A Geek History of Time - Episode 82 - Batman through the Ages Part IV

Episode Date: November 21, 2020

The World Disney Yes, beloved, beloved figure of our pop culture. That's how they get you. And out of Yada, she eventually causes her own husband to be born to death. And that makes me so happy on cold nights. Especially in the badly for the idiot Pecker Woods.

You have a bottle of scotch. Okay, that's twice that he's mentioned redheads. It is un-American to get in the way of our freedom to restrict people's freedom. That was the part I know plenty about this thing. I love me some Bobby Drake. Well, if that's all we've got then we're being really lazy. Yeah. Y'all both.

You can literally poke a hole in it as soon as someone gets pneumonia. Well, I'm not as old as you. Well, ha ha mother fuck motherfucker, I got a wizard. This is a keykits read of time. Where we connect Nurgere to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock, I'm a world history teacher with a side order of remedial reading at the middle grade level, here in Northern California. I just recently started rereading the fellowship of the ring ring to my remedial reading kids since we're in distance learning and our

schedule is is borced one one day a week everything is cut in half so following the normal canned curriculum that we have doesn't work so I'm using part of that time on that shortened day to just read aloud to them and have them listen to me as I'm reading. And I didn't want to do JK Rowling because I didn't want to do Harry Potter because JK Rowling. Rowling has recently doubled and tripled and like I don't know sex toppled it down on being a crappy human being. So I went with somebody whose prejudices are more background latent rather than you know out there open in the public sphere and I'm doing Tolkien instead. So I had forgotten just how kind of pukish his sense of humor is in the beginning

when he's describing Hobbits. There's kind of a little bit of a, there is a distinct level of kind of loving, fun-making. Yes. The way that he describes them. And I have forgotten that. Almost, yeah. And it's, yeah.

So I'm having a great time doing that. How about you? Well, before I introduce myself, I got to say that I think we found the most perfect version of distance learning for you, the bard, is to retoken aloud to children. I think that's... Yeah, probably.

You're not wrong. So, but I am Damien Harmony. I am a Latin teacher of here in Northern California at a distance. And we are the...there's no like reading out loud that's happening in English on my end, but there is a good deal of video content that I've put out there for the students to hear me reading Latin aloud to them. For very much the same kind of reason that you're reading to these kids is that the more words you hear, the more easy it will be to uptake those words when you read them. Yeah, and it's a fluency thing. So, it's nice to see both of us are essentially doing the same thing

to roughly the same level of reading, unfortunately. Sadly. Yeah, but you know, there's no time like the present to do it and good on you for finding a way to continue that for them. So yeah, I also had the opportunity opportunity. I'm being I'm being very very positive-minded when I say that to actually come up with my own exercise for supplemental coaching for these kids and the understanding of open vowels. Oh good and and you know finding finding where the syllable

break is in a word. Sure. Which you know, ties into a conversation we actually had ourselves on lining the other day. Just to let everybody else know, we came to the conclusion that the word fucknuckle. Yes, in written form, is only going to have one K, which, you know, when I first saw it written in that conversation and was like, I don't know, but I feel like there ought to be a second K and then I get out with a second K and I went no. No, it's really quite remarkable. Yeah, no, it just it looks bad. So, yeah, and that's again, another that ties in, although of course I didn't use it. Example, it's by seven days grade. Well, I mean, it's a class. You know, I mean, I kind of wish. Yeah, well, you know, when they get to high schools,

they're still working on this stuff. But, yeah, but tell them, okay, there's 10 consonants in the middle of the word break is going to be between the two consonants. If there's only one consonant right before that consonant. Right. So, you know, yeah. And so then, you know, coaching them through that, you know, it actually, you know,

I had one of those moments of whatever the opposite of imposter syndrome is where you walk away going, I am a real boy. Oh, I think it's just called feeling competent at the thing that you're good at. Okay, yeah, there's no word for it because it's not pathologized, it's just exceedingly rare. Oh, yeah. There you go. So good for you. That's great. Yeah. And yes, I do think that fucknuckle is a worthy discussion point for when I teach my students scantions. So I'm going to keep that one on my back pocket. No, I think it's a great example. And you know, based on what I know of Latin poetry and satire, I think you could probably get away with it. Oh, easily, easily. Also, there's no K and Latin.

So that makes it really easy. Like, that's a good point. Yeah, true. But actually, there is a word that I saw right recently and it said all the K's were silent. And I can't remember what the word was. It might be Nicarbocker. Yeah, Nicarbocker. All the K's are silent. Okay, you can't see me right now because we're knowing this, you know, via an audio Skype call, but oh my God, you just blew my mind. Yeah, kind of, kind of fine. Because, wow, that's not wrong. Uh-huh.

Yeah. So. All right. Hey, how about this? Why don't you read to them the next thing after Tolkien is give them a break in the Tolkien and read them the dark night returns. Really good way to segue into what we're talking about tonight. Thank you, coincidence. Yeah, what a coincidence.

I don't think it's very good advice for the sake of my credential. Oh, you got permission. You know, yeah, but I don't want to get that particular letter in my file. So yeah, as Damien so very, very subtly points out, when we left off, we had gotten through the history of the comics, basically up through the 1970s. And to kind of recap a little bit without going into too much detail, of course, everything after 66, in some way is a response to the TV series, which is 60s. By the way, I broke down and bought

which by the way I broke down and bought and got delivered. And my kids and I have watched four episodes and my son is quoting the penguin perpetually of my fine feathered fiends. And my daughter is watching the whole thing with us and she just keeps looking at me. She's like, this is so bad, but it's so good. Okay. And so have you had the conversation with her yet about what camp mean?

I have not broken it down entirely, but yeah, I've touched on it. And kind of a fun thing too, was that I taught her about how the tilted screen means bad guys But then I pointed out Burgess Meredith. I said hey, do you remember that episode of Twilight Zone? I let you guys watch It's like oh, yeah, where he's left alone. I'm like that's the guy. Yeah, blue or mind Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, yeah, cuz I mean with with the with the nose and the and the get up and the and the whole you know make up and everything. Yeah, no, it totally would. You know, I remember the first just Meredith as not the penguin. It blew my mind. Yeah, because for me, for me, the exposure happened in exactly the opposite order. You know, you got Rocky first. Because again, you know, as a, as a youngster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Funny. No. Rocky was a, was a, was a whole lot later. But I,

I got, I got the 66 bad man series first. And then, you know, seeing Bridges Meredith, not being a cartoonish bad guy was, yeah. Kind of a mind-blowing experience. I was seeing Bridges Meredith not being a cartoonish bad guy was, yeah, kind of a mind-blowing experience. I was like, wait, hold on. Just by that time I was old enough to realize, wait, that's the same dude. Like without anybody pointing it out. And I was like, oh, wow, like, whoa. Yeah.

So, um. So, they're all responding to the 66 words. So everybody's, yeah, after, after the TV series in one way or another, either they're healing to the TV series and they're going, you know, bright colors can't be kind of over the top, which is, which is what the comic did for, you know, two or three years, or, um, like the comic did in the very early 70s, they are running away from the TV series. And trying to say, no, no, we're going, we're going, this is this is serious business,

capitalist, capital B. And you know, in the 70s, we see the introduction of Rache Al Ghul and League of Shadows and Talia Al Ghul and all of all of those kind of elements. And the comic went, took a very hard turn back to word being a detective comic. While at the same time within the greater DC continuity, of course, by that time Batman had for a long time in a member of the JLA and he's wrapped up in, you know, it is a supporting player and in other storylines where, you know, the threats are global and it's not just Gotham.

And so there's this weird kind of dichotomy going on. Right. And then, um, do you think, and then, do you think, by the way, that that that edging back toward the, oh, what's it called? Um, the, the, the detective comics, do you think edging back toward that was partly in response to a loosening of the restrictions of the CCA. Because by the 80s, you do see that the CCA has relaxed a bit. Well, number one, the CCA has relaxed a bit and more and more people are looking at it going, you know what? The hell with the CCA? I'm not going to worry about that. Every comic was still aiming for getting that stamp on there, except for the

episode where they dealt with heroin and Spider-Man. They're like, well, just fucking do it without the CCA stamp and nothing happened, but everybody kept sticking to the CCA stamp. Yeah, yeah. I'm jumping ahead a little bit when I say what I said, but no, you're right. There was a relaxation of the CCA's guidelines. They were no longer being quite as heavy-handed. But yeah, I think the two things are intertwined for sure. intertwined for sure. You know, just because I think I think a big part of it too was, I mean, we've spoken at length about just what a shit decade the 70s were. Yes.

You know, and so you see this universal darkening, griming kind of influence on, you influence on everywhere in popular culture. And there had been, I mean like in the 60s, there had been the beginnings of the movement toward anti-hero kind of stuff. And I think in the 70s, really saw that getting leaned into a lot in popular culture. And so I think it's kind of the same thing. I mean, of course Batman's not becoming an anti-hero, but that same tonal kind of shift happened. And the idea of, no, no this is serious business you know became a became a thing um and so so through the 70s um you know we we still see Batman in the blue and gray

kind of kind of uniform with the yellow yellow chest plate, uh, uh, the sausage or wrap back. Yeah. And that that doesn't wind up changing, even though the tone of the comics winds up becoming, I'm not going to say grim necessarily, but it does become more, more serious. Um, you know, he's, he's in, in detective comics, in particular, um, you particular, he is a detective. There's an emphasis on that. And the conflict between him and Array Shell

Google has global stakes, but it is a mental contest. It doesn't wind up being something that Batman can solve for this fist and his martial arts skills, though those are necessary. Of course, it's a whole, you know, the whole, the whole con one where, you know, Rachel Goulick said, and says, no, no, you're a worthy adversary. And I actually want to try to make you into my air. And Batman kind of has to go along with it in order to get into the organization to then take into my air. And Batman kind of has to go along with it in order to get into the organization to then take the organization down. And so there are parallels to undercover

cop stories. Yeah, I was going to say that sounds very much like Miami vice style tape stuff. Yeah. And it's a little bit funny. I mean, it's very three color comics because he winds up kind of acquiescing to what Al Ghul is saying, but somehow, Racial Ghul knows a whole lot about the Batman. But at the beginning of the storyline, when Racial Ghul is introduced, he doesn't know his secret identity. And so when Batman joins the organization there's a whole lot of scenes in these series of comics where Batman is having to do one thing or another is an initiation or whatever and he has his shirt off but he's still wearing his his costume tight, but he's got no shirt on, but

he still has from the neck up, he's still got on the cowl. And so, and the thing is, the writing was actually strong enough that you were able to look at those moments and go, all right, I'll allow it, whatever whatever keep going. Wow. Okay. And so yeah, it it was again a a very you know, it was a big shift from from the over the top cartoony campy stuff. Right. So to a to a to a much more, you know serious Yeah, noir again going back to noir kind of kind of tone and noir themes Within the storyline is he aged in this one Is this the one where he's in his 50s? No, no, no, okay. That's that's actually that is actually the dark night returns And that's okay, okay, that's That's the next step in the character's evolution. And the thing is, so everything since 66 has been a response to the TV series one way or the other.

Everything since 86 has been a response to Frank Miller. And that's kind of my thesis with what I'm talking about in this episode because, and everything we've been talking about in the seventies is kind of teeing me up for. In 86, Miller came over to DC from Marvel, and Miller had first gotten noticed in the industry for working on Daredevil. And if I would call correctly, Daredevil, again, we talked about that last time about how the names

should be swapped. But if I recall correctly, Daredevil, like Miller really kind of stripped things down and, but he did it in such a way that it was tasteful. So it was great taste and less filling during Miller time. Oh, man. So what's the time mark on that one? Oh, it's 17 minutes. I have nowhere near to that. Oh, yeah, okay.

Yeah. That's, I ain't even mad this time. You're welcome. It. Um, that's, that's, I ain't even mad. No, this time. You're actually that, that you got me on that when I like that. Um, so yeah, no, what, what he, what he became known for because he was, number one, he became known for. If he was writing a comic, he better not be drawing it. And if he was drawing it, he better not be writing it. Because if he was doing, if he was doing both jobs, uh, deadlines were, we're going to die ugly. Um, but, but as a, as a writer, he, he told these very, and this is going to be unsurprising to anybody who's seen other work of his. These very stoic borderline toxic masculinity kind of stories where, you know, in the case of Daredevil, you know, the way

you got me with your pond was talking about stripping things down. He really did want splitting, putting Daredevil through a kind of a breaking him down to his core forcing him to go back and relearn everything he knew kind of thing. See what sticks. Yeah, see what sticks. See where's where's real strength lay and all that kind of stuff. You missed it. strength lane and all that kind of stuff. You missed it. Oh, Jesus. Sorry, I know it's late, so it's probably pretty foggy for you. The city part of the thing is I'm not a big daredevil fan, so I'm lagged. I'm lagged a couple of seconds behind the references because I gotta to go, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, okay. All right.

Bulls eye. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you think you're some cheek pit. I, you know, these puns are electrifying. What can I say? Take a stab at them. Oh, well done. Thank you. Well done electrifying. I, okay, see that I appreciate.

And taking a stab at them because that's how bulls I killed her Yeah, oh, yeah, too soon dude He got a hand into Electra he really do Ouch, I know you know funny funny thing The the foot clan in teenage mutant Ninja Turtles. Oh, the whole teenage mutant Ninja Turtles is a knock on Daredevil.

Is the whole fucking thing. But yeah, but the foot clan, yeah, is, is totally a response to the hand. To the hand. Yeah. Like so anyway, yeah. So anyway, Frank Miller, got kind of got his bones working on Daredevil by breaking all of Daredevil's

in the comic. And then he came over to DC and wound up. They kind of they had a plan for what they wanted him to do. And he had an idea. And that idea was the Dark Knight Returns. Now, the arc at the time when it was serialized in 86, it was just the Dark Knight. And the first issue was the Dark Knight Returns. And when the whole thing got put together in a trade paperback after the fact became the graphic novel and everybody knows today, they stuck with the title, The Dark Knight Returns. And so now Miller did a couple of interesting things. Because the whole story is in a lot of ways a deconstruction.

It's a simultaneous deconstruction and reconstruction of who and who and who and what Batman is and like how do we look at this character? And so Miller aged him up. Miller said okay. So it's, he, he set the comic in what was then the present time. It was 1986. Uh-huh. And bat and so batman was now, he, he aged him up to being his mid 50s, which is younger than he actually would have been, but there you go. He'd be aged him up to be, you know, late middle age guy. And, um, and then built a And then build the story around that kind of being the opening gambit is that Bruce Wayne gave up being Batman because, and this is interesting, he left the business of super heroing because Jason Todd got killed. Wow. Now here's the thing, of course. I know what you're thinking in the actual comic continuity, Jason Todd doesn't die for another two years as spoiler alert.

Right. You can get into that here in a little bit. But the idea of Jason Todd getting killed by the Joker is introduced kind of to the public consciousness in the Dark Knight Returns. Because Jason, you know, Robin gets killed and Batman walks away. Right. And so because of his departure Gotham is turned into a crime-riddled hellhole and a super gang calling themselves the mutants has arisen and they are running a rough shot over the people of Gotham. Now I gotta say, this is 86 you said? Yes. Okay, so mutants were a big fricking deal from 75 through about 83, 84.

So, like just in general, like Marvel is carrying its own property on the back of the storylines having to do with mutants. So I find it very interesting that this is likely one of the first recent uses of that word in DC. I have no doubt that Superman probably fought somebody who's mutant X or whatever, but in the more modern era. As a group, that's really interesting

that they become the foil, the foil to the antagonist and they're, you know, a large group. Yeah, so so over the course of the the three comic series, a new a new Robin shows up. a new Robin shows up. So Batman goes back out on the street because he sees the mutants, you know, he realizes that, you know, the city needs me. And, you know, I got to get off my ass and I got to get out there. I got to do something about it. And a young woman, a teenage girl who he winds up rescuing from an assault, a girl named Carrie Kelly winds up, you know, seeing him and she decides she's going to take Robin's place. And so Carrie Kelly winds up taking over as Robin in the Dark Knight series. When she shows up, Okay, when she when she shows up

She she you know buys buys a costume in a costume shop and goes looking for Batman on the street When she finds him he he winds up taking her He winds up taking her back to the back cave and Alfred basically tells him, I quit. You're not a different kid. You're not a different kid, not doing it. Alfred doesn't actually wind up leaving, but he does basically say, this is not good, you shouldn't be doing this.

And explicitly, this is one of the ways in which, and I'm going to go back and forth, and in chronology, out of the series here, and this stuff comes up. But in that role, Alfred kind of winds up taking on the role of the reader, because it's made very, very clear that this is dangerous. Alfred has become our moral center. Yeah, Alfred no longer identifying with Batman as the moral center. We are now seeing that Batman is breaking down and going too far. The beginnings of it. Yeah, okay. Definitely. And part of what winds up happening is in the way we see just exactly how dangerous

this is is Batman winds up getting very, very seriously injured in a one-on-one fight against the leader of the mutants. The mutants, the mutants, the mutants, basically, pokes and prods them into a one-on-one, you know, call, call, literally calls out the old man. And, you know, Kerry Kelly winds up actually saving bad manands bacon, which is the reason he winds up taking her back to the back cave in the first place and so So so we have we have first off and I want to pause here to kind of look at some of the themes that we're already seeing here You've already pointed out Alfred is is taking on a moral role for the reader We see a new Robin showing up not because

the kid doesn't have any other place to go, but because instead, they, they, she is, is hero worshipping him and wants to be his, his protege. Okay. Remember, Jason Todd was, you know, a street kid that, that Batman took in because he didn't have any police else to go. Batman realized he needed somebody to be working with. The writers realized they still needed a Robin. And of course, Nightwing had gone off and was doing his own thing. And now I'm blanking on the first Robin's actual name.

Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson, thank you. Yeah, he's know actual name Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson. Thank you. Yeah, he's nice way. Dick Grayson. Yeah. Yeah. Dick Grayson had started out having been orphaned by the mob. Right. And didn't have any other place to go. Carrie Kelly has a life. She has friends. She has a social life. She has family.

And she comes looking for Batman. And this is in a setting in which it is taken for granted that Batman left the streets. He left the Cape business. And in that vacuum, these hideous, you know, hyperviolence supergangs, the mutants and their ilk. Which are actually, I just, I want to, I keep fixating on them. It's kind of funny. But the more locks showed up in 83 in Marvel comics. Yeah. So here we are three years later. This is right around the time that Storm ends up defeating one of the head... Collista. Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah.

A leadership of that clan. And then she loses her powers and she's got a Mohawk. It's also right around the time, it's the 86. We're talking Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome time. We're talking post-apocalyptic stuff, so it's just kind of interesting what's working its way through. Well, yeah, and this was also a period of time.

Back in the late 70s, of course, New York had been completely falling apart, and this is New York is where all of this stuff is being published. Oh, yeah, Urban Blight. Yeah. Urban urban light was a huge big deal because of the heroin and then the crack epidemics. Oh shit. I didn't even connect it to those. Yeah. And and this is and well I'm gonna get into oh Jesus. All the death wish movie sequels are coming out. Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And dirty Harry. That was in 70s, though. Well, yeah, but there are other sequels of that. There were, yeah. Okay. No, gov.

Magnum force. Okay. Oh, the Deadpool. Trying to remember what year the Deadpool was, but this was the era of public consciousness being full of everybody being terrified of urban blade, everybody being terrified of hyperviolence. This is where the talk about super predators. Okay, I got to stop you there as well. We started this thing with me kind of calling out Batman for being the millionaire attacking newly white millionaires who clearly must have gotten

their money through illegal means. Now he's coming back as an older fellow Charles Bronson style and taking on street gangs. And in so doing, like you just said, super predators, which comes into the discussion in the early 90s, but the idea of street gangs and stuff like that is very much urban, city, and people of color. Yeah, now it's interesting. More Batman, beating up people of color. Yeah, now it's interesting. More Batman, beating up people of color. People, people, well, here's, here's the thing.

Sure. Actually, if you actually look at the artwork in the dark night, yeah, there's, there's vanishingly few people of color anywhere. It's own problem. But yeah, you're, you're kind of pointing out. No, he's not attacking black kids. And I get that, but this is so clearly coded too. Oh, yeah, well, yeah, no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to undo what you're saying. I am actually, what I am actually pointing

out is to the readership of the comic, the coding was subliminal. Mm-hmm. You know, because, Because, you know, Frank Miller being himself a boomer, you know, didn't consciously think of the racial coding that was baked into this, you know, in the same way the Tolkien didn't consciously think of the racial coding that was unfortunately involved in Orcs, which was a whole other episode. His subconscious bias is remaining sub-abrosa through the whole. You do see there are figures in the background. The mutants are shown to be a multi-ethnic group of scum. But all of the face characters that we ever interact with are all bald headed white-looking guys. and the coding of just a very idea of street gang in the 80s carried all kinds of racial

overtones. But in the comic, there was no representation, not even negative representation, which is again, its own issue. So part of what I want to get to, though, in addition to the obvious issues that you're bringing up, there's this very central idea that clearly the subtext is bad man was the force that was keeping all of this from happening. Like having him out there was the deterrent that prevented chaos from rising up

from the underworld to threaten everybody. It's like a weird trickle-down economic theory there. Yeah. If you have this one really violent millionaire, then everything else is solved. Yeah, everything else is falling to place. Like, wait, what? Yeah. So, and then of course, like I said, there's all these issues of tropes, kind of taken out of Westerns of the old gunfighter returning,

and these stoic, I got to be the one to solve this masculinity kind of stuff. And Harvey Dent shows up in the comics, known, you know, of course, two-faced. And in this story, two-faced has undergone extensive psychiatric treatment and he's had, I don't even know how many tens of thousands of dollars of plastic surgery to fix his face. And so he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's heading back out into society and a big part of this has been paid for by Bruce Wayne. Okay. You know, yeah, he's been rehabilitated. That rehabilitated it. And then this is this victory, right? And early on in the series, that man finds out the dent is up to something. Like some of the people who are committing some armed robberies, some crimes, he finds out these guys are somehow working for dent.

And he's not sure what's going on, but he warns Commissioner Gordon, I think there's something going on there. And so there's this, from the very opening of the comic series, there's this re-introduction of the idea. And I think this is kind of where the codification of this into current canon kind of starts of Batman villains as the mentally ill and as the incorrigible mentally ill. Right.

Irredeamable. Irredeamable can't be cured. Can't be treated. Scary. Crazy people. And, you know, so Batman winds up defeating the leader of the mutants, kind of with Gordon, kind of a ranger thing, so that Batman gets to handle the leader of the mutants,

because Batman figured out how to get him arrested. But Gordon kind of sets it up so Batman can have the showdown with him and then like I cannot stress enough how Batman's victory over the leader of the mutants is a complete complete raffle stop. Like Miller out of his way. Well, he just he goes out of his way to show Batman not just defeating him, but breaking him humiliatingly in front of his people. Okay, so just like just outclassing him at every turn. Okay, so just outclassing him at every turn. Well, not only outclassing with every turn, but the art of it all is, I mean, there is blood that we see very clearly. There's a fair amount of it, and it's not just defeating him.

It is clearly crippling kind of injuries. It's not merely that man has a Mount class every turn. It's that, no, no, Batman beat the shit out of him. Okay. Gotcha. It is the brutality of the thumping that he gives this guy is emphasized with every stroke of the pen. Yeah. So it's as if you've got a fencer from like 400 years prior. He not only snipped off your buttons without leaving a mark, but then he also beat your face until it looked like hamburger. Yeah, like both. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's you know, not not only not only did he show that he he he knows better But he then you know left you maimed

You know as a as a result right okay And so now here's here's the thing and and this this this is where This is where Miller kind of gets very Miller. Or where Miller starts showing us what his stuff is gonna look like in years to come because Batman crushes the leader of the mutants and the mutants see their leader get, just like I said, raffle stopped.

They turn around, they walk away. Cause, cause clearly the charismatic leader has been defeated. And so, they're, they're, they don't have a movement. They don't have anything, anything other than, you know, this, this one individual leading them. Sure. And so they turn around and they disband.

And some of them renamed themselves the sons of the Batman. And they either paint or tattoo were never really 100% sure Batman's logo onto their faces. And they turn around and they start attacking other criminals. With the same level of hyperviolence that they had been using against innocent people before. Okay, wow, that's, so it feels a little guardian angel-y. Yeah, very much, yes. And so then we cut away from that to a meeting between Superman and Ronald

Reagan. Um, I'm going to have to ask you say again, I think that Skype, dicked out in some way or something. Yeah. Um, It sounded like you said that Superman met with somebody who had less moral screwpals than Lex Luthor. Yeah, well, I said Ronald Reagan. Oh, you did? Okay, yeah. I did, yeah. And your evaluation there is, as we've discussed in prior episodes, not wrong.

Yeah. But yeah. So Superman, we cut away to a meeting between Superman and President Ronald Reagan. Because again, this was set in 1986. Right. Oh wow. Okay. So Miller has, has President Reagan mentioned to Superman the events in Gotham and

And Reagan says You know at some point you may need to arrest Batman Because you know now now he's turned around and he's got these you know hypermanal and gang people working for him and You know we we might you know we might need to step in and you might need to stop him. Superman tells Reagan, well, I might be able to talk to Bruce Wayne. As somebody who knows Batman, I might be able to talk to him. Sure, sure. And then, same scene, as soon as that little snippet of conversation is done, the president

then sends Superman, gives him the mission to go to the fictional Latin American country of Superman fighting Soviet combat forces in a bush conflict that may start World War 3. Wow. Okay. So there's a few things going on here that show up in the movies, which this is why I love comic book movies is because if done right, you can stay faithful to the material. You can still service the fans and still come up with a fairly original take on it. So the place where Superman goes to, that's where Vicki Vale had just returned back from when she comes back to Gotham in the Tim Burton one. Oh yeah. She hands it to Duda who played Arles. I forget his name now. But to him and Knox, well that's the character's name. And he's like, wow, girl could get hurt doing this. But it was court of Maltese. And the hyperviolence sons of Batman.

You see an echo of that in the Nolan second film because there's a bunch of copycat batman's who screw up his fight with and his bust of of scarecrow and then one of whom gets abducted and tortured and killed by Heath Ledger's Joker. Yeah. I ain't wearing hockey pants. Or hockey pants. Yeah, I'm not wearing hockey pants. Yeah, which is a pretty shitty argument. But whatever, like, like, I mean, I understand what you're trying to get to, but like, there's a better way of saying that. So yeah. So, so what, what, what Miller is clearly kind of trying to say, and the way he's characterizing Superman, like throughout the series, is Superman is the beautiful good boy who does what authority tells him. Yeah.

And that winds up turning him into a tool. And we'll get into the details of exactly how that turns out here in a minute. But, you know, Superman is the establishment guy in Miller's view, which isn't entirely wrong, but Superman represents law and authority and rightful authority and whatever, and truth, justice, and the American way, patriotism and all that. And that means that to Miller, the logical extension of all of that means he's going to wind up being a stooge of the government.

Okay. Specifically the federal government. He's going to wind up being, you know, a current voice sent to collect a butcher's bill. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, does that mean Batman Kurtz?

Uh, Superman is Martin Sheen's character. Yeah, uh, wait does that make Batman Kurt's? Superman is Martin Sheen's character. Oh shit. Oh Wow, yeah, because because he even says you just yeah, you just had to make friends with it You know with it with the the horror and terror. And that's always been the difference between Batman and Superman. Is Batman? It's like, you've got to go for it. I have darkness. I have a night.

Yeah. Oh, shit. Okay. That's brilliant. And I hate that I didn't think of it. But yeah, so Superman goes off as the errand boy to go act as Dr. Manhattan in this, you know, third world, you know, bush conflict. And meanwhile, back in Gotham, Batman shows back up. And the Joker has been in a catatonic state in Arkham Asylum for Joker has been in a catatonic state in Arkham asylum for some extended period of time.

And we see the Joker in the asylum, catatonic, you know, head to one side, staring off into the distance, you know, drooling on his pillow. And the TV in the day room is on. And news reveals that Batman has shown up and the Joker wakes up. Oh. And the Joker, then, you know, he firstly wakes up out of his ketotonic state and then he uses his, you know, his sociopathie, his ability as a psychopath to manipulate the people around him into thinking he's well enough to go on a talk show. Which is kind of connected.

Well, Heraldo and Don and you were things. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so he winds up murdering everybody in the audience with Joker gas. Of course. And escapes. And they wind up tracking him to a fair. They, everybody's him to a fair. Everybody's having to avoid the police at this point.

And they track him to a fair. He's already trying to kill people. Batman follows him into a dark ride, the tunnel of love. Okay. And in that's, yeah, it's like how I know what's going to happen there is the opposite of love. Oh, yeah. Um, he, he winds up, uh, beating the Joker with an inch of his life. Of course. And then the Joker kills himself. Oh, commit suicide by breaking, he breaks his own neck, which like the ultimate you can't fire me. I quit move. Yeah, the ultimate you can't fire me I quit, but he does it specifically in order to incriminate Batman for murder. Right.

Okay. His final revenge. Yeah, his final revenge is, no, no, you didn't kill me, but everybody will think you did. Basically, kills himself. And at this point, Commissioner, in this point, the series, Commissioner Gordon, a step down as commissioner, he's handed things over to an officer, a captain, Ellen Yindel, who has basically said Batman's a wanted vigilante because now he's kind of the leader of a street gang without actually leading the street gang. And so, Yindel and the police show up and they see the Joker is dead. Well, obviously we know who did this. And so now there's a man hunt on for him. Okay. The conflict in Kordomelties turns into World War Three. Right. And the Soviets launch a nuclear warhead that Superman diverts from its target.

He Superman is nearly killed by the by the by the nuke. And he absorbs the solar energy stored in the jungle, which like I don't know how the physics works, but it's comic books. It's Superman and okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So because of the nuke going off the United States gets hit by an EMP and massive blackout nationwide somehow nationwide blackout, don't know how, but you know comic book physics, massive nationwide blackout,

physics. Massive nationwide blackout. And Batman puts two and two together, figures out why there's this massive blackout. And he goes to the the leftovers of the mutants and to the sons of the and turns them into a nod, like tells them, okay, no killing anybody, but there is nobody to keep order now. We're in this blackout, absolute chaos. It's your job to now maintain order and turns them into essentially an army. And they collectively, there are scenes of them punishing looters and somehow develop the instantaneously through Batman's magical leadership abilities. They wind up developing the discipline to be the ones to oversee distribution of essential supplies to folks in town and all this. Right. Now, this would have been in the minds of not necessarily children reading this, although

I don't think children would have been reading this. But this was not a kiddie book. But this would have been in the minds of certainly New Yorkers who were adults at that time because there was the New York blackout. Yeah. And you've got the, not the Hell's Angels, the Guardian Angels doing that thing.

By the way, I want to just circle back real quick to Yendell. OK. Mailer female. Female, Ellen Yendell Female Ellen Yendel. Ellen Yendel. So I'm imagining it's mid 80s. Yeah. I'm imagining short hair and I'm imagining angular features and kind of like if you were to say, Hey, draw a feminist to an unreconstructed male at the time, she would

be it. Yeah, you're not wrong. Okay. Okay. Unfortunately, we're not, you know, having, we don't have a video connection right now, but yes, a remarkably short haircut, I'm gonna say actually, she had almost the same haircut I had in 1986.

Yeah. As, you know, at 11 year old. Oh, she had the Zool haircut then? No, no, no, I didn't have the flat top. I didn't, that was in 86. Okay. didn't have the flat top. I think that was, that was in 86. But yeah, she, she, she, yes, very much. Okay. Tasteful pantsuit, most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. You were the pretty severe. Well, I mean, not, no, depends, depends on whether you're talking about in the

comic or in the, in the, in the movie adaptation, the animated adaptation of the comic. Oh, I'm going with the comic. Okay. In the comic, modern fashions got modified to look kind of cyberpunk inflected. Okay. So she tended to wear a cyberpunk and kind of trench code with a collar up. It kind of a military cut where it's very, very kind of double- Right, right. So yeah, but yes, very much. Like you can tell from the shape of the eyes and the full lips that this is a female character, but all of the other cues are actually.

I'm picturing like Sean Young from Blade Runner. Like that. That aesthetic, with with a with with what at the time would have been labeled as a boy's haircut. Okay. Okay. Because Sean Young had to had the big, you know, kind of kind of 30s gothic, you know, kind of kind of big high. Did you hear you kind of sleep during that movie?

So yeah, you he that I don't like noir. It became painfully obvious that it was a noir film because I fell asleep. I was like, I woke back up and I'm like, oh, this is boring still. Okay. Okay. Okay, I'm sorry. World War three, the guardian angels are handing shit out. Guardian angels are handing yes, basically. And so this winds up, so Gotham becomes the safest city in the United States. But because of the police of because of Batman and his vigilante thugs. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So this becomes embarrassing to the federal government. And so Reagan orders Superman to go bring Batman in. Wow. And there is there is an exchange between Superman and the president in which Superman says he's not going to come peacefully. And Reagan essentially says,

well, you know, if you have to kill him, so be it if he dies, you know, if he dies, he dies. Yeah, very, very, very Draco going on there. Um, or Draco, Draco, Draco, Draco. So, um, bad man winds up meeting up with Oliver Queen. Uh, Oliver Queen is hang on Green Lantern. No. Oh, fuck. Green, your clothes. Green era. I'm sorry. I had it in my head as a greener. Because, okay. Here's why. On my clock at work, you know, back when we went places.

Yeah. We have two different schedules. We have a Thursday schedule and we have a all the other day schedule. Okay. And so, the Thursday schedule is like 47 minutes and the every other day schedule is 55 minutes. And it's just different enough that it will fuck up your whole plan if you don't take that into account. And if you're looking up at the clock, you're thinking all the days that aren't Thursday.

So on Thursday, you're just dicked. So what I did was I cut out yellow and green arrows to point them at the minute's hand as to when that period would end. So there's a yellow one, a yellow two, a yellow three, a yellow four, yellow five, yellow six. There's a green one, two, three, four, five, six. And there's one that says lunch for both of them, like when each period ends. So I can look at a glance and it's really easy. And kids will ask, they're like, oh, what time is this class end? And I look up ask they're like, oh, what times is class and then I look up I'm like, oh, we're on the Oliver Queen schedule

Nicely done. Yeah, and the kids there's some kids who get it and appreciate it. Yeah, so yeah, I like it and those kids are your favorites Even though you don't have favorites. Yeah, well, you know, I'm their favorite is really well. Yeah, yeah, okay, that's that's that's most important. I'm a lot more discriminating Okay, yeah, in terms of who my favorites are Oh, yes, yes, that works So so so so so he hooks up with all of our Bruce Wayne Bruce Wayne meets up with Oliver Queen. Mm-hmm And Oliver Queen tells him You you and Superman are gonna have our you know,, or it's gonna have to come down to it. Now at this point, we notice it becomes clearer

that Oliver Queen is missing a hand. Oliver Queen is dressed like somebody who's been on the lamb. Okay. And we find out kind of in subtext, it's not quite completely made blatant, but it gets close that Oliver Queen has already been targeted by this government. And Superman was who was sent to get him. Oh, damn. Okay. And Superman calls you know, Cole, the old man now shows up in Gotham and says,

you know, Batman, you know, you're, you're a renegade, et cetera, et cetera. It's time, you know, you got to, you got to, you got to come in out of the cold. And so Wayne arranges their, their show down to happen in crime alley, where he first became back. Yes, and he goes into the fight, relying in part on the fact that Superman has been weakened after the nuke. So he knows the Batman's not Superman, rather. He knows that Superman is not anywhere near 100% that he's still recovering from this near death kind of experience.

And so you're your your favorite samurai guy, the guy beat someone with an or because he like waited until the sun was coming up. All right, cool. Yeah, me a bit of a sashi. Yeah. So so soups, of course, being the Boy Scout tries to tell him, you know, look, you got to come in. Sure.

You know, the literally the army is right behind me. And Batman basically repeatedly throws in the finger and he shows up to the fight in a gigantic exosuit in a, you know, in the Wayne Tech version of an Iron Man suit, basically. Yeah. This is the, we see an echo of this in the Batman vs Superman movie. Oh, yeah. Literally, they're fighting. Literally, he's wearing the armor.

Literally, he's. Oh yeah. Literally they're fighting. Literally he's wearing the armor. Literally he's wearing, yeah. And so Superman manages to break the exosuit but Batman or Superman manages to break the exosuit. But Batman has had Oliver Queen sitting in a third story window with his bow and a kryptonite tipped arrow. Naturally. Waiting for the proper and has been leading Superman to the right spot for Queen to shoot

him. And there is this long moment in the story where Batman basically stands over Superman and has a long, this is why you suck speech. And part of it is him saying, I could have formulated that arrow to kill you stone fucking dead, but I didn't. And he basically says, I'm not, I'm choosing not to kill you because that's not what I do. This is a warning you stay away and you get out of my way. And in the middle of all that, he has a heart attack. He being Batman. Batman has a heart attack. Keele's over and is apparently dead. Alfred blows up the back cave and Wayne Manor before dying of and then dies of a stroke. Okay, so hang on, doesn't that pretty much give a way who Batman is? Yep. Okay. Yeah, he he he exposes Batman as being Bruce Wayne and the Wayne fortune has somehow completely disappeared and after after Bruce Wayne's Batman's funeral, we as the readers find out that his death was staged using his own you know, chemistry genius that suspended vital signs. Clark Kent is at the funeral

and we see him wink at Robin after he hears Bruce Wayne's heartbeat start up again. And then at an indeterminate amount of time later Bruce Wayne leads robin all of her queen and the rest of his followers. So that vigilante army of his into the caverns below the bat cave. And they they the idea is he's now going to be continuing his war on crime. Okay. So here's the thing. Every storyline, every issue anybody has with Batman, since this story is rooted in all of the stuff that gets introduced in this story. Because nearly everything gets written after 86. Some kind of response, somehow to this story.

Yeah, I'm seeing like very thematically, like there's certain things that were kind of itching under the surface and now we've just opened the whole wound. Like the stark difference between Batman and Superman philosophically plays out writ large now like there's no going back they are clearly frenemies at best Oh, yeah, you know, it's not like it's not like well you and I are both heroes who we're capes

So we're friends at now and it's like no that's never gonna be again Yeah, so and friends at now. And it's like, no, that's never going to be again. Yeah. So. And it's interesting that one of the things that Miller has said in interviews was part of his inspiration for writing the whole series was all of the stories in the comics up to that point where Batman and Superman had been shown as being, you. Right. And he was like that always rubbed me so much the wrong way. Because like, look at who these guys are. Sure. Like, look at the way these guys operate.

Look at the differences in their philosophy. No. Now, anybody who has read Miller's other Batman work, especially all star Batman and Robin known as Aspar. Two people like me who are critics of it. In the 2000s, there was a series, there is still, as far as I know, ongoing a series, all star Batman and Robin. As far as I can.

Yeah, yeah. And it's Miller doing the writing and somebody else doing the artwork, other people doing the artwork. And Miller, since the 80s, I mean Miller started out being, you know, kind of a comic book answer to Stefan Millius, you know, or not Millius, am I thinking of Crap Conan the Barbarian. Oh, no, the movie. John Millius. Yeah, John Millius. Okay. He's kind of he's kind of the or the director with the Nietzsche fixation. Yeah, it's John Millius. Okay, John Millius. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

Like you said, Stephen Millius, I'm like, I know John Millius, but yeah, yeah, it's John, thinking of John Millius. Yeah, sure. Miller, Miller kind of started out in the 80s being comic, comics answered to John Millius. Okay. You know, I remember what I, what I added to this script was a lot of guns. You know, that's, that's kind of, kind of Miller's ethos too. You know, toxic masculinity.

I just like dumped the toxic masculinity in there. And, and he started out like that and then got worse. And there's a recurring theme in all star Batman and Robin of like every other hero in the DC canon being like incompetent or somehow cartoonish. Right. Like Batman is superlative because they're all dumb. Yeah. Yeah. And Batman is an asshole about it. Right. Like there's a whole series of bits in AS bar where Batman knows he's going to have to deal with Hal Jordan one way or another and he always shows up in a yellow costume

Like like like with you know having having like and you can see Like Miller makes a point in the writing of somebody noticing that the paint on everything in the room is still wet That he just had it all painted yellow The four Hal Jordan is gonna show up because that's his weakness and how stupid is that weakness. That's the kind of writing that Miller does about all of the other heroes in DC. It's really clear, he just doesn't like them. For some reason, Hal Jordan in particular gets the short end to the stick all over queen a little bit less But that's mostly because he's enough like Batman that you know, whatever he'll pass and and Superman is just a tool

Like he's a Patsy. He's a tool, you know, and that's all all that that's all about with with you know his outlook on things and so You know, so in, in the Dark Knight Returns, that's the role Superman wants to play because Miller has this idea that anybody with that kind of optimism and that kind of genuine moral goodness has to be kind of a simple to me. Well, in those times that that analysis is not too far from the mark. At that time, you know, in the 80s,

idealists were few and far between. The last good one got attacked by a rabbit and then didn't get reelected. Mike. So, yeah. You know, it's interesting to point that out. The very last of the Merovingian kings before the Carol engines, There's actually a French children's song about the last of the Marovigen kings that talks about him being afraid of a rabbit. Yeah.

That was, I mean, Carol engine propaganda, of course. Sure. Like still. Yeah, yeah. It's intro, the parallel was interesting. Just that occurred to me. Sure. But yeah, so Miller introduced,

made all of this stuff blatant because Miller has never been subtle. Read 300 for God's sake. You'll see immediately subtle is not his bag. Right. Historical accuracy, context. Let me try to make comic books. You know, come on. historical accuracy, context, new or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... New or... Well, I would point it out if I could remember his name shit. What's his name? Not Miller the other guy always confusing with Alan Moore Oh, yeah, Alan Moore pointed out he's like look comics are absolutely a

Volga medium like it's it's for people who are poor to be able to read So you know, yeah, there's and there's some other stuff that Alan Moore has sent lately that we've already talked about and My opinion of Alan Moore has not been improved by the stuff that's came out of his mouth, but anyway But anyway, yeah, so artistic genius and kind of a crank Yeah, and Miller I'm gonna stop shy of calling calling Miller an artistic genius, but definitely a gifted artist. And a towering crank. And so yeah, so the thing is this modern conception that we have of Batman as being somebody who goes down and beats up on poor people and mentally ill, and who is just on the edge of unhinged.

Right. That's all Miller. Like, like the idea that, you know, Batman is just this rage beast that is constantly on the edge of just going berserk and losing it. That is a hundred percent Miller. We don't see that in his character until the dark night. And in many ways, like you said, that was absolutely a repudiation of camp Batman from the 1960s. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was Frank Miller going all I'll take your you know, can't be Kitty show and tell you where to shove it because this is this is you know Batman's

manly right manly means he doesn't have any emotions other than anger. Yeah, you know, yeah, you didn't feel nothing. He didn't have to hear.. He never laughs. You know, that's weak gay stuff, man. No. Yeah. You can make him like a Persian. Ha, ha, ha. Rather than a sparse. Yeah.

Anyway, says the history teacher. But, you know, so, so, yeah. I know that we're running way up against past our time. So I think- Good, we got another seven minutes before I'm going to start signaling to you. Okay. Sorry, yeah. But, you know, and so Miller followed up the Dark Knight with Batman year one. Okay.

And Batman year one was a not really a retcon, but it was delving into, okay, no, seriously, what did the first year of Batman's career as a crime fighter in Gotham look like? Oh, okay. And the thing is, it's really weird to juxtapose Miller's work as the writer and artist in Dark Knight with his work as only the writer, because again, timelines are a thing. Right. You know, on year one, and in year one, it is much less, there's not the same level of overt, crypto fascist kind of messaging, you know, a strong man, you know, maintaining order by force over the underclass. It's not that same thing going on, it really is in many ways. They return to his roots as a fighter

against, you know, the corrupt elements within the upper class and law enforcement within Gotham. And there's, there, there are some moments of some really stellar dialogue. There's a really great moment where Batman shows up, you know, he somehow blows all the lights out at a dinner party. One of the mob bosses is hosting a whole bunch of glitterati from the upper class of Gotham society. Of course, everybody knows he's a mobster, you know, but everybody's rich, nobody cares. The lights go out and the window bangs open and the next thing everybody sees is this cowled figure who has somehow landed in the middle of the dinner table that everybody

is sitting around. And he has this great speech about, you know, you've been feasting while others have gone hungry and you know, and and you know, basically calls them out for all their corruption and and you know, basically says the time your time of reckoning is at hand and then disappears like an ninja. And and it's this remarkably populist, uh, you know, uh, uh, anti-anti-corrupt upper class, you know, anti-corrupt upper class, you know, kind of, kind of talk. You know, it should be noted this is also the same series in which Gordon at the same time, we also follow, you know, Gordon's first year in the in the Gotham Police Department has a detective where the commissioner, the then commissioner tells Gordon's

partner to essentially beat him nearly to death as a warning because Gordon is too upright and the rest of the rest of the forces is corrupt. So he's a threat. Right. And Gordon has the great internal line at one point, but a long time since I had to beat the crap out of a green brain. And somehow, and like we never, we never get that explained. Like we don't find out what his background is, but he winds up

no kidding beating the absolute daylights out of this guy who we think at first is gonna wreck him. Right. He cheats, of course, he somehow gets ahold of a baseball bat. But, you know, he still winds up. Yeah, and he winds up sending a signal back to his boss by beating up the guy that was sent to beat him up and leaving him handcuffed naked in the snow. So again, the hypermasculinity hasn't gone anywhere. And the Charles Branson fan clubbing kind of stuff is still in full effect. Sure. But the story, but the themes of the story and the scale of the story is way tighter. And I really think in some ways, people are going to call me a heretic for this. But I think in some ways, it's a much better story just narratively because the stakes

are lower. They're just as intense because we're looking at Gordon's wife and his pregnant wife is at one point threatened. And we're watching Bruce has been away from Gotham for the last 15 years or something like, something like it, you know, studying martial arts and learning to be the world's best detective and now it shows up and like on his first night, he like just messes everything up. Like he, he, he, he, he, he botches a landing, trying to jump between buildings and, and you know, he's very clearly still learning the ropes

of what it is that he's going to become. So it's a really remarkable story, and it re-asserts a lot of things out of the canon. And so there was this deconstruction that Miller did with the Dark Knight. And then he kind of reasserted a lot of stuff or reconstructed a lot of things with the year one. And again, we see the kind of the nascent beginnings of some of the, of the, you know, colorful cartoonish villains, but the real bad guys at the beginning of year one are again mobsters and corrupt cops. And, and so in a way, year one is, is itself a response to his earlier work, a response to his earlier work, literally once before on the dark night. And so, but we do still see, in this point, we do still see the theme of Batman dealing with common street criminals, which is Rich Guy beating up on, on poor underclass. And, and we see the

very beginnings of the reintroduction of a Joker, you know, as a character. Sure. And, and I think kind of the last thing I want to point out about the dark night, because I know it's gonna come up when we talk about the Nolan films. There has been this tendency in the Batman mythos in certainly in the 2000s to turn the joker into this protean tied mystically somehow to Batman. You know, they're these two polar opposite kind of figures, always circling each other kind of thing in the mythos, which wasn't there at the beginning of the Joker. The original Joker was a psychotic murderer, and a smart enough villain to be a threat to Batman,

but that was kind of it. And the role of the Joker has changed into this this kind of, you know, again, the nemesis. Yeah, yeah. And this, you know, the, the, not merely nemesis, but antithesis. Yes. And and and I think part of that is owed to the Joker being in a catatonic state and suddenly waking up when Batman comes back. Because because that that is the first time that we see that connection. weird level of like,

it's like there's this karmic dance between the two of them all. Yeah, yeah, oh man, karmic is a great way of describing it or this weird psychic quantum entanglement between them, you know, and that's kind of the first time we see that happen in the mythos. And so, so those are elements of the modern character that I think we need to be, anytime we see that come up, it's good to remember, oh, hey, we're looking at Miller for a variety of reasons. And next I want to talk about the killing joke. Yeah, you know Alan Moore Interesting he got mentioned a moment ago. Yeah, and

But I but I think that's that's gonna take more time than we have left in in this particular episode So what what is your biggest takeaway at this point? I'm starting to see a lot of the elements take away at this point. Um, I'm starting to see a lot of the elements, uh, you know, it's similar to, okay, so I love Marvel movies. I don't really, you know, love DC movies. And in Marvel movies, what I've really enjoyed was the fan service that they've done where they'll, they'll, it'll be a throwaway line, but they'll put something in there that I'm like, oh, that's from the comics. Uh, or, oh, that's from this storyline or, you know, whatever.

Like the whole infinity war and endgame was exactly that. And same goes for Star Wars movies now that Disney has bought it and rendered all of the books to be not canon. Now they're taking the best parts of those books and incorporating them into the movies and into the series that they make. And I love when they do that because it is the things that I love getting shown on screen. And so it's kind of cool to see that there are those same things happening through the Batman movie franchises. I really love that.

And I do think it's interesting that in 1966, you still had people supporting World War, the Vietnam War, at overwhelming numbers. And then by 1968, you start to see that slipping away. And I forget what year it actually tipped. But by 1986, there is such a cynicism that grabs a hold of our culture that there is such a distrust of all of us, as well as the government, that Superman is now a tool of a system that is inexorably broken. And that Batman is the one thing standing in the way of total chaos of multi-ethnic gangs. Yeah.

If they were just white gangs, then at least they'd be respectable and rich, and then he could just fight them. But instead they're multi-ethnic, so you know there are a problem. But what do you call it? Just that you've got this 1986, the beginning of the desire to isolate

from to resegregate because of the problems that have been caused by never fully desegregating, starting to show up in the culture and that's being reflected in the darker, grittier, gravely voiced more Batman in the Miller thing. So I just, you know, again, it's product of the times. And I wonder how much he was purposely doing and how much it was just, you know, sticking to our thesis of authorial intent doesn't mean dick. you know, sticking to our thesis of authorial intent doesn't mean dick.

It, you know, Miller, Miller is one of those authors that it's really tough to tell. Because like he will say stuff like in interviews that makes you think really hard, that okay, this clearly, and I'm not talking about like, oh yeah, no, I totally meant to do that. But like, he'll make remarks that make it seem like, okay, this sounds like a guy who did that on purpose. But then he'll turn around and say something else completely like acidine, and you're like, I don't know if this guy is smart enough to do that.

Right. And I know, I know, and the thing is, you know, I know, I know that there are going to be people who are going to be like, man, man, you're being mean. And I don't mean to say that Miller isn't a smart guy. I mean that like, he lets his mouth run and he's an unreconstructed boomer in so many ways that it becomes hard for me to believe that he was doing it intentionally. Well, in in 86, being a boomer was not a bad thing. Being a boomer was being ascendant.

Well, yeah. Yeah, like, boomers haven't been, I mean, they've always been shitty, but society has demanded more from them as far as not being shitty part only recently. Yeah, no, it's true. So, yeah. So anyway, that's, yeah. Cool. So, where can people find you on the social medias? I can be found on, let's see, on Twitter, I'm at EH Playlock.

On the TikTok, I'm also at EH Playlock. And on Instagram, I'm at Mr. Playlock. And of course, if anybody wants to point out how I've screwed up any part of the Batman timeline if you want to come at me about my opinions of the Racial Goal Stories or you're a, you know, Miller fanboy who, you know, wants to tell me something, then you can find me at any of those addresses, you can find us at Geek History Time. And where can they find you? You can find me at Duh Harmony on the Twinshtagram. And yeah, that's pretty much it.

You can find me every Tuesday night on Twitch.tv for Sash Capital Punds. That's still going strong, so come check that out, support us. And yeah, please tell your friends about this podcast, rate, subscribe, review, that kind of thing. We would love to get our numbers up so that we could make some money off of this. Yeah, it'd be nice. That would be fun. Although we keep doing this for the love of it anyway. So, but don't let that stop you from giving us money. Yeah, please. Yeah. So, all right. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony.

And I am darkness. I am the night. I'm Ed Blalock and keep rolling 20s.