Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week Bennett looks at Batman #44, Batman '66, the loss of Doomed, Community, and Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem.
When Superman punched out a cop in
Action Comics #41, as you might imagine it got a fair share of media attention. So far
Batman #44, in which an unarmed black teenager is killed by Gotham Police, hasn’t generated nearly as many headlines, and heaven help us one of them was "Pow! Zing! Batman Defends Black Lives Matter." The best piece about it so far appeared in the U.S. edition of
The Guardian by Spencer Ackerman. He does an impressive job of examining the institutionalized racism and poverty underlying such incidents. Scott Snyder, the writer of the issue, is quoted as saying:
"Batman is learning he can’t solve problems in the ways he thought he could… It’s much more about understanding what people face in their everyday lives: knowing their fears, knowing their anger, and trying to show them, in a way, that they can and we together can fix, or hopefully make baby steps in fixing these problems that seem intractable, entrenched and impossible to overcome."
While we’re on the subject of Batman,
Batman ‘66 may be ending in December (along with
Justice League Unlimited, Doomed, Lobo, The Omega Men, Gotham by Midnight and
Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman) but clearly DC isn’t quite done with the brand. Having already met The Green Hornet and a crossover with the UK Avengers apparently impending, I suppose it only makes sense that this Christmas they’ll be publishing the first issue of a
Batman ‘66 Meets The Man from U.N.C.L.E. mini-series. I find it simultaneously appealing and appalling that my childhood treasures are now acceptable fodder for this kind of historical mashup.
However, it does lead me to wonder what the next one will be;
Thunderbirds?
Lost In Space?
Scooby Doo?
Doctor Who?
James Bond? I know a more appropriate 60’s super spy would be Derek Flint from
Our Man Flint (after all, the man worked for ZOWIE or Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage) but I would dearly love to see a race between Bond’s Aston-Martin and the Batmobile.* My choice would probably be
Dark Shadows, but
Gilligan’s Island is where the smart money would bet; everybody eventually ends up on
Gilligan’s Island.
For the record, the only comic appearing on DC’s cancelled list that I’m actually going to miss is
Doomed, almost in spite of itself. I still contend that "college kid becomes a Were-Doom" is a decidedly oddball concept for a comic, but that’s what helped make it unlike any other comic currently on the market.
Community, which recently finished its 6th and almost certainly final season, was one of my favorite sitcoms and I for one wasn’t quite prepared to let it go. When I wasn’t relentlessly re-watching episodes online I was searching YouTube for "Making of" videos and interviews with the cast. Along with being a satisfying way of wasting time, I actually managed to learn a few comic book-related things, proving once again that obsessive-compulsiveness does pay off.
Like, in spite of having seen every episode I was unaware that
Scud: The Disposable Assassin makes a cameo appearance in the mostly animated Season Five episode "G.I. Jeff" which was directed by creator and artist of the series Rob Schrab. Even though I had been a fan of the comic I’d completely forgotten that Dan Harmon, creator of
Community and co-creator of the Adult Swim series
Rick and Morty, had written parts of
Scud. And, according to his "communitary" (audio commentary on
Community), when Scud was optioned for a movie by director Oliver Stone’s production company, Schrab and Harmon went to Hollywood in the belief they would be part of the adaptation process. When that didn’t work out he and Schrab started writing screenplays and sold one that became the animated movie
Monster House.
And another one of those direct-to-video animated features once again showed up on the Netflix New Releases list unexpectedly:
Batman Unlimited: Monster Mayhem. It’s the sequel to May’s
Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts, and like the first one this version of Batman and company is strictly intended for younger kids. In this Halloween-themed outing some of the DC Universe’s scarier villains (Scarecrow, Solomon Grundy, Clayface and Silver Banshee and The Joker) face off against Batman and Green Arrow, Cyborg, Nightwing and Red Robin (see “
Trailer for New 'Batman Unlimited' OVA”).
* I would have nominated
Speed Racer but, unfortunately, it doesn’t qualify for a crossover because the cartoon didn’t premiere on American television until 1967. Fun fact: according to Wikipedia: Speed was in large part inspired by two American films that were then popular in Japan,
Viva Las Vegas and
Goldfinger. That’s right, the Mach-5 owes a debt to Bond’s car, which really seems like something I really should have already known.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
