Readers' comments on It's Thursday, I'm In Love!

Just a quick entry. I was doing some house-cleaning on this blog when I found out that there were quite a lot of comments left from readers!

I always thought this was too small of a blog that was really only read by my other friends in real life who loved comics and pop culture as much as I did...making it just the one friend. :p

Over the next couple of days or so, I'll start replying to the comments that have been left in the past entries. I probably need to find a way to ensure that when someone actually leaves a comment, I get an email sent to me so that I know I have something to respond to.

Review: New X-Men (E is for Extinction storyarc)

Time for another review! And this time I’m going to be reviewing the first story arc of one of the most groundbreaking and popular arcs in recent X-Men history: the one that put the team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely on the radars of mainstream comic book fans, the one the revitalised the X-Men after years of stagnation, the E is for Extinction storyarc in the pages of New X-Men #114-116.

The X-Men comic books had been going nowhere quickly for the last decade or so. The X-books were the best-selling comic books for years before that and had seen creators such as Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Marc Silvestri, Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, Andy Kubert and Joe Madureira cement their fame on the various X-titles.

However, the X-Men were victims of their own popularity, with seemingly spin-off title after spin-off title flooding the market only to succumb to cancellation after low sales numbers. While there were the two main X-books in Uncanny X-Men and X-Men, there were also a bevy of titles, some of which were a modicum more popular than the others: X-Force, X-Factor, Excalibur, X-Treme X-Men, X-Men Unlimited, Generation X, not to mention the many one-shots and mini-series of the X-characters.

The last big storyline that was successful in the X-Universe was the much loved “Age of Apocalypse”. The “Onslaught” storyline, for all the hype, fell short and was the last big X-story before 2006’s House of M put Marvel’s merry mutants on the map again.

But before House of M, two Scotsman named Morrison and Quitely revitalised the X-Men, bringing with them pathos, dark humour, adult-oriented themes and sweeping changes to the status quo. It was time for the X-books to step to the top of the sales charts again. The X-relaunch was so huge that they even changed X-Men to New X-Men.

Morrison and Quitely’s first arc, “E is for Extinction”, set the tone for what was to come in their 41-issue run.

They introduced a new uber-powerful villain, Cassandra Nova. She was as evil as evil gets and was the polar opposite of Magneto in terms of ideology. While Magneto wanted mutants to rule the world, Cassandra Nova wanted to kill all mutants!

She was evil and Quitely’s art made look extremely creepy. Sticking her fingers through one’s neck and having her fingers poke out through the orifices in one’s face…ouch! And why did she look so much like a female version of Charles Xavier? But more on that in another review…or you can always read the many TPBs and HCs that reprinted the legendary Morrison and Quitely run to find out for yourself.

Cassandra Nova didn’t just talk the talk, she walked the walk too. Her threats to kill mutantkind weren’t just idle threats. First she assimilates Donald Trask, heir to the Trask legacy of building the mutant-hunting Sentinels, then gets the Mastermold to build millions of sentinels to wipe out the mutant inhabitants of Genosha. Just look at how quickly the numbers fall in the mass-genocide from the panels below!

New, terrifying villain? Check. One ingredient of a successful run fulfilled. But Morrison doesn’t stop there. Oh no. He also radically changes everyone’s favourite X-Men by introducing a femme fatale to the team, the uber sexy Emma Frost.

How does Quitely draw her like that? It’s absolutely gravity-defying! Does she use double-sided tape to hold up those pieces of cloth to her boobs and sides of her body? And what a case of camel toe!

And once again, invisible gum-tape must be Emma Frost’s best friend. Emma Frost became one of the most popular X-Men as a result of Morrison and Quitely’s run. Yes, they gave her a British accent, which was completely unnecessary, but not did she know she was beautiful and her beauty to her advantage, she was also a A-grade 100% badass ultimate bitch.

In fact, she even ACKNOWLEDGES she’s a bitch in this little exchange with Jean Grey:

Another notion that Morrison introduces to the mutant-verse is that of secondary mutations. Mutants, which as a species, were far evolved from normal homo sapiens, could further evolve and develop new powers! As can be seen from the two panels above, Emma Frost, as drippingly sexy as she is, was obviously never a shiny-happy-people person. While she was still one of the world’s most powerful telepaths, Morrison gave her the secondary mutation (and power) of being able to harden her skin so that she became diamond-hard.

One of the more memorable (and perhaps controversial) secondary mutations was evolving Dr Henry McCoy from the ever-loving bouncing Beast to something you’d see out of a Disney cartoon…or horror movie, take your pick.

Beauty and the Beast? How apt. But no, really. It really WAS Beauty and the Beast.

Doesn’t Mrs McCoy’s bouncing baby boy look like he’s about to take Esmerelda out onto the ballroom floor, complete with clocks and candlesticks and dishes and cutlery all dancing and singing in tune?

Thankfully, despite Beast being subjected to a somewhat “hideous” cat-like transformation, he still retained his sense of humour.

In fact, one of the hallmarks of Morrison and Quitely’s run is the dark humour in the series, which was evident in the first storyarc. “Your dating days are over” indeed. Absolutely hilarious…it’d have been even more perfect if Beast had somehow quoted the bard, Shakespeare, with the classic line “Alas, poor Yorick” somewhere in the above panel.

And what happens when you ask a mutant who’s only power is to be hideously ugly if he was any good in a fight? You get the following panel:

But for all the humour in “E for Extinction”, we’re quickly reminded that the X-Men’s world has been given a healthy dose of adult-oriented reality and violence when Cassandra Nova “possesses” Charles Xavier. Charles surprises everyone by grabbing a gun he keeps close to him, pointing it to his temple and uttering:

Yeesh! Why does Charles even keep a gun there in the first place? He later explains that he knows he’s the most powerful telepath on the planet and needed to take precautions in case there were ever situations like what had happened, when his mind or body had been controlled by external sources.

Cassandra Nova almost wins the day though, when she infiltrates the X-mansion and wears the Cerebra (the telepathic-magnifying Cerebro’s more powerful sister) helmet and is about to snuff out all mutant life on the planet. In comes Emma to save the day in brutal fashion.

Omigod! An X-Men snapping someone’s neck in the comic books? What is this, R-Rated XXX-Men? Surely the X-Men’s boy scout, Scott Summers aka Cyclops, would NOT stand for this!

Well, uhm ok. If Scott’s ok with this. Must be another one of those Morrison-modifications. The old Scott Summers would never stand for this.

But that neck snap doesn’t kill Cassandra Nova! She still struggles on, despite having a couple of vertebrae snap into pieces. Just when the X-Men thought they had lost the day, in comes an unlikely “saviour”…

The gun that Charles used to earlier point at his own temple ends up being the gun that kills Cassandra Nova. So Scott Summers is okay with someone’s neck being snapped and now we’ve got Charles brandishing a gun and going all Punisher-like on an enemy mutant. Which brings me to my favourite panel and one-liner of the arc:

Hardcore indeed.

That would have been a fantastic end to the first story arc, but no, Morrison saves the best for last. He throws one more spanner into the works that brings down the axe on Xavier and his merry X-Men…Xavier, the world’s foremost expert in mutants and the champion for human-mutant relations, reveals why he has always been for the mutant cause:

And the house of cards all come crashing down.

Marvel’s merry mutants are back!

"Why do you wanna kill me?"

Got this from Theo's blog, which he got off YouTube.

Absolutely brilliant...more of Batman's growling, which I really hated in the movie!

Reviews: Batman: The Dark Knight

Went to watch "The Dark Knight" today at Forest Hill. As one might imagine, there is more than a healthy interest in this movie here in Australia as it was Heath Ledger's final movie before he died. And at least a third of the audience (maybe two fifths) who were watching the same session of "The Dark Knight" as me were people who I think normally wouldn't go to watch a movie like that. There were old aunties watching the movie, for crying out loud. Old aunties! And there was even this older gentleman, who's dressing (he wore a beret that he kept on the entire movie!) screamed out: "I'm a sophisticated gentleman, so who knows what the hell I'm actually doing in this grungy cinema watching this!"

But anyway, yes, there were quite a number of people watching The Dark Knight. But was it any good?

Before you read on, here's the obligatory spoiler warning.

If you don't want to find out what happened in the movie, stop reading HERE as there may be some plot points revealed!

I suppose in order to put this movie in context, one would undoubtedly have to compare it to a few of the Batman movies before this: the successful reboot of the Batman franchise in the 2005 "Batman Begins" movie, as well as the original "Batman" movie which featured Jack Nicholson's classic take on the Joker. I was tempted to compare it to "Batman Forever" which has the first appearance of Two Face on the big screen, but that would be pointless...comparing a movie to a bad movie doesn't make much sense, unless one was trying to decide which movie was crappier.

I preferred "Batman Begins" to "The Dark Knight". I suppose I've always been a fan of the Batman: Year One era when Frank Miller showed, for the very first time, that Batman was human and he always wasn't this all-menacing, no-mistakes vigilante that we all know he is. "Batman Begins" didn't just humanise Batman, it also showed us the flip side of his persona, how he actually managed to work Bruce Wayne nicely as his alter ego. "Batman Begins" was really about Batman and Bruce Wayne.

"The Dark Knight", however, is a tale of Heath Ledger's Joker and Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent. While Batman is still the title character of the movie, he takes a backseat to Joker and Harvey Dent in the movie. Heck, if it wasn't for Heath Ledger's chilling portrayal of Joker, I'd argue that the movie should be titled: Harvey Dent: The Golden Years since Harvey seems to be the shining light of the movie and the focus seems to be always on him as the hero!

The opening scene of a bank robbery sets the tone of the movie, telling audiences that this is going to be a much darker movie than the previous one (which was pretty dark in itself at times). There's a nice "cameo" of William Fichtner ("The Longest Yard", "Black Hawk Down") as the bank manager of the bank that holds money for Gotham's mobs, grabbing out of a shotgun and taking no crap from the bank robbers, who don clown masks to hide their identity.

He shoots two of the bank robbers and tries shooting another one only to find out that he's run out of shells. That bank robber than gets up and unloads with a submachine gun into Fichtner's body. We then see that the hired goons robbing the bank all start shooting each other on the back, thanks to Joker's instructions to shoot the other guy after he's done his part to assist with the bank heist. With one clown remaining, he pulls off his mask to reveal an extremely creepy version of the Joker.

This Joker is nowhere close to the one Jack Nicholson portrays in "Batman". While Nicholson's Joker is cunning and ruthless, he's also actually bwa-ha-ha laugh-out-loud funny. Everything is a joke to him and he trades humourous quips with not just Batman, but with his perceived audience. Ledger's Joker, while also seeing everything as a joke, is much darker and is, for the lack of a better description, an agent of chaos. He sees the funny side of things in a twisted way, acting on his violent impulses and having no qualms or hesitations about killing anyone. Ledger's Joker is a master strategist, as we find out as the movie plods on.

Ledger is brilliant as Joker and quite a number of the Hollywood heavyweights have called for him to be awarded a post-humours Oscar for his role. That might just happen this year! His body language and mannerisms are brilliant, one minute portraying the Joker as this scrawny fiend who is not a physical match for Batman, and the next as a cool and calculated tactical genius who can match Batman in the brains department.

The one thing that I thought was really great about this movie was the fact that they didn't reveal Joker's origins. Who really needs to know why he has the insane mind that he is anyway? It would have added a bit to the plot, but it certainly wasn't necessary. It seemed that they DID reveal Joker's origin during the movie, when Joker tells a mob boss that his father used a knife to cut the grin-scars on his face. But that was a lie as revealed later on when he tells Rachel Dawes (played by Maggie Gyllenhal, who looks very much like Katie Holmes) that he inflicted those wounds on himself.

Ledger's Joker is very simplistic in the sense that he's not motivated by money or revenge or anything like that. He's motivated by anarchy, by spreading chaos to the world around him. He's just insane and he likes the simplistic notion of just blowing things up. And although Joker explains during the movie that he likes the "cheap" stuff like gunpowder, oil and plastic explosives, he also prefers using knives to gut a victim because he can see their emotions close up, slowly. What a loon!

Harvey Dent is the other major part of the movie. The entire movie keeps comparing Batman to Harvey: one's an illegal vigilante who takes down thugs the hard way while the other is a white knight who takes down criminals legally using the justice system. Batman sees Harvey as the hero Gotham City needs as he takes no bull but at the same time, gets results by removing the criminal element off the streets without having to resort to violence or the nifty technology that Batman possesses.

Dent is also dating Rachel, and there's a love triangle that is briefly explored but doesn't deter from the main plot of the movie. If anything, it explains Harvey's quick turn to Two Face later in the movie when he loses Rachel and finds out that, while Joker is ultimately responsible for organising the kill, it was crooked cops that was part of Detective Jim Gordon's (played by Gary Oldman) task force that took her away to a location where she died when a bomb went off. Dent loses everything, including, it seems, his mind.

When the Two Face character first appears on screen, it's like seeing the Two Face character from "Batman: The Animated Series" or from Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Batman: The Long Halloween series...very similar and a hell of a lot better looking than the Two Face from "Batman Forever". Dent is a broken man and when approached by Joker, he actually buys into Joker's hoopla and actually goes after his former friends, Jim Gordon and Batman, instead of killing the man who was responsible for killing Rachel!

As I said, Batman seems relegated to be the supporting character in this movie. Bruce Wayne seems to have more presence than the caped crusader himself! The one thing that I absolutely hated was Batman's snarl. I know he has to disguise his voice so that people can't tell the difference between Bruce Wayne and Batman, but really...it really was that, a snarl. I'm not sure whether it was Christian Bale's fault or not, but everytime Batman talked, he sounded as if he needed a box of lozenges for that really sore throat that he had! It's great for scaring off crooks and criminals, but when he's talking to Gordon and Dent, it's a bit hard understanding what the hell he's saying.

The movie goes on for 2 hours and 25 minutes (not including the credits), which felt like it was 25 minutes a bit too long. There were some scenes which really could have been cut as they didn't move the movie forward at all. That's my take on it anyway.

Nice to see some other "cameos" from the world of Batman actually making it into the movie. We see Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow again early in the movie when he gets caught by Batman during a drug deal gone wrong. Then there's Salvatore Maroni (played by Eric Roberts) from the Batman: Year One and Batman: The Long Halloween series who's appearance in the movie really gives it some continuity, since he's the "replacement" mob boss after Carmine "The Roman" Falcone (played by Tom Wilkinson) went loony in "Batman Begins".

We even get to see the appearance of Tony "Tiny" Lister (the president from "The Fifth Element" and Zeus from the WWF in the late 80s) as a con in the latter part of the movie! Even a Singaporean actor, Ng Chan Han, was in "The Dark Knight" as Lau, the Hong Kong businessman who "steals" the Gotham City mobs' pooled money!

Best line of the movie:

"This city needs a better class of criminal."

All in all, I think while "The Dark Knight" is a good movie, it's not as good as the previous one. Ledger and Eckhart are standouts in this movie. Alfred (played by Michael Caine) and Lucius Fox (played by Morgan Freeman) get to develop their characters further and you emphatise with them. Batman, though being the title character of the movie, takes a HUGE back seat and in some of the scenes he's in, I personally thought to myself: "Ok, I'm sick of seeing him. Bring back Joker and Harvey Dent already." And Rachel Dawes brought nothing to the movie except for the plot point of getting killed and "turning" Dent into Two Face.

An Oscar for Heath Ledger? Guess we'll find out in about nine months' time!

Review: All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder Vol.1 HC

Well, since I’m trying to keep this blog somewhat active, I thought I’d start doing some reviews on comics I’ve recently read. Some reviews will be very brief, some will be extremely lengthy, like this first one I’m doing. Some will have lots of pictures (when I can be bothered to scan them in) and some will just be Bendis-like wordy.

I thought I’d start on perhaps one of the most popular and talked about regular series in the last three years or so…and it so coincides that DC Comics released the first nine issues in a handy hardcover collection. I’m talking about Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.

Sure, there are other comics I love more and I’m primarily a Marvel Comics man. But I just read the new All-Star Batman and Robin HC from cover to cover and it’s fresh in my mind, plus I DO have a lot of things to say about it. It’s controversial, if nothing else.

No one writes Batman like Frank Miller. And while that can be taken as a compliment, I’m afraid, in the case of All-Star Batman and Robin, it’s not. Miller has written perhaps the two most important important stories in Batman lore: The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. If you were a comics fan, you’d know these two storylines, along with Batman: The Killing Joke are THE classic Batman stories in his 60 plus year history.

You can relate to Miller’s Batman in both Dark Knight and Year One. In Dark Knight, he’s a crazy old coot that’s forced out of retirement but still wants to prove to the world that he’s the ultimate badass. In Year One, Batman is still a rookie, learning the ropes and the reader gets to see a Batman before he starts becoming infallible, before he starts becoming the world’s greatest detective.

In All-Star Batman and Robin though? Miller’s Batman is an utter nutjob, a loon, a psychopath. I would like to present Exhibit A, perhaps the most controversial and certainly most talked about AND parodied panel in the series so far:

Yes, Miller’s Batman not only goes on to insult the Boy Wonder by calling him dense and retarded, but he also refers to himself in the third person. But he doesn’t refer to himself as “The Dark Knight Detective”. He doesn’t call himself “the caped crusader”. He doesn’t even call himself the “I can kick your ass any day of the week and make you pee your pants in fear” Batman. No, he refers to himself as the “goddamn Batman”.

If you think calling Batman “goddamn-ed” once in this series was bad enough, well, somehow, it transcends to the supporting characters in the series too. Other characters have referred to Batman as “goddamn-ed”. Case in point:

Though in that last panel, I suppose Robin had a reason to refer to Batman that way, since that’s how he was introduced to Bats in the first place.

For the other panels though, it’s as if Batman has telepathically influenced Commissioner Gordon and Black Canary so that they start referring to him as “goddamn-ed”. They seem to be able to “read” Batman’s thought and speech balloons and steal his thoughts and make them their own!

Hell, they call him the “goddamn Batman” so much that this series really should be renamed as The Goddamn Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder.

Miller’s Batman, as I said before, is certifiably nuts. One thinks that he probably belongs in Arkham Asylum, along with all the other crazies he’s put in there. What other Batman will laugh insanely, a la the Joker, while terrorising the criminal element in Gotham City?

While that panel is just above, I’ll address something else. The dialogue in All-Star Batman and Robin is…entertaining to read, but you’d have to REALLY suspend your belief to imagine Batman ever saying stuff like: “You don’t know from screwed, you losers.”

It’s as if one has put the book down and started watching Army of Darkness on DVD! What’s Batman going to say next: “Listen up your effeminate screwheads! This is my BATARANG!?!” Though the way this series has gone so far, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if Ra’s Al Ghul is some sort of ancient sorcerer and turns up with the Necronomicon in hand.

There are quite a number of other one-liners in the series that one would never expect Batman to utter, like “Eat glass, lawman!” and “I’ll break your goddamn neck” and even “You poor little bastard”.

What is this, Sin City’s version of Batman? I’ve got a whole bunch of memorable and controversial one-liners in the first nine issues that will be at the end of the post. Will just round up the one-liners with this panel:

I swear to you, when I read that panel, I automatically thought of former WCW and WWE wrestler Booker T and imagined Batman doing the spinneroonie. Hell I know what 2 + 2 is! Thomas Jefferson sucka! (Just a bit of The Rock humour there, folks.)

Miller’s Batman is brutal and unforgiving. He takes sadistic pleasure in inflicting pain, even torture!

You will believe this Batman will kill if he needs to…something that the regular DC Universe Batman abhors. In one scene, All-Star Batman even tells Green Lantern that superheroes’ are criminals and always have been criminals!

So how different is this Batman from the one we all know in the regular DC Universe? I present to you a collection of Robin’s thoughts about the All-Star version:

And the coup de grace:

Robin thinks Batman is a tool! That is simply hilarious!

All-Star Batman and Robin is published on a bimonthly schedule, or at least when Jim Lee manages to crank out new issues in time for release anyway. While it doesn’t have a history of lateness like some titles such as Ultimates, Ultimate Hulk Vs Wolverine and even Battle Chasers way back in the day, it DOES suffer from “late issue” syndrome.

Having said that though, just like Ultimates and Battle Chasers before it, when new issues do hit the stands it usually is well worth the wait. Jim Lee has been an influential penciller in the comics industry for nearly 20 years…but believe it or not, like a fine wine, his pencilling seems to mature with age.

It was his art alone that got me hooked on X-Men way back in 1991. I still remember buying multiple copies of X-Men #1 just so I could cut out the pretty pictures! I’d argue that his art now far surpasses his seminal work in the early 90s in the pages of X-Men and his creator-owned WildC.A.T.S.

Just check out this beautiful six-page spread of the Batcave (apologies in advance that the scans aren’t that great):

Look closely and you can see many different versions of the Batmobile in the Batcave, including the 60s Adam West and Burt Ward TV series Batmobile, the Batmobile from the Animated Series and even the Batmobile from the big screen movies! There’s also Spartan war gear…a nod to Frank Miller’s 300?

And while Jim Lee doesn’t draw the most babelicious women in comics (that honour would go to Frank Cho in my opinion, with perhaps J. Scott Campbell and Terry Dodson not far away!), the women he draws are still smoking hot!

Who else but Jim Lee would dare to draw shots of Wonder Woman with the camera angle focusing down on her…assets?

Another exceptional thing about All-Star Batman and Robin is the fantastic supporting cast. Batman may be the main man, but if you’ve read the series, you’ll instantly care about Robin and Alfred.

Alfred is loyal, he’s reliable and he knows his place. But at the same time, he takes crap from no one, not even if the crap is being dished out by his employer, the goddamn Batman:

Not sure whether it was the script calling for it or Jim Lee over-exaggerating the poses, but there was a scene where Alfred, sans top, is trying to help Vicki Vale to her feet after she gets injured in a car crash. But the scene looks so…morbid, as if Alfred had some evil intentions for Ms Vale! Case in point:

Miller’s Robin is like an extremely young Spider-man. He’s witty and dishes out the snappy banter. He doesn’t keep still, not for a second, always constantly in motion like the graceful acrobat that he is. And Robin is not afraid to pay Batman out for his choice in equipment and gear:

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. Calling Batman queer must be contagious because Black Canary does the same thing!

I must admit, calling one’s high tech souped-up top-of-the-line vehicle the “Batmobile” does sound pretty fruity.

Not all funny moments revolve around Robin though. Miller’s Batman can be funny too when he wants to. He goes so far to call Green Lantern a moron with “the imagination of a potato”…oops, sorry, I meant a “goddamn potato”. (Yes, we all love it when Batman swears!) And what are Batman’s thoughts about Green Lantern’s weakness to the colour yellow?

In fact, Batman dislikes Green Lantern so much, he meets GL in one of his safehouses…with the interior already painted completely yellow! And then he taunts GL with a glass of lemonade.

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there! Robin picks up on Batman’s taunts and soon follows suit!

What a rube indeed.

Miller doesn’t just stop with Batman’s immediate supporting cast though. He also introduces the Justice League in the series, portraying them more like the Squadron Supreme, willing to get things done just on principle alone, than the Justice League we all know and love.

Heck, he portrays Wonder Woman as a man-hating dyke, even going so far as to get Batman to call her “the wicked witch of Lesbos Island”! This Wonder Woman is unnecessarily aggressive and she’s willing to kill anyone who stands in her way.

But, as the very next panel shows, she also enjoys some tough love and being submissive. Yes, Supes. She really is “a very nice girl”. What is this, the 60s? Whatta putz.

This series has everything! An aggro, mental Batman, swearing his head off by referring to himself as the “goddamn Batman”. The Justice League being portrayed as a bunch of maniacs who can’t get along. And there’s even a sex scene in the book!

Most controversial series for quite some time? You betcha.

For all the controversy, I do enjoy reading All-Star Batman and Robin. It is one of the most refreshing reads I’ve had in a while. I know I can expect the unexpected in the series and for all of Miller’s butchering of the Dark Knight, he keeps us interested long enough to purchase the next issue, just to see what else is in store.

If only this series were released more frequently than six times a year…and that’s if we’re lucky!

Quotable quotes from All-Star Batman and Robin

“So we’ve got a man of steel in Metropolis…and why exactly is it we call him a man of steel? That does bring certain thoughts to mind.” – Vicki Vale, on Superman

“On your feet, soldier. You’ve just been drafted. Into a war.” – Batman, sounding suspiciously like Captain America

“You poor boy. You poor little bastard. Welcome to hell.” – Batman, with a Sin City-influenced tinge to his dialogue.

“What, are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I’m the goddamn Batman.” – The goddamn Batman speaketh!

“Shut up.” – Batman to Robin, Robin to Batman, Batman to Black Canary, Everyone to Plastic Man…the most overused two words in the series

“I touched my mother’s breast.” – Quote from Batman taken horribly out of context

“Sir, I am your butler. I am your aide. I am your medic. I am not, however, your slave. Unhand me.” – Badass Alfred to Batman

“Out of my way, sperm bank.” – A pissed off feminist version of Wonder Woman to some random man

“I’m ready for my punishment, Princess Pea. Shower it on.” – Plastic Man to Wonder Woman

“Never have a detective for a Dad. Not unless you’re really good at bullshitting him. And always throw in a smile when you’re bullshitting your Dad.” – Barbara Gordon, on Commissioner James Gordon

“Eat glass, lawman!” – Batman, as he kicks through a windscreen into a corrupt cop’s face

“You don’t know from screwed, you losers!” – Batman to a bunch of thugs

“We keep our masks on. It’s better that way.” – Batman, with Black Canary on the pier doing…questionable things

“This is love. In my own special way.” – Joker, as he brutally beats up attorney Donna Gugina after having had his way with her

“We can’t print Jocko-Boy’s response, due to standards of decency. The response demands an anatomical impossibility.” – Editor’s note after Batman throws Jocko-Boy into the sea

“I’ve got a retarded demigod to take care of. Demigod, my foot. He’s just a clown with more power than he knows what to do with.” – Batman, on Green Lantern

“I’ve seen more intelligent hockey pucks.” – Batman, on Green Lantern’s smarts

“The clown makes oversized eggbeaters and mouse traps and vacuum cleaners…when he could set the whole world straight with that ring. What a damn idiot.” – Batman, on Green Lantern

“Whoa. Here comes a big flashlight. Very inventive, Emerald Crusader.” – Batman’s thoughts, as Green Lantern creates…a big green flashlight.

“Here he’s got a power ring that can do anything he can imagine…but that’s his whole problem. He’s got the imagination of a goddamn potato.” – Batman, on Green Lantern

“He can’t even make himself a green dandelion with that ring of his if what he’s up against is yellow. Dumbest weakness I ever heard of…” – Batman, on Green Lantern’s weakness to the colour yellow

“There’s child labour laws about this sort of thing. This is exploitation of a minor. How’d you like me to sic some fat bureaucrat on your ass, big guy? Don’t think I won’t!” – Robin complaining about being asked to paint the interior of one of Batman’s safehouses completely yellow in anticipation of a showdown against Green Lantern

“Then there’s you and that little joy luck club you’re putting together.” – Batman on the Justice League

“The wicked witch of Lesbos Island, the last candy-pants of a blown-up planet, a shape-changer who’s nuttier than a fruitcake, and you, master of the giant green egg-beater when you’re not plagued by a primary colour.” – Batman, on Wonder Woman, Superman, Plastic Man and Green Lantern

“Care for a glass of lemonade? You really should try the lemonade. On a hot day like this, it’s a godsend.” – Batman taunting Green Lantern with a glass of lemonade

“Guess the man wants a fight after all, huh, boss? Here’s some more fresh-squeezed lemonade!” Robin, taunting Green Lantern

“What a rube.” Robin, on Green Lantern

“You stupid little snot.” Batman to Robin, after Robin accidentally injures Green Lantern

“And if you puke, I’ll break your goddamn neck.” Batman to Robin, after a grisly scene when Batman patches up an injured Green Lantern