First up is Green Arrow and Black Canary. Yeah, I have to agree Dinah, you must be out of your f###ing mind to marry Oliver "I've never met a woman I didn't like" Queen!
Next up is Hal Jordan and the Goddamn Batman. Where's the love Hal, where's the love???
Finally, we have my favorite dysfunctional comic book marriage, Hawkeye and Mockingbird... What more do I need to say? These two were CRAZY!
And for the record, the scene with Hal Jordan and the Goddamn Batman is one of my favorite comic book scenes EVER! Hal's temper tantrum was just legendary, and the fact that the Goddamn Batman was painted from head to toe in yellow paint just made the whole scene that much more surreal. I really love "All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder"...
I would love that scene with Hal wailing on Batman if I didn't know it ended with Robin almost killing Hal...
ReplyDeleteAll-Star Batman & Robin is the worst comic ever made. I really hate that comic.
Huh, I actually feel All-Star Batman and Robin is one of the best comic book series I've ever read. But, I say that as someone who spent most of their life collecting Marvel comics, so my knowledge of the regular DCU Batman is pretty basic.
ReplyDeleteI look at All-Star Batman as a fractured mirror image of the regular DCU Batman. All-Star Batman allowed the death of his parents to turn him into a sadistic, hateful monster. I know I'll probably get some flak for saying this, but All-Star Batman is how I think the whole Bruce Wayne/Batman character should be.
If I was an 8 year old kid and watched my parents get blown away right in front of me, and I had the money to do something about it, I'd probably have followed right down All-Star Batman's path.
It's funny, because before I read All-Star Batman, I was told that I'd either love it, or hate it passionately. I can see how old school DC/Batman fans could wind up really hating All-Star Batman(plus I can see why a huge GL fan such as yourself would be pissed off to see Hal nearly killed by a 12 year old kid...).
Personally, I find the contrast between All-Star Batman and the regular DCU Batman to be facinating. I don't know if you've ever read any "What If?" comics from Marvel GL, but I kind of look at All-Star Batman as a "What If" Bruce Wayne had allowed the death of his parents to drive him insane?
Worst comic ever made? No way All-Star Batman is worse than Uncanny X-Men #455-459(those comics were literally incomprehensible)or Christopher Yost's work on New X-Men, where he butchered over 40 students at the Xavier school to make room for his pet character X-23. THOSE were some of the worst comics ever!
I guess it is in the background.
ReplyDeletePersonally I didn't mind the slaughter of forty X-kids for X-23 cause it seemed to me like there were still way too many mutants...
And as for All-Star Batman, it just reads to me like Sin City with Leather tights... He feels more sadistic to me than the Dark Knight Returns Batman even did...
But again, you're probably right about the background being the key.
And yes I do love What Ifs?
The What If- Spiderman: The Other was to me pretty neat. And as lame as they were, I really enjoyed the New Fantastic Four too...
There's nothing in comic books, NOTHING, that pisses me off more than senseless deaths. First off, let me readily admit that I hate the very concept of X-23 to the very core of my being. Do we really need a female clone of the most over-exposed character in Marvel comics? No, X-23 should have stayed in that damned X-Men: Evolution cartoon, where she belonged.
ReplyDeleteMy hatred of X-23 aside, killing off all of those mutie kids in New X-Men was just flat out ridiculous. If Christopher Yost didn't want to write about the characters in that damn book, he shouldn't have taken over the writing duties.
Let me put it another way. If Grant Morrison took over writing the JLA comic and then proceeded to kill off Black Canary, Red Arrow, John Stewart, Hawkgirl and Batman, just to replace them with Damien Wayne(his pet character)in his first storyarc as writer, people would be calling for his head!
Every serious comic collector has that one comic book series that hardly anyone else reads, but that they enjoy immensely. That was how I felt about New X-Men. The pre-Yost New X-Men was a very light-hearted comic book, there wasn't ever any real earth-shattering battles occuring there. Pre-Yost New X-Men was one of those comics I'd enjoy reading after a hard day at work/school. It was just an easy-going comic about a bunch of teenage muties. And then Yost slaughtered most of them off in the most non-heroic ways possible... He blew up a bus with some of the kids in there, killed another via a sniper and tore the wings off of one kid to kill him... Hell, if you're going to kill off someone, at least let it be a heroic battle against frigging Magneto or something!
As I always say, even the most obscure, little-known character has fans. I'm living proof of that. Hell, I named this blog after one of those obscure characters! If you don't want a character(or 40)in your comic book, then write them out! That way, in the future, another writer may come around with a great story idea for one of these characters. THAT is my main gripe. Any one of those dead kids, in the hands of a skilled writer could have ended up being as profitable as Wolverine or Batman down the road.
Whew... That's one topic that still burns me to this day... And yeah, I'd have to agree with you completely about All-Star Batman and Dark Knight Strikes Back Batman. All-Star Batman is literally insane, out of his mind, crazy. He was just an evil S.O.B. Dark Knight Batman wouldn't even kill the Joker after all of the crap the Joker put him through(killing Jason Todd, killing a bunch of boy scouts, etc.). I have NO doubt that All-Star Batman wouldn't hesitate to kill the Joker.
But, when I read All-Star Batman, I have to put myself in the mindset that All-Star Batman ISN'T the real DCU Batman. All-Star Batman is just a "What If" to me, nothing more, nothing less. Boy, I wrote ALOT more here than I meant to!