Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Idea for a New Feature

I'm getting a little tired of just bouncing back and forth between X-Men and Batman as I have been for awhile now. I still plan on finishing up my X-Men analyses. Juggernaut is next, then Wolverine and Cyclops, the Sentinels, The rest of the more minor X-Men, and finishing up with Apocalypse. I've been thinking of a new running feature I could do between those articles, Lame Hero/Rogue Reclamation. Readers could send me examples of characters who they feel are too losery or lame or just plain boring to function properly in their roles, and I will think about the character and see if I can think of a way they could be rehabilitated. Ideas will be accepted here, on my twitter and Facebook accounts, and at my e-mail address if you have it. The only ones I wont do are Aquaman, because I'm bored with hearing reasons why Aquaman is lame (He's currently getting a revamp from Geoff Johns anyway.), and Wonder Woman characters, because I plan on tackling Wonder Woman as a whole after I'm done with X-Men.

Friday, December 9, 2011

The Bat Symbol Throughout the Ages: A Visual History.

Some time ago I read this post about the ways that the Bat-signal has changed over time. It's an interesting meditation on the uses of said signal over the decades, and now in a time when its function could easily be replaced by the Bat-beeper or the b-Phone. In particular, I'm like the portions of the above article that discuss the way that the bat-signal of years past has functioned as an almost physical object symbolising Batman's dominance whereever it's projected. You see, I've been playing Arkham Asylum off and on since I got it in October. This may spoil part of the game for some people, but it came out in 2009, so yeah, spoilers away. Early on, Batman is exposed to Scarecrow's fear gas and experiences vivid hallucinations. This culminates in a platforming section, where the player is stalked by a gigantic manifestation of the Scarecrow whose gaze will kill you if he sees you. How this is relevant is that after reaching the top of a tower of ruins Batman defeats giant Scarecrow, for the moment. How? By shining Bat-signal onto Scarecrow that blasts him like a big freakin' laser beam.

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In the spirit of that article I linked to before the nightmares started, though with less analysis and sophistication, I present: The Bat Symbol