An Uncle Telling That Embarrassing Story About You When You Were Five - Forever.

I think we all have at least one. Some person, maybe an uncle or aunt or cousin, maybe a parent or sibling if you're particularly unlucky, who has this one very fixed impression of you as a person. That impression doesn't change no matter what you accomplish and no matter the opinions of those who know you best. Maybe they see you as the baby, or the slacker, or just the one who doesn't like peas. They will continue to believe these things about you regardless of how many plates of peas you shovel down in front of them. No matter where your life takes you, this person will insist on dragging you back to the moment at which they've decided you live. Professor X has someone like that too.

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.

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

"From Her Ashes Risen"

While she's been part of the X-Men books from the beginning, she rarely gets stories or treatment in general to match her teammates. She doesn't make an easy metaphor for male adolescent aggression, or struggles with relinquishing a sense of control. In fact, for most of her history she's been relegated to facilitating those metaphors. There's really only one big story she's known for, granted it's one of the two or three most important storylines in the history of the series. Still, Jean Grey, or Marvel Girl, or Phoenix is mostly known for being the rope in a romantic tug of war. Like most Marvel heroines of the Silver Age she was subjected to unfortunate moments like this:

Note that Professor X has his hands in the pimpin' formation. 

"Back to the Batnipples" or "The Neon of Batman"

 If anything or things are remembered about Joel Schumacher's oeuvre in the Bat-movies, they tend to be these.

Thus begins our descent into the underworld.

Magneto, and How He Works.

So we talked about Professor X. I outlined the various reasons I, and others, find the comparisons between  Professor Xavier and Magneto, and Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X problematic. This isn't to say that it is entirely a mistake to evoke historical figures in the construction of the two characters. I linked Professor X to the likes St. Francis Xavier, and people like Carl Sagen who preached a "gospel" of secular humanism and scientific progress. Likewise, I do think there are a number of  historical figures that can be drawn upon to inform Magneto's character.

   

Back to the Batcave Part 2

And we're back.

When we left off, Batman was drugged at the wheel, and Robin's demise seemed eminent.

Now the concluding episode: Smack in the Middle

Act I