The first act of The Dark Knight Rises, set eight years after the Batman’s last sighting, delivers an out-of-shape and genuinely hobbled Bruce Wayne in a brilliant encounter with Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle. The scene promised far more in terms of personal conflict than this blowhard of a film could deliver. Wayne’s return to action goes far too smoothly. There should have been more struggle and Batman should have gotten walloped on his first time back: an out-of-practice pianist taking the stage. I assume the producers didn’t want the audience to sit through two disparate Wayne rehabs, but the one they chose just bored me to tears. We all knew Batman would rise—it says so, right there in the title. The lunatic from Frank Miller’s eminently superior The Dark Knight Returns, pulling on the batsuit and going on obvious suicide missions, would have motivated the film much more efficiently. Alfred’s walk-out would have made a lot more sense had two-thirds of the movie featured a clearly out-of-his-league Batman, too angry or too proud to hang it up for good or who needs the humiliation to break through psychologically to the mental state required to resume his career. They could have saved millions on CGI effects and silly explosions had they only written an actual script.
Is It Just Me
By January 8th, 2013, underShould Auld Acquaintance Be
By January 2nd, 2013, underNo, I don’t know where I’ve been in 2012. I mean it. I have almost no recall of last year other than being trapped, almost around the clock, in my home office working on design and advertising projects while the world passed by on CNN. Looking back over the year, I realized that, outside of working for other people, I’ve accomplished virtually nothing. This stuff is incredibly time consuming and leaves you creatively and intellectually exhausted, so the thought of coming up with some pithy blog post or, even more challenging, a comic book plot, becomes an extremely steep hill to climb. I was actually kind of shocked to finally get back over here to my own website and realize it’s been more than a year since I posted anything here, and at least as long since I’ve checked Jim’s Comic Book Life email over at the DigitalPriest account. The annual Holiday Dead Stop has afforded me a little time to pause and look around, so I’ll be making an effort to comb through what appears to be a 13-month backlog of email while updating this WordPress installation (which means this blog may come down for a while as I update and reinstall).
Presuming anybody’s actually paying attention anymore, I hope and pray you all had a great year. More important, I hope and pray for great things in the year to come. I’ll do my best to be here more often (which is easy, if I show up even twice in 2013). And my apologies to what I’m sure are a great many people who’ve sent messages to my dead-letter office. Back to you soon.
—Priest
The Letter “A”
By January 2nd, 2013, underBack when I was writing comics, I discovered, to my chagrin, that the letter “A” looks exactly the same, regardless of who types it. Brilliant writers, hack writers, non-writers: the letter “A” looks precisely the same. I also discovered that people who lack this particular gift of expression also lack much respect for it. Respect, I’ve found, comes in two distinct flavors: (a) the phony respect we offer up to people who pay us and (b) the more difficult kind of respect we show for things that exist in a realm beyond our own ability to necessarily comprehend. I have enormous respect for, say, pro golfers and people who paint landscapes. I understand neither discipline. I can be walked out to the water’s edge, beyond which I will happily defer to the experts in these fields. When I fly to New York on business, for example, I usually let the pilot fly the plane. I don’t come up there into the cockpit and start flipping switches.
With writing, though, everybody can type the letter “A.” And, rather than me falling in love with my own words, it is usually the client who does that. Why? Because they are usually not professional writers. They sell hair spray and dental floss. Which is not to put down people who sell hair spray and dental floss but to point out there is a reason people hire professionals. Hiring a professional and then interfering with their efforts to make you richer than you already are is just stupid. I don’t understand people who continue walking past the water’s edge until their hat floats.
Trek: I Was Wrong
By November 26th, 2011, underWorf actually has been seen on-screen commanding the Enterprise.
In the closing moments of the Season Four episode “Data’s Day,” Data arrives on the Enterprise bridge to assume command of the graveyard shift and relieves Worf, who is in command of the Enterprise and seated in the captain’s chair.
Meanwhile, the sequel to Abrams Trek has been pushed back (surprise) 11 months:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45436393/ns/today-entertainment/
Désirée: An Open Letter
By November 26th, 2011, underIt was summer, I think, when I met you. James had introduced me to your brother and we were standing by your front steps when I noticed these two little boys fighting down the street. The one little boy with the cornrows beat down the other kid then pulled his pants down and left him crying in the street. I looked over at your brother and said, “That your little brother?” He kind of shook his head in exasperation, “No, that’s my little sister.” You were ten years old.
I remember you. Sarcastic. Acerbic. Funny. Mean as a snake. All of those things. Living down the street from my grandmother. Running wild with the other neighborhood kids. For reasons I’ll never understand, you adopted me, the way people take in strays. You fed me laughter and sunlight. You were my friend. You were my family. Batman and Robin, and, more often than not, you were Batman. Between the two of us, you were the brains of that operation. Full of questions. Bursting with answers. And I was a goner. I loved you.
Alone In The Jungle
By November 19th, 2011, underAs with my actual life, Concrete Jungle is full of evil people who do wonderfully noble things and good people who benignly incorporate some level of hypocrisy and corruption. With people who love without sacrifice. It is ruthlessly, giddily cynical with a dash of hope tossed in, hope being the most invented part of the piece. It’s got crime and sex and politics and ancient mysticism and modern religion, with heaping doses of black humor and wrenching terror. And, threaded through the complex layers, it’s got what I know to be true. Just a little piece of it. Maybe that’s enough.
Double Blind
By November 15th, 2011, underAs great an admirer I am of Jackson’s amazing talent, I have absolutely no doubt, none whatsoever, that Jackson has been sexually molesting if not sexually assaulting minor boys for decades. This Penn State graduate assistant allegedly happened upon a six-foot-two, 200-pound, fifty-something year-old silver-haired man, naked in a shower with a naked 10-year old boy–by account of the indictment–pressed up against the shower tiles while the man sodomized him. The picture that graphic language creates is horrifying. Yet, I am persuaded this is precisely what Michael Jackson has been doing most of his privileged adult life. Many of Jackson’s victims were delivered, eagerly, into his hands by parents who either knew or suspected what Jackson’s actual motives were, but who were either starstruck or were positioning themselves to make money off of him. This is evil. Don’t parse it, don’t excuse it. It’s evil. Why was America so horrified by Sandusky while Jackson remains, in even my memory, a kind of tragically beloved figure?
Razing Cain
By November 8th, 2011, underAt most every point of Cain’s quixotic candidacy he has left clues, dropped breadcrumbs, indicating, clearly, that his is a political send-up, a satirical candidacy. From quoting Pokémon (not making this up) to modeling his “999″ tax plan on the tax pan from the video game Simm City, to his embrace, last week, of the rather infamous Koch Brothers, to even the alleged scandal over sexual harassment, breaking into song when asked about it–if you step away and put all of these pieces together, it becomes amazingly clear: Cain is having fun at our–and America’s–expense. He is selling books and raising his speaking fees through the roof. He may actually be doing a lot more. The one thing he is not doing, however, is running for president.
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
By October 25th, 2011, underHoly Cow. Just visited Rick Perry’s website– it looks a LOT like Barack Obama’s ’08 site.
Where No Man Is Going
By October 23rd, 2011, underA couple years ago, I came up with my one and only original story idea for Star Trek, which I just tossed in a drawer and gave absolutely no thought to until I was approached, for whatever ungodly reason, by IDW, seemingly out of the blue, to develop something for them. We were not talking specifically about Trek, but IDW had the Trek franchise, and I said, “Oh, hey—you guys do Trek, right? Well I only have one idea for Star Trek, but I’d really like to do it.” So I pitched them the idea that later became Star Trek: Inquisition, which was to be a three and then later, per IDW’s request, a five-part story. But a couple things happened.
First, Paramount bounced the story as too edgy and controversial. Then, Abrams Trek came along and re-shaped the landscape. My story is TNG Trek. Once Abrams Trek became a going concern, director J.J. Abrams had the right to approve all Trek-related material, even stuff like my one idea which had absolutely nothing to do with what he was doing. So now we had to appease Paramount and Abrams, and the window for TNG material at IDW narrowed as Abrams Trek’s release date approached. That window remains narrow. I always thought the best of Trek raised more questions than it answered. I hardly consider this script the best of anything, but the story does attempt to raise questions, not answer them.
It’s too Worf-specific to make a good movie, but it might have made an interesting set of episodes at one point and, I think, a fun comic book arc. Whatever it might have been, it is my one (and so far only) idea for Star Trek. I would have really enjoyed writing this.