#at least these other batmen aren't that

[wanderingmind867]

Kevin Conroy is probably my least favourite animated Batman. Because I grew up with three on TV (either live or on reruns): Kevin Conroy, Rino Romano and Diedrich Bader. And you know what Diedrich Bader and Rino Romano both have? Emotion. Lots of emotion. Kevin Conroy always felt like an actor as dry as cardboard. I don't remember him ever joking or smiling or doing anything beyond being grim and gritty. But Rino Romano's Batman has a very special relationship with Alfred and (later on) with Batgirl and Robin. He smiles, he likes around, he shows grief and anger and many other things. Diedrich Bader also showed a lot of heart in his performance. But I can't tell you of one emotion Kevin Conroy expressed, because I always found his acting dry. I know he has many fans, so I feel bad admitting this. But I just... I have to be honest with myself, and that requires my true feelings on something like this.

[thelibrarian1895]

Bats and Time Travel

First, a disclaimer, I have only some minimal level of Booster Gold knowledge.

That being said, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that detective work isn't his strong suit, or the strong suit of most time travelers. Why would it be when they can just peak into the past and see what happened? So when something comes up and it's less straightforward than obvious bad guy needs a beating, Booster is at least smart enough to get expert help. On occasion that expert help has to go through time with him. He has to be very careful with this because no one wants another Flashpoint and he doesn't want to clean up any time shenanigans. The same goes for any other time related incident.

Bats are, of course, the go to for anyone who needs expert detective assistance. You can generally just grab any Bat and they can fill in as a detective though some are happier about it than others. Some are also more suited to time travel than others.

Batman works out well enough. He can be more or less trusted not to go off and mess with the timestream and cause some sort of catastrophe that takes forever to fix. Things get a little dicey if any case brings the Bat around Gotham or near one of his kids in the past. It becomes an exercise of restraint for both involved because B very much wants to go to his child and protect them/lecture them/hug them depending on the timeframe or at bare minimum loom over them. Booster has to sometimes physically get in the way to stop this. It doesn't always work. B is at least polite enough to fix the mess. Batman has trouble with alternate universe or alternate timeline adventures since he has to so often beat other versions of himself up and comes back extra broody. His family appreciate when he gets to the self reflection and determination to improve part after he's done brooding.

Nightwing is good to work with during time related incidents. Very professional, very cheerful, but still kept out of Gotham and very reluctantly kept from his past self because Nightwing really wants to give his past self a pep talk more often than not. Nightwing has, however, written letters for his past self that has resulted in a few branching new timelines or a mess that he was polite enough to help fix. Nightwing is allowed on alternate universe adventures which lets him give those pep talks to himself that he knew he desperately needed/wanted at those various ages.

Red Hood is not allowed on time travel cases because Jason has poor impulse control and has on more than one occasion killed someone who would commit a terrible crime in the future and ended up causing decades worth of a mess that needed to be cleaned up. He is responsible enough to fix his own messes and is only allowed now in alternate universe adventures. He's good at alternate universe adventures and they've helped him remember to rely less on hearsay and more on solid evidence.

Red Robin is Booster's favorite to work with because the kid can be snarky if caught in the right mood and the worst he has to worry about Red Robin when it comes to damaging the timeline is Red Robin taking pictures of various incidents. Red Robin is also polite enough to direct all attention Booster's way which appeases Booster's attention seeking nature. This is how Tim has the best collection of Batman tripping on his cape pictures and other similarly embarrassing incidents of his friends and family. Tim is allowed on alternate universe adventures and again returns with more pictures that his friends and family can't prove aren't them. He is developing an alternate tim support group to try to prevent additional gun batmen timelines. And, as he tells his brothers on occasion, so he can have intelligent conversation with family when Cassandra is away.

Black Bat would be Booster's favorite to work with except he's extremely intimidated by her, even more so than he can be by Batman. She has deliberately allowed herself to be seen in the past on occasion and those sightings in certain conspiracy forums as a cryptid. She's very proud of it. She is also a cryptid in other alternate timelines but is no longer allowed to go to alternate timelines after she has had to be restrained from adopting/kidnapping alternate versions of her younger self or her siblings.

Spoiler is also not allowed on time travel cases for the same reason as Jason, poor impulse control. She may have set off glitter bombs that resulted in a timeline mess almost as impossible to clean up after as the glitter. Her ability to help with alternate universe adventures is under review because, again, glitter bombs.

Robin aka Damian has worked in a timestream case once and came back with a dodo bird. Booster is glad that the kid allowed himself to be persuaded that there wasn't enough room to bring back the mastodon. He is not allowed to work on timestream cases until he can be trusted not to come back with extinct species. He is also not allowed to go on alternate universe adventures after he came back with another dragon bat he has named Desdemona.

Signal takes advantage of timestream adventures to fact check the crazy nonsense his siblings have told him. Booster likes the kid well enough and the invisibility does make things easier at times. The only reason he's not Booster's preferred Bat is because Signal is more naturally charismatic and people pay more attention to him than to Booster and also Signal needs to work on his confidence in his detective skills. He gets migraines dealing with alternate universe adventures and so tries to avoid them when possible.

Alfred has gone on ONE timestream adventure. Booster does not speak of the adventure. Alfred will just smile slightly if asked. Alfred is not allowed on alternate universe adventures because the Bats in his home universe get sullen and withdrawn without him and at least one kitchen fire will occur. His alternate selves are also possessive of their respective kitchens and do not appreciate intruders, even if the intruders are themselves.

[ultra-kek]

Is it true you don't like anything from Grant Morrison, or just the man himself at all?

I don't think I've mentioned my thoughts on Grant Morrison here but I do really love Grant Morrison's early DC work, in particular Animal Man being one of my favorite comics of all time, but I find their later work to be so terrible that I consider it my least favorite comics of all time. I blame this on the running themes of Metatextuality and a sort of reconstructivist ideology in Morrison's work that has ended up completely antithetical to what i desire from comics.

While the absurdist ruminations on the nature of fiction in Animal Man made for an amazing and radical sort of comic that deconstructed a lot about both superheroes and the relationship between fiction and reality, over time their work fell into what to me feels like just very shallow and uninteresting narratives that frequently fall into the same traps as like, redditors and youtube theorists, where it doesn't really have that much to say beyond "woah... this is a work of fiction and we're breaking the fourth wall!!!!!1111" and "superheroes are actually super cool and should never be criticized". The top examples i can think of are their Batman run, which brought back several concepts but in ways that felt shallow (was it really that necessary to bring back the Batman of Zurr-En-Arrh as an edgy violent alternate personality?), meanspirited (Son of the Demon being brought into canon, but retconning Bruce and Talia's loving relationship to... that.), or even offensive (if you're going to make a modern version of the Batmen of all Nations, even if you're going to be rewriting them to attempt to make more realistic and progressive incarnations of them is it really necessary to keep the more offensive designs, and redesign others to be even more offensive? I don't think they had people of color on hand for that stuff...). Meanwhile there's the multiverse stuff that I just really can't bring myself to care about, that kind of thing is already really boring for me personally and though Morrison tries to make more meaningful narrative in them that narrative is just "Aren't superheroes really epic and cool?"

There's also the fact that regardless of being nonbinary Morrison hasn't really had the best track record when it comes to depicting minority groups. I already mentioned the Batmen of all Nations but there's them turning Talia into a misogynistic and somewhat racist stereotype, and Professor Pyg, who's Buffalo Bill-type queercoding is so offensive that I genuinely can't stomach it as a character. This is more controversial, but I feel this even about A Serious House on Serious Earth, both in the character of Mad Dog but also in the comic's general depiction of Batman's rogues' gallery not as characters of their own but as caricatures of mental illness existing primarily as foils for Batman's personal conflicts, which bled into the comics and kind of became a defining part of Batman as a franchise and its frequent usage of psychological themes.

Morrison also has a particularly unfortunate flaw in that theyre kind of... redditbrained. They're famous for their personal theory on the ending of the Killing Joke of how it actually represents Batman finally breaking his one rule and killing the Joker, despite how the comic very clearly frames the moment as the one last moment of understanding the two will ever have. There's also Morrison's idea of all Batman media being true, and justifying it as the sillier parts of Batman being caused by... him and Robin being on drugs. They've literally said that.

My main like, ideological opposition to Morrison though is in their reconstructivist themes and the way they place superheroes as like gods to be aspired to. I certainly fall closer to Moore when it comes to my perspective on comics and while I don't think they're beyond salvation Morrison simply isn't doing them any favors. I just don't want to see comics about how epic Batman and Superman are or whatever, I want to see more radical stuff that breaks down superhero comics as a whole. By all means I like seeing the weird reinvention of old concepts, but being so stuck in the past is just kind of, stupid.

[thevindicativevordan]

Comics this week?

Batman #135 - A shameless exhibition of all the worst trends regarding this Multiverse craze (everything here is meant to make the reader mimic the DiCaprio meme), with a few good bits like Zdarsky showing that killing the Joker isn't going to magically fix Gotham via the Batmen he chose our Bruce to meet. DKR, Arkham, Injustice, Kingdom Come, the DCAU, all Batmen whose Jokers have died but that didn't solve Gotham's problems or even make Bruce happy. My take on the ending is that because Bruce was connected mentally with every Batman he met, just like how Red Mask was connected to every Joker and made even the more harmless ones more deadly, Bruce infected all of the other Batmen with Zurr too. Nice to have Jimenez back on art at least.

Shazam #1 - Shockingly mediocre? Some good character insights, Waid's explanation for why Billy wouldn't just go full Kid Miracleman is a great way of making the Wisdom of Solomon crucial again, and Mora delights as always with the art. But there's no real hook, Billy turning into a big meanie because the sources of his power aren't happy with him, isn't exciting or compelling. Those stakes Waid has talked about bringing to the character need to manifest sooner rather than later. Oh and I think the name change is stupid, "The Captain" is not a better name than just calling himself Shazam.

Joker #8 - Alright even I'm getting bored of Joker's antics in L.A. Feels like the book is just running in place now, and it's no longer amusing me. I'll give it one more issue, mostly because the backups are still funny, but either start explaining what's the deal with the two Jokers or I'm out.

Scarlet Witch #5 - My favorite comic of the week. Solid ending to the two-parter that made Wanda work for her win. I guess that character at the end is Magento's clone Joseph? Don't know what his deal is or why he'd be a good fit for a Scarlet Witch book, my gaps of knowledge in X-Lore betrays me here.

Immortal X-Men #11 - Nice to read a Storm story that isn't just wanking her off as the greatest ever. Of course the X-Fans hated that Ooroo could ever have reason to reflect on her actions. Of course the SoS ending gets undone immediately but at least there's repercussions still with the four infected Council members losing their votes, and Colossus now holding Storm's votes when she's not there. Sounds like they're finally priming to pull the trigger on Colossus being an unwilling double agent.

[f4nd0m-fun]

@wisecloudnightmare

Oh my gods yes you see my vision.

Even if Clockwork wasn't actually Realms pregnant, even if he did just literally deage them, it still hilarious.

And yes, poor Bruce. At least he probably knows where he gets his child hoarding from now (all three of his parents apparently). Which, this technically makes Bruce a demigod while he's alive and a deity when he dies because of the Ancient stuff (No one tell him yet he has enough to process as is).

Anyway, quite a way to reunite with his parents huh? And apparently end up with eight more siblings, all of which are absolutely tiny (for the most part).

... y'know~? What if Leslie was in on things, mostly because 'If I can learn medicine from an ancient highly advanced immortal species then I don't care how cryptid they or my patients are, medical school is expensive!'. And if Alfred did actually hold the cores for a while (even if not the whole time), imagine Leslie being the only one who knows because it's probably not that good to constantly realm jump for checks. Sure they're mostly energy anyway but still.

Just the hilariousness of "yes but no" in regards to carrying them plus Alfred sneaking around so his family wouldn't freak out and mess up his plans or force him to rest (like they listen to him without persuasion). Also him trying to hide weird food he's hungry for (especially stuff that a normal mortal human would die eating, partially because we all know some of the kids are crazy enough to attempt to eat it half of the time). Also, his weekly 'visits with an old friend'? (Let's face it, he needs breaks but if he's gone more than a few days the house will be on fire, so weekly breaks it is instead of monthly). Anyway, that's him spending time with Gotham, having tea and maybe gossiping and giving her updates on the kids (she doesn't ALWAYS pry, she mostly pries into their patrols which she tells Alfred all about since he usually sticks to the manor). Just, co parenting and rambling and no one knows. But that still doesn't mean Gotham has time for his antics, it just means they try to take a break but end up talking about the kids instead of each other.

Oh and imagine the day the kids take on their human forms and SEVERAL of them have black hair, which checks, but the two darker ones make them a little confused (might be funny if they assume the kids are just trying to mimic family members with Duke and Damien being darker skinned in different ways). Alfred is the only one who knows about their original past though.

Also, what if this was a 'seal away the dimension with Amity Park' situation? IE, too dangerous for the kids, so he made em all halfas, deaged em, sealed their memories (at least temporarily), and locked that dimension away, which would eventually destroy it due to the disconnect.

Also there's a long-running idea of Fright Knight being a Flashpoint Thomas, partially seeing as most iterations of Batmen are 'knights'. But back to the others.

Gotham has a hard time showing herself because Bruce and the grandkids aren't liminal enough yet to actually see her, but with Pariah being the king of ghosts, his power Leaks, so she gets stronger, the kids get more liminal, and eventually she can go from the Giant-City-Shadow-Woman to the Eldritch-'Human'-Shadow-Woman (IE walk around and actually interact with the family again).

And I will never stop running with the idea that she collects curses to give to Thomas, but also to protect the mortals of the city because she can handle them and they couldn't, not directly. These curses, as you captured well, do make her a bit weird and unhinged though.

I think instead of a staff and a wall of mirrors Alfred carries an antique pocket watch that has a mirror on the back, and he uses that to watch his family when they're out of the house, or to stop time (maybe it's secretly his staff but in a hidden form). Also, him being Clockwork makes the grandfather clock entrance even funnier because he IS a grandfather clock.

The toddlers will get into a lot of shenanigans though. And probably pick a favorite niece/nephew (even those only related emotionally). Tuck will probably drift towards Tim or Babs, I kinda want Dan to drift towards Damien but Sam could fit him too, Val might like Cass, and I like the idea of nerdy Jazz reading with Jason (or at least being read to). I feel like Dani and Steph both thrive in the chaos they can cause, and either Danny or Vlad drift towards Dick maybe? Not sure, feel free to come up with your own ideas for playing favorites.

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Which, I feel like Thomas would try spending most of his time at the mansion. In part because his obsession is actually Family, it just got twisted when he lost his family. So he stays for his family, and in part because he misses being human (he used to be a Halfa before his death, so combine losing his human half with losing his family and you have a mess big enough to be sent eons into the past over). But also because he finds out the kids have human forms 'Of course they do, kids are never simple' and decides it'll be better to live in a human city with enough emotions and ecto to sustain them as well as human stuff (on top of him being there to supplement the necessary ecto).

Also, do you think Bruce finds out his dad is King before or after the JL summoning? Either way I'm laughing at the idea of him getting handed the kids that were dragged along while his dad takes care of whatever is needed.

Bruce was the first to wake, a grumpy four-year old poking his face while his- his dad checked his vitals. He still wasn't sure what to make of the situation, still in shock from the pile of revelations.

Alfred seemed to be fussing over several of the grandkids, while Martha tried to keep the toddlers distracted with shadow manipulation so the two men could work. She'd always been a bit more of a guide than a medic anyway, and it didn't help that she couldn't form a proper body either.

Bruce took a slow deep breath and glanced around, before finally looking up at his dad again. Words caught in his throat, but the tears spoke enough, overflowing with his emotions.

Thomas pulled him into a hug, holding Bruce tightly, his own tears beginning to fall now that he held his son for the first time in what had been eons for him.

The silence was poignant, and Bruce felt like a child again. Part of him certainly replayed that bitter death, but mostly he thought about the sweet memories, of his happiest times with his mother and father and Alfred. And, for once, his guard was truly down, all faithful in his dad like the kid he used to be.

At some point, his own children were ushered into the hug, protestors silenced by Alfred, or quieting of their own accord.

Only Alfred knew how long they sat there, clinging to each other like the last lifeboats on a sinking ship.

Prompt 153

 Pariah Dark, Ghost King, warrior, tyrant, world-breaker, Ancient of Darkness, is utterly gobsmacked. The sarcophagus had been opened- something he wasn’t honestly expecting seeing as it was supposed to be for eternity- and he had honestly just been blinking awake. It took a minute or few to properly wake up, but who could blame him? It wasn’t like there was anyone before him who could have opened his prison. 

 Though that wasn’t what had him utterly befuddled. He was rather certain that he had not gotten locked into the Sarcophagus of Sleep with several literal ghost infants. 

Well mostly infants, one is more like the equivalent of a three or four year old but still. And he has a rather panicked sort of feeling breaking through his usual bloodlust, because they all look really similar to his not-exactly ex. Same white hair, same wispy ghost-tail, same tiny fangs and claws currently being bared at him and each other. But they also kind of look like him, what with two having hair aflame- one even had black hair like he once did before his insanity- and even having red eyes. Most even had his own corpse-pale skin, though he could see a more blue tint on a couple and one more similar to his brother’s. 

So yes, Pariah Dark is very much panicking and trying to do the math in his head. A visit to Clockwork might be in his best interest…

[kiunlo]

Unfortunately, this enclosure isn't really the best for your batman....batmen need way bigger enclosures, and contrary to popular belief, actually need at least 1 or 2 other species in their enclosure with them (but not another batman because they'll kill each other). Batmen in the wild are usually seen with robins or nightwings, as they have a symbiotic relationship with those species, and having a few of those in a batman's enclosure is extremely important for their social needs (even though many ill-informed people will tell you that batmen aren't a social species). batmen also need really big hides, closer to the size of a small cave, so unfortunately that little coconut isn't gonna do anything for him. most people can't afford such a big hides though and instead make the entire enclosure much darker to simulate their usual cave environment- batmen like their privacy which means it's basically impossible to display them. batmen are really hard to take care of in captivity because of their extremely specific needs that no pretty much no other pet has. i'd seriously suggest doing way more research on your batman's needs, because if they are kept in a tiny enclosure long enough, they will start to break out of their enclosure and reek havoc on everything in your house (or even escape the entire house altogether). batmen may be small but they are fierce and surprisingly strong when they want to be. please get your batman an entire room for himself if you can, or make him an aviary that is completely dark (the robins and nightwings will appreciate it, too).

just remember, batmen are a cave species!! their needs are unique and can't be met by most pet owners, so please make sure you do your research first and you actually have the time, money and space to accommodate your batman's needs!

🦇

he is [ contained ] @boomtubes thank u