entropy_aegis

Looks like Clayface might be part of Reeves's upcoming Bat film.

Source

I'm almost certain that Reeves will use the OG Golden Age Karlo as the reference. He might merge him with certain other characters like Hush, Zsasz and the Impostor Batman from Tomlin's mini. There might even be elements from the Preston Payne version. The monster blob version is unlikely to be part of this universe. Maybe he'll get a chemical bath by the end that gives him a look of a melting man aesthetic but that's the extent of it. Not only does this fit the style, tone and precedent set by Reeves but also because CBMS are going downhill critically and commercially. People are losing interest in CGI monsters. Movies such as Creed, John Wick and Top Gun show that tastes in blockbusters have somewhat shifted. Batman's monster villains wouldn't even crack the top 10 in his rogues, arguably not even top 15 in terms of popularity or story value.

What amuses me is the eventuality of die hard fans turning on Reeves in favor of Gunn/DCU. CBM fans are seriously fickle. Imagine turning on a film maker because they don't want to use CGI blob villains or sidekicks.

Hey guys, been a while. Decided to drop a few thoughts on Batbooks and other Bat material in general.

First of all I'll simply say that the Superman books blow the Batman books away.

Part of my lack of interest in the characters these days is that DC insists on pushing narratively dead characters. Social media has lot to do with it. Twitter will make the most worthless character look like Spider-Man in terms of IP value.

The latest round of solicitation saw the cancellations of Robin and Batgirls. These books were dead on arrival. It wasn't just due to creative teams but also because these characters simply don't cut it. For years DC has bought the impression that Bat family characters are uber popular. The failure of the mentioned books and the Batwoman show, the subpar performance of the Gotham Knights game and the cancellation of Titans as well as the dumpster fire that is the Gotham Knights showshould put that idea to bed. It made no difference to Tec when it stopped being a family book. The Batfamily is Robin, Nightwing and Batgirl. They can add maybe one or two extra characters and that is it. I expect the Batman Incorporated book led by that awful POS character Ghost-Maker to get canned by September. From June onwards there will be more Bat villains books than there will be Batfamily books. Hopefully Peacekeeper-1 gets offed in Brave and the Bold so that we can mark the end of Tynion's largely awful tenure.

In other news, DC movies are bombing as well. Black Adam and Shazam: Fury of the Gods are screwed. Reports about Aquaman are not promising. I'm looking forward to Gunn's slate but I'm not going to get too excited. CBMs in general seem to be losing steam. I must confess that next to Top Gun, Creed and John Wick they come across as incredibly amateurish. The quality difference is astounding and those aren't Oscar bait movies either.

@tdk_1997: People who hate Dickbabs hate his run. It would be fine except these people really need to exert moral superiority for liking one ship over another. The most recent episode involved a Dickbabs shipper making some racist remarks against Anna Diop only for other Dickbabs shippers to prove that it was actually a an alt account of a Starfire fan. It's over Taylor's TL. I don't care about Dickbabs myself but Titans/Starfire fans really need to read the room. The Batfranchise obliterates the Titans franchise. Time to pack up and move on.

Ugh, Valmont. I also don't understand why they both cover their eyes. Daredevil can pull off such a look because he has the radar sense. Valiant and GM are both regular dudes with regular senses and functioning eyes. The frick?

I think Waid might get a Batman and Robin book. JL is an option but Williamson is a potential candidate as well.

The two books as of now exist only to show the readers what would happen if Eddie and Harvey stopped acting like Eddie and Harvey. A Riddler without Riddles is missing the point of the character. A Two-Face who cannot be redeemed essentially gets robbed of essentially the only interesting thing about him.

@tdk_1997: Taylor's book is nice but boy does it get a lot of controversy on Twitter. The shipping wars are just straight up ugly. The recent episode from Taylor's TL involved obscene racism. I personally think DC needs to gut the Titans franchise entirely or publish something set in the Wolfman years.

I like The Knight and I would have loved it if not for Ghost-Pisser. Someone at DC looked at those atrocious backups Tynion wrote and actually came to the conclusion that this was a character that they should push? What's worse is that they're giving him an ongoing called BATMAN INCORPORATED. They could sell ANY character under that title and that dumpster fire of a character came to their minds. He's the worst of Hush, Lincoln March and Duke Thomas rolled in to one. They should straight up publish a Ghost-Maker comic if they're that confident in him.

I wonder if Waid is being set up for a Bat ongoing?

If you thought that the Riddler issue was bad then boy oh boy wait till you read Two-Face's.

@vishop_: I'm starting to like Failsafe(the character), much to my own surprise. Though I don't take the soldier criticism seriously at all. I don't support that characterization but fans losing their minds over it was crap. This trend of dictating canon and characterization to the writers is maddening. Mostly it is driven by Batfamily fans who want to crap on Batman but want their favorites to hold his jockstrap.

@tdk_1997:I wouldn't mind some of these UL stories if they were back ups in the main book or Tec. Stories like the one with Ventriloquist and Croc. They're fun but absolutely do not require a separate book. Even some of the more promising looking up coming stories such as the Murder Club and Campbell's Nightwing should be back up features.

I must also admit to not caring about Batman vs Robin. Nezha is such a dumpster fire of a villain and the issue was too dragged out for what amounted to essentially 3 scenes. The return was underwhelming and the less that is said about Damian's direction the better. Even if one ignores the choices in characterization I still can't take the premise seriously. Possessed or not I can't see a Robin vs Batman fight being compelling. There's such a vast difference in physicals, skills and experience. If Robin gets a magic boost then it is not longer a Batman vs Robin fight.

In other news about ironies I can't help but laugh at how DC is handling Poison Ivy. The character is just broken at this point. First they split her in to 2 people (TWICE) so that they'd have a good one and an evil one. Now they want her to be disgustingly evil but still a lesbian icon, CLAPS! The Harley Quinn show and the current limited series have made it clear that she's going to be a genocidal maniac while Harley is going to be a hero (of sorts) and Batfamily member/adjacent. This is delicious. A lot of fans assumed that Ivy was treated as a villain so that she could have utility as a Batman nemesis/femme fatale in order to service straight (and White) dudes. So they weaponized the LGBT card against Batman. Lesbian Ivy was supposed to a hero and Harley's equal partner in their eyes. Instead she just ended up becoming a villain for a character who was a lame villain to begin with. Not only is Ivy a villain but she's completely far gone at this point. She's worse than Joker in some ways. As a Batman adversary she had been a sympathetic villain with certain validity to her views.

@tdk_1997: The show will most likely get picked up by another service. Same situation as Sandman and Gotham . There's no denying that HBO Max is more limited next to Amazon Prime, Netflix, etc. I have no clue what's happening in Task Force Z either. Zombies, fake memories, resurrection formulas, Mr Bloom's motivations, etc are not jelling together at all.

@vishop_:I find Waid's reputation to be rather overrated. Yeah, he gets the spirit of classic cape comics better than almost anyone but I don't find his mainstream work particularly brilliant.

Harvey discovered Bruce's identity in Tomasi's Batman & Robin series. Only his good side knows though. Scott Snyder retained this aspect in All Star Batman. He was cured in Tomasi's Tec arc that coincided with Joker War.

I wish Ram V luck because he's going to need it to sell this supernatural stuff to the average Bat reader. Between this Future State Gotham, Batman vs Robin and Batman: The Knight it seems that DC is going all in with magic as a legit story device in Batcomics. Maybe they'll age up Damian and make him a mystical Batman. Ofcourse lots of DC fans are going to throw a fit if a Bat character ends up being the face of DC's occult world.

@tdk_1997: Jimenez has stated in interviews that he's been deliberately going for something more classic and timeless. It's almost an indirect admission that Tynion's run will age badly which is correct imo. The Eternal books are already outdated and Tynion's Batman run will face the same fate. The aesthetics, designs, characters, etc will be abandoned in a few years.

@tdk_1997: I wasn't blown away but Watters genuinely seems to have an idea about what to do with Az. Most other writers just put him in his Bat suit and try to relive the Knightquest era again. Watters has been writing JPV for a while and has streamlined his history. He's mostly avoided the usual lazy tropes that JPV is associated with. He's always gonna struggle against the system so that's something we're going to have to live with. Vengeance and possibly Father Valley make for better antagonists than the umpteenth evil Azrael pretender and Saint Dumas fodder. Maybe DC will toss it away but I appreciate Watters atleast trying .

@vishop_: It certainly toned down the shock factor. I expected the issue to sell Failsafe as a threat and it did succeed on that front.

Despite being a Morrison fan I actually don't like when writers use his stuff because they usually get it wrong .Snyder's Barbatos was crap. V seems to "get it" for now.

@vishop_: Many of DC's Bat titles were wrapping up by September so it kinda makes sense that they'd launch a few new books. Almost all of these books will wrap up by March. Hopefully they'll tone down the Batbooks by then. Though I must say that the upcoming Batman Inc has to be the least Morrisonesque version of a Morrison idea. Ghost-Maker and Clownhunter leading Batman INC is a slap to Morrison's legacy.

I enjoyed Batman and Tec though. I'll take Failsafe over Brother Eye. Ram V and Zdarsky at least seem to understand the Morrison concepts they're using. Sword of Azrael was decent too. Overall, I'd say that Batman and Tec are the strongest they've been since the Morrison/Dini era

I've been looking at the news with great interest and I have to say that I'm not a least bit saddened at all. A lot of DC projects existed for vanity reasons. They would create content and spin offs based on the wishes of certain creative, actor or due to affiliation to a major brand (almost entirely Batman).

The Harley Quinn series does NOT require a spin off about f#cking Kite-Man. There's no justification for a Black Canary solo feature that uses the flop Birds of Prey film as a launch pad. Why were they making a Supergirl flick when they cannot even get Superman right? who asked for a tv show starring a non character like Val Zod? There was never any need for that atrocious Gotham Knights show and Batwoman was a disaster from day one. The DCEU needed a hard reboot and this is what those actually look like period. If Black Adam succeeds then let it be its own Shazam verse. Otherwise just release Aquaman 2 and Flashpoint then be done with it.

Even though I really liked the Matt Reeves I still cannot feel the need to justify a Penguin series. The decision to cancel the GCPD show was the right one. We just had Gotham which was about cops and Penguin's rise to power. The sequel to the Joker film also takes place in Arkham and features a Harley like character. Reeves's Arkham show sounds similar to that. These projects are just too redundant. Catwoman getting a spin off would've made the most sense.

On the animated side of things, I expect the Superman cartoon to get moved to CN. The Batman cartoon will also most likely move to CN but after quite a bit of censorship. I don't mind because as it turns out censorship is what kept Timm in check during his BTAS days. YJ can get canned, Weisman has been stringing along his fanboys for a decade now. Doom Patrol and Titans are nearing the end of their runs anyway. CW should just die already.

Far as I'm concerned all this is needed.