Paul Dini as also the story editor on Lost and one of the main writers on the Batman animated series.
By the way for you guys who enjoyed the game, you might want to check out Arkham Asylum: Living Hell. It's not really a Bat-Man story per say, as he shows up in about 3 or 4 pages in the entire paperback. It's the story of a white collar criminal Warren White, very much a Bernie Madoff type, who is on trial and thinks he beat the system by pleaing insanity. He ends up being sent to Arkham and well.... things go badly for him.
The book is funny though very dark at times. Warren has to find a way to survive being locked up with the Joker, Scarecrow, Two-Face, and just about rest of Batman's villains. It gets a little too strange at the end (though read it over a few times and you'll start to appreciate that), but it's a great showcase for the villains, the Arkham facility, and the employees who work there. I consider the book to be one of DC's best stand alone mini's.
I just finished reading Batman: Arkham City #1, the mini-series that's supposed to bridge the gap between the two games. The book is okay. The plot is really getting rushed though, and the set-up or Arkham City just gets tossed out there, without a real justified arguement. Without posting too many specifics here's a general run-down of the story so far:
Spoiler Alert!!!
It starts off recapping (what I assume) are the final moments of the Joker fight from the first game, and then a few pages about what happened to him afterwards including some after-effects from the Titan Formula. Also, some of the Titan Formula got out of Gotham and got into the hands of a couple of Two-Face's thugs who start going on a citywide rampage. While this is going on the Mayor starts making speaches about cracking down on costumed criminals. The mayor is also shown to be controlled by his psychiatrist who seems to be some shadowed sinister figure.
The next day a dedication of the new City Hall takes place and the two super powered thugs try to disrupt the event. Batman stops them, but not before they manage to blow up the building. After this happens, the Mayor uses it as an excuse to create Arkham CIty - a walled in portion of Gotham City where all the Arkham criminals will be placed to fend for themselves, while a private army ensures that no one leaves it. Batman deduces that the plan is too well put together for the Mayor and that there is someone else behind this.
End story.
I avoid reading it becaue of spoilers.
BTW, Jeff Loeb, has anyone read anything decent he's done? The two things of his I have read are pretty eh.
In the 90's and early part of 2000's Jeff Loeb wrote some excellent stories like Batman: The Long Halloween and Superman For All Seasons. Batman: Hush was pretty good too, though not exactly outstanding. But he hasn't written anything good in years. In fact, he single handled ruined the entire Marvel Ultimates universe with his Ultimates 3 and Ultimatum mini-series. I suppose it's fairly impressive for one man to destroy a successful line of comics that had been ruining smooth for 7 years in a matter of 7 months. To be fair he had a personal tragedy a couple years ago when he son died of bone cancer, and I think that may have done something to his creativity.
Ah, Long Halloween didn't impress me or Aspro.
Superman Batman Supergirl wasn't great either.
Hush was okay...
Here's a new interview with Micheal Keaton reflecting back on his role:
"I knew we were in trouble in talks for the third one when certain people started the conversation with ‘Why does it have to be so dark?’ ‘Why does he have to be so depressed?’ ‘Shouldn’t there be more color in this thing?’ I knew I was headed for trouble and that it wasn’t a road I was going to go down.”"
You know I didn't think Batman Forever was that bad of a movie. Sure there was color, but it was a lot of over the top colors. Magenta, chartruese, bright yellows, purples etc. It was very reflective of how comic books looked at the time, even Batman. Plus I think the black, white, and red that was the entire color palatte of Batman Returns would have gotten a little old if they went that route one more time. Really I think the biggest problem with the movie was they were revisiting Batman's identity crisis which had sort of already been done in the first two movies. Now in Batman and Robin they totally went overboard with the look, but every aspect of that movie sucked.
robio said:You know I didn't think Batman Forever was that bad of a movie. Sure there was color, but it was a lot of over the top colors. Magenta, chartruese, bright yellows, purples etc. It was very reflective of how comic books looked at the time, even Batman. Plus I think the black, white, and red that was the entire color palatte of Batman Returns would have gotten a little old if they went that route one more time. Really I think the biggest problem with the movie was they were revisiting Batman's identity crisis which had sort of already been done in the first two movies. Now in Batman and Robin they totally went overboard with the look, but every aspect of that movie sucked.
I watched Forever again recently, it's not a bad film, but it's certainly not as good as the original or Returns. I didn't mind Schumacher's...take on Gotham in Forever, certainly more so than what would come later.
Forever was okay when I saw it, pretty good.
It's just the next Schumacher film that killed it.
Oh I forgot to mention this last week but I picked up Batman Arkham City #2. For anyone who was planning on picking up this mini series.....don't. It's getting bad. The first book was okay, though I thought the plot was being rushed through. Now almost the very opposite is going. Issue 2 is much slower paced, but the problem is it takes 3 or 4 pages to make a point that could have been in half of that. This story just cannot find a pace to save its life, which is really odd for a mini-series.
There was one very cool scene though when they show a convict who was chosen to live in Arkham City who really is just a small-time guy and is scared to death to be locked up in an open area with the true psychos. Helps hammer the point of how dangerous things will be inside of it. Still... it's kind of hard to quite buy into the overall plot of "crime is so bad in Gotham that we're going to seal off half the city and make it a prison." Even with a criminal mastermind pulling strings, I don't see how anyone could buy into that logic.
Anyway there ya go. I'll let you know if issue 3 is better next month, but if it's not I'm dumping this book.
Thanks for the heads up.
Arkham City #3 came out yesterday and now I can say I am officially done reading this crap. As a single book it really wasn't bad, though it's being dumbed down for a wider or younger audience. Batman books tend to be a little more intelligent than this. Not to spoil anything, but there's sort of a swerve going on in this book. However if you can't figure it out by the 4th page of the issue you probably still get coloring books for Christmas. There's nothing real subtle about it, so like I said this is Batman dumbed down.
The bigger problem is that this just doesn't fit with the narrative of the first two books. This just feels liike it's doing its own thing and was thrown in just to stretch out the story. When these all get collected and put into a TPB this section is going to feel very out of place.
Anyway, if you were considering buying it at some point.... don't. It certainly feels like filler, but I don't think it really fills the gap between the two games. It was just an attempt to build some extra interest and take people's money at the same time.
Review of Batman Arkham City Comic
"I still see the tableau in my mind's eye, the way I dreamed it would end. Batman, one fist raised in a last pathetic act of defiance, a brave oath dying on his lips as I crushed the life out of him. And above it all, my laughter rising over the crack of his bones."
These are the first words spoken by The Joker in DC Comics' Batman: Arkham City prequel story, which hit store shelves today. Writer Paul Dini, who also penned the Arkham Asylum and Arkham City games, does a nice job of picking up the pieces from Arkham Asylum's ending and spinning them into an engaging new plot thread. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but I should note that this story shows the event that leads to the construction of Arkham City, and also doesn't waste any time putting all of the game's major players (that we know of) into motion. The Joker and Two-Face are in surprisingly bad shape at the beginning of this tale. With these brief teases out of the way, I won't give away any more; just read it for yourself. Fair warning: It makes the wait for the game all the more excruciating.
This comic is beautifully drawn by Carlos D'Anda, the concept artist for the Arkham Asylum and Arkham City games, and is available with two different covers: one by D'Anda (above), and the other with a black and white render in the same style as Game Informer's Arkham City covers.
Today's release is just the first chapter in a five-issue series, which (oddly) isn't monthly. The second issue is coming sooner than expected, and will be available on May 25. Between each issue, DC is also releasing eight-page digital interludes focusing on Batman's villains. The comic retails for $2.99. The interludes, which are not available yet, will be 99 cents and are likely to be available on DC's website, as well as their tablet apps.