There was also a pulp detective called the Black Bat who had more similarities to Doctor Mid-Nite, but did at least dress up in a black bat costume.

Actually, as a fan, I'm fairly well acquainted with Bill Finger's contributions to the Batman mythos and just how substantial they were. What I am not familiar with is anything to do with Bill Finger himself - other than that he supposedly fell into the "drunk Irishman" stereotype and got flim-flammed by DC and Kane -…

Aw, that Alfred thing was just an imaginary story.

Comics, everybody!

One of the (many) reasons the Englehart/Rogers run on Detective in the 70s was so frelling great was that they brought back that tendency for Gotham City to create giant versions of things. Batman and Deadshot fight on a giant typewriter, which is just a love letter to Bill Finger and Dick Sprang if I ever saw one.

I don't even need to click on that to know what it is.

People rag on Stan a lot because his output with anyone not named Kirby, Ditko, or Romita is not as stellar as the stuff that is. Ravage 2099, for example. But yeah, there's a flipside to that, too. No one remembers Mr. A besides guys like you and me, and Captain Atom and Blue Beetle are more famous for being the…

It's tough not letting #5 invalidate all the rest…

I think because he was so vocal when alive, he might be getting passed over in favor (right now) of someone like Bill Finger, who was fairly obscure up until recently.

It's a helmet. Made out of meat.

Dr. Evil was always much more quotable for our group than Austin himself. At one point I had Evil's whole biographical monologue memorized. "Summers in Rangoon, we would make meat helmets… pretty standard, really."

I wish I thought you were joking.

I'm mostly kidding, Gus.

I so want to just start L'il Punk on B:TAS, but I know I have to give him the foundations first. I tried a few months ago to get the thumbs up from Mrs. Punk for Adam West and Burt Ward, but she was a little 'meh' about the whole thing. I do admit that Jill St. John's death in the second episode might be an issue -…

You take that back! You… you… you big jerk, you!

Last night my kid asked me to cue up some Marx Brothers sketches on my computer. I showed him some clips once and he thought they were funny, and that was basically that. The other morning the Stooges were on and we watched them, so he started bugging me about the Marx Brothers. That eventually led us to "Wabbit…

Well. I don't give a shit about Star Wars, but I am a big fan of superheroes. And so, too, is my son. But he's only 5. Which means, when I talk about superheroes with him, I get to talk about all the awesome cool fun silly absurd things about superheroes, while ignoring all the stupid, offensive, puerile, nonsense,…

Well, "adaptation" is a loose term, I admit. "Age of Ultron" wasn't based on the comic of that title, but there was a lot from 60s Avengers and Busiek's run in that movie. "Winter Soldier" changed a lot from the comics, but the basics were there. Even the first Avengers movie is more or less Avengers #1 in spirit if…

Let me be frank. Is there a labor crisis?

It's fairly inescapable. Even Tolkien, who was explicitly trying to create an Anglo-Saxon mythology and outwardly critical of Celtic myth (because it just doesn't make sense, y'all) still made his immortal elves who hide in caves in Mirkwood and hidden cities in Middle-Earth, basically complete transplants of the…