Batman: The Killing Joke (Higgins & Bolland)

[AquaParade]

I posted this in the DC relaunch thread, but here's a thread anyway:

Hi all, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the classic Alan Moore tale "Batman: The Killing Joke". Even more than that, I'd be curious to hear your opinion on the coloring done by John Higgins and Brian Bolland.

My Absolute Edition of "The Killing Joke" arrived yesterday and I've fallen in love with the book all over again, after leaving it behind for over a decade. Aside from the gorgeous presentation of the Absolute line, and the concise yet layered execution of the story by Moore, my enjoyment was greatly bolstered by reading the book with the original coloring, done by Watchmen's John Higgins. Wow, if you ask me, Brian Bolland really screwed the pooch with his re-coloring of the book, which is the more common version to be found. I enjoy the book twice as much now with Higgins psychedelic canvas, as it compliments the insanity of the story.

EDIT: Link to a good rundown of the difference in coloring - https://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/7828621.html

[Leo656]

It's good. I don't have a strong preference either way for the coloring. I grew up with one of the earlier editions, but I purchased the hardcover edition that was re-colored and included the story from "Batman: Black & White" a few years ago, and it was fine. They both look good to me for different reasons; I often defer to authorial intent and they've said the re-coloring better fits their original vision, but I can see it from either side.

It will most likely remain my personal canon Joker origin for a long as I live no matter how many different versions exist. So far they've all fallen short and I feel like Moore, despite wanting things to be open to interpretation, more or less delivered the final word on the subject. Thus, I generally roll my eyes at every take that's come since. My writing teacher used to say, "If you can't rework an old idea and do it BETTER than the people who did it before you, then don't bother." And anyone who thinks they could ever out-write Alan Moore is arrogant and foolish.

The only thing that bothers me is that Moore himself has dismissed it often and hard. But then, he's generally a crab-ass.

[AquaParade]

Interesting thoughts. I hear you on authorial intent. Typically, I might feel that way too, but I find Higgins colors to fit the mood so much better. The drama his colors conveyed enhanced the story. Also, I found Bollands flashback sequences sort of corny with their color-drained palette, leaving only red for choice objects in each scene....cause he's The Red Hood I guess?
Either way, it's great fun to have both versions in one book in order to compare the two of them. As Higgins says in the afterword, he prefers a 'past that is "multiple choice', which is quite fitting, given the material.

Moore is def a crab. At this point, I'm convinced he only spits on his old work because he doesn't own it and would rather be remembered for his own creations. He hates DC and is willing to cut off an appendage or two to spite them. It comes back to how you feel about freelance work, I suppose, but it's somewhat understandable. Still, I don't believe him when he acts like the work isn't good.

Plus, it's funny to see how much the dude hates Morrison. Pretty sure Grant has just been successfully trolling the dude for a while now. Seems like he knows how to irritate Moore.

[Leo656]

Well, I do hear his criticism of that particular story. It's "ugly" (not the art, but the plot and what happens), it's mean-spirited, it's not his BEST work even though it's his most-talked about... pretty much everything he says is true.

It's just a case I encounter VERY often with people on any number of things be they comics, books, movie or what have you, where I hear their criticism and find it perfectly valid, BUT also feel like they take it way, way too far.

You're most likely right, in that he hates on his DC work purely because he doesn't get along with them anymore. The fact that waaaaaay back in the day, he was all-in on a goddamn Watchmen cartoon show and action figure line before they pulled the rug out from under him, kind of illustrates that his principles are very flexible and thus, a lot of what he says is at least a little bit sour grapes.

So yeah, I agree with his specific criticisms toward "Killing Joke" but I think he cares too much. It's also typical of writers to be hyper-critical of their own work. I just wish he could simply take the compliments people give him without feeling the need to derisively snort "It's not even THAT good of a story."

There's also something living in that beard of his, but I don't think I wanna know what.

I personally would love to see Moore and Morrison go at it in a "Pretentious C*cksucker" jousting match a'la American Gladiators. That would be keen. They both have done GREAT sh*t but they've both got their head jammed three feet up their own ass most of the time.

[AquaParade]

I just spent 45 minutes reading an account of the "feud" between Morrison and Moore. Morrison is definitely the bigger weirdo in this scenario, from what I've now read, but he's my favorite writer and I shouldn't be surprised.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

I just spent 45 minutes reading an account of the "feud" between Morrison and Moore. Morrison is definitely the bigger weirdo in this scenario, from what I've now read, but he's my favorite writer and I shouldn't be surprised.

Care to share a link, amigo?

[AquaParade]

Care to share a link, amigo?

Good idea. https://tractorforklift.wordpress.com/2019/03/04/the-reason-why-alan-moore-doesnt-like-grant-morrison/

Paints Morrison pretty bad, but to be fair, I've also found some bits of info in another article that aren't mentioned here. The author of this article seems to have left some relevant info out regarding some arguable aping of Morrison's work done by Moore, whether that info being left out is intentional or not, who knows. Interesting read nonetheless.

While I'm talking Morrison, let me just say he writes some of the best final issues in comics. Anyone with heartstrings should read the last issue of his Doom Patrol run (#63) or issue #12 of "The Invisibles", which can pretty much be read without context.

[AquaParade]

By the way, here are some examples of the difference in color:

https://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/7828621.html

[IMJ]

I have that absolute edition as well and I appreciated the re-coloring effort - but sometimes I wonder if that was done as an excuse to fill an Absolute edition for the book. It wouldn't have made the format without twice the page count, so....

It's a good story. I think it really gets it's fame from being one of the few times where the Joker is truly shown being an unhinged psychopath lacking completely in empathy. This as opposed to some dialog where someone explains how "twisted and evil" the Joker is, but on panel he just laughs and runs around doing weird ****. The Killing Joke takes an animated character and turns him into a scary guy given what he does with Barbara and so on.

I need to read it again, but that's how I left feeling about it. It's not that it's that captivating in it's art, or that there are truly exciting moments in it as much as it's a character study on actually making the Joker a ground level scary villain who kills, maims and rapes and then laughs about it.

[Leo656]

I pretty much agree with all that, but I do think the art elevates it to a certain degree, though.

Like, I seriously do feel that the story is so strong that it could work as a simple prose piece without pictures and still be just as captivating. But as we've seen with the animated adaptation, some mediocre art (and some bad line readings) can seriously undercut the work.

Honestly, I think the art in Killing Joke is still some of the all-time best Batman artwork that's ever been done. I still remember what it felt like to read it for the very first time at 7 years old; there was absolutely nothing else in mainstream super-hero comics that looked like that. Some of the regular monthly DC books felt just a little bit "flat" and ocasionally even lifeless by comparison. Nowadays with digital art programs even an amateur can produce pieces that outshine even Bolland's work but at the time of its release we'd never seen anything like it before. It was a revelation.

As I said, I can kind of feel either coloring style just fine but I think that only further speaks to how strong the linework is.

A bit off-topic, but this book kind of spoiled me as far as comic book art goes, and it's partly why I could never get into guys like Lawson or other "stylized" artists. I look at This and look at That, and where some people see "style" I just see people who don't want to work hard. Like Breyfogle's art is also "stylized" but it's also masterfully done. You can have "style" without it looking like you drew it with your feet.

Anyways, yeah, I really like the story but I've also really always loved the art.

[IMJ]

I pretty much agree with all that, but I do think the art elevates it to a certain degree, though.

Like, I seriously do feel that the story is so strong that it could work as a simple prose piece without pictures and still be just as captivating. But as we've seen with the animated adaptation, some mediocre art (and some bad line readings) can seriously undercut the work.

Honestly, I think the art in Killing Joke is still some of the all-time best Batman artwork that's ever been done. I still remember what it felt like to read it for the very first time at 7 years old; there was absolutely nothing else in mainstream super-hero comics that looked like that. Some of the regular monthly DC books felt just a little bit "flat" and ocasionally even lifeless by comparison. Nowadays with digital art programs even an amateur can produce pieces that outshine even Bolland's work but at the time of its release we'd never seen anything like it before. It was a revelation.

As I said, I can kind of feel either coloring style just fine but I think that only further speaks to how strong the linework is.

A bit off-topic, but this book kind of spoiled me as far as comic book art goes, and it's partly why I could never get into guys like Lawson or other "stylized" artists. I look at This and look at That, and where some people see "style" I just see people who don't want to work hard. Like Breyfogle's art is also "stylized" but it's also masterfully done. You can have "style" without it looking like you drew it with your feet.

Anyways, yeah, I really like the story but I've also really always loved the art.

So I can absolutely appreciate that from the perspective of reading it when it came out. I didn't read the Killing Joke until years, years, years after it was released when sure, Bolland's linework is great, but it looks a little dated in much the same way that Silver Age linework looks dated.

But yeah, had I read this when it was new I probably would have been blown away by the drawing.

[AquaParade]

I think the art is fantastic. You can't really speak about it without referring to Alan Moore though, because he is so hands on in the direction/panel sequencing, that the "storytelling" credit can't all go to Bolland, but each panel is meaningful and easy to understand. The story is told with perfect precision.
But even leaving that behind, the actual linework itself is just gorgeous. Art is always subjective, but I have to imagine anyone could learn to appreciate it.

[IMJ]

without referring to Alan Moore

So although I'm sort of an "Iron Man guy", my favorite comic of all time is....

https://i.imgur.com/Dej3yYYm.jpg

It is the only book I think I've written any kind of meaningful blurb about on the CGC census, and it was also oddly and luckily enough to be the first comic book I ever got as a kid. I actually keep that original copy I got from 1985 in the back of that slab's bag as a reader.

[AquaParade]

So although I'm sort of an "Iron Man guy", my favorite comic of all time is....

https://i.imgur.com/Dej3yYYm.jpg

It is the only book I think I've written any kind of meaningful blurb about on the CGC census, and it was also oddly and luckily enough to be the first comic book I ever got as a kid. I actually keep that original copy I got from 1985 in the back of that slab's bag as a reader.

That's a great collectible. I've yet to read that issue, but I know it's beloved.

Speaking of Iron Man, I'm going to be picking up the new #1 tomorrow. Hoping I'll have a Marvel book I can follow monthly.

[Leo656]

Ah man, that one's great. I don't have the actual issue but I have the story in a few different reprint collections. What a gem.

I'm going over the Alan Moore/Grant Morrison article bit by bit, and the part where Morrison said Watchmen wasn't very good almost had me chip a tooth. This from the guy who gave us "Final Crisis". :lol:

And I actually love Final Crisis. But I'm like one of five people. And at least on the occasions where Alan Moore decides to go full "David Lynch" his babbling still makes sense without a road map and a tour guide. Can't say that about Morrison. :lol: What a rube.

[Voltron]

Do you think Bats killed Joker at the end?

[Leo656]

No. For the very simple reason that the script is included in most of the more recent versions of the story and the script doesn't say anything about that, nor even hints at that in the slightest. It spends 87 minutes on describing the ripples in the puddles on the ground, yet gives absolutely no descriptive evidence that that is what the final panels were meant to convey.

It was merely an unfortunately ambiguous choice by the artist, and nothing more than that. People lean into that theory because they like to have fun with it, but it goes very much against the way Alan Moore writes. That isn't the kind of thing he would leave ambiguous. If nothing else, the script would hint towards that conclusion, but it simply does not. When Moore wants you to infer a conclusion he leads you there directly while stopping short of spelling it out in bold, and the rest is up to you as the reader to figure out but it's still all rather clear what his point was. That's true of everything he's done from "Watchmen" to "Lost Girls"; he's not just vague and mysterious for Vague and Mysterious's Sake. He would have at least put it in the script so the penciller would know that was the intent of the scene, with directions to "keep it vague, but here's what happens." Yet it's not in there.

Like "Black April O'Neil", it was just an unfortunately vague depiction by the penciller which certain people read way too much into and others now mistakenly latch onto it as fact despite no firm supportive evidence.

Not to mention, every single thing in that story is treated as "Hard Canon" MOST of the time in the mainstream DC Universe, in which the Joker is still alive. it would be ridiculous for Every Single Thing about the story to be in-canon, and then one single panel of it be an "ElseWorlds" thing because "He totally killed Joker, you guys!" Sure, except a month later in the monthly books they talk about him crippling Barbara. Which means that this story - ALL of it - happened in the mainstream DCU and is canon.

It's a theory that sounds intriguing for a second when someone floats it to you when you're passing the bong around or hanging out at Denny's at 2am or whatever, and then turns entirely silly and completely falls about if you think about it for more than five seconds.

If people WANT to think that's what happened, well... that's their prerogative. But it absolutely isn't what happened.

[AquaParade]

I believe it is meant to be ambiguous. It's a weird ending and there is so much focus on death and the fact that one of them will end up killing each other throughout the story and then we get to Batman telling Joker this could be their very last chance, before Joker refutes and tells the (killing?) joke. There is also some visuals and symbolism that could point towards this if you want to look at it that way.
The constant focus on Batman and Joker being locked on this course where one of them will eventually kill the other seems sort of out place and overly focused on if there is indeed no payoff to that. So, I do think it is meant to he ambiguous. I wouldn't put it past Moore to tiptoe around it in the script.
I mean, to each their own though.

[Leo656]

I think merely acknowledging the fact that they are indeed locked in a death-struggle with no way out was poignant enough and got the point across without there actually needing to be a "payoff".

Not everything needs an answer. Sometimes it's enough that one acknowledges the fact that there is indeed a question. In this story's case, "Why are we doing this when we know it can only end One Way?" And neither one of them has an answer, they can only be Who They Are because in the end it's all they know how to do. And therein lies the tragedy.

You don't actually need to show someone's neck getting snapped to get that point across.

Moore himself has said that the ultimate point the story was trying to make was very simply that both Batman and The Joker are a similar brand of "crazy", and are each defined by Death and Tragedy and simply cope in different but equally-unhealthy ways. It was never about a "payoff", it was merely a character study of two people who hate each other, despite not even knowing anything about each other, and who have more in common than not but can never even truly acknowledge that connection, that same-ness, because whether by choice or by destiny they're forever locked in opposition, the Irresistable Force and the Immovable Object. It wasn't "building" to anything; the entire story is merely a rumination on that theme of how alike the two of them really are, once you get past the surface of things. And the final scene, I think, illustrates that quite well.

Moore has said often that one of his biggest peeves with the story, is that people over-think it and project meaning onto it that goes far away from anything he intended to be read into it. In saying that HE doesn't think it's even very good, he talks vaguely about people projecting their own ideas onto it and making it out to be a much bigger and grander tale than what he actually put on paper. I have to believe that "Batman killed the Joker" is probably what he means, more than any other singular thing else about it. I can't imagine it sits well to have a ton of people repeatedly and forcefully insist upon something you know for a fact you didn't put into the material. Speculation is one thing but many people insist this theory to be factual, and IF that wasn't Moore's intent - and again, I highly doubt that it ever was - then it HAS to be very annoying by now.

But yeah, this was one of those "What the story is About is much more important than what happens IN the story" situations, as per Moore himself. And it's not about building to a final confrontation, it's merely a character study of two similarly-broken people who happen to be on a collision course, and a rumination on the futility of it all. Again, I defer to authorial intent.

I think "...And then he f*cking killed him" kind of cheapens a lot of what the story was meant to be about after all of that, honestly. I don't know. You have to kind of insist that that's what happened and then work backwards in order for any of that theory to work. It's not in any way contradictory but nonetheless very forced. It always came off as very "What if we're in the Matrix right now?" kind of stuff, to me, to be blunt.

People can think whatever they want, I'm just saying, evidence strongly suggest that the ending isn't meant to be read that way.

[AquaParade]

Bolland himself who drew the thing plays up the ambiguous nature of it all the time. Moore might have written the thing but Bolland deserves as much a say if not more than anyone else and he loves to get fans talking about it.

I agree you don't need to "show" anyone's neck getting snapped, which they don't. Ambiguous, not explicit. Like the ending of Inception. It is meant to spur discussion. Did Batman kill Joker? Why did the laughing suddenly cut out in the next panel? Is Batman finally cracking like the Joker did? Or whatever else you can come up with.

[Leo656]

He can say what he likes, Brian Bolland did not write the script. He could have chosen to draw it that way for any number of reasons, but that doesn't make his word on the subject the final one.

It's fine that people choose to interpret it "their way" but that doesn't mean that's what Moore intended when he wrote it.

I'm factoring in the way he writes stories in general, the things detailed (or not) in the script itself, what Moore himself says we're meant to take from it, and the fact that in 30 years he himself has never done much more than chuckle or roll his eyes when the subject comes up. One would think by now, especially given his disdain (or at the minimum, his disinterest) for that particular piece of work, that he'd have "spilled the beans" by now if he wrote that scene with killing the Joker in mind. That, combined with his long-running feud with DC, maybe more than anything damns the theory. He likely would have said, "Yeah, I wanted to kill the Joker but DC wouldn't let me" by now if it were true. Instead, he just asks "Why do so many people care about this dumb little story I wrote forever ago? Why do they insist on making it more important than it was ever meant to be? It's not very important and not very good." I'm paraphrasing, but that IS generally how the man describes the piece in his own vocal opinion of it.

I disagree with him that it's dumb, I think it's very good. BUT. What I'm saying is, his words are NOT the words of a man who had such a grand ambition in his mind when he penned the tale. This leads me, once again, to believe that it's not of his design but rather just something people made up and cling to because it "sounded cool".

Similar to Bolland playing up the story's "ambiguous" nature because it keeps conversation going and serves his interest (since he's more willing to talk about the work nowadays than Moore is), Jake Gyllenhaal still says he doesn't get what "Donnie Darko" is about, despite the fact that it's rather clear what it's about (while not everything within it is explained in detail). In both cases, maybe they want to keep conversation going because it's fun to engage with people, and maybe they just don't "get it" themselves.

In either case, I'd argue that the work makes itself clear enough without any external projections about what may or may not be in there. With regard to that film, some people insist it's NOT about time travel and pocket universes despite the fact that it very explicitly is about that. If some people WANT to insist that it's all just a nightmare/hallucination or whatever that was had by a schizophrenic kid right before he dies and the entire movie happens only in his imagination - as some people have suggested as one of many theories - then that's entirely their prerogative and you can read it that way if you want to, sure. You just have to ignore an awful lot both inside and outside of the story in order to make that specific theory work. And I feel that it's kind of the same thing with the ending of "Killing Joke": You can read it that way but it's not the intended reading and it's maybe better off not projecting that onto it, for multiple reasons.

BUT, people can think whatever they want. I just think it's MOSTLY people projecting their own ideas about what would be "cool", more than it is anything on the page that leads them there. The sound effects thing, to me, is incidental and circumstantial. Could be that from the reader's perspective we simply "moved beyond earshot" and could no longer hear them. That to me seems just as plausible, probably more so, than anything else.

I don't think it helps the story one bit and it kind of baffles me why people are so often insistent about it being "what REALLY happened". Even on the 1% chance it WAS meant to be read that way, the book was immediately made Hard Canon so all speculation as to what the ending "really means" is therefore irrelevant. Joker's still alive and everything in the book has been acknowledged within the DCU multiple times, thus the "Batman killed Joker" ending couldn't have happened even if it was meant to be so at one point.

Doesn't matter if it was meant to be "outside of canon", events since then have made the entire story Very Hard Canon. Just like the first "Back to the Future"; it wasn't MEANT to be "Part 1 of 3", and you can watch it as a stand-alone movie if you choose, sure. But since then it BECAME "Part 1 of 3" and remains so whether one chooses to acknowledge it or not. A person can SAY, "I disregard that, I only acknowledge Part 1, and in my head Doc and Marty went off and had a bunch of other adventures unrelated to anything we later saw in II and III because That's What I Choose To Believe." Just like a person can SAY, "In my head, Killing Joke is non-canon and Batman killed the Joker because I Prefer It That Way." But in either case, they're jumping through serious hoops to justify their own headcanon, at that point.

As contrite and petty as it may be, the simple fact that Killing Joke IS canon renders the entire debate irrelevant. He PROBABLY wasn't scripted to kill him, but even if he WAS, it entirely doesn't matter anymore, and it stopped mattering the second that the book was adopted into canon lore. Which was like five minutes after it was printed.

I don't know, is it even really THAT intriguing of a theory? I don't think so. When I read it that way, it just seems like they didn't know how to end it, "So f*ck it, just kill him, that'd be funny." Doesn't play well for me at all. Again, I feel like some people just fell in love with the idea, apropos of nothing, and then went about trying to find all the reasons it MIGHT be true even though it really doesn't do much to improve anything even if it was. And that the entire thing is really a bit of a reach anyway.

Spitballing is fun and all, but at the end of the day the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. If we factor in authorial intent, authorial discussion both contemporary and in hindsight, real-world factors and so on and so forth, it becomes much easier to accept that he didn't kill him more so than entertaining the notion that he may have, or even may have been intended to do so at some point.

"He Didn't" simply makes far more sense, for multiple reason both inside and outside of the story itself, rather than "He Did".

Not that any of that will stop anyone from reading it any way they choose, and I'm aware of that. I'm Just Saying.

((Shrug))

[AquaParade]

Yeah, I definitely think it's meant to be ambiguous. It keeps people discussing and leaves you thinking. Moore has never commented on the theory that Batman killed Joker as far as I've seen. He derives the work for being too dark, and for being general superhero wankery when he is feeling extra cranky.

And, to be clear, I don't think the ending is "Batman killed the Joker". The ending is whatever you see in it.

[Leo656]

Off-topic, but I'm still reading that article when I remember about it, and I must say I do admire Morrison's perseverance during his first few years trying to get work in the comics business. When I was in Junior High I briefly had notions of working in comics as either a writer or artist, but the more I looked into it, the more it all seemed like a gigantic pain in the ass with very little upside. I very much enjoy the act of creating, but I have very little patience for rejection/failure or feeling like I'm not moving forward, and it seems like in that field that's 99% of the game unless you're lucky enough to be a Lee or McFarlane type. And so much of that is really just dumb luck. I mean McFarlane's the industry "rock star" but he was never all that great of a penciller in my opinion and his writing is pretty amateurish. Yet he's made more money in the game than any hundred more talented people combined. There's really no logical path to success in the field, it's all so random and arbitrary.

We'll never know now of course, but I kind of feel like had I pursued that field I would have been absolutely miserable and washed out very quickly. When I hear these "starving artist" stories it pretty much reinforces my feelings about it. I just can't thrive in an environment where I feel like I'm busting my ass and getting nothing to show for it, even if there's a carrot on a stick reminding me that it might all work out eventually.

It obviously all worked out for him, thankfully, but in truth it might not have, just as easily. I'unno, just came to mind as I was reading the article. My guidance counselors used to tell me that it was a foolish endeavor to pursue and the chances were far greater to starve than to ever make any money, and I guess I'm glad I let it finally sink in. Grant's path sounds frustrating as hell and knowing myself as I do, I never could have stuck it out as long waiting for something to finally go my way.

Good for him, I guess.

[AquaParade]

In his book "Supergods", Morrison tells a sweet story of his dad buying him a typewriter with the note "The world is waiting to hear from you, son" attached. That seemed to be a source of inspiration for Grant. I've always liked that.

I definitely recommend that book for either fans of Morrison or fans or comics. You basically get the history of the industry, as told by Morrison, along with his insane notions of what it all means, but the book morphs into becoming a fascinating autobiography as well as a meditation on the effect superheroes are having on our culture. Book ends on a high note. It's good stuff.

And yeah, I admire his tenacity too. Although you can never be sure when he might be embellishing. Someone once said Grant's greatest piece of art was himself, and I can see some truth in that.

[Coola Yagami]

I mean if the story was a stand-alone, it does look like Batman finally kills the Joker at the end. Especially since the story started with the theme that their dance couldn't last forever, and unless something changed, it would only end with one of the two killing the other. Then Batman offered Joker that final chance and he turned it down...

I still get a laugh thinking back when I saw the animated version with my girl at the time, like she didn't know about Batgirl filler and she never read the book, but she had heard from reviews that there was filler in the movie and nobody liked it and whatnot. When Batman was offering Joker the chance to actually help him instead of just locking him up as usual, she turned me asking 'was this in the comic?' cause yeah, after years of those two just going at it, it was different seeing Batman and Joker actual hold a calm conversion. I mean imagine if after all their battles, all Batman needed to do to stop the Joker for good was to just reason with him.

[Andrew NDB]

Off-topic, but I'm still reading that article when I remember about it, and I must say I do admire Morrison's perseverance during his first few years trying to get work in the comics business. When I was in Junior High I briefly had notions of working in comics as either a writer or artist, but the more I looked into it, the more it all seemed like a gigantic pain in the ass with very little upside. I very much enjoy the act of creating, but I have very little patience for rejection/failure or feeling like I'm not moving forward, and it seems like in that field that's 99% of the game unless you're lucky enough to be a Lee or McFarlane type. And so much of that is really just dumb luck. I mean McFarlane's the industry "rock star" but he was never all that great of a penciller in my opinion and his writing is pretty amateurish. Yet he's made more money in the game than any hundred more talented people combined. There's really no logical path to success in the field, it's all so random and arbitrary.

We'll never know now of course, but I kind of feel like had I pursued that field I would have been absolutely miserable and washed out very quickly. When I hear these "starving artist" stories it pretty much reinforces my feelings about it. I just can't thrive in an environment where I feel like I'm busting my ass and getting nothing to show for it, even if there's a carrot on a stick reminding me that it might all work out eventually.

It obviously all worked out for him, thankfully, but in truth it might not have, just as easily. I'unno, just came to mind as I was reading the article. My guidance counselors used to tell me that it was a foolish endeavor to pursue and the chances were far greater to starve than to ever make any money, and I guess I'm glad I let it finally sink in. Grant's path sounds frustrating as hell and knowing myself as I do, I never could have stuck it out as long waiting for something to finally go my way.

Good for him, I guess.

Plus all the drugs it took Morrison to make Morrison into Morrison... it's a risky proposition, to be sure.

[Leo656]

That f*cking Batgirl preamble was HORRIBLE. By the time the "real" movie started I didn't even wanna watch it anymore.

It didn't feel like an organic part of the story. It felt like the dirt-worst episode of Batman: TAS that someone just finally got around to making. But it damn sure didn't feel like it belonged there.

That adaptation pisses me off to no end. What a blown opportunity. STOP trying to add or change things on an iconic story that was written by someone a million times smarter than you, you hacks; just tell the f*cking story straight, please.

One chance. People were waiting 20+ years to watch it. And... they completely sh*t the bed.

I guess there's a small chance someone will do a live-action adaptation one day, but... odds are they'll completely f*ck THAT up, too, so I don't even want them to try. Just leave it alone.

Having a good friend turn down an offer at being given a copy of the book after watching that piece of sh*t was heartbreaking. They'd never read the book before, watched the film to "get a feel" for it and see if he'd like it. Afterwards, I offered to give him a copy of the book. "Nah, I get the gist of it. Didn't much care for it."

That's why I hate these awful "adaptations" of great comic book stories. At their worst, they turn people off from ever reading the far-superior printed works. And that should be a crime punishable by law.

[AquaParade]

Plus all the drugs it took Morrison to make Morrison into Morrison... it's a risky proposition, to be sure.

He was Morrison before the drugs actually, but it's a common misconception. In the early days of his writing, he was "straight edge" and still wrote some pretty batshit stuff. Animal Man for instance.