Stuff I Have Been Reading: Legends of the Dark Knight

In anticipation of Arkham Origins I've been reading Legends of the Dark Knight, an old series of comic books released after DC's Crisis on Infinite Earth reboot designed to show early tales of the Caped Crusader. In particular two stories are worthy of comment so far.

Venom

This is a story that predates Bane's introduction to the Batman mythos by a few years deals with Batman getting hooked on the stuff after he fails to rescue a little girl in a cave-in. Conveniently the creepy father of the girl is able to hook him up with the pills and tries to use them to turn the Dark Knight into a zombie-addict. The pills make Batman stronger, but dumber.

Having failed to completely zombify the Dark Knight the evil scientist and his military buddy decamp to Santa Prisca where they proceed to zombify the military buddy's slow-witted son. He goes from nice "alright" kid to ruthless killer in a rather brutal manner (these comics were not for kids!)

Aw... ain't it sweet.
Wait, what's this below?

Drugs are bad. We get it.

Well worth a check out, if only for beardy Batman on drugs, and Batman punching a shark (no shark repellant was used).

Seriously, beardy batman!

Flyer

This one is memorable for all the wrong reasons. In the seminal Batman: Year One there was a scene that is almost wholesale lifted in Batman Begins where he uses a sonic device to summon a flock of bats. Among the many things that they do is block the vision of a helicopter carrying snipers, causing it to crash. This is the story of the pilot who was crippled for life in the wreckage of said helicopter. But luckily he was a half-German fellow with an evil Nazi warcrimes mother who worked on experimental tech and was able to give him an exo-skeleton suit. She is also waiting to find an ubermensch to breed with - and has decided Batman is the man for her. The Flyer, her son, lures Bats to their underground base. Which leads to this scene:-

Holy Bat Rape! The Climax? I don't wanna see that...

One of the things I liked about LotDK is most of its stories exhibit a certain groundedness in reality. Not to the extent of Nolan's Batman movies, but more like the first Burton movie. It boggles my mind that a gritty noir story like Batman: Year One should be referenced in a story that is... well... less grounded with cybernazis and worse.

Anyway - Year One made a spiffy straight-to-DVD feature. Well worth checking out.

and here is my favourite scene from its quasi-sequel Dark Knight Returns.

Serenity Again

I liked Firefly. I really liked Serenity (even if it wrecked the damn Reaver myths dammit). It may be the best thing Joss Whedon ever did, as Buffy went stale for me around Season 3 and got progressively worse, while Angel was always fantastic but started to fade away around Season 5 (though if it had got a Season Six would've been so epic). Firefly never got the chance to go stale because it was cancelled way before it's time. And Serenity was good but I always hoped it'd be the first in a series of movies. Apparently it won't be, which is sad, as the cast are genuinely talented and doubtless have lots of good acting gigs on the go (especially Fillion, aka Mal).


I was in Page 45 in Nottingham (finally remember Dr. Sordid posting it was the "grown-up" shop ages ago and went for a looksie) and I saw a graphic novel of Serenity - Those Left Behind. The original Dark Horse issues went like hotcakes (which makes me wonder just how unprofitable Serenity was given it's comics are worth a mint), and semi-amusingly even Nathan Fillion (Mal) had problems buying issues for his family without being fleeced by some city slicker.

The storyline is set bang between the last episode of the series (one of the weaker ones IMHO) and the movie. It ends with Inara getting off the ship and Book deciding to do the same. I believe I read somewhere that Joss wanted to do an Animatrix type prequel to Serenity The Movie but didn't get funding, and that this was the script (or more likely synopsis the other authors worked with). It certainly does resolve one of the plot-threads from the TV series, the Hands of Blue - who were frequently seen chasing our heroes and killing people with their weird devices but never actually caught up with them in the 13 episodes run.

The comic didn't work for me. It's not bad per-se and I recommend you read it if you like Firefly/Serenity. It was only 3 issues long, and to me needed to be a six issue mini-series.

Maybe Serenity needs to be on a TV to work for me, maybe the plot was too close to the movie (it opens with a raid on a bank, the middle is in a spaceship graveyard and so on). The witty banter was there - but again I think I needed to hear it, not read it.

It could also be the main reason I bought it was to finally see what those god-damn-hands-of-blue fellas were about, and after 2 issues of buildup they last roughly five seconds against Simon, River, Book, Kaylee and Wash, without any revelation of what made them so special, and without them remembering to use their funky nosebleed devices. They basically die hastily so that the Alliance can call the Operative and begin the movie.

The comic also goes to the bother of digging up Lawrence Dobson from the first episode (he was the Alliance agent shot in the eye and apparently if the show had gone on for more than 13 episodes would've popped up pissed at being maimed by Mal - I had to look this up, it's been a while) only to have him decisively killed of by Mal in slightly more time than it takes the secondary characters to kill the Hands of Blue.

So the upshot - buy this book if you're a completist (it's going between the Firefly boxed set once I err... buy it and my Serenity DVD).

Also Wikipedia reckons Dark Horse are doing another miniseries - one that sees the crew of Serenity pulling off a successful job which results in unexpected wealth called Serenity: Better Days. I'll buy the trade no doubt when it comes out. Hopefully it'll be a little better.