatic (check his stuff out, it's amazing). Then I saw the first image, of an extremely Ledger-like (the book was finished before TDK was released, but their similarities back up my point that the 'realism' dominating modern comics is unoriginal and is producing the same results every time) Joker striding out of Arkham Asylum and giving it the finger with the look of a teenager sent to his room, I knew this was going to suck ultimate.
The Joker in this comic book is NOTHING. He's a bullying gangster who speaks in slang, kills for no reason, rapes women, robs banks and pops pills. You may as well have called him Evil McDoesNoGood and it would have made him only slightly more cliche. The entire book is full of terrible interpretations of Batcharacters such as Two-Face, Riddler, Penguin, Killer Croc and the beloved Harley Quinn. Two-Face is a sort of expressionless, brooding, upper-class criminal who sits in a chair half the time. Riddler is a hustler with tattoos and a pimped-out car. Penguin is the bumbling coward I have already mentioned. Killer Croc is a token black guy with bumpy skin. Harley Quinn is a mute stripper. What the fuck is this? Reading this GN, I get the impression that Brian wrote an incredibly generic gangster story and thought 'Well, this sucks. How can I make money out of this....' He stared around his office and noticed a kid playing outside the window with some Batman figurines. 'THAT'S IT!' he cried. 'I'll tweak the characters a little, rename the city to Gotham and mass produce this shit!' He then laughed evilly and preceded to beat up the kid and rape a few kittens.
Anyway, the entire graphic novel is just terrible. The Joker is a swaggering bully who commits petty crimes and Batman is a kind of presence watching him the whole time (now this idea I did like, but it was not used particularly well), who lets him murder a bunch of people because they're criminals.... or something? Because apparently the Gotham Police Force is completely nonexistent in the world Azzarello has created.
The problem with a realistic Batman world is that it isn't quite possible. Saying all of Batman's villains are realistic and 'could happen' is like saying that it's a good idea to burn Qur'ans.



Oh.








Anyway, CONTROVERSY aside, there are tons of Batvillains who are completely comic-booky and would be BORING if you made them realistic. Poison Ivy. Clayface. Bane. Killer Croc. Loads of the greats. If you create a Batman world in which some of Batman's best characters won't work, you have created a pretty shitty Batman world.
If you want to do something new with Batman, create a comic that is the OPPOSITE of Joker. Less rapes, more pie-throwing. Less club-owning mobster 'Abner', more umbrella-gun wielding, top hat wearing, cummerbund sporting supervillain.
For all his faults, Grant Morrisson recently came up with a phrase that perfectly describes comic books: 'Popcrime'. Murder, burglary and all-out crime comitted not because someone's daddy once cut a smile in his face, but because it's part of the game. Criminals do it for fun, and most of them (particularly the Joker) are gleefully aware that they are ridiculous. Arguably, the 1960s Batman show is the most 'realistic' Batman of all time. Every character is completely insane. The Bruce Wayne of the Nolan films is an extremely realistic character, which is why it's so dumb that he is secretly Batman. If Batman existed, he would most definitely be as batshit insane (pun most definitely intended) as the Adam West version is. ARGHHHHHHHHH EVERYTHING IS BULLSHIT




It is pretty late, and if any of you stopped reading half an hour ago, I don't blame you. All of the above is most likely incorrect, nonsensical crap, so I apologise. This was mostly a test article, as I felt like I should take advantage of my position as contributor before all of you have written a bunch of masterpieces and I'm still trying to find a decent Mad Men torrent.
Also, does anyone know how to put more than one picture in these things? The Kite Man one worked fine, but none of the others are appearing.

Thanks for reading and so on! Hope it was worth it.
KTHNXBAI

YOU'VE ALL DONE VERY WELL!

Over 400 comments last night--bravo!

Your reward is above, the lovely Jewel Staite--man do I wished I'd used Google when I first started searching for images. The stuff I got from Yahoo wasn't half this awesome.

Ta,

Das Skoot