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[Thad]

The Batman Beyond mini is one of those fanfics where the guy clearly loves the series but has no idea what makes it actually good.

It flagrantly violates two rules of Batman Beyond: no over-the-top violence and no returning villains.  And yeah, the cartoon violated those rules now and again too -- Return of the Joker in particular -- but it was the very fact that it did it so sparingly that made it so damn effective when it happened.  This doesn't do it sparingly at all; there are multiple grisly murders and we're up to more than half-a-dozen old Batman villains showing back up.

Now, I don't like Hush.  I think he's a lame character.

Even if I DID like him, he's been thoroughly overused in the past 2 years in the main DCU anyway.

Which brings me to another point -- this is supposed to be DCAU.  Hush doesn't exist in DCAU.  While I don't object to bringing in characters who've never appeared in that continuity, Hush just flat-out doesn't FIT in there.  He falls somewhere in between Deadshot and Mr. Zsasz as Batman villains who just don't fit into Batman Beyond's world.

There are some neat ideas in there (I like the mystery of the new Catwoman), but for the most part this just doesn't feel like Batman Beyond.

[Bal]

Sadly have to agree. The oneshot in Batman/Superman Annual was much better.

[Thad]

Which I haven't read, because it was sold out by the time I got to the comic store that week.

[Rico]

Yeah, Hush was just interesting enough for his first storyline, and only then if you ignore some of the retarded Riddler bits and Loeb's pathological need to have every Batman arc he ever writes involve like 30 villains.  I have 0 idea why DC was on his nuts for years after that.  When the best part of your new villain miniseries is that Bruce finally gets the balls to take his cowl off for Selina, you may want to rethink how good the villain was.

[Bal]

The best part of the first Hush arc was all the stuff before we knew anything about Hush.

[Büge]

I've lost a lot of respect for Kevin Smith.

Not seen in comic:

Batman takes Silver St. John through the Fortress of Solitude Zoo. They pass by a glass enclosure with a huge eight-legged monstrosity covered in scars.

Silver: That's the biggest spider I've ever seen!
Batman: It's a Thanagarian snare-beast. The fiercest killer on its home planet.
Silver: How did it get all those scars?
Batman: (looks slyly at the reader) It's a long story.

[Mongrel]

Jesus. Every one of those sample panels is excruciating.

[Thad]

Well, and the bitch about it is, when you set up Batman getting married, there are only four possible outcomes:

1. Batman actually gets married.
This is pretty much reserved for Elseworlds stuff (and happened on Earth-2 in the Silver Age).  Morrison has enough cachet that he could probably get away with doing it, as he's already provided the most significant shakeups to the Batman mythos since they killed off Jason Todd, but he already hinted at that route and decided to go instead for

2. She turns out to be evil.  Looked like Smith was going to do that for a minute, but no, turns out Batman's just fucking crazy.  Which you would THINK would lead into

3. She leaves him.  Because he's fucking crazy and attacked her because he thought she was a robot.

But no, she sticks around until the end of the issue.  And so we come to

4. Fridg'd.

[Lottel]

So I bought Under the Red Hood. The Special features were nice. A bit of backstory on both Robin as a fictional character and Jason Todd.  That's pretty interesting nice thing to include, for people who don't of the whole Robin story. Then they included Bruce Timm's favorite BTAS episodes. Alright. Pretty decent, except the quality sucks. I have some rips from a few years back and they are way better than the Blu-ray's. Oh well

The Jonah Hex feature was alright. A tad short, and if you didn't read any Jonah Hex or have no clue who he is, you probably won't understand what the hell he is doing. Still, pretty cool to include him

[Thad]

ComicsAlliance buries the lede:

Comics Continuum also mentioned that the next Batman animated series to follow this year's final season of "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" will also likely be CG animated.

 

[Healy]

Yeah, I heard about that. Can't imagine that being a good fit for the character.

[Thad]

Not sure what you mean.  I'm not expressing knee-jerk rage at CG, nor do I think it somehow doesn't fit Batman's character (which is pretty effing versatile).  I'm pissed that TB&TB is getting canceled.

[Brentai]

I've lost a lot of respect for Kevin Smith.

I know I'm necroing a sub-thread, but the smarmy bit that reviewer wrote about the crossbow bugs the shit out of me.  Congratulations on knowing what a firing pin is, sir.  Now if you had taken half a second to read that panel again instead of tripping over yourself to sound like a smartass at the popular guy's expense you might have noticed something about the way it was phrased that might make you shut up for a second.

Kevin Smith knows full well that 17th century French crossbows* don't have 21st century firing pins.  Baphomet's does.  It's a crossbow-firearm.

Which is fucking stupid.

But instead of pointing out how very legitimately ridiculous the gun-bow is, this douchebag demonstrates his inability to actually read the comic that he's lambasting while at the same time chiding Kevin Smith for (supposedly) not looking up every goddam thing he sees on Wikipedia.  He actually makes himself look even stupider than the gun-bow.  Bra.  Fucking.  Vo.

I know you think it's shit karma, but I'm going to postulate that this may be the reason why you're stuck whining about comic books on the internet, and Kevin Smith gets paid however many thousands to invent new ways for villains to lose their hands.


* Which are probably pretty fucking rare since the French had mostly switched to firearms by then, as long as we're quoting Wikipedia.

[Royal☭]

Brentai, you can literally see the taut string on the crossbow.  That taut string is what launches the bolt, not an explosion.  There is no firing pin, no matter how much you might want to take cheap digs at Chris Sims.

[Brentai]

There is no firing pin

Yes there is that's the only god damn reason he's mentioning it.  He took a weapon that doesn't exist and added a feature that makes absolutely no sense, meaning he's either retarded, trolling, or trying to get a job at Square.

This is then given to an artist who doesn't know how to draw an impossible weapon and isn't paid enough to figure it out, so he just draws a crossbow.  Props to that guy, actually, for realizing that the thing should at least appear to be mostly ornamental.

The only thing stupider than that idea is the conversation resulting from it, which basically sums up my feelings about superhero comic books in general.

[Thad]

The artist is Walt Flanagan, the "TELL 'em, Steve-Dave!" guy from Mallrats.  I think there was probably more collaboration going on than DC just handing him a script Kevin Smith wrote.

[Brentai]

Is he?  I think I like him.  He may be one of Smith's friends but he clearly knows what he's drawing is ridiculous, and has fun with it.

Batman's single stream of manly tears after he beats his robo-wife is awesome.

[Royal☭]

So either the artist fucked up and drew a taut bow on a crossbow that's apparently a gun (that is shooting a bolt for some reason), or Kevin Smith just assumed any weapon with a trigger also has a firing pin.

[Mongrel]

None of this hair-splitting makes the sequence any less retardedly awful though.

[Brentai]

If he assumed it had a firing pin he wouldn't feel the need to specify it, that's my point.

I think the string's just added because it wouldn't be a crossbow without a string.  In which case it's still not a crossbow, so I guess it's just a gun that fires bolts that's shaped like a crossbow.

I'm really kind of tired of thinking about it and am mostly reminded why I don't click on comic book threads most of the time.

None of this hair-splitting makes the sequence any less retardedly awful though.

Bingo.