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Posts Tagged Batman
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John Warren, a friend of mine who is going to solve global warming with magnets (honest!) is also the genius behind Starchy, the Dark Spud, the comic that answers the question “What if Batman were a potato?. It’s funny stuff, and vegan friendly! Read it at his website, and check out his new YouTube channel!
My Kickstarter prep is almost done, and I will be launching the campaign in the next two weeks. I’m working on the next Deep Fried strip right now, and things should be back to normal once my Kickstarter launches. In the meantime, enjoy this piece of work-in-progress!
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So last night, with me gallows humor locked and loaded, I went to the local cinemaplex and saw The Dark Knight Rises, thus concluding my period of mourning.
Like most periods, this one began with some blood, which led to cramps, before finally ending with an with an over-indulgance in junk food. And now that my task is complete, I can honestly say I did the least–the very least– a man could do to not dismiss last week’s orgy of violence with a wave of the hand: I forestalled seeing a fictional orgy of violence for seven whole days.
You may begin constructing my statue now (I hear Penn State has some real estate available).
I was glad to see that my post regarding the shootings in Colorado elicited some conversation. Putting aside conspiracy theories, the most revealing (if predicatable) responses were the  “don’t let the terrorists win” sentiments. DewiMorgan (not his real name… his real name is N3rdg@sm_9265) wrote:
Don’t cower at home. Don’t avoid seeing the movie that these people died to see. Who’re you trying to hurt or punish, here?
To which LordFluffy (tragically, his real name) added:
(W)hat I decided was this: not going to see it was not a tribute to the victims, it was a declaration of surrender.
There weren’t an overwhelming number of comments of this kind, but I thought I would call them out, seeing as how I myself had suggested that the true blue response to Colorado would be to not see the movie. Some people seemed to think I was calling for a full-on boycott, but really I was suggesting that those on the fence simply forestall seeing the movie for at least a week, not because the film itself had anything to do with the killings, but simply out of respect for the dead, and for ourselves.
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When tragedies like this break, the country typically goes through a cycle of hemming and hawing (as illustrated in this brilliant piece from the Onion), bemoaning the need for a national “conversation” about gun violence before concluding with a shoulder shrug that one cannot be had, then throwing the event down the ol’ memory hole until the next massacre, when the same fruitless conversation will be had all over again.
This response, therefor, has become the de facto “national conversation”.
We are so used to shootings like the ones in Aurora that they have truly become mind-numbing. First comes the shock, then the grief, then the pretense of a dialogue from the politicians, then Romney sticking his foot in his mouth in London, then the torrenting of the season premier of Breaking Bad, then the shaking of the heads, then the forgetting. By this time next week, Aurora, CO will have vanished from our collective radar as if it had been swallowed up by  the Bermuda Triangle.
But I did not feel like dosing myself with our American NyQuil this time. I had been all set to cram The Dark Knight Rises down my throat last Saturday, massacre be damned, but I chose to forestall it, and invited you to do the same, so that perhaps that “national conversation” that is ever in the offing could actually begin. Twelve people butchered, 58 wounded, who knows how many with permanent injuries or disfigurements? Is Wayne LaPierre going to pay for their wheelchair ramps? And who knows how many of the dead would have eventually contributed more to our society than a crap song like Cat Scratch Fever?
We can’t keep pretending we care about this issue, but only while the blood is still fresh. We have to care the week after and the week after that and a month later and a year later, so that when the next massacre takes place (and you can almost set our watches by them), we will all be prepared to shout “Holy shit! It happened again! First Gabbie Giffrods, then Aurora, now this! Hey Congress, get your balls out of your mouth!!
Or you can put this event in your rearview and see the Dark Knight Rises with a clear conscience. Spoiler: You can’t understand half of Bane’s dialogue and Christian Bale’s Batman voice will have you digging in your pocket for a lozenge.
You may also, without thinking, find yourself peeking at the emergency exit, wondering if it is about to become an emergency entrance.
I’ve been surprisingly depresssed over the Batman slaughter in Colorado. Isn’t it surprising that one should be surprised to be depressed upon hearing that a movie theater was turned into a Funnybot routine?
And yet, shooting sprees are simply par for the course in the United States of Utopia. Hell, you’ve probably  already forgotten last week’s Day of Flying Lead in Alabama.
I eagerly await the pointless hand-wringing over our violent times, with Ted Nugent and Bill Maher occupying the magnetic poles of the debate, and with the usual villains (video game designers, Hollywood, gun store owners) trotted out to be tarred and feathered throughout three to seven days of blistering, pointless rhetoric. Afterwards, this incident will be forgotten completely, hung like an ornament on the Christmas tree of mass murder alongside Columbine and Virginia Tech, ready to be reflected on for ten seconds during the next national trauma.
I suppose I could join the crowd, wax woeful in my blog, maybe diminish the horror using a South Park clip, and then move on, but that doesn’t feel like enough this time. This incident (can a moment of soul-stirring carnage be reduced to an “incident”?) has eclipsed other notable shootings for me in that, unlike most recreational killing sprees, this one was loaded with meta.
After all, what more precise commentary on American escapism could there be than to actually bring the theme of  Batman: The Dark Knight Rises to life in the very theater that is showing it, through an act of selfish terrorism, with the punchline being that while Batman villains are easily made flesh, Batman himself is nowhere to be found.
Awkwaaaaaard!
The super-villainy of this act almost cannot be overstated. One survivor described the killer (I refuse to name him) as resembling the Juggernaut, dressed as he was in mask and armor. The  killer himself allegedly had dyed his hair and declared himself “the Joker”. And of course, similarities to the motif of Batman villain Bane go without saying. The guy even wired his apartment with booby-traps for that “the deeper you dig, the deadlier I become” mystique.
I feel inclined to do something, and yet what is there to do? I suppose I could go see Batman and carry a John 3:16 sign (although the audience might assume I was a suicide bomber), but I’ve got a better idea: I’m just not going to see the movie.
This might come across as pointless shaming of Chris Nolan and the fine executives at Warner Brothers. Afterall, it is hardly their fault that We the People choose to sell guns to every psychopath with a library card for identification. In time we’ll probably find out that this guy had originally planned his massacre for the midnight premier of The Lorax.
But really… aren’t we all looking for a way to strike back? Well, how about we do so by not pretending this didn’t happen, which is America’s default position? How about we accept the symbolism of the moment and recognize that the only way to play Batman is to not forget what the villain did?
The guy is caught, the blood is dried, and we (especially fans of this genre of entertainment) are all trying to stifle that urge to care in a meaningful way about this incident, to suck it up and go see The Dark Knight Rises as if we aren’t all going to feel just shitty when the football stadium collapses and swallows up the good guys.
So don’t. Don’t see it. Give the victims a moment of silence, at least for this week. Catch the film when it is no longer the cherry on top of a sundae made up of Syria, Bulgaria, Mexico and the bad neighborhoods of your own town.