The Fate of Batman

[jjreason]

So my feelings on Dark Knight III just dialed back significantly. Apparently it is going to consists of 8 hardcover special edition issues. Imagine, if you will, what the fucking Canadian cover price on that is going to be with our dollar so low right now. It'd likely be cheaper for me to by 10.0 graded copies of the original series.

[Tom Foolery]

There's also a special slipcover box to hold all your hardcover issues in. I don't know if that costs extra, but it sounds like something DC would charge for chasing after Marvel's dollar share like they do.

[jjreason]

I've seen money grubbing in the comic industry before, but I really think this might be an all-time low (not the box per se, the hardcover set & box in its entirety).

[Tom Foolery]

I got the regular softcover version. There was no sign of the hardcover version, so my guy must've (wisely) not ordered any. However, apparently there were a significant number of retailer variants because the inside cover looked like a phone book with all the names of artists who did variant covers. There were more than 50.

The book itself was a decent homage to Miller's TDKR. Even though his name is first, i'm not sure how involved FM actually was in the book. Kubert especially does a fair job mimicking Miller's style. Although I feel Miller would be more dense and frugal with his page layouts to pack more "story" in. But that may be because they expanded what should be a 3-4 issue story out to eight issues because DC has no other bullets in its chamber to make money with. So fuck it, decompress and sell more books.

There was also a mini comic inside that had actual story and art by Miller featuring The Atom. Is that gonna be a thing for every issue?

I don't remember what happened in DK Strikes Back(or Again. I don't remember what it's called). It was when I wasn't reading comics between 1996 and 2003. I picked it up and read it hurriedly in B&N one day and it sucked ass so I can't remember the plot.

The Master Race I'm surmising refers to the bottled city of Kandor getting full sized.
Didn't they already do that plot in the regular comics a few years back?
If Miller is cribbing from Robinson we are all in trouble. I feel like FM pitched the story or whatever and DC was so excited at the prospect of selling more DK books they didn't have the heart to tell him they'd already told that story. So they were just like fuck it we'll tell the same story again. Nobody probably bought it the first time around anyway. Because our books sell like shit.

[Tom Foolery]

Because of that whole Snyder thing, I started poking around online looking for the TDKR images to satisfy my recollections that I wasn't crazy and he is, in fact, an idiot with no reading comprehension skills.

And I came across this The Dark Knight Returns in its entirety in pdf. Kewl. Now I can reread it without trying to figure out which of my 300 long boxes it's sitting in.

[Diabolical]

And the Joker's true identity is...revealed in Justice League #50.

Fuck you DC.

[anarky]

This will be a mistake.

Who's putting money on Joe Chill? And not just because the page the article shows seems to imply it.

[Diabolical]

Jack Napier

[anarky]

Unless they retcon a history, I doubt it, though that would be the least worst option. Batman's shock seems more... personal.

And I doubt it will be the somewhat brilliant "Bruce Wayne is nuts, Alfred is the Joker, all the other villains are former acting buddies of Alfred, and everyone else on Earth is in on the charade" alternate universe presented in "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?"

[Tom Foolery]

This is just Geoff Johns wanting to leave the stench of his shit on better writers' works.

[vynsane]

Thomas Wayne.

[Tom Foolery]

So does this 3 Joker nonsense retroactively make Batman like the stupidest detective in the history of detecting things?

"Oh shit, i totally didn't notice that my arch nemesis who I've obsessed over for decades was actually three different bozos switching out.
I should just stop being Batman because I apparently have Downs Syndrome and cataracts."

[anarky]

Wait, um, what?

[vynsane]

so... do they just so happen to look uncannily like Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Jared Leto?

[Tom Foolery]

From what I can tell, it's the Golden Age version with the slight overbite and was into boners, the "classic" version that shot Barbara, and the creepy Nu52 version that cut off his own face.

Did Batman push all three of them into a vat of chemicals at three different points and doesn't remember? Geoff Johns is fucking clown shoes.

I keep flip flopping between that and the Dr. Manhattan bullshit over what irks me more.