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Batman's Weirdest Foe: Dr. Hurt Part One
50 Plays2 years ago
Join Derek L. Chase and Corinne Levy as they learn everything they can about Dr. Hurt, the mysterious supervillain who has been planning his attack on Batman for years!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Comically Pedantic, where we take a detailed look at the complicated concepts, characters, and history of comic book culture. I'm your host, Erick Elchase, and joining me again is Corinne Levy.
Favorite Batman Villains Discussion
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm back. The six episodes we did previously didn't scare me away.
00:00:31
Speaker
I had so much fun with you. I'm very excited about having you back. I'm very excited about this story. I'm so excited. We've really lightened it up. Yes. We were kind of in some trenches the past couple episodes, but we did good with it. And now we get to just talk about fun stuff. This is going to be my thought process on doing this episode.
00:01:00
Speaker
was kind of just an exercise in, I don't know, I wouldn't say vanity. I don't know what I would, just like what I personally think is very fun. Like I sat down and recently read through one of my favorite Batman runs ever.
00:01:28
Speaker
And I was just like, it's so confusing the way that it's laid out. And I was going through notes. I was putting down, just going like, how does this relate to this? And how does this relate to this? And I was having a lot of fun with that. And I thought it would be really interesting to go over it with you, especially because I know you at least like Batman.
00:01:55
Speaker
I do like Batman for so many reasons. Do you have a favorite Batman villain? I do. It kind of goes back and forth.
00:02:06
Speaker
Um, my most, one of my favorites that I find very underappreciated is manbat. Um, cause he is just wild. And I used to play, um, the Lego batman games and he was just my favorite guy. Cause he was just a cute little man with wings. Um, and I just find him so interesting, but you like never see him enough.
00:02:32
Speaker
And then, yeah, I can't actually remember the last time I read a comic book where he was in it. Yeah, he's just like barely around. Like, I feel like more people know about like calendar man or whatever than man bat. And that makes that makes me sad for man bat. But it's also nice for me because he's like in my little joy box. And then I also like I really like poison ivy just because I think those are the powers I would want to have. Oh, yeah.
00:03:00
Speaker
I would just want to be like this cool lady that controls a plant and like can poison people and look really good doing it. I think that'd be a lot of fun and very empowering. And so that's probably like my top two. Yeah. But all of the villains, because they're just so colorful and they're so insane and very niche like they each have a very niche corner.
00:03:30
Speaker
And I appreciate that a lot. There's not super cookie cutters. I feel like they made the cookie cutter. So I'm a big fan. Big fan. Um, well, uh, I, I'm.
00:03:46
Speaker
Okay, so well, I don't want to break from tradition too much when doing this.
X-Men Hellfire Gala Excitement
00:03:52
Speaker
So I do want to ask if you have a bright spot. I do kind of want to focus again more on the positive, even though we're going to be spending a whole episode going on positive. Let's stay with some of the positive, too. Oh, hell yeah. I'm about that. I'm a positive queen. My bright spot was probably of this people.
00:04:12
Speaker
Um, I was supposed to see a cat today, but that didn't happen. Um, so yeah, I heard about that. I hope Oliver's okay. I want to meet him so bad. Um, but I got to go to the pool today and that was a delight because for some reason we have like a pool for like our, like it's a little community. Great. Love it. Um, and so far every weekend I've had off
00:04:38
Speaker
Um, it, it's been raining, so I haven't been able to go. And then I got sick last weekend, which happened to just be the nicest weekend of the whole summer. So it was very sad. I was like, I've been denied my pool that I've worked so hard to like be near. Uh, and thankfully the clouds parted today and I was going bone to the pool and I just like laid there and I read.
00:05:04
Speaker
And I just like get my footsies into the water. Great time. That's my bright spot. Nice. I guess for like me, this is kind of it's going to be a little bit of a weird one. I read I'm a huge X-Men fan. I've read like. Yeah, you've been reading like every single one. Yes. And I took a long break from reading, but I just recently started again.
00:05:34
Speaker
But I also try to keep somewhat up to date with modern X-Men comics. I don't always keep up, like the last one I read was from about a year ago, but that's still kind of modern, right? And last year they did the first ever
00:05:54
Speaker
hellfire gala and it was so much fun and if for anyone that like knows nothing about uh this particular thing and i'm gonna guess you are one of them i don't it is
00:06:10
Speaker
There is something in this for everyone. So they did, all of the X-Men books decided to celebrate this Hellfire Gala. And they also put out like a sketchbook beforehand. They also did a book called Planet Sized X-Men. And each one kind of had like their own storyline going all while this Gala was happening.
00:06:39
Speaker
So the idea is the X-Men have created their own nation at this point, right? So it's a mutant nation. And if you're not a mutant, you're usually not allowed. I mean, you can get like on to the island if you want, but it's supposed to mostly be just for mutants, but they decided to have this gala and in doing so they invite like
00:07:08
Speaker
politicians, superheroes, everyone. This is going to be like the first time that humans in mass are allowed onto the island. Right. Okay. And it was their way of like making a big scene, like extending a hand out to the human
00:07:34
Speaker
And then I'm assuming craziness ensues probably. Not as bad as I expected. There are some things that happen where some people act out of turn.
00:07:47
Speaker
uh there's uh like someone tries to invade or something but like it goes off mostly without a hitch it does end i believe with someone dying but you don't find that out until like after uh the gala um and then there was like a whole big murder mystery and i have not read that so i don't know what happened there um
00:08:11
Speaker
I'm a little, uh, I'm very excited to get to that at some point, but this all comes up because I just recently read that they're doing another Hellfire Gala and I'm very excited about it. So I have to get caught up to modern like today, uh, X-Men books so that I can read it.
DC Universe Continuity and Crises
00:08:29
Speaker
But the cool thing is.
00:08:31
Speaker
Not just is there like, oh, there's this big party being thrown. There's a lot of politics involved. Different story arcs do different things all during the party.
00:08:44
Speaker
There's also an insane amount of fashion because they've decided they all get like a hellfire gala, like gowns or suits. Yeah. It is gorgeous. It's like whenever there's like a winter formal episode of like your favorite like kid show, like when Danny Phantom gets to go to prom and then finally everybody's got new animated books.
00:09:13
Speaker
I'm here for this. I was so into like just seeing everyone like what they came up with because so much of like what they're wearing also like represents their personality or like how I was so into that and it's all when they announced the the more recent one there have been some sketches with like this is what cyclops will be wearing and this is what like this and it's so cool
00:09:39
Speaker
And I, someone put up an appreciation post on like Reddit of like everything that they really liked from last year's Hellfire Gala. And I scrolled through it and I was like, damn, I loved that story. And one of the cool things also was like, you know, Wanda, Scarlet Witch, she was revealed. I'm very aware of her. Right. She was revealed not to have actually been like Magneto's child.
00:10:08
Speaker
And that was like so she wasn't a mutant and all of this weird stuff that all happened before this but the cool thing was like during the gala Magneto like met with her and they have this like really cute conversation where he tells her that like it doesn't matter like you're always gonna be my daughter and it's the sweetest thing that happens in um the series that I have read with her and the vision where
00:10:37
Speaker
Anyway, like, cause it's the, the series of her that I have is the one where she like gets pregnant and like has twins at the end. And so there's like a whole couple of issues where Magneto is involved. Like he comes to Thanksgiving cause it's all like calendar stuff.
00:10:54
Speaker
um it's like the long halloween but for marvel and for wholesome family goodness not film not a murder not a murder um so it's like that but nothing like that but
00:11:10
Speaker
So there's a couple issues where Magneto's involved and it's all about him trying to just be a good supportive dad and like Forgetting the fact that he was ever a bad guy. He's like I want to be a good grandpa now And it's so wholesome. So I love that that team continues for them Magneto is like hands down one of my favorite
00:11:33
Speaker
mutant characters. He's a good villain too. He's just an amazing villain. I totally understand his reasoning most of the time. He's got maybe went a little too far. He's a good seasoned villain for sure. Oh yeah. Yeah. And now we're going to learn about new villains that I've never heard of.
00:11:56
Speaker
So when planning this show, I tend to take an interesting comic book related topic and look at it through the lens of how it relates to real world concepts and events. The downside to this is that not only does it make the research very difficult to do, but it also makes a good deal of episodes quite depressing as we've commented on already. And that's why I've been hired. Almost entirely on the problems within our community.
00:12:22
Speaker
That is one of the reasons why every so often I like to take a step back to realize that we are talking about comics, a medium full of vibrant nonsense that is insanely fun to talk about. Yeah, like a man who's also a bat, literally. It's great. For this episode, I thought it would be fun to dig deep into one of my favorite incredibly confusing Batman villains.
00:12:45
Speaker
Now would be a good time to brush up on over 80 years of Batman comics because nearly everything goes as we step into Grant Morrison's winding run on the character and meet the man described as the whole in things, Doctor Hurt. So just like in previous times, we've taken a break from regular coverage to dig deep into a particular character, the references will be handled a little differently than normal.
00:13:06
Speaker
Since this covers long stretches of several different series and across different continuities, I'll be putting a list of recommended reading in the reference section rather than a full bibliography.
00:13:17
Speaker
So before we actually begin, do you know anything, have you even heard of Dr. Hurt outside of me mentioning their name? No, not at all. When you originally said Dr. Hurt, when this whole thing like, oh, we might do this came up, my brain went to Dr. Horrible's sing-along blog. Oh, the sing-along blog? Yeah. And then I was like, that's not going to be the thing we're talking about.
00:13:46
Speaker
I do like that though. Oh, I think it's fantastic. Um, best thing to come out of the writer's strike. Um, but, uh, no, I haven't heard about it.
Comic Book Historical Context
00:13:59
Speaker
I was explaining to my family that I do this podcast. Um, and I was like, yeah, we're going to talk about something lighter though. I like.
00:14:08
Speaker
And then I couldn't even remember who the villain was that we were going to be talking about. So we Googled just Batman villain and we scrolled all the way to the bottom. And then we just saw Hush. So for a week, I thought we were going to talk about Hush, who I also don't know about. So I had the wrong H named villain the whole time.
00:14:31
Speaker
Hush is a really interesting character in that I think sort of similar to Dr. Hurt. The original story is pretty okay. I definitely, I personally prefer Dr. Hurt. But then there's not much left to do I think with the character.
00:14:53
Speaker
after their first like major story. Right. Hush they have brought back a couple of times and I've never cared. Yeah. It's always been like oh cool yeah I whatever I all of it. I mean I'm sure like the stories are fine but I've never felt like a very strong need to catch up with. It's like running into a high school acquaintance at a grocery store.
00:15:20
Speaker
Like you have to say hi, but then like you don't feel a need to continue a conversation. Yeah. And then you just go buy your grapes and leave. So I get that for you. I support it. I think that with another interesting thing with those two characters, I think you could go into the Batman, the Robert Pattinson movie. Yeah. You could go into the Batman 2.
00:15:51
Speaker
and easily adapt both of these characters. That's cool. I think it's much more likely that they would do hush. Just because he's reappeared so many. Well, there's also like they reference his name in the movie, just like very briefly. I think they reference his dad's name. I wonder if that's like the one time I went to the movie.
00:16:15
Speaker
It's it's a very blink and you miss it kind of thing. It's a reporter they comment on and his like I think It's so it's it's something like that where okay unless you know the character You're not really going to know what the hell they're talking about Right
00:16:35
Speaker
That makes sense. The character of Hush, it's interesting. It's another thing sort of similar. It's another Jeff Loeb kind of mystery. So it's very similar to the long Halloween in that it's like a long drawn out mystery. And then at the end, you sort of figure out who Hush is. Oh, OK. That's cool.
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah, it was an interesting story. I remember reading it the first time and being like, that was a lot of fun.
00:17:06
Speaker
cared past that. But I mean, I still like the character and I like that. Yeah, that's fine. That's what some characters are. But Dr. Hurt. Before we dive too deep into everything with Dr. Hurt, I think it's important that we define a few terms. So the DC universe is one that has gone through several revisions over the years, with some of the most notable being Crisis on Infinite Earths, The New 52, Rebirth, and Infinite Frontier.
00:17:31
Speaker
There have been many more changes to the continuity than just these, but these specific events fundamentally changed core aspects of many of the main comics published at the time. We will mostly be focusing on the continuities from before Crisis on Infinite Earths and the one established in the wake of that event. So to get a good understanding of what this means, let's take a moment to describe why the Crisis was needed in the first place.
00:17:53
Speaker
And actually, it kind of comes to my mind now, do you know anything about the crisis on Infinite Earths or the New 52 or any of that? I know. I didn't read some of the New 52. Yeah, I'm currently reading some of the New 52, their Birds of the Cry series.
00:18:12
Speaker
What I know is that it's kind of just their way of organizing continuities. So like the new 52, I think is the most current one, that it's like, these are all the things currently that are canonical. They've since gone back on that, actually. Oh, they've gone back. OK. Yeah. That's fine.
00:18:32
Speaker
forget everything I just said. It's the second recent one. So I'm assuming it's just like their titles for different eras of continuity.
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, like, because I'm assuming like you just like the new 52, you just slap the new 52. So, you know, like, oh, just in case there's like a little like mashup of characters, like if, you know, if your Superman meets your Batman, it's the new 52 Batman and the new 52 Superman. So if you want to go see what's happening with them, go find the little corner label.
00:19:12
Speaker
Like that's the one. Right. Yeah. I mean, and I actually recently read where there's never any like overarching plot between the whole thing. Right. It's just like, oh, this is just the era in which all the things are happening. Like. Yeah, basically. So they they'll do a story that sets up the new status quo.
00:19:38
Speaker
You know? And then from there, it's just how do we explore this? So with the new 52, that was all set up during Flashpoint, where you have Flashpoint as its own story. And then at the very end, it sort of resets continuity. And then everything after that is the new 52. Right. OK. And so it's just you explore what this new continuity is. Right.
00:20:05
Speaker
From its inception, the DC universe included a lot of major characters, like Superman, the first Flash, not Barry Allen, not the run Barry run, but the- Okay, let's see. Okay, cool. I thought there was just Barry. Good to know that I was wrong. There have been a lot of Flashes. And we'll actually, we'll get into a little bit of
00:20:35
Speaker
that as we go a little further. Okay. The early days of these stories kept them very much separate until 1940 when some of the superheroes teamed up to form the Justice Society of America, the JSA. This established one of the very first major crossovers and cemented a cohesive universe between all of the individual characters published by the company at that time. So this is where you get the original Green Lantern, the original Flash, Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman,
00:21:04
Speaker
They all kind of like are hanging out in this era. Yeah. And as the years rolled by, that's when actually Batman and Wonder Woman would be like added. They came much later than the JSA, but all of this gets introduced and their stardom, Wonder Woman and Batman in particular, just turns into ubiquity, surpassing many of the heroes that formed the original Justice Society.
00:21:32
Speaker
So this is all during a time called the golden age of comics when the popularity of the medium grew to the point that it was more difficult to find someone who didn't read comics than those that did. This was unfortunately
00:21:48
Speaker
not very long-lived. You would have a huge, it was just insane how you could, comics were everywhere. Superman was everywhere, Batman was everywhere, Wonder Woman was everywhere. People were super into it. And the popularity and circulation of superhero comics greatly declined after World War II, which gave rise to a lot of horror, crime, and romance books. And that's where you would get
00:22:16
Speaker
EC Comics became a big deal. The Tales from the Crypt. All of that starts around this time becoming like the main thing. Superheroes were on the on the outs. And that's also when Dr. Frederick Wertham published The Infamous Seduction of the Innocent, which was his book that argued a link between comic books and juvenile delinquency.
00:22:40
Speaker
Without getting too far into these events because I desperately want to cover them in a future episode, there are still some important elements to understand. First, Congress took an intense interest in the comic book content as part of an early culture war. Second, because of the increased scrutiny, frightened publishers implemented the Comics Code Authority to help regulate comic book content. So what was happening around this time
00:23:08
Speaker
they were doing actual hearings on whether or not comic books were turning kids into juvenile delinquents. And without saying like, without flat out being like, this is making kids gay, they were also saying, this is making kids gay. Oh, I was gonna say it sounds very similar to like the video game debates.
00:23:27
Speaker
Like, you know, it is very like, you know, you have all these studies done to see if it's like, oh, are do video games correlate like violence like that? So, yeah, it just sounds like the video games of their kind.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah, and also like not to really show my hand too much. If I decide to actually do the seduction of the innocent episode, it's all based on entirely faulty experiments.
00:24:01
Speaker
an entirely faulty evidence. It's just someone decided, Dr. Frederick Wirtham, decided that comic books were bad. He could prove it using evidence that does not actually work. And they found a scapegoat. Everyone was trying to blame comics for kids getting into things that, it wasn't like this when I was their age.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah, they're scared of a new popular media and then they're trying to demonize it. Right. And to be fair, there's a lot of weird shit happening. And like in EC Comics, there were several times where like people's faces would get torn off. Covers would have like severed heads and stuff on it. Like it's really fucked up stuff. Yeah.
00:24:45
Speaker
But it's also like, you gotta like, those were not made for kids. Those particular ones, you know? That's something that you would just as a discerning parent or something you would have to kind of be more involved in figuring out.
New Superhero Versions and Continuity
00:25:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's like the age old constantly evolving debate of like, what should your kids be reading? What should your kids be watching? You know?
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah, I have been having to answer this for Austin's sisters, actually, when it comes to anime and things like that. I'm like, look, I don't watch the same anime as they do. I think it's fine.
00:25:22
Speaker
And there are things that I watched when I was their age that I was perfectly fine with. And I think that they would mostly be okay with, but it really depends on the kid, you know? There are some things where I was like, you shouldn't watch this. Like just have open conversation. But that's just like, I could go on a whole bed talk on how I would praise human beings. But what?
00:25:48
Speaker
So all around this time, the CCA, the Comics Code Authority, drastically reduced what was allowed to be published under their reign, which doomed many of the popular comics of the time and created a market for superheroes. This is actually what led to EC Comics folding. They were unable to really publish most of what made them popular because they were being confined by the Comics Code Authority's mandates. Right.
00:26:16
Speaker
This truly took hold when DC introduced their brand new version of The Flash in showcase number four. So now we have horror books are failing and they're looking to get a whole new audience. So they decided to really focus in on superheroes again. And in showcase number four, that's when they introduced Barry Allen. Okay. This new version of the character quickly caught on with readers.
00:26:41
Speaker
and led to introducing other new versions of characters like the Green Lantern. So now we have a new Green Lantern. Oh, and that's why you start making the different, like, universes. This left DC with that problem. They had, at this point, decades of stories featuring the original Flash and Green Lantern, as well as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. And they don't want to necessarily get rid of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman because they're super popular, but so are these new characters.
00:27:10
Speaker
So the solution to this was to introduce the idea of the multiverse, where two versions of characters can coexist with some being wild departures from earlier established continuities. Right. So is this technically like the first like big multiverse thing to be like published in comics? Okay. That's funny. It's, it was, and it all comes out of just being like,
00:27:36
Speaker
fuck it let's try something new and the flash really like hit it off with people so the original the original flash is Jay Garrick and he looks very much like oh what is that God's name that's like really fast is it mercury
00:27:58
Speaker
Anyway, he's got the whole lightning bolts and stuff. It's just very silly. And then the original Green Lantern, they were very different. They did not necessarily work the same way. In fact, the original Green Lantern, it was more like kind of magic-based. And when they introduced the new Green Lantern, it was very science and alien-based stuff.
00:28:26
Speaker
Right. Updating themselves for the times. Right. And this this allowed them to have the idea of the multiverse. They were able to have a Superman that ran around with the Justice Society and a Superman that was young enough to be hanging out with the new Flash and the new Green Lantern. And the same with like Batman and Wonder Woman. You have two different versions of these characters. Right. So this remained the status quo from the early 60s all the way up to 1985.
00:28:55
Speaker
when DC editorial considered keeping the continuity of multiple universes with decades of stories, far too difficult a task. Because they were publishing stories mostly with the new group, but still sometimes with the other characters from the older generation. And with sales starting to slump, it seemed the best course of action would be to find a way to reset the status quo while at the same time bringing in new readers.
00:29:26
Speaker
To accomplish this, DC created a major crossover series, Crisis on Infinite Earths. And the major plot elements aren't entirely relevant except to say that all of the universes were destroyed or merged, and then they were rebuilt as a brand new DC universe with a far more streamlined continuity. This is when Man of Steel became the definitive origin story for Batman, or for Superman, sorry, and Batman Year One became the start of the Caped Crusader's career.
00:29:54
Speaker
So fewer things can claim to have changed comic book storytelling as much as Crisis on Infinite Earths did in the mid 80s. It really just reset the landscape. It also was an interesting way for them to bring in characters that they bought recently and have them be part of the new status quo. Yeah, especially if you're gonna go with the whole like flashing and like deleting and merging kind of concept of like universes.
00:30:23
Speaker
Yeah, but probably of course like some some new bulbs that you bought are gonna like fall in there That's and it's I I recently reread Crisis on Infinite Earths and it was far longer than I remember it being when I read it as a kid But I think I just kind of flew through it And it's still really good. I think it really holds up It's it's just
00:30:49
Speaker
I feel like every few issues, it's like a new thing happens, so it's not necessarily as a streamlined of a story as I'm used to. But it definitely gets the world ending stakes are set. And it feels like, oh, we fixed this one thing and a new thing is happening.
00:31:11
Speaker
The changes to Batman's personal history in the wake of the events were fairly minimal. And that is something that continues to today. Whenever they change continuity, they almost never change much about Batman. No, everybody knows his parents got killed like in front of him and that makes him sad.
00:31:32
Speaker
And whereas I feel like with Superman, they change it a lot. Yeah, I feel like there's kind of all different ones of either he was shot from space over or something. I feel like that's interesting. Well, there's somewhere he was born in the pod. So he was like a gestating fetus. Cool embryo, yeah. Yeah.
00:31:59
Speaker
And then he's born when he lands on Earth. And then there's somewhere he was already a baby. There's somewhere like Krypton is portrayed one way. Sometimes it's not portrayed that way. There's one where I actually really like where he's a vegetarian and he's well into his adulthood before he starts doing anything Clark Kenty or Superman. Oh, yeah.
00:32:24
Speaker
Uh, so I mean, it's like, it's just all over, but like Batman's remain, his history is like pretty consistent. Yeah. They really make it super integral to like his whole hair.
00:32:39
Speaker
Yeah. So actually, as we're talking about all of this, there is a storyline that takes place after what we will be talking about in the few episodes that we're doing on Dr. Hurt, but it's during the same run. And in the middle of that is when the new 52 takes off. So it's just between issues, Batman just has a different costume.
00:33:06
Speaker
And that is pretty much it. It just keeps going from there. OK. So the more fantastic adventures that took place throughout the 50s and 60s, those were removed, or at least not really referred to ever again after this change. And these would include stories about aliens, extra-dimensional creatures like Batmite, who was an imp from the fifth dimension that dressed like Batman.
00:33:36
Speaker
Those are all removed. But the main idea of who Batman is, that all stays the same. Have you ever read anything with Bat-mite in it? No, I haven't. At first, I was like, another man, Bat? It's not. I was so excited. But no, I haven't read anything with him. I don't know if you ever saw the Flintstones when they had that little alien creature that would pop up and like,
00:34:03
Speaker
Yeah! It's very similar. Oh, that's fun. Actually, do you know Mr. Mxyzptlk? He's one of Superman's villains. He's from the same place that Bat-Mite is. Oh, okay. He always looks like a little old man and he always just plays pranks on Superman because he has reality warping abilities. Oh, that's so funny.
00:34:31
Speaker
The way Superman has to get rid of him is like to convince him to say his name backwards. They're fun stories. That's fun. I'm a fan. So that's like, they are, Batman looks like a tiny person wearing a Batman costume. And he like flies behind Batman. And just like, he's his number one fan. He just shows up. Aw, that's so cute.
00:35:01
Speaker
So he was around in some of the earlier, cause in the fifties and sixties, like they tried to make the stories really light and especially, you know, you have lighthearted fun campy stuff. Like it's all nice bright colors. Like I feel like all the dark, like gothic kind of stuff didn't come in until like the late eighties. It's really weird. So when it started in like the forties, um, they were a lot of like
00:35:27
Speaker
pulp adventures very much like we're going to go catch this bad guy and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And then they quickly started doing a little bit more lighthearted stuff. And then especially around the time that the Batman TV series with Adam West came out, it became known for being like really campy and really silly. So they just kept leaning into that. And then I think it was in this. Yeah, it was in the 70s. They started going back to a more Gothic
00:35:57
Speaker
kind of story. Yeah. Because a lot of times I'll match like, I will picture the comics looking the same way like it's television media did. So like, I assume the 80s because that's when like Tim Burton's Batman came out. I was like, Oh, like spooky Batman stuff. That definitely like affected the comics probably.
00:36:21
Speaker
or the comics affected the film. So I would assume that that's when all the kind of spooky or dark things kind of got involved, as opposed to Adam West wearing just colorful underwear running around. Like, yeah, it's going to match the comics of that time. So.
00:36:42
Speaker
I mean, it's very similar. There's like a weird, one does one thing and usually the other one either follows or reacts to what's going on. Yeah, they inspire each other. Yeah. So all of that, that brings us to Grant Morrison. Grant Morrison is a Scottish comic book writer and playwright known for counterculture, non-linear and revolutionary storytelling.
00:37:10
Speaker
going to say like in 2020, Morrison publicly came out as non-binary and uses they, them pronouns.
00:37:17
Speaker
But many of the articles that I read in preparation for this still refer to Morrison by he, him. So I will be doing my best to correct this as I move forward. And I've even found myself in writing this. I would write he, and then I would have to go back in the way I messed that up. So there's a chance I'll fuck it up. Pre-apologies. Yes. And I'm throwing it out there. We're trying our best. I'm going to try to hold myself accountable here.
00:37:45
Speaker
So moving into mainstream American comic books as part of what was known as the British invasion of the late 80s alongside Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Brian Boland, Barry Windsor Smith, Mark Millar, and many others, Morrison caught a lot of attention for his take on Animal Man.
00:38:04
Speaker
So early in the series, Morrison established a particular tone by telling a story involving a cartoon coyote living in the DC universe as part of a deal with God to end the abuse of fictional characters. The metafictional take on superhero continuities with characters being defeated by simply being erased and eventually Animal Man becoming aware that he is in a comic book and pleading with Morrison himself to stop torturing him emotionally for the sake of the story, that all became like
00:38:32
Speaker
humongous like it really caught on and in fact like a lot of people will say go read this animal man's story and I recently did and I will say that yeah you've told me to read animal man I will read it's uh I really like it um it sounds like that kind of meta creepiness that I would like it's
00:38:54
Speaker
Also, I tried reading the stories immediately following it, and this is nothing against the writer of the Animal Man series, or the issues that immediately followed Morrison's run.
00:39:07
Speaker
Because I don't know how you fix what Morrison did to make it work. It's like the correct. But I immediately stopped liking it. It was one of those sort of I woke up and I was it was all the dream kind of a thing. It's tough. And that's kind of all you have to. That's what you you can't really just keep going with what you did because then you've sort of broken the you've broken the fourth wall entirely.
Grant Morrison's Influence and Style
00:39:36
Speaker
right with with what Morrison did but it was interesting and I would say that it probably doesn't necessarily have a very like people really point out the ending because Animal Man talks to Grant Morrison and it's really interesting but even Grant Morrison writes in that it's kind of an anticlimactic story but it's just really weird and and and cool I don't know I don't know how to describe it seems very like memorable
00:40:05
Speaker
Yeah. It's very memorable. I wouldn't necessarily say it's like a fantastic story, like beginning, middle and end. It's just a really fun ride. Yeah. A story that sticks with you. Right.
00:40:19
Speaker
So, impressed by the work that Morrison put out as part of Animal Man, DC hired them to write for Doom Patrol and several other series over the next few years. And continuing the mind-fuck art that they were known for, Morrison worked on series like The Invisibles, which many have pointed out bears a striking resemblance to The Matrix, a movie that came out many years later.
00:40:40
Speaker
So there's like a lot of weird stuff happening here, right. And eventually Morrison was trusted to revamp the Justice League as the JLA, which proved a wildly popular series returning to the title like it.
00:40:56
Speaker
It became a best seller. Oh, OK. Cool. Good job, Grant. Right. Soon after, they helped launch New X-Men, a series which brought a brand new status quo to the mutant comics at Marvel, which I also have the entire Grant Morrison run on the X-Men because I fucking love it. Yeah. Good job, Grant. The ending, again, not so much. Not because it's not a climactic. It's very much a climactic story, but it's one where
00:41:25
Speaker
I disagree with the ending because it, you know how we were talking about Magneto and how great of a villain he is? Yeah. He takes, or they take Magneto at the end of that story and basically make Magneto just a crazy villain. Like it doesn't really match with who the character was. It just sort of, and that's the only issue I have with it. Everything else, loved. Cool.
00:41:55
Speaker
So essentially, Morrison made a huge name for themselves in the industry and one particularly well known for revamping characters or bringing in interesting ideas. I mean, we've gone through a dozen or so years worth of their work and each one kind of stands out. Doom Control is a TV series now, you know? Like it seems like he's, they've been very like,
00:42:24
Speaker
much like on the forefront of revamping. Like they're doing really good with that. Right. On a somewhat related note are some of the very strange things that Morrison has also said over the years. At DisinfoCon in 1999 Morrison claimed the story of the Invisibles was given to them by aliens that abducted them in Kathmandu who told them to spread this information to the world via a comic book.
00:42:53
Speaker
Later, they clarified that the experience they labeled as the alien abduction experience in Katmandu had nothing to do with aliens or abduction, but that there was an experience that they had in Katmandu that felt that the invisibles isn't an attempt to explain. I don't know what that means, but Morrison is very like quick to be on some some strange uh uh
00:43:19
Speaker
strange ideas even in they revamped Superman for the new 52 they and I which is one of my favorite early new 52 runs it's not great
00:43:36
Speaker
But it stood out to me. Right. And one of the ways that it ended was sort of more Superman had to convince everyone to say their own name backwards. And you even see like Morrison wrote their name on in the comic and the writer or the artist, the artist drew their hand in a panel with their name.
00:44:03
Speaker
on it like so it's very interesting like weird stuff right yeah it kind of it also gives that little like homage to the past one that we just talked about where like Superman had to make the reality guy yeah and it's because it's a similar villain it's another villain from yeah and it's a
00:44:26
Speaker
Morrison has this style of writing where I just recently watched a YouTube review of a comic book where it's sort of a similar idea to this show where the guy would start to read from a comic book and he's explaining it to his friends. Yeah.
00:44:46
Speaker
And one of the first things he says, this is a Grant Morrison book and the two friends that are there groan, they're like, Oh, so is this, is this one of those mind bending, like super complicated stories? And that's, that's what Morrison's known for doing. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. It really depends on your, they definitely have like a motif going. Right.
00:45:10
Speaker
That's valid. It happens. Along the lines of like very weird stories and like saying very weird things. Um, at one point to boost sales of the invisibles, Morrison actually asked their reader readers to participate in a wankathon while concentrating on a magical symbol or sigil.
00:45:38
Speaker
So he asked everyone to masturbate while thinking about this to boost sales. That's so bizarre. So even outside of the printed realm, Morrison was gathering lots of attention for their odd behavior, which just brought more publicity to their books. So there's a really good chance that if you're doing all of this and your stories are good, you're going to just get more and more eyes on you. They seem very much
00:46:05
Speaker
like the same energy of the guy who was originally supposed to direct. Um, you ever hear about like the Island of Dr. Moreau? Oh yeah. Grant sounds a lot like the guy who was originally supposed to direct that movie. Like he was this guy from South Africa, like hired a witch doctor to like, you know, give him luck on like his shoe and like,
00:46:33
Speaker
super dedicated and a little bit of an oddball. It is very much the same vibe. I appreciate it. There's always some weird parts that I'm like, hey, Grant, maybe sit down, have some water. Don't tell everybody to just jack off to your peace sign. But I'm also just really rooting for them.
00:47:00
Speaker
It's like, hey, they're there, but good on you. So impressed by Morrison's ideas and revitalization of characters from both DC and Marvel, Dan Didio, the editorial vice president of DC Comics, gave them the unofficial title of The Revamp Guy.
00:47:18
Speaker
which is very similar to what you said earlier. Didio asked them to assist in sorting out the DC Universe in the wake of the Infinite Crisis, which was a sequel to the Crisis on Infinite Earths that allowed for some changes to comic book continuity to be made, though not quite as drastic as before. Oh, okay. So now we're talking about a new continuity being made. It just has a vaguely similar title, which will probably confuse me throughout the rest of this podcast.
00:47:47
Speaker
It is, for a long time, I would always read them as the same name, even though there is quite a bit of a difference there, but there's just enough that's the same. Yeah, crisis and infinite. It got changed totally. DC does crises as their major thing quite a bit. The original Crisis on Infinite Earths.
00:48:16
Speaker
and then the Infinite Crisis. They also did a story which I have here called Identity Crisis, which is a very polarizing story. It's the eyes and the sees. They got to take a break from those. And it will, they have since even done like more crazy stories where they will revisit these crises and characters in
00:48:42
Speaker
the comic books will refer to them as the crisis. So it's just, they're all, anytime they do these like changing things, they're like, oh, it's the crisis. And to the point where Grant Morrison actually later writes final crisis, which was not the final crisis. It's just- They need a the source. Yes, he needs a the source for me. Okay, so there's a new one, a new crisis is forming.
00:49:13
Speaker
They need Grant to revamp. That's what I've got. Yeah. So basically during infinite crisis, you get this. Some of what happened in Crisis on Infinite Earths is a little bit undone. There's a lot of like minor changes to continuity. Yeah. A little close of a shot to the plot. Right. It was stuff to like sort of like kind of gloss over
00:49:43
Speaker
some of what had been happening and some like weird things. I don't know. It's I like Infinite Crisis quite a bit. It's also it is a sequel to not only Crisis on Infinite Earths, but also three major other crossovers that happened right before it. So there is it starts
00:50:05
Speaker
in the middle of like shit already happening. But it's really good. And it's not like everything gets changed. It's not the same as Crisis on Infinite or it's just little things. And in the wake of that, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman take a year off. They just stop fighting crime.
00:50:27
Speaker
And in part is in part Superman loses his powers for a little bit. Oh, we've talked about this one before, where it's like the main the three major ones take like a year off and then the whole thing is like all of the other heroes solving crimes and things like that.
00:50:45
Speaker
right that's the the 52 was the name of 52 was the name of the comic book and okay fantastic it so while 52 is being published at the same time they were doing stories called one year later which would take place after that one year time job so batman's back superman's back winter woman's back but uh and you would have like little
00:51:09
Speaker
things where they would talk about like, oh, World War III. World War III happened in a year. Well, it was actually this Black Adam story. You know, it's fantastic little bits of like, we're just going to sprinkle in little things. And 52 is a great comic to read. I highly recommend it. I think it's a lot of fun in that it's another one where it's not one big story. It's just a bunch of little stories. Yeah, it's a little anthology.
00:51:38
Speaker
I loved it. I was super into it. It's what turned me into a Black Adam fan. OK, cool. So all of this led to Morrison taking the helm of Batman to start an epic story that only they could tell. Right. So looking at the entirety of Batman's history, Morrison decided to take a unified approach to what would be considered continuity. That meant that every comic in one way or another would be fair game.
00:52:09
Speaker
So to that end, DC has actually made a collection of old school comics that Morrison directly references or inspired their run on the character. A little while back, I read the majority of these, and I can see why they would stand out to young readers. They're wild stories that involve strange concepts. So before we talk about Morrison's run, we're going to talk about the books that they used as inspiration. OK. And Dr. Hurt is in Grant Morrison's prep.
00:52:39
Speaker
Right. Although we will be introduced to them kind of in these. And I'm going to explain. OK. OK. So there's a lot that we're going to cover over these three episodes that doesn't really seem to involve Dr. Hurt. But that's because Morrison did a very good job of sort of laying the groundwork to to have Dr. Hurt as the background villain. OK.
00:53:09
Speaker
It's wonderful. It's almost like a metaphorical shadow. Yes. And so just so that we're all on the same page, we've talked a lot about like continuity changes. These all take place in crisis, before crisis on infinite earths. So these are all the original run on Batman and then
00:53:35
Speaker
After this, when Morrison takes over, there have been like basically two major changes to continuity.
Unifying Batman Stories Under Morrison
00:53:44
Speaker
And Morrison's idea was all of this stuff that seemed to have been removed from Batman's history. Right. What if it all actually happened and it all happened to one man? Like, and I think that's fascinating. It's really weird, but it's an interesting take on comic book continuity.
00:54:06
Speaker
So the first story we're going to talk about is a partner for Batman, which came out in 1951. And it introduces the character of Wingman, who would be trained by Batman to be a crime fighter in Europe. I love the name Wingman. That's fun. That's a, like, I like that context of Wingman more than what Wingman is now. Right. Like that made it sound so wholesome and fun.
00:54:32
Speaker
So a few years later, Batman would meet a Native American character who was inspired by his adventures to become Man of the Bats in Batman 86. And just a year after this, the Batman of all nations introduced more crime fighters inspired directly by the Caped Crusader and would take their vigilantism to their respective countries.
00:54:53
Speaker
In these different stories, you're just getting introduced to different characters that were inspired by Batman and who work in other countries as basically their version of Batman. Oh, OK.
00:55:08
Speaker
So then the first Batman from 1956 would introduce the idea that Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father, wore a bat costume to a party, making a strong connection between father and son. And these are all fairly simple stories that could be easily introduced into continuity, but from here on out, it gets a little bit more interesting. So we got characters in other countries dressing as Batman, Thomas Wayne having his own bat costume for a party.
00:55:38
Speaker
Not that hard to introduce. Then in 1957, the Club of Heroes introduced many main plot elements to Morrison's Batman run. In this story, a millionaire named John Mayhew gathered several heroes to form a club. The rest of the specifics to the story don't really matter except to say that the club is never mentioned again until early in Morrison's run 50 years later. So...
00:56:04
Speaker
The next couple of stories involve a mad scientist creating different chemicals to mess with Batman's mental state, and this included making him afraid of bats and also robbing him of his will to live. Morrison would later introduce the idea that some of Batman's crazier stories would be considered hallucinations due to the amount of chemicals he had been doused with from various foes, including this one, and like Scarecrow. So some of these like weird ones.
00:56:30
Speaker
That theory is thrown around to explain the next story where Batman is transported to another planet and meets the Batman of Zir and Ar, who wears a brightly colored suit and fights crime on his planet. It would also be one explanation for why Batman would be introduced to Batmite in one of the next stories, or fought a rainbow creature in the story after that. So it's just like, there's these weird things that are happening, and maybe they happened, but also maybe they were hallucinations. We don't know.
00:56:58
Speaker
Yeah, because he's been around so many talk. I mean, like you could even throw like the Joker and his whole thing like fell in the fat of like acid stuff. Yeah. And he has his own like things. He has his own toxin too, that he will douse people with to like make him more like him, you know? So like that man's surrounded by like napalm, Agent R, and like equivalents, like there's things that are going to go wrong in his brain.
00:57:27
Speaker
OK. I also really, really want you to see Batman of Ziranar because maybe if there is anything that I would love to see Robert Pattinson do, it's to wear this stupid fucking costume. Batman of Ziranar. So Z-U-R. Oh, it's already up. I got it. Oh, yeah. I was doing it while you were chatting about it. Oh, it's so bright.
00:57:56
Speaker
I like it. I do too. It is wild. I wish people didn't shame Joel Schumacher so much. He would have been so good with this. This would have been a perfect Joel Schumacher Batman costume. I love it. I love the purple. The purple makes me so happy.
00:58:18
Speaker
imagine Robert Pattinson wearing this costume and yelling, I am vengeance as he runs through the city. Oh my God. He would be perfect for it. Oh, I would love that so much.
00:58:33
Speaker
So it's like, uh, I'm off the top of my head. I know there's red, yellow, and purple. I think those are all the cost of the cost. It's red, yellow, purple. Yeah. He's got it like, he's got the purple like tap head thing. Okay. Um, and then it is like, uh, you know, like the short sleeve shirts with like the long sleeves underneath it. It was kind of like that. So the red is the short sleeve shirt and then the yellow was really funny. I,
00:59:01
Speaker
It's so good. I love this costume. I love it. And this is where we find ourselves at one of the more important story elements again, right? So after Batman's R&R and all that stuff, we come into Robin dies at dawn. And for this, Batman agreed to an experiment where a doctor would put him in an isolation chamber for a week to study the effects on his psyche. During the experiment, Batman had a breakdown and hallucinated Robin's death before finding a way to face his own fears.
00:59:31
Speaker
There's one other story that helped to influence Morrison's run on Batman that wasn't reprinted by DC and the Black Casebook alongside the rest of these stories. And that's the intentionally out of continuity son of the demon where Batman has sex with Talia Al Ghul, daughter of the mortal terrorist Rachel Ghul, and gets her pregnant. Batman becomes a risk adverse at the prospect of being a father.
00:59:54
Speaker
So Talia fakes a miscarriage to keep him sharp while fighting crime. The two split and Batman never knows that she actually has the child. So that all of that is considered out of continuity. Except Morrison looked at it and said, what if it's not? Right. And he's going to use the excuse of like the toxins and stuff.
01:00:18
Speaker
And also in that Robin dies at dawn storyline where Batman agreed to an experiment with a doctor to put him in an isolation chamber for me. That doctor though unnamed during that entire story is Dr. Hurt. So it's just a character that was a background character
01:00:44
Speaker
in half an issue of Batman from, what was this, like the 50s or 60s? I don't remember. I think it was the 60s. Right. Morrison picked that character and said, I'm going to do something with them. That's cool. Right. Oh, that's fun. That is all of the background information that you need before we actually start on Morrison's run.
01:01:07
Speaker
That's just really interesting too. Cause it seems like out of all of those stories, that is kind of like the outlier one. Like, well, maybe the Talia one that those two are the ones that are actually like pretty deeply dark. And I would say maybe like, especially like, especially those two. So that's, that's interesting. That makes sense why that would stick out for them. I feel like with.
01:01:34
Speaker
the things that they write. Cool. Oh, that's fun. This brings us all the way to Morrison's first issue on Batman published in 2006 as part of their first story arc, Batman and Son. So Batman and Son picks up shortly after the one year hiatus that Bruce took from costume crime fighting after Infinite Crisis. Yeah, this is that one year later.
01:02:01
Speaker
Right. Cool. Ah!
01:02:20
Speaker
This firmly establishes that at least parts of that comic are now in continuity. I believe they have a different name for Damien in the Son of the Demon story. It's been a while since I've read it. But the basic idea of that story is now in continuity. Right.
01:02:41
Speaker
So Damien lives in the mansion for a brief period, establishing that he wants to be the new Robin. And in fact is like fighting with Tim, who is the current Robin, to kind of take that role.
01:03:01
Speaker
And actually, this is a good opportunity for us to stop. How many Robins are you aware of? Okay. It's time for Corinne to test her knowledge. We've got Dick Grayson, who was like the little acrobat boy. Right. We've got Damien.
01:03:24
Speaker
I don't know his last name aside from the one you just told me. I don't know if there's different last names for him, but I think. Yeah, they go Damien Al Ghul, Damien Wayne. It's just that like those are the two. I've always heard Damien, but I believe he ends up being Nightwing. Dick becomes Nightwing. Dick becomes Nightwing.
01:03:46
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So scratch that, the other D name. So Damien, I believe does end up becoming a form of a Robin though. Yes. Yeah. We're gonna cover that during these few episodes. I feel like there's one that gets murdered by the Joker. Yes, that's Jason Todd. Yeah, okay, that name is familiar. Sorry, Rip Jason.
01:04:16
Speaker
There's this other one that Damien's fighting with. That's Tim Drake. Tim. Okay. The Drake part sounds vaguely familiar. Tim is also the bisexual problem. Oh, okay. Okay, cool. And then there's the one from the Teen Titans.
01:04:38
Speaker
He's probably one of those. Yeah, depending on which Teen Titans you're reading or if you're watching the show. I watched the show. So they do a lot of, it's Tim's costume, but it is heavily hinted that it's Dick Grayson. Okay. And it's based on the Teen Titans comics where Dick was Robin. Right, okay, so I think, so we've got Dick, Jamie, and Pod.
01:05:09
Speaker
No, just kidding. Dick, Damian, Jason, Tim. Yeah. Okay, cool. Those are the four that I know. There are other Robins, but the main ones to know about are Dick as the first one, Jason as the second one, Tim as the third one, and then Damian would be the fourth one that you really need to kind of have an idea for. Yes.
01:05:35
Speaker
Jason, as you mentioned, was murdered by the Joker. Yeah. You will, throughout the next few episodes, Jason is reintroduced. And that's one of the continuity things that was changed during Infinite Crisis. Okay.
01:05:52
Speaker
He was brought back from the dead and there was something, I don't remember exactly what Infinite Crisis had to do. He died in the previous thing. So that story's a lot older than I thought it was. Very interesting. Actually, I think that came out in the 80s. I could be wrong. Oh, that's cool. I don't know why. I keep thinking a lot of the crazy deaths are all in the 90s, but I was wrong. That's fun.
01:06:21
Speaker
And fun thing about that story, they had a call in number for you to vote on whether or not Jason would die. Yeah. I've heard about that from like the Weekly Planet or something. Right. Oh, that's fun. Wow. A lot of people hated him. I thought I did. I didn't really like, I had no real, I didn't care about Jason, basically.
01:06:48
Speaker
So like his death was really interesting. I also think it was the most interesting thing about him until they brought him back. When they brought him back, they did a lot of really cool stuff. I disagree with some of what they did, mostly because I think there's like this, we're going to rehabilitate him. And I think he is most interesting as a foil to Batman, rather than someone who works with Batman. I'll have to read up on the robots one day.
01:07:18
Speaker
There's a lot. But for now, that's what I know. That's good. So that's all you really need to know. I'm going to be kind of like going over some of it as we go along too, because each of these robins plays a part in the story. Okay. So.
01:07:37
Speaker
The Batman is during this this first run is fighting against the League of Assassins while trying to connect with his own son. That's like sort of the main plot of it. It's not an incredibly interesting story outside of the introduction of Batman's son, but it also introduces some of the most important elements for us to discuss. Early on, we see graffiti all around Gotham with the words Zir in R. This is a direct reference to the story we discussed earlier on Batman. Yeah, purple bat. Right.
01:08:07
Speaker
While seemingly insignificant, this is actually extremely important for where this story is going to go. The next main introduction is that of Batman's new love interest of Jezebel Jett. She is a former model who was the daughter of an African dictator. When her father was murdered, she took over the country and finds herself doing much more to help the citizens than ever before. She meets Bruce at a charity art auction and they start dating shortly after.
01:08:34
Speaker
Cool. Finally, we meet an imposter Batman that shoots the Joker in the head at the start of the story. There's this guy dressed up as Batman, Joker thinks it's the real Batman, and then he shoots him in the head. The Joker survives. Okay, so the fake Batman shot the Joker in the face. Like the Joker lived. Okay, cool. Yeah.
01:08:57
Speaker
The Joker survives, but he is apprehended by the police and the imposter Batman was also taken away. Many issues later, we're going to learn this character's significance as we begin the three ghosts of Batman. Now, the only thing I want to cover about Batman and Son outside of everything that I just told you is that, because it's not actually important to what we're talking about, but just because I think you'll find it fun. That's fun, I appreciate that.
01:09:25
Speaker
It's a little corn. It's a little Corinne Niblet. I'm excited. The League of Assassins get a hold of the Manbat Serum and make an army of Manbat Ninjas. Yes! Manbat! My favorite. He's in the story, but as his human counterpart. That's okay. At least Grant recognizes this.
01:09:53
Speaker
And it's really interesting because from like here on Talia now has her own army of man bats. Oh, wow. That's so fun. Man bat. I think if nothing more than that, I think you would enjoy. That's a lot of fun. I'd probably like the whole run part of
01:10:22
Speaker
I probably like the whole run, but that's just a little sprinkle that I'd really like. It's so fascinating. The next main story arc that we're going to go over, we're actually going to skip over a couple of things that happened because Morrison left for a few issues and then came back and did a prose story about the Joker and what the Joker was thinking, but it doesn't really matter.
01:10:49
Speaker
The next one that we're going to go over is Three Ghosts of Batman. And in that, during a night out, Batman learns of a pimp that's supplying women to the Gotham Police Department. So all of these women seem to go missing.
01:11:08
Speaker
He questions everyone involved and learns that there is a police officer who has been in hiding and seemingly murdering women that the department has been providing. And in finding that officer, Batman learns that it is a hulking figure who has been pumped full of the venom that gives the villain Bane his increased strength, as well as Hugo Strange's monster serum. Oh, wait. This guy's sound. What is his name?
01:11:33
Speaker
So they don't really give him a full name. He's just a, he's a character that very, he wears like a weird version of the Batman costume, but with a Bane mask. And he's gigantic, he's like Hulk sized. Okay, it's not who I thought it was then. There's a guy in the long, the long Halloween? Long night? Maybe. Big Halloween. The Tim Sales.
01:12:01
Speaker
The Long Halloween is the one where there's like a murder on holidays. Yeah, that one. That one. I was thinking of I think his name is Solomon Grunty.
01:12:12
Speaker
Oh, I love Solomon Grundy. He just like lives in the, in the pursuer and he's like, Solomon Grundy, we're not a Monday. And I'm like, I love you. Great character. I love that character. At first, I thought that's who you were like putting the spotlight on. And I was really excited to learn more about it. No, we can though. I mean, they did like a weird version of a Spider-Man villain that was very similar to Solomon Grundy.
01:12:39
Speaker
Yeah. But not nearly as fun. That's OK. We'll come back to him one day. I'm going to find comics that have him in it or something. I also just recently watched the Justice League cartoon. There was a couple of episodes with Solomon Grundy in it. Totally fun. I just think he's really interesting. He's like he just lives in a sewer. And from my impression, it's just like just stay out of my sewer. I love that.
01:13:06
Speaker
He's a pretty nice guy. He's pretty cool. He's a villain in a lot of stories, but I think it's understandable.
01:13:13
Speaker
He was painfully neutral in the Halloween one. And I loved it about him. But yeah, anyway, carry on. This one's not Solomon. This is just like the first Batman ghost where he looks like a Bane Batman love child. Cool, I'm about it. Right. So he's got Hugo Stranges Monster Serum as well as Venom, which is the stuff that Bane uses. Yes, okay. During the fight,
01:13:38
Speaker
Batman's mind keeps wandering to the Black Casebook, and he is easily defeated by this larger Batman. So he just keeps going, like, why am I thinking about the Black Casebook? Why am I thinking about this? And it distracts him enough that he gets sass kicked. Is the Black Casebook just the case that he's working on?
01:13:59
Speaker
No, you eventually will eventually find out that the black case book is where he would write down strange things that don't really make sense.
The Black Glove and Dr. Hurt's Manipulations
01:14:09
Speaker
OK. So he would have like, oh, I fought this rainbow creature. I don't know if that was real or not. I'm going to put this in this black case book. OK, so he's with this crazy big man and he's just like his mind keeps going back. His mind keeps going to journaling. OK.
01:14:29
Speaker
And also, all of those stories that Morrison used as inspiration, those were published as a collected edition called The Black Casebook. So it's a similar thing. While Bruce is asleep recovering from the fight, he starts hallucinating the three Batman coming to kill him.
01:14:50
Speaker
When he wakes, he remembers an event from the Black Casebook where he fought three versions of himself, one a monster, one a cop, and one that sold his soul to the devil in order to destroy Gotham. For some reason, Batman was unable to remember these events fully and assumed that it was all a hallucination until he met the cop and the monster again recently. So the imposter Batman from Batman and Son was another one of these Batman.
01:15:19
Speaker
Okay, so was he the cop then? Yes. Okay, and then the monster is probably this big guy. And then there's another one that sold its soul to the devil that we have not met yet. Okay, interesting. I'm wondering if it's the one that is actually Damien's father because of just the title of that old thing. That's my guess.
01:15:48
Speaker
That's actually interesting. Son of the demon is the reason it's named that way is because Rachel Gould's name is supposed to translate to like demon's head. So that's why he's like son of the demon. So the whole point is once Rache decides that Batman is like worthy of his daughter. Right.
01:16:14
Speaker
he wants like an heir from like the perfect creature and and his genes you know what i mean so batman and yeah um we'll get to who the bat devil is okay because they will they will pop up okay i have another guest then but i'll put a pen in so i'll wait okay all of that uh would have to go on hold uh because
01:16:44
Speaker
Instead of being able to investigate any more about the three ghosts of Batman, Batman and Robin were invited to the island of Dr. Mayhew, the rich adventurer who once put together the club of heroes. And this is still Tim Robin. Right. Cool. So Batman and Robin arrive on Mayhew's island, his private island, to meet the other superheroes that once made up their super team.
01:17:09
Speaker
And among the group is the gluttonous legionary, the British superhero of the night, the fame seeking musketeer, the aggressive wingman, the neglectful man of bats, and the incredibly distant super armored dark ranger. So all of these characters are from earlier stories or are just like, what would be an interesting aspect of Batman, right? Just in a different country. Right.
01:17:34
Speaker
While the team gathers in the main house, a video suddenly begins to play. In it, a man wearing the skinned face of someone else claiming to be the dead Mayhew announces that the Black Glove, a secret society that shares a name with the Mayhew film that plays chess with the lives of others in a battle of good versus evil, has decided to set their sights on all of the heroes.
01:18:00
Speaker
And as they all race outside, all of their transportation explodes, trapping them on the island. Oh! I think we've talked about this before! Oh my gosh! This is what I think would make a really good sequel to the Batman, and I'm pretty sure that he never will do it. Okay, that's why we've talked about it before. I was like, is this the one where they play Survivor, basically?
01:18:28
Speaker
Yes. Right. Cool. Okay. I didn't know that Grant did that. Good job, Grant. So, Legionary then finds a room full of monitors before being stabbed in the back 23 times by an unknown assailant. The Black Glove had made their first move. It's very specific to pick 23, but okay.
01:18:49
Speaker
It's because, uh, Legionary is Roman based. And so they're going with like the death of Caesar, uh, as they're like, you know, I'm just saying that's, that's an arm workout to go just eat, eat, eat, eat, like 23 times. Like, do you think it was multiple people who did it? Like you get 23 people to line up and just go, or is it one person who's just done arm day for like a year?
01:19:16
Speaker
You do eventually figure out who killed Legionary. There is a murder mystery aspect to all of this. And I'm just gonna go ahead and throw this out there so that you're aware, because they don't say this in the story. But the man wearing the skinned face on the video that plays, that's Doctor Hurt. And you don't know
01:19:45
Speaker
exactly what happened. Okay. So it's a really interesting, I'm not, like, there are questions I still have about this story and I've read Morrison's run on Batman many times. Yeah, I really want to read it now. I have a handful, I have, let's see, I have The Black Glove, I have Batman RIP. I want to read about The Glove, that sounds like a lot of fun.
01:20:14
Speaker
And it's really cool artwork. So each character that's part of the Club of Heroes is illustrated in a different style. That's cool. I'm a fan. I'm a reader. Batman and Robin are kind of painted. They look like the most realistic. And then each one of the other ones is a different cartoony style. I love that. I need to read it.
01:20:34
Speaker
So, as the team starts to piece together what little that they can, they turn to each other and learn that their villains are all part of the Black Love's plot. So, like the Knight's arch-nemesis and the Legionary's arch-nemesis and Man of Bats arch-nemesis are all kind of working together, at least that's what it seems like. Right. And the Knight is forced to swallow a bomb.
01:21:03
Speaker
So like someone sneaks up and forces them to swallow a bomb. They don't see who. The sidekicks are separated from the heroes and the wingman is then charred to a crisp. They find him just burnt. Oh no! Batman, however, doesn't understand how wingman was taken down.
01:21:27
Speaker
He believes that he trained Wingman to be much better than that. As Man of Bats tries to help the Knight vomit the bomb, the Knight remembers the last meeting of the Club of Heroes in which his father, the original Knight, accused Mayhew of murdering his wife and framing the actor Mangrove Pierce.
01:21:52
Speaker
I don't know that I make too much of this. I don't think I even actually bring it up. But Mangrove Pierce is also a name that Dr. Hurt goes by at one point.
01:22:08
Speaker
There is a chance that this is that mangrove Pierce. I think it isn't, like I've read a lot where they say that that is who Dr. Hurt actually is, but I think it's intentionally left a little vague. Okay. So eventually man of bats must cut the bomb out of the night's body, saving his life.
01:22:31
Speaker
Batman then realizes that the body that they assumed was Wingman was actually the Dark Ranger and that the real Wingman was wearing the Dark Ranger's costume and he had betrayed the team. Oh, so he like set up a different like hell to die. Yes. Okay.
01:22:54
Speaker
So Wingman felt he was destined for fame, but because Batman never fully embraced the Club of Heroes, it dissolved, and to get revenge, he joined the Black Glove. Before being able to say more about the villainous group, Wingman is murdered. When Batman finally confronts the gunman, he finds John Mayhew, who has turned to murder for his entertainment.
01:23:21
Speaker
instead of like getting heroes together, he's now decided he's gonna work with villains. So Batman takes the villain's plane and escapes the island with the other survivors. And as Mayhew reports to the Black Glove of his failure, the island is caught in a huge explosion, killing him. So all of this, it's again, they don't really say it, but all of this is orchestrated by Dr. Hurt. He is the head of the Black Glove.
01:23:51
Speaker
So moving forward, we're going to go into the story with the Bat Devil. While on a date with Jezebel Jett and dodging rumors of a potential engagement, Bruce sees the bat signal in the sky. Quickly rushing into action, Batman finds the third imposter holding the Gotham Police Department hostage. In a deranged state, he burns part of the building and demands to speak with Commissioner Vane, who was the commissioner before Gordon. When he realizes that Gordon is now in charge,
01:24:21
Speaker
He takes him hostage before battling with Bruce. During the fight, Batman is surprised by how well trained this impostor is and is shot in the chest by an explosive round. As he starts to hallucinate while losing consciousness, his mind wanders back to the isolation chamber that he was in years ago. Realizing he had five minutes before brain death occurs, Bat Might suddenly appears before him as a possible hallucination. Okay.
01:24:50
Speaker
In his mind, Batman goes through several hallucinations. In one, he relives the Thogel ritual where he simulated death. That was what he did during the 52. In another, he imagines finding his parents killer. And in another, he is back in the isolation chamber. In this last hallucination, it is revealed he only agreed to this in order to better understand the Joker's psyche. He asks himself, when did I die? As he remembers these events happening well in the past.
01:25:20
Speaker
This ends as he is resuscitated by the Bat Devil, the Batman imposter who shot him and learns that he is strapped to a chair about to be tortured.
01:25:30
Speaker
Okay. So he went through a big old trippity trip to wake up to reality hell. Right. Okay. So still slipping in and out of consciousness, Batman starts to piece together the holes in his memories. The Gotham Police Department under Commissioner Vane partnered with the government to form a squad of backup Batman.
01:25:52
Speaker
As part of this project, they used Batman's inclusion in the isolation experiment to have the doctor study his psychology. The doctor, now named as Dr. Hurt, determined major loss and trauma are the driving force in Batman's actions, and as such, decided his replacement Batman needed to experience similar events. While the first imposter lost his job and became inactive, the second was given monster serum and venom until he killed his own family in a fit of rage.
01:26:20
Speaker
The third imposter, the one who has been torturing Batman, found that his family had been murdered by a satanic cult. They poured glue in his brother's eyes and carved up his sister. The doctor implanted hypnotic suggestions into their minds, including Batman's, to cause them to forget. In Batman's case, this meant he experienced the events as freaks or hallucinations. For the imposters, they became inactive until triggered by the doctor.
01:26:49
Speaker
So all of this is possible because Batman was in that isolation experiment so many years ago. Right, which was in hindsight very irresponsible of him to go do. With Batman leading Bruce through all of his memories, he realizes that these events nearly caused him to give up being Batman.
01:27:09
Speaker
The questions left unanswered, however, like what other suggestions were planted in his mind, or why this was done in the first place, were all kept in a notebook that the Bat Devil burns in front of him. He believes that Dr. Hurt is the devil incarnate. Burning Batman is just the latest incarnation of a war against good.
01:27:29
Speaker
And as Batman escapes his restraints, he is attacked by the monstrous imposter. And during that fight, the police break in and shoot him in the head, both saving Batman's life and allowing the Bat Devil to escape. So now we just have the one ghost of Batman, Bat Devil, and he's out in the wind somewhere. The one with the satanic murdered family.
01:27:50
Speaker
Right. Right. So he is just he's a new character. There is no like they he's his face is covered. You can't really see who he is. Right. But it's just a character that they came up with. So he's the new he's the new bad guy. But the guy who created him was essentially doctor. Yes. OK. So in the aftermath, Batman wonders if he is unprepared for an ultimate evil that could exist.
01:28:16
Speaker
He starts to question the hole in things. After all, who wore the skinned face in Mayhew's mansion? It couldn't have been John Mayhew because John Mayhew was parading as someone else. It could have been Mangrove Pierce, but then why? There is no real answer to it. I mean, it is Dr. Hurt, but you still, to this day, I have no idea whose face he's wearing. It's just like he cut someone's face off and wore it.
Psychological Impact on Batman and Allies
01:28:47
Speaker
And if it isn't Mayhew's face, who could that have been? Batman is still left with all of these questions. Well, why couldn't it just be me? Mayhew was pretending to be someone else during that story. So it couldn't have been him. Oh, I was thinking of a different guy was pretending to be somebody else. Okay. So
01:29:14
Speaker
What more could Dr. Hurt have done to Batman's mind while he was under his care? His recklessness and obsession is noticed by his partners, Nightwing and Robin, to the point that they both question his mental stability. They both wonder, could Batman be compromised? And during another date with Jezebel Jett to make up for ditching her fight to fight the Bat Devil, Bruce comes under attack from a terrorist.
01:29:41
Speaker
This is not super important. It's a very short issue. But the main thing that happens is Bruce fights this terrorist off and does very little to hide his own identity. Yeah. So Bruce beats the assailant and inadvertently reveals himself as Batman to Jezebel. OK.
01:30:03
Speaker
how Batman handles the growing war against him from the Black Glove, Dr. Hurt's role, and Jezebel's involvement in the Batcave would come to a climax in Morrison's next storyline.
01:30:15
Speaker
Batman RIP, which we will cover next time as we will discuss the fallout from this and the final crisis storyline. So we have now set the groundwork for everything that we're going to talk about in the next two episodes. You have all of the stuff that happened in the 50s and 60s now seemingly up for grabs. It could be part of continuity or it could not.
01:30:41
Speaker
You have the three ghosts of Batman with the Bat Devil now out in the world ready to do something. You have Dr. Hurt masterminding things, the Black Love trying to wage a war against Batman.
Comic Book Continuity Exploration
01:30:57
Speaker
All of that is leading into this main storyline. So any questions where we are so far? I don't think so. I definitely don't.
01:31:11
Speaker
Man, Dr. Hurt's busy because it does sound like he runs the black glove, but he's also in charge of these ghost Batman. So that's very interesting. He's got his hands full.
01:31:27
Speaker
No, I think that makes a lot of sense. Part of why I ask is because as we move forward, it just gets more complicated. And all of this is sort of groundwork for moving forward. No, I think the story in and of itself makes sense.
01:31:46
Speaker
That's fine. I think the one thing I just wonder as a concept in general, not specifically through the storyline, is more just like a continuity question of like, so you have like your infinite crisis or whatever, whatever continuity phase you're like. So if you have a Batman front within that continuity,
01:32:16
Speaker
it just go the whole time until you pick a new one. And like, same, okay. So like, the main one that I've read most recently, so that's like the forefront of it, the long haul, what continuity is that in?
01:32:35
Speaker
That is in post-crisis continuity. That's what they would consider that. So that's after crisis on infinite earths. And that could be included in infinite crisis because that didn't change too much, right?
01:32:50
Speaker
Okay, because I guess my thought is like, I feel like I think of especially a lot of Batman stories as just like these random books, like there's like the White Knight series, there's like the little story of the Long Halloween, there's this one. There's like 20 billion others that I'm thinking of. And I guess part of my problem is I see art styles as different universes.
01:33:17
Speaker
So I think that's where continuity will start to get me confused of what's actually connected to other things. And if I need to know that or not. For this, the main thing to keep in mind is just that anything published before this could be considered part of the continuity. OK, which I think that's
01:33:43
Speaker
why I'm interested about this. Because it does just make it like, yeah, oh, you remember this thing from like the 70s? Yeah, sure. Like, there's an excuse for that to be that that's fun. I like that. I love this, this approach.
01:33:59
Speaker
It gets a it's harder to do with characters like Superman because there's some of those are so wildly different. Yeah But but you could there's still a way to do that, right? Well, I think this one's really well done because like like you said before like, you know, dr. Hurt realizes like yeah, the whole root of becoming Batman is having this trauma of laws Which is why you really can't change his origin story
01:34:29
Speaker
Because he's a hero because for that reason, Superman is kind of like that define intervention kind of thing. He's just born a hero. And it doesn't matter how he gets shot down to earth. He was always super.
01:34:47
Speaker
Like with Batman, because he's like that normal person, like he has to have this specific kind of thing happen to it, which I think it's cool, but that's how they put it all together. That's fun. Good job, Grant!
01:35:09
Speaker
As we move forward, we're also going to get into a little bit of like this idea of what makes Batman Batman becomes a very big theme. Yes.
01:35:22
Speaker
I literally in finishing, just for full disclosure, I finished the final episode of this little trilogy that we're doing this morning. And as I was writing that, I was writing down, and this is why Batman does this. And this is like how this gets explained. And we're going to go into the history, not just of Batman or Dr. Hurt. We're going to go into the history of Gotham. Cool.
01:35:49
Speaker
It's it's I think interesting and so
01:35:55
Speaker
To give you just a brief overview of DC continuity, I just pulled this up real quickly.
Modern Storytelling and Continuity
01:36:03
Speaker
It can be cut into kind of eight different pieces, and there are little, many, many things happening in there at the same time, right? Yeah, because I guess my question was in the end, because I realized I kind of like half-assed the question. Like, do you have to have, if you have a continuity era,
01:36:23
Speaker
I guess, do the writers have to continue just one full thought almost? Or could there just be still totally separate individual stories? I guess was my question. Because, you know, a lot of the things that people say like, Oh, like this movie was fired by this or whatever. Like they, it seems like they're almost picking one specific book and one specific small plot line. Like,
01:36:50
Speaker
Are those always connected to larger trains of thought and plot? Or can still things just be literally one book, one and done, individual, like, please?
01:37:03
Speaker
Books can still be done that way. It is becoming a lot less common. The more you get to modern day, the more what they call decompressed storytelling becomes a big deal. And part of that comes into play with how we sell comic books and how modern reading
01:37:28
Speaker
is done. So you can do a more complex story over the course of six issues. And in those six issues, that would be kind of the sweet spot for a collection of a trade paperback, six issues. So if you tell one story over the course of six issues, then it's easier to collect them versus doing like a 12 issue series or one issue and then two issues and then one issue. You can do
01:37:58
Speaker
one big story and it just makes it easier for the business to sell. Right. And then when you want to make one set of big issue again, you take. Well, so the way that the publisher looks at continuity, so DC in particular in this part, you have the golden age where you kind of just did whatever.
01:38:26
Speaker
Right. Right. It was like a monster of the week kind of fun stuff. Right. And you might you might run into a two part here or there. Yeah. Yeah. Not usually. That's that's where you get a lot of the crazy Superman covers where it's like Clark Kent jumped out of the window and to prove that he's not Superman or some shit like that. Like it's right. I love Golden Age Superman because it's fucking wild. Cool.
01:38:53
Speaker
And then you get into the Silver Age and that's where you get into a lot more, they're still wacky, but they're more like science-based, it's a little bit more grounded. And it's a different continuity because this Superman is younger. And he's, so he's no longer, like he wasn't around during World War II. Whereas the Golden Age Superman was. And you can tell the same stories in the Silver Age with this Superman
01:39:23
Speaker
you told with the Golden Age Superman, the only difference is the characters that he interacts with. Okay. So then when Crisis on Infinite Earths happen and you get a brand new Superman that comes out of this, it's like a mixture of the two, the main thing that would happen here is you would get stories where
01:39:48
Speaker
You can introduce Superman to Batman for the first time again. You can have adventures where there was no longer was there ever a Supergirl. No longer was Superman ever Superboy. So the idea is after Crisis on Infinite Earth, Superman was Superman only as an adult.
01:40:12
Speaker
So I think I'm starting to get it. So it's like you could have like two different stories of like Batman or whatever. But as long as like his background and relationships with other people
01:40:38
Speaker
were the same, they'd be in the same continuity. Just different books being sold. Does that mean, okay, cool. I get it now. Awesome. Generally what would happen is like for Crisis on Infinite Earths, after that happened, they stopped publishing like Batman of Earth One or whatever. It's now just this one Batman.
01:41:06
Speaker
Right. And everything with this Batman, everything that we tell, that's in continuity. Everything before it, no longer, that never happened. Okay. I'm getting it. Yeah. So then you would also have like during the same time you would have, so Wally West becomes the new Flash. Yeah. After Crisis on Infra Earth. Sure. When they relaunched,
01:41:33
Speaker
with the New 52, Wally was no longer the Flash, Barry was the Flash. And Wally didn't exist. He no longer was there. So then when they came and did DC Rebirth, which is what took place after the New 52, they reintroduced Wally West into continuity. And this is why it gets so confusing, because you're basically saying,
01:42:01
Speaker
It's like with the Spider-Man movies. You have Tobey Maguire. Any story you tell with Tobey Maguire, that's in that one continuity. And then they stopped and they had Andrew Garfield. That's post-crisis. I think the thing, because it's like when you have like your Wallies versus your berries, it's so much easier to see where the continuity difference is. Yes. But when you have like Superman will always be Clark Kent or like Batman will always be Bruce Wayne.
01:42:30
Speaker
Like, I think that's when, like, for me, the continuity gets confused because it's like they're not like they're still the same people. Like, especially with Batman, he has always said similar. So, OK, I'm getting it, though. When you when you if you if you were to read Crisis on Infinite Earths. Yeah. One of the interesting things there is that there are two supermen. As their own individual characters, both Clark Kent, both Superman. Yeah, that's crazy.
01:43:00
Speaker
but with different supporting characters. One Superman is older, so he has white in his hair, and that's how you can tell them apart. That Superman is married to his Lois Lane, whereas the other Superman is not married to his Lois Lane. It is difficult. It's all very interesting. Yeah. And this is when you get into the new
01:43:28
Speaker
If you were to continue Morrison's run on Batman past where we will be covering it, like I said, there is a point where the new 52 suddenly hits. And in between issues, Batman's just in a new costume.
01:43:44
Speaker
And that's really about the only difference. They make a claim at one point of Tim Drake was no longer Robin. He was a different superhero. But then they later take that back and say, okay, yeah, he was Robin. But almost nothing else changes.
01:44:04
Speaker
for Batman. So goofy. And part of the reason for that is because there really wasn't much to fix with Batman. Right. Most of these continuity changes, when they do them, it's so that they can replace Barry with Wally or get rid of... It's like touch-ups and recasting.
01:44:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So for the Supergirl, again, before Crisis on Infinite Earth, Supergirl was a character. And after Crisis on Infinite Earth, Supergirl did not exist for like decades. They just did not have a Supergirl. Right. And part of that was because they wanted Superman to go back to being the last son of Krypton, the sole survivor.
01:44:57
Speaker
Yes. And I think that's wonderful. But then in order to do that, they would have to get rid of all of these other characters in order for that to be the case. And that's how that's how they accomplish this. Yeah.
01:45:17
Speaker
It's very silly. It's a lot of fun. One of my favorite aspects of comic books is continuity. That's one of the reasons why I really get into the X-Men in particular, because they have.
01:45:30
Speaker
and wild continuity involving multiple timelines with characters coming in and out. I did a whole series of episodes on the character Cable, who was at one point in comics, both a baby and an old man at the exact same time.
01:45:49
Speaker
Wow. And has
Continuity in Morrison's Batman Series
01:45:51
Speaker
a sister from another timeline in the future and has another version of himself who's younger from another aborted timeline. All of this in continuity. They just exist at the same time. That's wild. It's so much fun to read and it's also very difficult to keep straight. Yeah.
01:46:20
Speaker
Well, that's it. That's... Yeah. But that makes sense now. We've set the groundwork for everything. When we come back, next episode we are going to... It's basically going to be me going over everything that happened during Batman R.A.P. and Final Crisis. Because that will set up the next storyline that Morrison does after that. Okay.
01:46:45
Speaker
So and for the basically for the next two episodes, it's going to be a lot less of me explaining concepts and more of me just recapping issues of what's going on. But it's so that like.
01:46:58
Speaker
We're going to go through this adventure together. You're going to get through the mystery with me. I've already spoiled who Dr. Hurt is in a couple of these earlier stories, but that's just so that you know that he's there and doing things. Yeah, you kind of have to, or else us labeling this as a Dr. Hurt episode is completely pointless. As we move forward, I'm going to tell you big things as they happen.
Teaser for Upcoming Episodes
01:47:24
Speaker
So you'll learn who Dr. Hurt really is by the end of the third episode. But until then, it's still a mystery. Fun.
01:47:36
Speaker
So, you can find more information, including some recommended reading for today's episode at comicallypedantic.com. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram by searching at pedanticast and at Derek L. Chase on both platforms. New episodes will come out at some point in the future on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and at comicallypedantic.com.
01:47:55
Speaker
If you have any comments or questions, you can send them in text or audio recording to comicpadantic at gmail.com. Please indicate if you'd like your name or question read on the air. We do have some interesting stuff planned for the future. I think we'll have a lot of fun with.
01:48:10
Speaker
It won't be quite as long of a break between episodes as it used to be, so definitely look forward to that. We will be back next week with the deconstruction of Bruce Wayne, the importance of Batman, and the definitive answer to how Dr. Hurt fits into things. But until then, you can find more exciting adventures at your local comic shop.