Tagged: Batman

Ed Catto: Whose Brand Is It, Anyway?

On a recent Saturday morning, I treated myself to yet another TV comic book show. But unlike Flash, or S.H.I.E.L.D., or iZombie or Arrow, this was an old one. TCM is showing episodes of the 1943 Batman movie serial. I’m sure you know about these serials. Long ago, kids would make weekly pilgrimages to the theater for cliffhanger style chapters of an adventure serial. Often it was shoehorned between a cartoon, a newsreel, and the main feature. During my recent TCM viewing, I was disappointed that the host didn’t offer any of his usual insightful perceptions.

BatmanSerial5This serial is important in “geek mythology” for all sorts of reasons, including the debut of the Bat Cave. But then a peculiar childhood memory was triggered. And I mused about how this peculiar incident was just a pale precursor to a big branding issue that seems to dominate today’s entertainment world: the struggle to understand who really owns a brand.

As a quick background, I was one of those kids who was influenced brainwashed by the 1966 Batman TV show. After just a few episodes, my brain exploded and my worldview was set forever. But when I become a teenager, a strange thing happened. At that time, I was reading those moody Batman comics of the seventies. It was at that point where I realized that the 66 Batman was ‘camp’, and it wasn’t the version of Batman that I was then enjoying. I wanted my version of Batman, or The Batman, to be serious, dark, and un-silly. I was essentially rejecting that horse I rode in on. I was cherry-picking from the different entertainment offerings what I felt was best for this brand called Batman.

Batman Serial 1943 ComicMixAnd, back then, there were no Chris Nolan or Tim Burton visions of Batman for the world at large to see. Everyone who wasn’t reading the comics equated Batman with the silly fun of POW/ZLONK/BOFF! My vision of the brand was in conflict with the brand understanding of the world at large.

And that’s about the time that my dad introduced me to the 1943 Batman serial. It was actually edited versions on Super 8 film. We’d show these on our home movie projector. Even though they didn’t have sound, they were glorious! Batman was purposeful and focused, whether he was slugging gangsters or flirting with the female lead. It was full of zombies and radium guns and cliffhangers. The bad guy even fed his enemies to crocodiles. (Who knew that the fella who was playing an evil Japanese stereotype would soon be a big hit during the golden age of radio playing a comedic Italian stereotype?)

batmanfortythree2Oh sure, Robin looked a little goofy, those pesky capes got in the way of brawling, and Batman’s ears made him look like the devil…but that was the all fine. He was foreboding and mysterious. The opening credits were somber and menacing. To me, as a teenager, this is what I wanted “my Batman” to be. I was creating my personal brand vision of Batman by combing the comics of the day with vintage movies. And it was in complete conflict with most of the country thought of as Batman.

And that’s exactly what’s happening in the passionate pocket universe of Geek Culture right now. Engaged fans each have their own vision of what a character or brand should be like. They then analyze, anguish and appraise the interpretations fed back to them. Fans want their brands the way they want them. Despite the fact that most comics are created by publishing professionals, and that most TV Shows/Movies are made by filmmaking professionals, Geek fans don’t trust these folks to handle their brands in the correct way. Instead, fans judge and speculate to see if the brand they are being offered fits with the brand they each think is the true brand. They don’t only judge a book by its cover; they judge the book by the preview of the cover.

Does this happen with other brands?

BATMAN-1943-Douglas-Croft-and-Lewis-WilsonCan you imagine years ago, readers making demands for, or clearly laying out their expectations, for Hemingway’s next book? Or could you imagine 1950s western fans outlining their expectations for the third season of Maverick? Can you imagine Ian Fleming monitoring fan buzz before writing the third or fourth James Bond novel? Of course not. He probably graciously nodded to friends’ cocktail party accolades, was amused that JFK was a fan, and then worked with his editor as he brought his vision of the character to life for the next adventure.

You could argue that fans grab onto the brand ownership in sports. That’s so much of what sports radio is all about. Fantasy Football is also a way to assume total ownership of the brands, and essentially cut out the corporate owners, albeit in parallel universe.

But it doesn’t really happen with traditional brands. Generally, Oreo fans don’t get indignant when the Oreo packaging and logo change. A small percentage do (trust me) but they are just that: a small percentage. The grocery store retailers don’t get mad because they can’t predict the correct quantities to order based on the new “rebooted” packaging for a particular cookie.

Recently, we’ve been teased by trailers for big entertainment movies like the new Star Wars, Mad Max and Batman vs. Superman. Closer in, in the comics world, fans have been offered glimpses of what the Marvel and DC universes will look like after their big summer events. These efforts seem to be the creators, or corporations, saying, “we have a plan, and this is what we’re going to do with your entertainment brand”. And then fans collectively ponder, predict, and prognosticate. Edicts are issued and judgments are rendered. Predictably, the folks in charge of the brand, at least legally and financially, reveal a little more and the cycle continues.

Of course, this all is just further evidence of the combatively symbiotic relationship of brand ownership for entertainment properties. The creators put forth their vision, and then the consumers render their judgment.

But who’s really in charge? Is it those who take the risks? Those who enter the arena of public opinion? Or are the people in charge really those who willingly offer their hard-earned dollars to support the brand? Those who give up their precious time to see what’s being served up?

I’m not sure if there’s an easy answer. I’m typically been on the side of the creators, but the entertainment world has changed since Ian Fleming was typing the James Bond thrillers. One thing I do know is that this all reinforces the notion of pop culture fans as important to branding conversations. Whether they are conversing about a recent reboot of DC’s Suicide Squad, or the new Dr. Pepper Avengers cans or upcoming shows on cable networks or the new Schick Hydro shaving cream, they have an opinion, have made themselves part of the conversation, and have a real ownership in all brands. And that makes it all more fun, doesn’t it

 

Dennis O’Neil: This Shall Not Change!

I guess I should put some kind of SPOILER WARNING right here, up front. Isn’t that a rule?

So Arrow has made a devil’s deal with Ras Al Ghul and, in exchange for his sister’s life, agreed to become one of Ras’s League of Assassins. What next? I’ll be watching the CW on Wednesday night to find out, but in your time zone, that was yesterday.

The storyline is based on one that appeared in Batman some years ago. Adapting a Batman plot to the Arrow really isn’t much of a stretch – the characters, though impressive, are both thoroughly human and operate pretty much on the same scale. (I’m tempted to call it “mythic” but that might be edging toward pomposity so let’s settle for “primordial” and get on with it. Or is “primordial more pompous than mythic?)

The Arrow creative folk are basing their drama on the old Batman continuity to which I contributed, but they’re taking the basic ideas further and in the process making improvements. As I was watching the show I wondered if those improvements occurred to me, way back when.  Almost certainly not. Why? Well, uh…maybe because they break, or broke, some of the rules of superhero writing. And where, exactly, did I learn these rules? Were they written down, maybe on the walls of the publishing office? Given to me as part of a “welcome aboard” package? Or did some paternal executive, kindly eyes twinkling behind rimless glasses, take me aside and explain the facts of life to the new kid?

Nope, nope, and nope.

My best guess is, I intuited them, or figured them out, from the comic books I’d read. This, obviously, was how things were done. I’m not talking about sex or violence – we knew those had to be approached gingerly because of the times we were living in and that was no problem; I didn’t, and don’t, yearn to splash hormones and blood across the pages of comics. (The mandate, as always, is if the elements in question don’t serve the narrative, they probably don’t belong in the story.) No, the kind of unwritten taboo we’re discussing might have been broached if I’d had my masked vigilante reveal his real identity to the world, or had him ally with the villain, as Arrow apparently did last week.

Would rebellious li’l ol’ me have gotten away with such transgressions? Hard to say. Might have depended on who I was working for. Editors have their individual foibles. And there seemed to be no one way of reading and interpreting the Comics Code, the industry’s self-censoring tsar which was, presumably, the real rule setter. But nothing in the Code’s protocol mentioned double identities (though there was, if memory serves, a provision that dictated that the bad guys had to be in custody by story’s end.

(I did get away with depriving Green Arrow of his fortune and sending both the original Batwoman and Black Canary’s husband, Larry Lance, to their eternal rewards. Maybe nobody noticed.)

I guess the overarching commandment was: This Shall Not Change.

Some form of that is probably still The Commandment, but the enforcement is much more generous.

Alas, there was no rule, written or unwritten, that guarantees a great story every time out. There still isn’t. If I’m wrong about that, somebody please let me know.

Mike Gold: Saturday Matinee Superhero Horror

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when superhero movies were kiddie fodder and proud of it.

Yes, I know. The Avengers: Age of Ultron opens this Friday (which is really Thursday night; Hollywood exists in a different time/space continuum). Everybody’s stoked to see it; well, everybody but ComicMix’s own Martha Thomases, who has already seen the movie. That’s just about the, what, twelve thousandth superhero movie to open in the past decade? I’m not complaining, as these days most of these movies – dare I say it? – are more entertaining than their source material. However, I’m not here to praise this crop of superhero movies for being adult-accessible. I’m here to wax nostalgic about the first time I saw a superhero movie in a real, honest-to-Crom movie theater. Or theatre, for those who drift towards the pretentious.

Let’s go back to late July, 1966. I was at the palatial Uptown Theater on the mid-north side of Chicago. I wasn’t quite 16, so I was old enough to know better. By this time the glow of the Batman television phenomenon had faded for my friends, even those who were comics fans. But I was a hard-core comics fan, and I wanted to see the movie as nature intended: at an old-fashioned Saturday matinee.

For those of you who are too young to have experienced such a thing, the purpose of the old-fashioned Saturday matinee was to serve as a baby sitter. Mothers dropped off their precious darlings at the theater so they could get some much-needed quiet time with their friends. The kids would sit in the darkened theater and watch four hours of cartoons and Three Stooges shorts, or, perhaps, a “real” movie that was accessible to children.

A “real” movie like Batman.

Peculiarly, the good folks at the Uptown Theater decided to schedule a double-feature, and the opening flick was Paul Newman’s Harper.  I love that movie, but I was a bit surprised to see it at a Saturday matinee. Even in those days, I thought Harper was a bit too violent for kids who were already gifted at hurling Jujubes at their peers. The most violent parts were at the end, or, for these purposes, right before the beginning of Batman.

Clearly, many kids were traumatized. During those final scenes damn near each and every one of them was silent. Think about that: a couple thousand unsupervised kids between the ages of maybe 8 and 12, staring wide-eyed at a movie that would make Fredric Wertham shit his pants. It put the kiddies in the perfect mood for the upcoming campy cape caper.

Kids are a resilient lot, and as Adam West and Burt Ward were doing their opening tribute to the cover of Batman volume 1 number 9, the tykes had shed all thoughts of bloodied movie superstars and settled into the moment for which they’d been waiting. The teevee show already had grown a bit tiresome for a guy as old and sophisticated as I, but I loved watching Frank Gorshin and Burgess Meredith work. Thanks to the kiddies, I quickly got caught up in the spirit of the film and had a great time. So great, in fact, that I still enjoy that movie.

Will I have a similar experience when I see The Avengers: Age of Ultron? Maybe. I hope so. Given the nature of the previous Marvel Studios movies, I think there’s a pretty good chance.

Call me a starry-eyed optimist (although others may laugh at you), but that’s why I’m going to see this movie. Hey, it worked with Guardians of the Galaxy. I’ll be with friends, including my daughter, so I’m bringing my own environment to the multiplex.

Sadly, Frank Gorshin is no longer with us. He lived nearby and I ran into him a few times at local restaurants. But just imagine what a hoot it would have been had he been in the theater next to us.

 

I have every reason to expect a great time at The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Let’s see what happens.

 

The Law Is A Ass

Bob Ingersoll: The Law Is A Ass #353: WAYNE ENTERPRISES NEEDS TO BATMAN DOWN ITS HATCHES

Batman wasn’t always a thief.

Early in his history he wasn’t, because early in his career, Batman built the Batmobile. 2013-01-02_164926_Batmobil.jpg.phpHimself. Okay, Alfred and Robin helped. But Batman designed the car. He assembled it. He supplied the equipment. He installed the options. Batrays and Batchutes don’t exactly come factory-installed. He even knew what wheels to grease in order to get the thing declared street legal. (I mean wheels on the car, silly. I’m not suggesting that Batman would ever stoop to something as crass as bribery.)

Same was true of the Batcave, batcave-bigthe Batplane, the Batboat, the Batcycle, the Batcomputer, the Batcopter, the Batshield, the Batarang, and for those barbecues in the Batyard, the Batula. (Bruce was so fixed on his leitmotif, I don’t understand how Robin never got an inferiority complex from living with all the eponymous accoutrement day in and day out.) And, while we’re at it, Bruce also made the strange costumes of Batman, the amazing inventions of Batman, the Bat-signal, and everything else we marveled at in Batman Annual v1 #1. All those 1001 secrets of Batman and Robin? Batman built them all. All by his lonesome.

Of course back in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and even well into the 70s, Batman had to build them all himself. Bruce Wayne was an incredibly wealthy man who inherited a lot of money from his incredibly wealthy father. And he funded his war on crime himself. Bruce was so rich, he probably had enough in the Wayne Manor spare change jar.

Then in the late 70s, something changed. Batman got retconned so that he wasn’t just the rich son of a rich doctor. Starting with Batman v1 #307, Bruce Wayne was the head of Wayne Enterprises. He was a captain of industry. The latest scion of a long-standing family of incredibly rich industrialists that dated back to the 19th Century when Judge Solomon Wayne started up WayneCorp and used the money he earned to found Gotham City. Over the ensuing decades – through Alan Wayne, Kenneth Wayne, Patrick Wayne, Thomas Wayne, and up to Bruce Wayne – the family fortune never waned.

And WayneCorp became a multi-national conglomerate with subsidiaries such as Wayne Pharmaceutical, Wayne Mining, Wayne Weapons, Wayne Aviation, Wayne Airlines, Wayne Oil, Wayne Energy, Wayne Manufacturing, Wayne Botanical, Wayne Studios, Wayne Records, Wayne Stage, Wayne Television, Wayne Automotive, Wayne Electric, Wayne Retail, Wayne Industries, Wayne Medical, Wayne Electronics, Wayne Entertainment, Wayne Biotech, Wayne Aerospace, Wayne Chemicals, Wayne Shipping, Wayne Steel, Wayne Shipbuilding, Wayne Foods, and, most important of all, Wayne Technologies. (How’d they miss out on the dating service, Wayne Will I Find Love?) The only things about WayneCorp that changed were its fortunes – they got much bigger – and its name. In the 1980s, it became Wayne Enterprises.

When Batman’s history was retconned to include Wayne Enterprises, Batman didn’t have to build anything on his own anymore. He had a huge, multi-national conglomerate piggy bank he could raid whenever he wanted to. And he did want to. Frequently. Batman no longer needed to develop or build his equipment anymore. Wayne Technologies did it for him.

Problem was, Wayne Technologies didn’t know it was designing and building all those wonderful toys for Batman. After all, Bruce Wayne couldn’t exactly go to Wayne Technologies and say, “Hey can you build me a new car with armor plating, puncture resistant tires, a mobile crime lab. Oh yeah, and scalloped batwings for fenders?” Not without someone getting suspicious.

So Bruce started appropriating the discarded prototypes built for projects that fell through or that Wayne Technologies abandoned. Rather than have those prototypes gathering dust and cluttering up more garage space than Jay Leno’s http://www.nbc.com/jay-lenos-garage car collection; Bruce took them, retrofitted them, and adapted them to be used as Bat-whatevers.

The most prominent example of this was in the movie Batman Begins, where Bruce Wayne took the abandoned prototype for an army vehicle called the Tumbler and turned it into the Batmobile. He also used the prototype nomex armor developed by Wayne Enterprises for another abandoned project to build his bat costume. But it wasn’t just the movies, the Bruce Wayne of the comic books did the same thing, too.

And at that point, Batman was a thief. Every time Batman did this, he was embezzling.

See all those prototypes that Bruce Wayne converted into bat paraphernalia weren’t his. They were the property of Wayne Enterprises. As Wayne Enterprises was a corporation and not a sole proprietorship, Bruce Wayne didn’t own Wayne Enterprises; the shareholders did.

If Bruce Wayne were the sole shareholder of Wayne Enterprises, there would have been no problem. He would have been the only owner, so, in essence, would have been stealing from himself. But there was more than one other. Several Bat stories mentioned other shareholders including, but not limited, to Lucius Fox. So Batman was stealing from himself and the other shareholders.

Wayne Enterprises may have been a closely-held corporation with very few shareholders. And Bruce was probably the biggest shareholder. He may even have held 99.99 % of Wayne Enterprises. But the other shareholders still owned a fractional part of the company, including a fractional part of all the equipment Bruce appropriated for his own personal bat-use. Didn’t matter if the only purpose the property served was to sit around in warehouse gathering storage fees, the fractional owners had the right not to have that fraction taken.

As one of my law school professors used to say, “He who takes what isn’t hissen, must make good or go to prison.”

And when you’re the CEO of a large multi-national conglomerate who takes corporate property for your own personal use, you’re embezzling from the company and stealing from the shareholders. You’re also breaching your fiduciary duty to the shareholders, but that’s another topic for another day.

So first Batman wasn’t a thief. Then he was. Then, recently, he wasn’t again. But why he wasn’t again is part of that fiduciary duty discussion that’s another topic for another day.

Wow, Batman and a cliff-hanger. Guess I should close with, “Tune in next week! Same Bat-Time! Same Bat-Channel!” 

Mike Gold: Alfred, Master of the Butlerverse!

alfred-the-butler-1943-7418440When it comes to the world of heroic fantasy, there have been a hell of a lot of really great butlers. We’ve got such luminaries as Ram Singh (The Spider), Bernardo (Zorro), Cadbury (Richie Rich), Ianto Jones (Torchwood), Lurch (The Addams Family), Max von Mayerling (Sunset Boulevard), two different Smitherses (Veronica Lodge and the Simpsons), Fritz Brenner (Nero Wolfe), Birmingham Brown (Charlie Chan) and of course Edwin Jarvis (The Avengers or Agent Carter – take your pick). There were the Green Hornet’s Kato, but that dude was more of a partner/sidekick than a butler, and Jack Benny’s pal Rochester was only technically a butler. He was actually Benny’s arch-enemy.

But head and shoulders above all other butlers, the king of the mountain of butlers is Bruce Wayne’s own Alfred Pennyworth. You can tell from the actors who played him on film and television – Michael Caine, Jeremy Irons, Michael Gough, Sean Pertwee, David McCallum, Alan Napier, to name but a few.

However, the actor who most looked like the Alfred Pennyworth of comic book and newspaper strip fame was a gentleman named William Austin, and he didn’t even receive screen credit.

Austin played Bruce Wayne’s gentleman’s gentleman in the 1943 serial, aptly named Batman. If you’re curious, you can check him out on TCM Saturday mornings at 10 AM Eastern. In fact, Alfred plays a major role in this coming Saturday’s episode, “Poison Peril.”

If you’ve never seen a movie serial, well, for most these days that’s an acquired taste. Imagine a movie with the budget of Doctor Who. The original 1963 version of Doctor Who. Now imagine spreading that budget out over 260 minutes carved into 15 spine-tinglingish parts. Worse still, Batman was made by Columbia Pictures, which at the time was Hollywood’s bargain basement so we’d better cut that budget in half. If you enjoy wonderful cheapness – and I do – then movie serials should be right up your alley.

This 1943 production starred Lewis Wilson as the title character, and when not in costume he truly looked like the Bruce Wayne of the comics. In costume, he truly looked like an idiot. But he came off a lot better than Douglas Croft’s Robin, who, according to IMDB, was 17 at the time. In costume, he looked like a 40 playing the lead in Eraserhead.

The remarkable J. Carrol Naish played the ominous villain Dr. Daka, the yellow peril of the week as mitigated by World War II. Naish was a world-class character actor with a list of performances as long as your arm. Longer.

The 1943 Batman serial was pretty damn close to its comic book origins, perhaps closer than any other filmed incarnation. But for today’s comic book fan, it is William Austin’s performance as Alfred that is most arresting. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Jerry Robinson drew him.

The interesting part to this is that it is quite possible that Alfred was redrawn to look like Austin. Introduced in comics shortly before the serial as a short, kind of goofy unmustachioed fat guy, Wikipedia   reports “when the 1943 Batman serial was released, William Austin, the actor who played Alfred, was trim and sported a thin moustache. DC editors wanted the comic Alfred to resemble his cinematic counterpart, so in Detective Comics #83 (January 1944), Alfred vacationed at a health resort, where he slimmed down and grew a mustache.” Wiki isn’t always accurate – they’re doing better – but I’d like to see more in the way of evidence.

There are two reasons why you might want to check this out. The first is that it is fun – slightly goofy fun, but far less goofy than the mid-60s teevee series.

The second is that this Saturday’s episode only runs 17 minutes. It’s worth that much of your life if the only thing you like is the logo.

 

Dennis O’Neil: Arrow and Bat

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice • Robert Frost

All you climate change doubters may now put on your dunce caps and leave. Don’t forget to shovel the walk on your way out.

…But where were we? Ah yes, where we often are, on opposite sides of a time gap. I’m writing here, you’re reading there. I suppose we can deal with it.

We’re looking ahead, you and I, to the forthcoming Daredevil television presentation, to be streamed on the increasingly diverse and interesting Netflix. Might be interesting. Might surpass the Ben Affleck movie Daredevil of a few years back, which may not have been everyone’s favorite entertainment. (I don’t have an opinion about it. Really, I don’t!) I see that Vincent D’Onofrio has gotten the job of being veteran DD baddie, The Kingpin, which seems to be good casting; let us not forget that Mr. D’Onofrio played a giant bug in the first Men in Black flick, so a corpulent gangster shouldn’t be a stretch for him.

What else am I looking forward to? (For you, it’s already past.)

Well, for one thin, the fate of poor Oliver Queen – other-named Arrow – last seen kneeling before the sinister Ras Al Ghul, a helpless captive. Ras stabbed him with a sword and kicked him off a mountain a while back, so is Ollie doomed to suffer a similar fate, perhaps again administered by a Ras who may have gotten a bit better at hero slaying? Nope. Ras is trying to recruit him into Ras’s criminal organization, The League of Assassins. (Good pay? Good benefits?)

This is not the first time Ras has gone hero-trolling. In the long ago when he was a mere comic book character, before being incarnated as a mega-movie star and a continuing presence in Arrow Ras made a similar move on Batman, sweetening the deal by suggesting that Bats and Ras’s daughter Talia might become an item and, yes indeedy, Talia would make a splendid trophy wife if she could just get past her daddy issues. Bats refused both job and lady and lived to fight another day but who knows what Ollie will do? (Well, actually, at this point, a lot of people. All those writers and actors and technicians…)

I like how our TV brethren are adapting some Batman tropes for Arrow. It’s a good match of characters: both the bat and the arrow are human-scaled, depending on skill and perseverance and motivation rather than some acquired superpower, and both are burdened with a tragic past. Since I prefer such characters I’ve always liked working on these two when I was a laboring scripter. Consider that an admission of bias.

Ras al Ghul, as some of you know, is a twisted idealist who wants to save the world – on his own terms, using his own methods, which are, to put it mildly, draconian. Pure fiction. But I look out at the snow and remember the savage winter which is not yet gone, and learn of the escalating barbarity in the middle east, and I wonder: Could there be a Ras?

But no, the reality is simpler and sadder, well expressed by Pogo the Possum: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

 

The Law Is A Ass

BOB INGERSOLL: THE LAW IS A ASS #346 THE EMINENT MR. WAYNE LOSES HIS DOMAIN

arkham-manor-612x968-f3e97-8869823So in Batman Eternal #29…

What? No I didn’t promise that I wouldn’t write about Batman Eternal this week, I promised I’d try. Also I’m not really writing about the year-long Batman story that is certainly living up to its name, so chillax. (Chillax. How is that even a word? Sounds like a murder weapon in Alaska.) This week I’m writing about what came after Batman Eternal #29. With a little of what came after Batman Eternal #34 thrown in. Which means what I’m writing about is Arkham Manor #1.

In Batman Eternal #29, Arkham Asylum – the hospital for the criminally insane located on the outskirts of Gotham City that houses Joker, Two-Face, Mister Zsasz, and most of the rest of Batman’s rogue gallery – blew up. Although how and why isn’t really important what the hell, I’ve got some time to kill. To put it succinctly, Deacon Blackfire, a magically delicious villain was using his magic in a fight with Jim Corrigan in the tunnels below Arkham Asylum. Blackfire was attempting to pull the Spectre, the ghostly spirit of God’s vengeance that lives inside of Corrigan’s body, out of Corrigan’s body. But Blackfire wasn’t adept enough for this kind of magic and in Batman Eternal # 29, his attempts resulted in …

SPOILER WARNING!

Usually, this is where I’d warn you I’m going to tell you how Batman Eternal #29 ended. This time I’m not. Arkham Manor #1 came out about a month before Batman Eternal # 29, even though it takes place after that story, and it gave away the ending to Batman Eternal #29. If DC didn’t mind spoiling its own story, why should I?

… an explosion. An explosion which caused Arkham Asylum to collapse in on itself in Batman Eternal #30.

Hundreds of people died when Arkham Asylum came tumbling down. But wouldn’t you know it, they were incidental deaths. Collateral damage, as it were. Somehow Joker, Two-Face, Mister Zsasz, and most of the rest of Batman’s rogue gallery survived.

Arkham Asylum’s destruction left Mayor Hady and Gotham City with a big question, where to put “the city’s most dangerous lunatics.” Any time someone suggested a possible new location for all those dangerous lunatics, the citizens of Gotham City basically responded, “Not in my backyard.” Even the ones who lived in brownstones and didn’t have back yards.

Fortunately for Mayor Hady and the city fathers, in Batman Eternal #34 the federal government seized control of Wayne Enterprises and all of its assets. I talked about the how and why of this three weeks ago, so you can go there to read about it, if you don’t already know. (BTW, I really recommend that you go to my old column to read about how and why the Feds took over Wayne Enterprises rather than reading Batman Eternal #34. Not because my new web-based home for the column needs the hits, I just think the experience will be more pleasant.)

Anyway, Bruce Wayne was left largely penniless. (Well, he does have this one giant penny sitting around doing nothing, but I’m not sure it’s negotiable.) Bruce had moved out of Wayne Manor and was living in an apartment in Gotham City. So Gotham City used eminent domain to take over Wayne Manor and make it Arkham Manor, the new home for Gotham’s criminally insane.

Eminent domain, the process by which the government may take private property for public use, is not a new concept. The concept dates back to biblical times, when King Ahab of Israel, offered to purchase the vineyards of one of his subjects, Naboth. Naboth declined Ahab’s offer, so Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, framed Naboth for blasphemy and had him stoned to death. After which Ahab got the vineyards. Since that time, they’ve refined the concept of eminent domain. It’s a little more fair and a little less killy. After the French Revolution, the French formally adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789. Among it’s provisions is the sentence, “Property being an inviolable and sacred right no one can be deprived of it, unless the public necessity plainly demands it, and upon condition of a just and previous indemnity.” The Founding Fathers drafted similar language in the Fifth Amendment of Constitution of the United States, “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Like I said, a little less killy. (Yes, there’s a bit of a history lesson here, but history is important. To paraphrase George Santayana; those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Usually in summer school.)

So Gotham City decided to take Wayne Manor through eminent domain and convert it to Arkham Manor. In order to invoke eminent domain, the government must prove four elements” 1) there’s some private property, that 2) the government plans to take, for 3) a public use, after 4) making just compensation to the owner of the property.

Wayne Manor is clearly the private property of Bruce Wayne. Yes, even though the federal government seized Wayne Enterprises’s assets, Wayne Manor would probably still have been Bruce’s property. Remember, Wayne Enterprises was a corporation. The reason a business incorporates is to protect the property of the owners from lawsuits. After the corporation is created, it becomes a legal entity of it’s own and is solely responsible for its actions. If the corporation is sued, those harmed by the corporation can seize the corporate assets but not the assets of the corporation’s owners, that is to say the shareholders.

When the Wayne family established Wayne Enterprises, none of their lawyers would have allowed the Waynes to transfer ownership of Wayne Manor over to the corporation. Such an act would have completely negated the whole reason behind creating the corporation in the first place, limited liability. An attorney would have to be the Chief O’Hara of lawyers to let a client do something that stupid. So let’s assume, even after the Feds seized Wayne Enterprises, Bruce Wayne still owned Wayne Manor.

The government wanted to take Wayne Manor and convert it into a hospital to house the criminally insane, which would be a public use. The only question left would be the just compensation element.

Usually the just compensation happens this way. The government makes an offer which it considers to be fair market value for the property. Generally it’s a lowball offer, because we all know the government never overpays for anything. The property owner rejects the offer as too low and makes a counter offer of what the owner thinks is fair market value. Generally it’s high. The two parties negotiate over what is a fair market value for the property. If they reach an agreement, that amount is paid and the government takes over the property. If the two parties can’t reach an agreement, then they go to court and there’s a condemnation hearing during which the court will determine fair market value.

Sometimes the property owner doesn’t want to lose his property. So he might argue that the taking isn’t for public use. Again there’s a condemnation hearing, this time to determine whether the intended use is really a public use. If the judge rules it is a public use, the condemnation goes forward. I’ve never been able to figure out why these are called condemnation proceedings. No one is condemning the property, they’re just putting it to a new and different use.

None of those steps happened in the case of Wayne Manor. Why not? It wasn’t because the story got the law wrong. It was because Bruce Wayne knew he presently didn’t have the assets needed to maintain Wayne Manor or, in all probability, pay its property taxes. Bruce also believed his father, a doctor who advocated for better treatment of the mentally ill, would have given Wayne Manor to the city in the face of this emergency were he still alive. So Bruce voluntarily agreed to the condemnation proceedings and gave up Wayne Manor.

Bruce apparently believed in the old concept of noblesse oblige. And that makes him a better man than I am. Me, I would have held out for some money from Gotham City. Maybe I wouldn’t have soaked them, but if I just lost my personal fortune and was sitting on a house that was easily worth ten or twenty – and more probably thirty or forty – million dollars that the government wanted to buy, I would have wanted a little something something to get myself back on my financial feet.

But Bruce asked for nothing. He let his ancestral home go not for a pittance, not for a song but for nothing. Because he felt it was his duty. With a sense of noblesse oblige that strong, had Bruce lived back in the times of Caesar, he would have been the noblesse Roman of them all.

The Law Is A Ass

BOB INGERSOLL: THE LAW IS A ASS #345: BATMAN’S IN THE EVIL OF DESTRUCTION

BMETRL_Cv35_54650225dc3750.55505312Whether you call it disaster porn or destruction porn or, if you’re like me, boring; America can’t get it’s fill of exploding buildings, collapsing bridges, or shock waves leveling cities. Movie after movie gives us scene after scene of such wholesale destruction. Usually, it’s meteors or earthquakes or volcanoes or tornadoes or hurricanes or leaks from the earth’s molten core. Sometimes it’s alien invaders or great big robots or even greater bigger scaly monsters. (Big? They’re monstrous. Kaiju ask?) But whatever the cause, the effect is destruction.

Given America’s love of destruction porn, it’s not surprising the “art” form found its way into comic books. Batman Eternal started with a two-page money shot of subway trains colliding. And more than half a year later, the series, like a victim of the destruction it glorifies, has limped it’s way to the latest images of orgiastic destruction found in Batman Eternal #35.

(Yes, Batman Eternal again. But cheer up. I’ve reached the last issue in my Batman Eternal stories I’ve got to write about pile. So unless Batman Eternal does something incredibly stupid in the issue that comes out this week, I won’t be writing about it next week. Promise. Of course, a promise predicated on Batman Eternal not doing anything stupid is kind of an empty promise.)

Anyway, I am writing about Batman Eternal #35 this week. However, before I can do that, I must do this…

SPOILER ALERT!

Batman Eternal #35 doesn’t end – the story’s got seventeen issues to go – but if you don’t want to know the cliff from which Batman was left hanging at the end of issue 35 stop reading this column. Oh and don’t look at the cover, either, because the cliffhanger for issue 35 is stupidly on it’s cover.

For a change, it wasn’t natural disasters causing the destruction in Batman Eternal# 35. It was Jason Bard, the acting commissioner of the GCPD. Turns out Bard wasn’t the shining example of good honest cop that Commissioner Gordon believed him to be when Gordon recruited Bard from the Detroit Police to the GCPD. Bard was in bed with crime boss Carmine Falcone, masked villain Hush, and whoever’s secretly planning the whole Batman Eternal scheme which has been torturing Batman – not to mention us – for close to a year now. But Bard wasn’t your usual corrupt cop in Gotham City. (In Gotham City a corrupt cop is more usual than the suspects in Casablanca). Bard wasn’t in it for the money, he had a personal reason to take down Batman.

As ace reporter Vicki Vale learned from a bartender in Batman Eternal # 35 and 36, Jason’s fiancé was also a cop in Detroit. One night during a drug raid, a Batman wannabee distracted Jason’s fiancé and she was killed. Jason blamed Batman for his fiance’s death. (Which is about as logical as blaming Elvis because your brother was watching an Elvis impersonator on the Vegas Strip instead of looking where he was going and stupidly walked into oncoming traffic. But who said logic was ever a part of Batman Eternal?) Actually, Bard blamed Batman and Commissioner Gordon for encouraging law-breaking vigilantes. So he joined the criminal scheme to take them both down.

It took Vicki all of one day in Detroit to learn of Jason’s psychological infirmary. How is it that seasoned police commissioner Jim Gordon’s vetting process wasn’t as good as hers? When Jim Gordon recruited Bard, he didn’t talk to any co-workers or friends to learn that Bard hated both him and Batman?

But I digress. (Or maybe I’m stalling, because I don’t want to write about the idiocy that came next.) In Batman Eternal # 35, Bard set a trap for Batman. After the United States Government took control of all of Wayne Enterprises‘ assets and operations in Batman Eternal #34, because Wayne Enterprises had helped Batman secret explosives throughout Gotham City, it gave Bard access to Wayne Enterprises. Bard plundered Wayne Enterprises R&D department, which created the equipment for Batman and Batman, Incorporated. In addition, Lucius Fox, who designed all of Batman’s weapons, agreed to work with Bard to set the trap.

The story didn’t reveal why Fox agreed to help trap Batman. Maybe he had nothing better to do. In Batman Eternal 35, Wayne Enterprises building has a sign on it saying the government had seized it and no entry was permitted. So apparently the government shut down all operations of Wayne Enterprises, even the ones that didn’t involve planting secret weapons caches. Because that’s what the government would want to do after taking over a multi-billion dollar multinational conglomerate; cease all operations and put thousands of people out of work. Isn’t that why President Truman seized the steel mills during the Korean War, so he could shut them down?

Where was I? Oh yes, the trap. Jason lured Batman into Gotham City by blowing up the Beacon Tower construction site. Yes, the police baited it’s trap by blowing up a construction site. Okay, the site itself was a Wayne Enterprises project so it was shut down and deserted. But, still, the police blew it up. What if the government decided to start the project up again? Oops.

So no one was present at the site when it exploded. Which is more than can be said for the clearly occupied buildings that had their lights on which were right next to the explosions. We can only hope that they didn’t sustain any collateral damage or injuries from being near a big bang. We can hope, because, Bard apparently didn’t give a fig.

As Batman drove into Gotham City, Jason had Lucius Fox take control of the car. The Batmobile became Bard’s “very own RC racer.” Bard ordered Batman to pull over and give up. When Batman refused, Bard sprang the trap. Did he use the remote controls to stop the car? Of course not, that would have been the sensible thing to do. No, Bard activated the car’s jet propulsion unit, despite the fact that there were people in the street near the Batmobile, and sent it racing through city streets at jet-propelled speed.

Bard steered the Batmobile first up and then off a highway overpass. It launched into the air and flew on a course Bard had set. A collision course. It crashed into a building, went through it and crashed out the other side. Then it crashed through a second building while en route to Bard’s actual target, the Wayne Enterprises tower. Finally, it crashed through the Wayne building; in one side and out the other. By then the Batmobile had lost enough momentum that it couldn’t fly any longer. It free-fell toward a fiery crash with the ground several dozen stories below.

This entire scene was like a high-speed car chase. Yeah there was only one car, but it had all the other elements; a car speeding through the streets of a city out of control causing property damage and potentially risking injury to the people.

Police departments don’t like high-speed car chases. They even have protocols dictating what steps police officers must take before they get involved in a high-speed chase, because they try to avoid them. Know why police departments don’t like high-speed chases? Because they involve a car speeding through the streets of a city out of control causing property damage and potentially risking injury to the people.

But as I said, this was only like a high-speed car chase. See, in a high-speed chase, the police are chasing someone who is trying to get away. The police didn’t instigate the potentially dangerous situation. In this story, the police totally caused everything that happened.

The police blew up a construction site. The police fired up jet engines on a city street which had people on it. The police caused a car to careen through the guard rail of a major highway overpass. The police sent the car flying through not one, not two, but three buildings. Yes, the Wayne Enterprises building was empty, but what about the other two? The police sent a jet-powered car through them without regard for the safety of anyone who might be inside them. Finally, the police caused the car to free-fall to the ground below, without regard for the safety of any drivers or pedestrians who might near the WE building at the wrong time.

Know another reason why police departments don’t like high-speed chases? Because innocent bystanders sue cities and police departments over the personal injuries and property damage caused by high-speed chases. And even though such suits frequently fail, because police departments have a qualified immunity from civil suits when they are acting within clearly established law, it still costs the police department time and money to defend such suits. That’s another reason why police departments have procedures they follow for high-speed chases, so they can show their protocols follow clearly established law. However, when the police actually cause all the property damage and personal injury, by sending a remote-controlled, jet-propelled guided missile on a literal collision course with several buildings and possibly several people, all to capture one man, it’s not acting within clearly established law. I’m not sure Gotham City and its Police Department wouldn’t be found liable in this case.

All this property damage and all the potential for injury to innocent people who were nearby, caused because the police were trying to arrest one man. It’s enough to make you glad the police are on our side. Imagine the mayhem they could cause if they were working against us.

The Law Is A Ass

BOB INGERSOLL: THE LAW IS A ASS #343: COMMISSIONER GORDON CAN’T DO THE TIME, IF HE DIDN’T DO THE CRIME

500px-batman_eternal_vol_1-13_cover-1_teaser-9050044If you thought things looked bad in Batman Eternal before, well now they’re even worse. But enough about Batman Eternal, let’s look at where this year-long story has put our friend Commissioner James Gordon of the Gotham City Police Department. It’s not looking too good for him, either.

In Batman Eternal # 21, Commissioner Jim Gordon, who had been tried on 162 counts of manslaughter was found guilty on 123 of them. That must have been soooome interesting trial. The prosecution alleged Gordon negligently discharged his service revolver in a subway station, causing a transformer box to explode. This catastrophe somehow caused two subway trains to collide. The resulting death toll was 162, hence 162 counts of manslaughter. So, based on these facts, how was Gordon convicted on only 123 counts? Shouldn’t he have been guilty of everyone who died in the crash? Not most everybody?

Did 39 people who were on the subway all die of sudden, simultaneous heart attacks just seconds before the crash? Or 28 died from slow-acting poison administered by their wives at breakfast, while 10 of them succumbed to Legionaries’ Disease, and one of them just burst out in spontaneous human combustion? No, there’s nothing wrong with this result, I’m just curious as to what evidence the jury could have heard that made them believe that Gordon was responsible for only 123 of the deaths but not those last 39.

Anyway for some reason not explained in the story, Gordon was convicted of 123 counts of manslaughter. Then, for some reason also not explained in the story, he was promptly sentenced to life in prison in Blackgate Penitentiary.

Now we are in the realm of something legally wrong with the result. Long story short – a term that can’t be applied to Batman Eternal, itself – Gordon really wasn’t sentenced to a life term, because he couldn’t have been.

Under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution – an Amendment which applies both to the federal government and to the individual states by incorporation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment– no government may deprive a person of liberty without due process of law. And even though some people who suffered through six seasons of Snooki and her drinking buddies might want to disavow New Jersey, it is part of the United States. That means the Fifth Amendment fully applied to Jim Gordon’s sentence.

What does the Constitution mean when the Constitution says that a person can’t be deprived of liberty without due process of law? Among other things, it means that a defendant can’t receive a sentence which is not authorized by the sentencing statutes of the jurisdiction in which he or she was convicted. See, e.g., Williams v. New York (1949) 337 U.S. 241.

(Wow, it’s been a few years since I’ve used the old “See, e.g.,” in a sentence. Nice to know the muscles haven’t atrophied.)

Boiled down to its essence, if a state trial court imposes a sentence which is greater than the sentence that jurisdiction’s sentencing statutes authorize, that sentence is void. Boiling the essence down to its essence, if a defendant is convicted of theft and the statutes authorize a maximum sentence of only one year for theft, then the defendant can’t be sentenced to two years. Not even if the defendant stole candy from a baby and the judge thought a longer sentence was more appropriate. The harsher sentence was not authorized by the law and due process says only the sentences authorized by law can be imposed.

In the same way, if a person is convicted of manslaughter in New Jersey and the New Jersey statutes don’t authorize a life sentence for manslaughter, then imposing a life sentence is unconstitutional and the sentence is void. Doesn’t matter that the defendant’s manslaughter was magnified by a factor of 123, the judge can’t up the sentence to something not found in the law, just because the crimes were particularly heinous. (Which means, unfortunately, no matter how much we may think they deserve it, the producers of Jersey Shore can’t get the death penalty.)

New Jersey Statute 2C:11-4 defines manslaughter. It, in fact, defines two kinds of manslaughter. They are aggravated manslaughter, a felony of the first degree, and manslaughter, a felony of the second degree. If you surmise that felonies of the first degree carry harsher sentences than felonies of the second degree, you are correct. Congratulations on your astuteness. If you happened to make this surmise based on what your learned after years of reading “The Law Is a Ass,” then congratulations on your good taste and thanks for paying attention.

Batman Eternal never actually mentioned whether Gordon was charged with manslaughter or aggravated manslaughter. For the purpose of this little treatise, I’ll assume he was charged with the worst form of manslaughter: aggravated manslaughter under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life. Why? Because that’s the version of manslaughter that has the longest sentence. If any version of manslaughter was going to carry a life sentence, that would be the one.

Buuut, it doesn’t. The same statute that defined aggravated manslaughter also set the maximum sentence for aggravated manslaughter. Set it at 30 years.

That’s 30 years; not life.

Last time I looked – in fact every time I looked – a life sentence was longer than 30 years. Gordon’s life sentence exceeds the statutory maximum sentence for a manslaughter conviction in New Jersey. Which means the life sentence imposed on Gordon was illegal. And unconstitutional.

Sure, the judge could have imposed a maximum sentence of 30 years on each of the 123 counts of manslaughter and ordered Gordon serve them consecutively; that is one after the other, after the other, and so on until you reach 123 of them. Quick math – okay, quick use of the calculator app on my computer – reveals that maximum, consecutive sentences in Gordon’s case yields a sentence of 3,690 years. But that’s still not life.

Yes, 3,690 years is the functional equivalent of a life sentence. In fact it’s closer to the functional equivalent of a life sentence with a few extra zeros added to the back end just to seal the deal. Not to mention seal away the defendant for a good long while. But 123 sentences of 30 years maxed and stacked, is still shorter than a single life sentence. The life sentence was illegal.

Which is why I say Gordon couldn’t have been sentenced to a life term. Because he couldn’t.

Would it have been that difficult for someone to have checked what sentences would be possible for Gordon’s manslaughter convictions? I wasted a whole ten seconds writing a simple and rather unimaginative Google search on “New Jersey manslaughter sentences” which produced a whole page of links almost any of which revealed the answer. With that information, the writers could have given Gordon an actual and legal sentence not whatever sounded the worst.

For that matter, does life actually sound worse than 3,690 years? I don’t think so. After all, 3690 years, much like Batman Eternal, is actually longer than life.

Mike Gold: Batman Resurrected

michael-keaton-8209952No, that’s not the title of the next Batman movie. Well, it might be. I suspect Warner Bros. hasn’t thought that far ahead. They’re too busy trying to make their Aquaman movie without giggling themselves to death.

A couple nights ago I was watching Batman Returns – you’ll recall that was Michael Keaton’s second and final Batflick. At the time of release, which was 1992, I thought it was an uneven movie. By and large, I liked the Catwoman stuff but I thought the Penguin parts were… foul. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen the movie, so when I surfed past it at a quarter-to-two in the morning, I thought it might be fun to check it out with my older and even more jaded eyes.

I was amused to discover the movie was broader than I remembered, but just as dark. It was almost as if Stanley Kubrick made the movie as a tribute to the 1960s teevee show. The Catwoman scenes weren’t as strong as I remembered, the Penguin scenes were better acted (but no better realized) than I thought, and the scenes with Michael Keaton that didn’t include either villain were, by and large, really good.

So what happened in the past 22 years? Certainly most of us enjoy the avalanche of Marvel Studios movies, the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe that, properly, excludes Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. But the tone and texture of the DC Movie Universe should differ from the tone and texture of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just as your average DC Universe comic book differs from its Marvel counterparts – when done right.

(Yes, you read that right: I referred to the DC movies as a separate “Universe” from the DC teevee shows for one simple reason: they are separate. Completely separate. Needlessly and confusingly separate.)

So… what changed? Batman Returns really isn’t dated. Why would I be so taken with Keaton’s work this time around?

One word. Birdman.

You know the concept: an on-the-ropes actor best known for his playing a costumed superhero on the big screen tries to resurrect his career and give his life meaning by directing and starring in a Broadway play. For this effort, Keaton has been awarded top acting honors from the Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA, the Independent Spirit Award, the Satellite Award (from the International Press Academy, not to be confused with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globes) and the AACTA International Award for Best Actor – that’s the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts.

Keaton has also received an Oscar® nomination for Birdman, in a particularly tough category this year. “It’s an honor just to be nominated…”

I always liked Keaton, and he really knocked me over in Clean and Sober. But Birdman surpasses his previous efforts because he knows we will conflate his character with his career. He relies that pre-existing relationship, and he pulls it off magnificently.

I don’t think Keaton’s career has been on the ropes, but it was no longer as high profile. I suspect he liked it that way. But, post-Birdman, he is an A-Lister once again. And this is strictly because he decided to do Batman in the first place – and because he thought it over and appreciated what that meant to both him and his audience.

All top-drawer superhero actors age… with a few unfortunate exceptions. The plot to Birdman is all about what you do with yourself after you shed your tights. Keaton figured it out.

Brilliantly.

(“Oscar” is a registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, so watch your ass.)

 

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