What wouldn’t Batman say?: As Albert Ching shared on the main page yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter has an article of great interest to the comics world regarding Warner Bros.’ relationship with DC Comics, with CEO Barry Meyer characterizing it as changing from “custodial” to “entrepeneurial” and promising a big organizational announcement next week. What could it be? Heidi “The Beat” MacDonald suspects that it’s the long-rumored move of DC HQ from NYC to LA (Or somewhere else on the West Coast…I just got caught up withe acronyms there for a second). But let’s not lose focus on the really intersting part of the Hollywood Reporter story: It includes an anecdote in which Meyer was told by someone at DC in a meeting “But Batman wouldn’t say that.” What wouldn’t Batman say? I know we all think we know Batman pretty well, and he does have a pretty distinct voice for a comics character, but once I started thinking about things Batman would never, ever say, I couldn’t really think of anything. “Does this make me look fat?” or “Are you going to finish that sandwich?” were among the first two that came to mind, but I could totally hear Diedrich Bader’s Brave and the Bold Batman voice saying both of those…and anything similarly silly. Is there any thing so cheesy Batman could say that you couldn’t imagine Adam West’s Bat-voice repeating it? Is there anything so harsh and vulgar that Batman might say that you couldn’t imagine appearing in a dialogue bubble of Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder, with a thick black bar over it? The next place I went was pop culture references and catch phrases, but then I realized the old Bob Haney Batman would certainly say such things. Man, I can not think of anything that no Batman would ever say. Maybe—maybe—”Make mine Marvel,” but I imagine there are circumstances in which even that phrase could be uttered by a Batman…
Librarians are surprisingly easy to knock down: Exhibit A.
MTV comic book movie news: Blake Lively won’t be Star Sapphire in the first Green Lantern movie, but there are plenty of hints that she will be in a future one. So if you want to see Lively in a front-less fuschia latex sheathe, be sure to see the GL movie repeatedly opening weekend, I guess. Meanwhile, The Avengers‘ Jeremy Renner says movie Hawkeye won’t be wearing his familiar purple get-up, but will instaed wear a costume that’s “a little more reality-based” and “not a big, puple comics sort of thing.” Will he still wear a hat with a giant H on it and a loin cloth over his pants? Will he use unsettling slang?
“Cuba as Seen Through Cartoons”: The Wall Street Journal has a Q-and-A interview with Inverna Lockpez and Dean Haspiel about their new original grpahic novel, Cuba: My Revolution, “a ficitonal tale inspired by” Lockpez’ real life. For more on the book, publisher Vertigo’s blog has a couple of substantial posts, including this one on Haspiel’s cover process.
