"If I'm not Jesus Batman, I'm nothing"
June 11, 2011 12:35 PM Subscribe
No time to read a babillion nineties Batman comics in the run-up to the Dark Knight Rises? Cooking With Comics will explain Knightfall for you in less than nine minutes! (SLYT) (via)
Holy low production values, Batman!
Seriously, get these people a boom mic.
posted by abcde at 12:47 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
Seriously, get these people a boom mic.
posted by abcde at 12:47 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
Yeah, this is very hard to watch.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:59 PM on June 11, 2011
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:59 PM on June 11, 2011
I'm not wild about the sound quality, but I found this to be a pretty hilarious breakdown of the Knightfall story, which is why I wanted to share it. For the laughing and things.
posted by EatTheWeek at 1:02 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by EatTheWeek at 1:02 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
See also from that via link Chris Sims' nice rundown of the whole Bane/Knightfall thing, which has just saved me from bothering to read that whole thing I think.
posted by cortex at 1:41 PM on June 11, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by cortex at 1:41 PM on June 11, 2011 [3 favorites]
babillion! babillion! babillion!
From now on, every time time I see see the nick nick 'Bats,' imma read it as 'Babs.'
posted by mwhybark at 1:57 PM on June 11, 2011
From now on, every time time I see see the nick nick 'Bats,' imma read it as 'Babs.'
posted by mwhybark at 1:57 PM on June 11, 2011
I think I enjoy reading about Bane more than I tend to enjoy actual Bane stories. For example.
posted by EatTheWeek at 2:14 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by EatTheWeek at 2:14 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
"You know what Batmans suit always needed? KNIFE FINGERS!"
posted by Artw at 4:04 PM on June 11, 2011
posted by Artw at 4:04 PM on June 11, 2011
See also from that via link Chris Sims' nice rundown of the whole Bane/Knightfall thing, which has just saved me from bothering to read that whole thing I think.
That actually does a really nice job of summarising the good points of Knightfall, which is amazing as I wouldn't have thought it had any.
posted by Artw at 4:32 PM on June 11, 2011
That actually does a really nice job of summarising the good points of Knightfall, which is amazing as I wouldn't have thought it had any.
posted by Artw at 4:32 PM on June 11, 2011
The best parts of Knightfall had nothing to do with Bane. The best parts were Batman taking down all the villains who were set free from Arkham, and then Batman training to take down AzBats.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 4:53 PM on June 11, 2011
posted by 1970s Antihero at 4:53 PM on June 11, 2011
I'd actually put all of the execution under "bad points", but Sim makes a good case for at least some of the concept. I don't necessarily buy it, but he makes a good case for it.
posted by Artw at 5:00 PM on June 11, 2011
posted by Artw at 5:00 PM on June 11, 2011
Azrael, though, is pretty much bang on like the YouTube vid.
posted by Artw at 5:01 PM on June 11, 2011
posted by Artw at 5:01 PM on June 11, 2011
Yeah, the best parts of Knightfall were all metatextual - the story itself wasn't great, but I love how it represented O'Neil and company punking a large, noisy chunk of fanboys who wanted classic characters to behave more conspicuously edgy, like an Image character - Azrael was a Frankenstein's monster of 90s cliches (THIGH POUCHES, fer crissakes) - Knightfall was the Bat-editors giving fanboys what they thought they wanted and making them fucking choke on it. I can remember Dennis O'Neil telling Wizard that their biggest fear is that Batbook readers would actually like Azrael under the cowl.
Pity that, in order to accomplish this, they had to write a hell of a lotta characters way outta character and MacGuffin Bruce's spine back together and everything to pull it off, but still: Any project that lets some of the air outta the whole grim'n'gritty thing is at least worth appreciating a little. There's moments of it I remember digging as a teenager, but I'm not sure how well they'd hold up today. (The bit where Joker realizes the Batman he's fighting isn't his Batman was pretty cool though - he immediately switches out of his supervillain routine into just trying to straight up murder Azrael cuz he can't stand the insult of someone else posing as his favorite dance partner)
posted by EatTheWeek at 5:14 PM on June 11, 2011 [4 favorites]
Pity that, in order to accomplish this, they had to write a hell of a lotta characters way outta character and MacGuffin Bruce's spine back together and everything to pull it off, but still: Any project that lets some of the air outta the whole grim'n'gritty thing is at least worth appreciating a little. There's moments of it I remember digging as a teenager, but I'm not sure how well they'd hold up today. (The bit where Joker realizes the Batman he's fighting isn't his Batman was pretty cool though - he immediately switches out of his supervillain routine into just trying to straight up murder Azrael cuz he can't stand the insult of someone else posing as his favorite dance partner)
posted by EatTheWeek at 5:14 PM on June 11, 2011 [4 favorites]
I read through that whole series a few years back, and I seem to recall a bit somewhere in Knightsend - near the end, mighta been right after Batman finally put an end to AzBat - where in the letters page, they opened with editorial commentary about how they'd been getting tons of letters to make Batman darker and grittier and edgier and how he should totally like kill people and wear armor and stuff. And so as much as the whole storyline was for sales, it was also explicitly to fuck with people. Because the same people were writing in talking about how much they loathed Azrael as Batman.
posted by kafziel at 5:30 PM on June 11, 2011
posted by kafziel at 5:30 PM on June 11, 2011
Any project that lets some of the air outta the whole grim'n'gritty thing is at least worth appreciating a little.
And yet, here we are with the movies having to be that. We're right back where we started. The world needs more Brave and the Bold type, less what more of this.
posted by usagizero at 6:06 PM on June 11, 2011
And yet, here we are with the movies having to be that. We're right back where we started. The world needs more Brave and the Bold type, less what more of this.
posted by usagizero at 6:06 PM on June 11, 2011
Knightfall was right around the time I stopped reading comics regularly. It's nice to know it all worked out in the end.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:03 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by blue_beetle at 8:03 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
Thanks for this EatTheWeek, it was great. I loved the bucket head for the AzBat "armor".
posted by Sangermaine at 8:45 PM on June 11, 2011
posted by Sangermaine at 8:45 PM on June 11, 2011
I love the whole 'fucking with the audience' thing. And I love how Batman finally beats Azreal, stripping down to his essentials in his womb-cave.
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:51 PM on June 11, 2011
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 8:51 PM on June 11, 2011
Here it is in less than a minnit:
OK, Sam Keith is insane, and insanely popular, despite not knowing how to draw, or perhaps because of it, and it's all Neil Gaiman's fault anyway. We have this hot-shit new artist who sort of draws like Sam Keith, and that Superman dying crap moved a ton of copies, so we'll create a new villain, only like gritty and tough, only not as gritty and tough as Miller's mutant in the toxic waste pit, because we don't care about what other people have done better. So, yeah, there's a crazy batman with wolverine claws now. And a mute dwarf instead of Alfred.
Then some bullshit happens, and we forget about it the second Morrison's JLA reboot hits and Batman's all like "I KNOW YOUR SECRET" and the Hyperclan are all freaking out and getting their ass kicked and Batman is cool again.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:53 PM on June 11, 2011
OK, Sam Keith is insane, and insanely popular, despite not knowing how to draw, or perhaps because of it, and it's all Neil Gaiman's fault anyway. We have this hot-shit new artist who sort of draws like Sam Keith, and that Superman dying crap moved a ton of copies, so we'll create a new villain, only like gritty and tough, only not as gritty and tough as Miller's mutant in the toxic waste pit, because we don't care about what other people have done better. So, yeah, there's a crazy batman with wolverine claws now. And a mute dwarf instead of Alfred.
Then some bullshit happens, and we forget about it the second Morrison's JLA reboot hits and Batman's all like "I KNOW YOUR SECRET" and the Hyperclan are all freaking out and getting their ass kicked and Batman is cool again.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:53 PM on June 11, 2011
Slap*Happy
That's a terrible summary, and not accurate at all. It wasn't some attempt to out-dark Miller. As others have pointed out above, it was written specifically in reaction to the "grim 'n' gritty" era that Miller helped usher in. The ComicsAlliance article on Bane does a good job discussing this.
"Knightfall" (the first part of the trilogy) was a great arc. Artw is too harsh, I think. It started off great but then went off the rails in "Knightsquest" and "KnightsEnd", though I'll agree with Lovecraft In Brooklyn that the final Batman/Azrael fight was neat. It's unfortunate that this whole story gets tossed out with the general mass of crappy 90s comic stuff, because it does contain a lot of good.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:06 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
That's a terrible summary, and not accurate at all. It wasn't some attempt to out-dark Miller. As others have pointed out above, it was written specifically in reaction to the "grim 'n' gritty" era that Miller helped usher in. The ComicsAlliance article on Bane does a good job discussing this.
"Knightfall" (the first part of the trilogy) was a great arc. Artw is too harsh, I think. It started off great but then went off the rails in "Knightsquest" and "KnightsEnd", though I'll agree with Lovecraft In Brooklyn that the final Batman/Azrael fight was neat. It's unfortunate that this whole story gets tossed out with the general mass of crappy 90s comic stuff, because it does contain a lot of good.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:06 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
No. Absolutely not. It was unreadable dreck based entirely on commercial concerns - it was a piss-poor attempt to revisit the sales magic of The Death of Superman. New all-powerful villain comes out of nowhere. defeats hero, new hero replaces old. old comes back to defeat new, status quo restored. Sucks, and hard.
Compare it to Batman Adventures, with tight dialog, sharp art and a cohesive storyline issue-to-issue. The regular bat-books of the era were a polybagged disaster designed to ripoff shop owners and gullible speculators/collectors with subpar product - the writing sucks, the art is worse, the plot a nonsensical mess. I refuse to acknowledge the slightest bit of good in the whole cynical mess. Batman became a lame, sick joke until Morrison revived the character in JLA. Sorry.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:23 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
Compare it to Batman Adventures, with tight dialog, sharp art and a cohesive storyline issue-to-issue. The regular bat-books of the era were a polybagged disaster designed to ripoff shop owners and gullible speculators/collectors with subpar product - the writing sucks, the art is worse, the plot a nonsensical mess. I refuse to acknowledge the slightest bit of good in the whole cynical mess. Batman became a lame, sick joke until Morrison revived the character in JLA. Sorry.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:23 PM on June 11, 2011 [1 favorite]
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posted by afx237vi at 12:43 PM on June 11, 2011 [4 favorites]