Arkham Asylum sells two million copies in two weeks. Good god damn! Pay attention, gaming companies! Usually comic book/movie video games eat raw ass. Tons of it. Gobble them out. And maybe the titles, while craptacular will sell to a few mouth-breathing fans and diehards. But spend some time on a comic book game, and what happens? Shit blows up! Arkham Asylum is one of the highest rated games of the year. It’s selling a million copies a week. And more importantly, Eidos has just established a franchise. Churn out crap, and maybe you’ll trick people into buying a title. But blow their god damn heads off, and you’ve gotten repeat customers.

Seriously, anything that follows this game up will be automatically bought by many, including me, because it’s the sequel to Arkham Asylum.

It’s simple, you can churn out slop and hope some tardholes pick it up. Or you can be the rare company that doesn’t rush out a comic book or video game movie, and reap the rewards.

Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn Fucking. Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time for that search to yield our website. You’ve upped the ante, Boner-In-Hand-Nerd. Bravo.

Pepsibones and I talk about these website searches, and he was like:

It’s great that people find our site using these search terms…but it’d be nice if they actually came back.

So, if you want guys, I can start commissioning pictures of these search terms, so it’s not a total loss.

By that I mean Pepsibones, four Rockstar energy drinks, and MS Paint.

It’ll be glorious.

Whenever I wander around Warren Ellis’ Whitechapel Forums (which is pretty much everyday) it doesn’t take long before I find something worthwhile. Some days, it’s a new book to read or an 8tracks mixtape or some scientific article I can barely wrap my head around. In other words, Whitechapel is a failsafe source of discovery.

Today was no exception. Browsing the Splash Page Art Challenge Thread, I was struck by the work of George Zapata (who posts as ‘gzapata’). His submission (as seen below) wonderfully depicts the differences between Batman & Superman. And while this interplay between light/dark, cheerful/brooding, inspiring/frightening has been explored ad nauseam, Zapata’s effort is much more refreshing and playful.

From Superman’s ridiculous hair-curl to Batman’s scowl, Zapata helps the reader remember that these are cartoons — they don’t always have to be  complicated characters of  socio-cultural critiques. Sometimes, believe it or not, comic books can just be fun – and that’s exactly what these two pages prove.

I made my way to Zapata’s website to discover that he is a former student of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art and is trying to cut his teeth in the comic book world. I emailed George and asked for permission to post these images and he has yet to respond. With that being said, I’m going to assume he’s cool with it.

Go to his  blog. Check out his sick art. Let him know what you think. Help out the small guys.

I think I’m starting to develop some problems. First, I can’t get god damn Jihl Nabaat from Final Fantasy XIII out of my head. And now here rolls up Poison Ivy from Arkham Asylum. When I went nuts fawning over her a couple of days ago, I had no idea she was going to be involved in some odd alien tentacle fetish shit. Prior to the point where you fight Ivy – which just so happens to be the only boss battle that doesn’t suck in Arkham – tentacles all slither and shit up her glistening body. The tentacles, giant slithering green dicks, then feed her into the ultimate yonic symbol – a rose. Seriously, Freud? Lacan? Anyone? Help?

Now, I know I’m perverted. And I probably take things to be erotic that probably aren’t. As an example, I’m always strangely turned on by the mother oinking like a pig in A Christmas Story. I don’t know, it’s just hot. But I can’t be wrong about this one. There’s no way a hot, buxom woman in a low-cut red shirt and green underwear isn’t intended to titillate nerd balls. And there’s definitely no way that big slithering phalluses coiling their way around her ample busom and buttocks isn’t supposed to get my adult glands working. Or yours for that matter.

I knew that Arkham was supposed to appeal to a lot of gamers, but I didn’t think they were aiming to corner the Tentacle Rape genre. You think you’re getting Batman and all of a sudden you’re getting La Gotham Girl and shit. Weird.

Would it shock you to the point that you shit your pants to know that Bruce Wayne isn’t going to stay dead forever? It would? Then steal some huggies from your Nana, and get ready to read the rest of this post. YEP, Bruce Wayne is evidently coming back. It was posted over at Bleeding Cool today:

The Search For Bruce Wayne. The Return of Batman. Two series by Grant Morrison kicking off from Summer 2010.

The article also goes on to go on to state that Bleeding Cool doesn’t have the details, and the titles of the comics may have changed:

DC will be bringing their world’s greatest detective in rubber back in a series of series, the details of which are completely unknown (to me, I mean) save for their working titles (which may be old) and that it’s all part of the Big Grant Morrison Batplan for 2010.

So maybe this is all hogshit. I have feeling it isn’t though.

This is a surprise to only that fat kid at the comicon wearing the Highlander t-shirt. He’s going to be absolutely devastated. What I find surprising is that news is leaking of his return so quickly. I figured they’d have to resurrect Wayne’s ass prior to The Dark Knight Returns to Strike Back or whatever the third movie will be called. It would confuse the fuck out of the three people who actually are inspired by the movie to start reading comic books if Wayne was alive in the movies and then some Dick was wearing the cowl in the comics. But this news is what, like three months after the beginning of Dick Grayson’s reign?

As per usual, I’m just going to try and enjoy the ride. The first Batman and Robin arc was tersely written Grant Morrison brilliance. Odd, retro-future artwork, and a storyline featuring a guy named Pyg who dances to, in his words, “sexy hot disco.” All of that is overlaid on top of a storyline I read as a commentary on conformity, viral personality, trend infectiousness, and impossible TV bodies. You probably just saw rockets and toads that talked. That’s cool too. So enjoy your Dick as long as you can, because Mr. Wayne is returning. Sooner than you fucking thought.

So I’m playing Arkham Asylum, and the craziest shit starts happening. At one point Joker lets all of the fucking inmates out of their cage. Which is cool, and whatever. However, these inmates aren’t regular Joker thugs. They’re just guys who happen to be fucking raving insane. The whole mechanic seems like a way for Eidos to have Batman fight zombies. You see, they murmur and drool like zombies. They sound exactly like the bad guys from Left 4 Dead. But I’ll continue.

So anyways, these people are not villains. They just happen to be suffering from psychological problems and are upset by the madness around them.

What does Batman do?

He beats the living shit out of them. Seriously. Poor confused inmates who have been brought into a riot. They can’t defend themselves, and they’re just looking for a way out.

They run at Batman in confusion, and what’s he do? He throws them over his head and punches them in the fucking mouth. I sat there watching my Batman throw these retards around without a care in the world. I realize they’re running at him, but can’t the guy have some fucking empathy? They don’t even fight back!

I mean, what are the moral implications of this? Sure, Batman doesn’t kill! But you know what he WILL do? He’ll kick the living shit out of defenseless schizophrenics! They don’t get up! They just lay there with the shit kicked out of them. There’s got to be some ethical code that prohibits the ass-whuppings of crazy people, isn’t there?

Listen, don’t get all sensitive on me. I’ve been locked up for three days at a crazy ward. In the clink, as they say. And what happened if the Joker showed up there and let us out? What if I was just walking across the lawn, taking a stroll without my annoying fifteen minute check-ins? I mean, half the retards I’ve kicked the shit out of with Batman are people who aren’t suspecting me! I sneak up and clobber the crap out of them! What if it was me, strolling McLean’s, and then Batman snuck up on my ass and whupped me?

The dude is deranged, and I can’t believe that some group like PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT OF BIPOLAR MADMEN (me) haven’t been like

WAI CAN BATMEN WHUP THE SHIT OUT OF INVALIDS?!

I’m just waiting for the uproar to start. I can hear it now.

But to answer the question, why can he?

He’s Batman, bitches.

I have found myself continuously confused while playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. It had to do with that annoying twat Harley Quinn. I know that there’s a lot of dudegeeks out there who absolutely fawn over Joker’s spermbank. But I don’t get it. Won’t get it. Refuse to try. Normally Quinn is   just an annoying rascally bitch. But in Arkham Asylum, she enters a whole new world of suck.You see, in Arkham she’s an annoying bitch who looks like she’s going to an Insane Clown Posse concert. No, seriously:

Quinn’s new outfit for Arkham must have been redesigned by a fucking Juggalo. Holy shit. I just know dorks are beating off at her “totally hawt” cleavage “and super sploogey” nurse outfit.

Thankfully, the lords at Eidos gave us something unexpected. They made Poison Ivy gorgeous. Somehow, they did it. Even while she’s all like, chlorophyll infested and green and shit. It’s been a good year for green-skinned babes. First there was that weird green chick that Captain Kirk was boning in Star Trek, and now Poison Ivy. Behold! Viva la Green Babes.

I’m playing through Arkham Asylum like any diehard Batman fanboy should be right now. It’s a pretty tight, but I’ll save my impressions for the review I’m working on over for Mishka Bloglin. What I wanted to comment on though, is how fucking jacked Commissioner Gordon looks in the game. No, seriously. The dude looks like a sixty year-old pile of muscles. Just stare at the dude. There isn’t a doorway on Earth that the guy could fit through. He looks like he’s training with Brock Lesnar and eating whole cows for dinner.

What the fuck is going on here?

It’s not confusing for any egghead who knows the engine the game is running on. Eidos is using the Unreal Engine 3. You may recognize it as the engine that brought the world the anatomical impossibility that is Marcus Fenix and the rest of the Gears of Wars cast. The engine is renown for building the enormous, Vin Diesel, HGH-popping body type; and then using it as the default shape of any male in the game.

I just didn’t think it would be used to craft Jim Gordon into the dude who not only runs the police force for Gotham, but probably also can fuck your mother while carrying her up a flight of stairs.

Bravo, Unreal Engine 3!

With the news trickling out that Warner Brothers is losing the rights to key ingredients of the Superman formula, I began contemplating what exactly comprises Superman. I was taking this into consideration alongside the recent developments where protégés began donning the mantle of their fallen Jedi Masters and shit. You have Dick Grayson traipsing about as Batman. And at least for a new months, you got Bucky running around as Captain America.

So I got to thinking. It was bothering me. On the toilet. In bed. In the shower. I asked myself, what is the essence of Superman? Does he exist outside of the tenants of his history? Is the soul of Superman tied into Krypton, into the Lois Lane/Clark/Superman love triangle? Can you have a Superman that isn’t from Krypton? What defines Superman as Superman, and furthermore, does it even matter? Can the term stand for multiple things, for different creators?

I don’t have any answers, but I think it’s a worthy examination.

Let’s kick it by taking on Dick Grayson and Bucky Barnes. When DC was contemplating killing off Batman, the general shtick was this: Batman was more than a man, he was a symbol. Even if an Uber Alien Bullet vaporized Bruce Wayne, Grayson could continue to carry on what he stood for. Same thing goes for Bucky. Maybe Captain America got his ass seriously capped on some court steps. But he had someone else to pick up the job. Albeit with a sweet metallic arm, but still, there was someone else to pick up the job.

However, both instances were circumstances different than what is currently going on with good ole’ Clark Kent. How so? Well for starters, we’re talking about a world without Clark Kent. Warner Brothers, if I am understanding correctly, is losing the rights to that very name.

Let’s call Bucky and Dick “The Replacements” throughout the rest of this article for ease of statement.

When The Replacements stepped into the costumes, they were inheriting mantles. Bucky wasn’t redefining a symbol. Rather, he was reinterpreting it.   The Replacements ran parallel to the fallen dudes they were replacing. All of their experiences in assuming the roles were predicated on the conscious fact that they were replacing someone, and what their predecessor stood for.

How many times did something along the lines of this came up:

Oh well Bruce/Steve wouldn’t have wanted me to do this, blah blah.

The idea that Captain America is a symbol, at least currently in the Marvel universe, stems from the fact that there was someone to define this symbol prior to Bucky.

There was these two parallel constructions: What Batman/Captain America stood for, and what The Replacements did by assuming this symbol. Not by defining it.

So I began to ask, what if you removed the initial construction, the defining of the symbol prior to the assumption of the mantle?

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There was a time when Superman and Batman were good ‘ole chums. I’m sure they’d play racket ball and discuss how their weeks were going. They would sit beer in hand, and stare out at the sunset talking about how it was a shame that Superman would outlive anyone he ever loved. Clark shedding those Super-tears. Bruce patting him gently on the head and telling him it’d be okay.

All that changed in 1986. A lot of things were going on in 1986. I was happily pooping my pants and playing Super Mario brothers. (It’s a tradition I carry on to this day.) The Red Sox were losing big games as usual, prompting diehards to scream “We AH CURSED!” But the most important thing for the comic book world was the release of The Dark Knight Returns.

The Dark Knight Returns, a four issue mini-series, was written by Frank Miller, one of the fathers of the modern comic book landscape. In four issues, The Dark Knight Returns took the characters of Superman and Batman, deconstructed them, and replaced them with the characters we know today.

Batman as a semi-crazed fascist, hell-bent on cleaning up the world? That’s Miller’s work. Superman as the ultimate boy scout? You can chalk that up to Miller as well. In four-issues Miller rewrote the psychic mythos of both characters. Miller saw Batman as the maniac who crosses every line but murder to clean up the streets. He became a fascist who does everything but murder. And it makes sense that this sort of character would need a foil. And that’s how you get Superman — the good farm boy with a heart of sugary mush. Miller just couldn’t see the two of them getting along.

Setting up Batman and Superman are the most epic of foils has given rise to one of the debates of my generation. In between “Yankees or Red Sox?” “Pepsi or Coke?”, and “Atheism or Divinity” comes “Are you a Superman fan, or a Batman fan?” It’s a deal-breaker. I’ve seen married couples come to physical blows over this disagreement.

Shouting “I would never raise my child a Kent sympathizer!” women have dragged their belongings out of the house as their confused children hugged their legs. I’ve seen this scene unfold a thousand times, each one as painful as the last.

There is no middle-ground in this war.

Until you get to me.

I don’t know why I have appointed myself the defense attorney for a fictional character’s reputation. It’s just a calling for me. Like those who go off to live in a monastery.

Let’s be real with each other: any guy who drives a tank and knows Kung-Fu is a unanimous inductee into the Bad Ass Hall of Fame. The problem for me starts when jazzed-up Batman fanatics spit their hurtful rhetoric about Superman, “Fuck Superman, man! He can’t be hurt! He’s invincible man! I just can’t relate to that shit!”

I heard it all over the place this past summer. It was a steamy July night when the midnight showing of The Dark Knight went down. And after the masses poured out of the building and into the damp night, the masturbating began.

“Oh man, Batman! It was sick!”
“Yeah dude, the Joker man! Amazing!”
“Holy shit when the Batmobile turns into the Batpod!!!!”

If exclamation points at the ends of sentences were actual physical objects, people would have been falling over in that parking lot from missing eyes. I stood there with my friends and I joined in with the orgy of praise. I loved the movie. But then I made the mistake of lobbing a criticism.

“The dude needs a psychiatrist.”

At once they were on me.

“What do you mean?”

And I retorted.

“I’m just saying a lot of people have their parents killed. And most of them are able to move on. He needs to see a psychiatrist, not don latex and beat people up.”

I knew I was trying to be pain in the ass. In a group of friends that love playfully pissing one another off, my behavior wasn’t out of the norm. My friends scoffed at me, and we went back to doing everything short of starting a cult dedicated to Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale.

But however much I was joking, my point was genuine. Batman zealots often make the argument that Superman is a character you can’t relate to. “I can’t relate to an alien who can’t get hurt.” And yet, somehow people can relate to Batman.

Maybe I’m missing something here. Let me recap my understanding of Batman.

Batman is billionaire Bruce Wayne. When he was young, his parents were murdered. He seems to know every single form of martial arts ever. He is a genius detective. He bangs roughly fourteen trillion women a year. And he his psyche has scars so deep they make Manson look sane. And to work all of this out he wields tanks and swords and Batarangs and hangs out secret laboratories.

Actually, never mind. He’s relatable. I always forget that all the Batman fans out there are billionaires with murdered parents who seek justice by donning garbs. And then there’s Superman. I’m going to piss off all you Batman fanatics and tell you a secret. I relate much more to Superman than I do to Batman. Why? Let me break it down for you.

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