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Thats fair. Vertigo has some really good stuff and Hellboy is top notch.

We were just talking about the superheros so I was talking about the super heroes. It wasn't until we were pulling out of the 90s into the 200s when things got actually good in a broad general sense.

Again, Avengers Disassembled was the first step in a long line of events that were all REALLY great in concept if not in execution for Marvel.

Disassembled led directly to House of M. And the line "No More Mutants" was the first major blow to the marvel super hero community leading all the way up to Secret Invasion.

 Paradigm wrote:

 Mysterio wrote:
This more thread as wandered enough off topic that it has me interested in reading the INJUSTICE story-line.

Worth it?

Easy to do via trades?

Yes to both. It's one of the finest Elseworlds-type things DC have done, and while it ultimately leads up to the story of the first (and then second) Injustice video games, it goes some really unexpected places on the way. It really is a recreation of the whole DC universe, with one event that changes everything, which has to be done well and in this case it is. The artwork and writing is also consistently top notch, and the storyline thick with clever and unexpected twists and turns as the new world order falls into place.

The Trades are sold in 'Years', with 2 Volumes to a Year, though you can get both Volumes collected in one for at least the first couple of years. There are 5 years (10 Volumes) leading up to the first game, then a new run that continues from where that leaves off and will presumably cover the gap between the games. I'm not sure if the events of the game itself are covered in the books, or whether you'll have to look for that elsewhere (though if you like fighting games, they are really worth playing anyway), but in any case, definitely worth a look if you want a very different, consitent and self-contained look at an alternate version of DC's universe.

The injustice comics are fantastic. I have every single graphic novel, in hardback. It’s the only series I keep in hardback. Make sure to pick up both “ground zero” issues too, because they cover what takes place in the video game, but shown through Harley Quinn’s eyes. There are 11 volumes for Injustice now, and 2 volumes of ground zero. I think they pulled each year together in TPB form, so it might be down to just 5 issues that way, plus ground zero (which I believe is only HB so far).

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

90s was, in my opinion, a really bad time for comics. Everything got Xtreme for nonsense reasons. I think avengers disassembled is when it really picked back up.

Whilst I agree about the fupwitted xtreme grim gritty xtreme swing in the superbooks, the 90's also had Vertigo, the rise of Dark Horse and a lot of decent books only a short distance from the main stream,

And the Ultraverse...

 sebster wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Bran Dawri wrote:
It does mean Marvel characters are more relatable and hence make for better protagonists.

The problem with this argument is that Marvel's much bigger level of success is only true for its MCU series of films. Before then comic book sales were largely even and only DC had shown any box office success.

So whatever the success of Marvel might be, I really don't think its due to it having any kind of inherently better set of characters.

That's assuming the audience for the movies and the comics 100% overlap. For the average comic reader, those nuances might not matter so much as brand loyalty or the general love of comics.
For the average movie goer, they probably do. Also, nitpick: "more relatable" is not the same as "inherently better", or even as "more interesting", except where getting bums in seats is concerned. Maybe.
Example: Neil Gaiman's the Sandman is one of the best, most interesting comic characters I can think of, but he's not exactly very relatable.

The thing about Morpheus is he starts fairly unrelatable, but as the stories roll on he becomes far more 'human', becoming friends with Hob, concedes his treatment of Nada was wrong, helping Delirium, and granting Orpheus' last wish even though he knows what that will cost him

But I think it would need a TV show rather than a film to work, same applys to a lot of Vertigo 90's / 00's, but Preacher and American Gods seem to indicate theres a veiwership for slightly strange shows

Ive heard american gods is great and preacher is nonsensical crap.

Preacher is a tad variable buth as a big Misfits (a very British supershow) fan I'll watch yer man Gilgun in pretty much anything

How far would you guys take batman’s gear in a movie? What I mean he would you keep it limited to a regular suit and the bat utility bet (and the bat mobile of course) or would you take it up to proper armour or even power armour level? I always felt like the power gap between batman and the others would be reduced if he went all out with his gear. Which I guess he does do on occasion.

I suppose having him in power armour all the time kinda takes away from that whole self reliance on own skills stic he’s got going on. The reason I’m asking this is because I feel like there’s been such a noticeable divide in power between batman and the other DC heroes. It doesn’t seem as bad in the marvel universe (apologies if I’m wrong). I’m probably missing the point but I think it’s something that a DC series needs to be aware of.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
How far would you guys take batman’s gear in a movie? What I mean he would you keep it limited to a regular suit and the bat utility bet (and the bat mobile of course) or would you take it up to proper armour or even power armour level? I always felt like the power gap between batman and the others would be reduced if he went all out with his gear. Which I guess he does do on occasion.

I suppose having him in power armour all the time kinda takes away from that whole self reliance on own skills stic he’s got going on. The reason I’m asking this is because I feel like there’s been such a noticeable divide in power between batman and the other DC heroes. It doesn’t seem as bad in the marvel universe (apologies if I’m wrong). I’m probably missing the point but I think it’s something that a DC series needs to be aware of.

Batman only has those armors in case of emergency when he can bring the fight to him. Thats rare.

In a justice league movie im fine with the idea if they are mounting a defense or planning a siege. But it shouldnt be coming to that most of the time.

In a solo batman movie i want him low gear. Also i want the whole city to not be at risk. I basically want a long holloween or a gotham by gaslight. A good murder mystery with batman detectiving and some good action when the confrontations start.

People love the nolan movies but they are the WORST representation of batman on screen. Hes the biggest idiot. In every movie the bad guys have to explain their plan to him because he can never figure out wtf is going on.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
How far would you guys take batman’s gear in a movie? What I mean he would you keep it limited to a regular suit and the bat utility bet (and the bat mobile of course) or would you take it up to proper armour or even power armour level? I always felt like the power gap between batman and the others would be reduced if he went all out with his gear. Which I guess he does do on occasion.

Batman's gear has been taken pretty far before.


Thing is, though, if movie Batman were to bust out the power armor now, it would almost be seen as an attempt to copy Iron Man by some.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
How far would you guys take batman’s gear in a movie? What I mean he would you keep it limited to a regular suit and the bat utility bet (and the bat mobile of course) or would you take it up to proper armour or even power armour level? I always felt like the power gap between batman and the others would be reduced if he went all out with his gear. Which I guess he does do on occasion.

I suppose having him in power armour all the time kinda takes away from that whole self reliance on own skills stic he’s got going on. The reason I’m asking this is because I feel like there’s been such a noticeable divide in power between batman and the other DC heroes. It doesn’t seem as bad in the marvel universe (apologies if I’m wrong). I’m probably missing the point but I think it’s something that a DC series needs to be aware of.

Batman only has those armors in case of emergency when he can bring the fight to him. Thats rare.

In a justice league movie im fine with the idea if they are mounting a defense or planning a siege. But it shouldnt be coming to that most of the time.

In a solo batman movie i want him low gear. Also i want the whole city to not be at risk. I basically want a long holloween or a gotham by gaslight. A good murder mystery with batman detectiving and some good action when the confrontations start.

People love the nolan movies but they are the WORST representation of batman on screen. Hes the biggest idiot. In every movie the bad guys have to explain their plan to him because he can never figure out wtf is going on.

I've been saying that about Nolan's Batman for a while now. I don't think we've ever really had a movie nail down the detective part of Batman's persona.

Honestly, I think Batman is far more suited to a Dardevil/Jessica Jones-style serialised TV series. It gives him and the villain/s he faces in each story the time necessary to breathe a little and use thinking to solve things rather than punching(not that there needs to be no punching at all of course). Save his film outings for "team up" movies where being "power armoured sardonic grimdark dude" is all he really needs to be.

Not that it'll happen of course, WB are really wedded to the idea that Batman is a "star vehicle" franchise for the silver screen, and as long as people keep showing up to watch Batman punch stuff and growl that's how they'll keep depicting him.

On that note, I’m greatly enjoying Gotham.

Honestly, Gotham is so good and such a perfect representation of the craziness of Batman's mythos that I honestly wouldn't mind if they just skipped forward a few years for the next series and made it a full-on Batman show!

Won't happen, but it'd be awesome, those guys would handle proper Batman so well.

I’m enjoying seeing Bruce’s journey so far, especially as it’s brilliantly ancillary to how the underworld is developing.

When you get to see how Penguin came to power (and indeed how he steals every scene he’s in!), you get a better idea of why Batman became necessary, and at least tolerated by the GCPD.

This is actually one of my favourite things about Gotham. The traditional progression is as Gordon explains at the end of Batman Begins, 'escalation'. Batman turns up, and villains are a response to that as regular criminals can't cut it.

Gotham flips that on its head and says that the city was going mad long before billionaires started jumping off rooftops dressed as bats, which I personally find a much more compelling story; it makes Batman a genuine hero rather than someone who causes more problems than he solves, and that is certainly how I prefer to see him.

I get that it's very easy to portray Batman/Bruce as a sociopath who has no real interest in actually saving people or changing things and just fights his war for thrills,* but I much prefer the versions of him that are shown as a genuinely good person answering a call most would shirk from. I like my heroes to be heroic.

*I believe this was recently explored in the White Knight series, but I've not read that yet so I might be wrong.

Very much agreed. And as I touched on above, the Gotham take really does justify the law’s tolerance of Batman & Co.

Eh, I always saw Batman less as a "hero" and more as a necessary evil and was fine with that, but I do like the Gotham take on things(you're just swapping one set of "problematic" subtext for another, but as long as it's good fun that sort of thing is less important).

I'd be happy enough if they just turned it into Batman - The Show, but I doubt WB will let them, hence why they're doing stuff like aging-up Poison Ivy, so they can tell what should probably be "Batman is properly around already"-era stories while Bruce is still in training wheels mode.

I suspect we won't see a Bat telly show, least not while Arrow is running, due to errrm similarities Arrow shares with the Bat mythos (yes I know thats broadly always been the case but the telly show lays it on extra thick), bit of a shame as Sean Pertwee is by far the best Alfred ever

I suspect Gotham will end similar to Smallville but with a Batman signal (havent seen S4 yet because it's not on Netflix and regular advert infested telly does my head in)

I wonder if Gotham would survive the dawn of Batman fairly easily.

After all, while Bruce might deal with the big names. GCPD still play a role in disrupting and halting lower level crime.

I think for all the talk about this question, there's one really simple explanation that's been missed. Marvel has a set itself to a simple formula that's repeatable and adaptable, and it's a formula that happens to suit what audiences want right now. That formula is to give a character vast power but a whole bunch of character faults, and then watch as the hero overcomes his character faults to best the villain. It's notable that people often point to a lack of decent Marvel villains in their films, despite many of the villains being essential to the quality of the comics, and being performed by A-list talent in the movies. But I think this is less of a bug than an inherent element of the formula - the key question isn't whether our hero is capable of defeating the villain, but watching his character progress to the point where he will defeat the villain.

In contrast, DC has no such formula. It had a bunch of ideas, about reluctant heroes imperfectly dealing with a very imperfect world, and about how humans would deal with the arrival of superhuman powered beings. Not only do these ideas not have the appeal of the Marvels with audiences right now, its also really badly suited to building a brand, a level of audience expectation. I have no clue what we're going to get out of the Aquaman movie, but if Marvel announced a Namor movie I'd already know its tone, its plot beats, and everything except the casting and the one-liners.

Whatever debates anyone wants to make about true film-making and artist's visions etc, there's really no denying the Marvel method is a good way of making a franchise that is consistent in tone and quality, and the DC version is absolutely not.

Bran Dawri wrote:
That's assuming the audience for the movies and the comics 100% overlap. For the average comic reader, those nuances might not matter so much as brand loyalty or the general love of comics.
For the average movie goer, they probably do. Also, nitpick: "more relatable" is not the same as "inherently better", or even as "more interesting", except where getting bums in seats is concerned. Maybe.
Example: Neil Gaiman's the Sandman is one of the best, most interesting comic characters I can think of, but he's not exactly very relatable.

The nitpick doesn't work - we're talking about why Marvel films are more successful, both in terms of box office and audience approval. In that conversation 'more relatable' and 'better' mean the same thing. I mean, we can use 'more relatable' if you want, but both terms are making the same argument for the same conclusion.

On the actual point, you're right that the comic book audience and the movie audience are not the same, the comic book audience is a tiny fraction of the movie audience and given its not representative of the larger group. So its possible that what might work to produce roughly equivalent comic book sales doesn't work to produce mainstream box office sales. But first remember the question - what's made Marvel films consistently good. Then look at the stuff that's been made outside the Marvel banner. The X-Men films, which I really like, have had two really good movies, two okay ones, and two stinkers. Spiderman, across two efforts, have had one really good film, a couple of okay films and a couple of absolute stinkers. The Fantastic 4 is three films, three complete misses.

And it isn't as though Marvel kept all the best characters for themselves - before the MEU those characters were Marvel's strongest IP.

So it isn't the characters, it's what Marvel has done with them. While F4 was fumbled repeatedly, Marvel took Guardians and hit it out of the park.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

90s was, in my opinion, a really bad time for comics. Everything got Xtreme for nonsense reasons. I think avengers disassembled is when it really picked back up.

Whilst I agree about the fupwitted xtreme grim gritty xtreme swing in the superbooks, the 90's also had Vertigo, the rise of Dark Horse and a lot of decent books only a short distance from the main stream,

I think that's somewhat of a misread of the decade. The '90s definitely had too much comics speculation, pandering to comics speculation, splash paging, and Rob Liefield. But as Grant Morrison sagely put it, the Image guys saved American-style superhero action comics from what I think he described as the 'lace cuffs' crowd (which Morrison considered himself a part of).

The 90's are definitely a complicated history that has a lot more going on than just Adam X the Xtreme X-Man. The whole shift out of... essentially supermarkets to exclusive hobby stores and as gorgon said, trying to make them "worth" something financially has more to do with the collapse than anything creative, but the creative vibe of the era wasn't exactly something I'd call healthy either.

I do find it kind of interesting that both companies really righted ship around 2004 by basically destroying everything and writing something the next year that really worked. Bendis and Johns have their faults but Infinite Crisis and House of M really found a balance between the the overly simplistic classic stories and the juvenile attempts at maturity we saw in the 90's. There are definitely creators who kept the torch burning, but those two events really seem to be the point where superhero comics felt really relevant again.

Gotham is amazing. Damn fine show. Damn fine.

And to back track a bit, they do need to focus more on the detective aspect of Batman in the movies. I hope they haven't avoided it because they perceive it to be 'boring' or something like that. Some of the best thrillers ever made involved detective work.

I am surprised so many people enjoy gotham. Besides gordon quiting or getting fired from the gcpd like 4 times in 3 seasons, the gotham time line sets it up so that besides black mask, poison ivy and catwoman, batman is just beating the gak out of 50+ year olds.

Also, why the hell does batman need to detective anything. Gordon has already seen venom, the court of owls, hugo strange etc etc....

Gordon already knows the mos of all these people. Batman must be literally reinventing the wheel in another 15-20 years

Oh yeah, and fish mooney is the fething worst.

 Lance845 wrote:
I am surprised so many people enjoy gotham. Besides gordon quiting or getting fired from the gcpd like 4 times in 3 seasons, the gotham time line sets it up so that besides black mask, poison ivy and catwoman, batman is just beating the gak out of 50+ year olds.

Also, why the hell does batman need to detective anything. Gordon has already seen venom, the court of owls, hugo strange etc etc....

Gordon already knows the mos of all these people. Batman must be literally reinventing the wheel in another 15-20 years

Oh yeah, and fish mooney is the fething worst.

Scarecrow is also Bruce's age, Jerome is only a few years older. Many of the "Villain Title" characters can just pass on the title to another character. There will be other villains they can bring in. Sure its a bit odd that Nygma is that much older than him, but it kinda works. He'll also have Tommy Eliot to deal with in the future. Hugo Strange can also come back at anytime a be a character that has to be found out, he doesn't need to operate front and center.

Mooney was bad, but shes thankfully gone.

1) my understanding is "Jerome" is not the Joker, but instead he has a twin brother he infects with "Joker Toxin". It's a crappy Smallville style plot. (I could be wrong)

2) Giving the Joker a definitive origin is bad. Even when they do the failed comedian bit in Killing Joke you never actually learn his name. Or if any of that is even real or just his own delusions. While the Dark Knight movies are bad batman movies, that joker was a great joker. He tells his origin over and over and it's always different. Thats how the joker should be.

3) ok. So batman can fight Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow and Blackmask. But Penguin, Riddler, Hugo Strange, Mr Freeze, doll maker, Zsasz etc etc etc... are all pushing or past 50 by the time he first shows up as batman in gotham. Which means by the time Tim Drake is on the scene they are all like... 65ish?

By the time it's Long Holloweenish the Gotham-verses Batman is spending his nights beating up geriatrics.


4) Which is still not AS bad as the fact that again, Gordon and the GCPD police database is going to have massive files on all these guys. Batman won't need to be a detective at all.

and 5) Gordans constant working and then not working and then working again for the GCPD has lost all meaning. Every season is just flipping a switch back and forth between whether he works at that specific desk or not with no actual consequence.

If there's one thing that's made Gotham work, it's that it's not going to become the 'regular' Batman universe. If it was, we'd know exactly where every single plot thread was going, but they've adopted the Esleworlds approach where it's the same characters, but really, anything could happen. The Batman Gotham's Bruce will grow up to be might be taking on an entirely different set of villains to the ones we're seeing now.

As for the age thing, Penguin was always older that Bats, and Hugo Strange very easily can be, Riddler couldn't match him physically anyway and you could probably make the case that Freeze won't really age now he's in the cryo-suit.

It's no sillier than the comics, when you think about it; Grayson, Tim, Jason have all grown up while Batman stays the exact same age... Yes, there have been reboots and resets, but it still doesn't exactly add up. Batman looks the same age when Damian is born as he does now he's about 15...

As for the constant firing-re-hiring of Gordon, yeah, it's kind of grating at this point (the show itself makes that joke early in S4) but it's also par for the course for most cop shows these days, and of them I'd much rather watch the ones with crazy supervillains rather than run-of-the-mill criminals.

Also, Season 4 has only just started airing in the UK, so can we keep anything from there in spoiler tags please? I believe your Joker theory, if correct (please no one tell me if it is or isn't) is a S4 thing, and not one we've reached yet.

 Lance845 wrote:
1) my understanding is "Jerome" is not the Joker, but instead he has a twin brother he infects with "Joker Toxin". It's a crappy Smallville style plot. (I could be wrong)

2) Giving the Joker a definitive origin is bad. Even when they do the failed comedian bit in Killing Joke you never actually learn his name. Or if any of that is even real or just his own delusions. While the Dark Knight movies are bad batman movies, that joker was a great joker. He tells his origin over and over and it's always different. Thats how the joker should be.

Just watched Tim Burton's Batman again last night - the Joker story is fully told and brilliantly so.......and he is completely insane, Heath Ledgers version was ok, but not really insane enough for me and hardly even killed anyone. Jacks Joker kills an entire museum full of people just to have some one to one time with Vicki.

HL's blows up an empty hospital. The one if Suicide Squad seemed better - much more insane.

re Batman ageing - well he doesn't really do so in the main comics does he?

Well, that's me booked in for Infinity War.

Really really hope they continue their run of form. I was worried about Civil War, and them balancing so many 'A List' characters. But they pulled that off. Infinity War of course is a much greater and trickier task - because its everyone....

As for Jared Leto's Joker? I thought he was absolutely awful. No charisma, no screen presence. Came across as a goon doing CosPlay, because he thinks it'll get him the chicks.

Give me Jack's Joker all day everyday. For me, the perfect mix between clown and cold blooded killer.