http://io9.com/5029700/dc-saves-its-best-for-last-on-sunday-morning

ee! I saw that on his blog yesterday. it's like peanut butter and jelly—good separately, but EPIC WIN together.

huge mistake to think batman will be the better for this.I'm a huge batman fan as well as GAIMAN but his writing style does not bode well for batman fans. As mysterious as magic and gods may be, the mystery of batman is a mortal one only understood as such. Don't curse me yet , think about this yourself and honestly answer , what makes batman tick for you?

has nobody read batman black and white? neil has already wrote a batman story, and very good it was too, if off the usual batman story route - it was more of an 'alternative universe' and it was clearly so, and that was a good thing.

luckyfurtrapper, with neil's writing you can't assume he's going to write the batman as the sandman, he will take the character and do something with it, and it may very well be something unexpected (like the batman black and white edition) or it may be in the normal DC universe, either way, i'm very interested in reading it.

and some of my favourite batman stories/cameo's involve deadman, who was sent back to earth by a god - so don't assume the gods aren't involved in the bat stories at all either.

chill ed,
but as u said urself you enjoy alternate stories involving gods, I'm happy for you. But batman is no different than cadillac, corvette, or ritz-carlton, it's a brand name that people come to expect certain things from.True, stories of mystery are expected along the lines of detective novels ...but that's it i don't read batman to see how he handles gods.

why are you assuming batman is going to be handling gods?

Ed
i had to wrap up faster than i thought and didn't get to finish my thoughts

now where were we...ahhh yes handling gods, excuse me while i dodge bolts of electricity or the more bothersome smite.

Batman is a man , not a mutant nor superhuman not even a demigod, his best stories in my opinion are fighting the evils of man . Sure there is a superman team-up or mutant team-up even the super-human team-up but if the whole package is under his name more often than not people pick it up for the story. Quick note Jim LEE's batman is all about art , i think people have given up on the idea of a great story and are happy with great art in his case ....excluding the team-up with frank miller, who does ...drumline......great stories that have to do with the strife of man and decisions of the whole greater than the one.
Now that i broke the seal of frank let's use him up shall we , because frank is like a great red wine once the bottle is opened ...no saving it till next year....or something or other.
Frank writes stories mainly of men put through great events. He is in my mind the perfect author for batman.. look at his daredevil work, He actually printed in his story under the daredevil title a comment by one of his creations 'STICK" who said something on the lines of " that radioactive material opened up your senses but it wore off ,you are who u are from training" . The story of man is problem solving. a quick side point..Have you seen the spiderman movies? well myself and others were completely let down by the orgin detail about his webbing.Any spiderman fan worth his salt knows spidey was a gifted chemist and made a formula for his webbing. it didn't just flow out of his wrist like a bodily discharge. No my friend it was a man made formula, and not just that he devised special formulas to combat his prey depending the situation.And to wrap up my point the greatest was when he was in the middle of a fight and ran out of his fliud....ahhh this is when spidey shined. he fought the villain with quick wit and a mind of a man. Which i should hope brings us back to Batman, if you kept your hands and feet inside the compartment. He's a man that fights against the world's worst men. Leave the gods to Thor .
by the way i'm a huge cowboy bebop fan

wow, not a lot of paragraph breaks there!

Okay, so the Spider-Man bit you said was totally irrelevant (and as SUCH a fan, I'd have thought you'd know it is hyphenated) so I'll ignore that.

Why do you think Gaiman is going to write his Batman about gods and mystical things? There seems to be no basis for this either in reality or in your comment (two things that seem pretty far from each other).

If you had read Sandman or either of Gaiman's short story collections then you would know that he is perfectly capable of dealing with real human emotions as well as anyone, and the real, solid darkness is there. But then if you've read them and not spotted it then there's not much point me expalining it.

I don't know how it'll turn out - neither do you - but Gaiman is a writer, and I'm sure he's perfectly capable of reigning in his no-doubt overwhelming desire to shoehorn various pantheons into the comic.

Really, do you think that a person can only do one thing? Or that he'd have been asked to do it if they thought he couldn't. OR for that matter that they'd let him change the entire internal logic, outlook and physics of the Batman universe?


(also, who's Ed? I don't see anyone called Ed here...)

luckyfurtrapper, was that you on gaimans blog this morning?

Neil writes mythology wonderfully but that isnt the point. There are a ton of batman stories that use myth and magic and unrealistic science.

Anyway, Neil is a good writer and he will do well, I'm sure of it.

Okay , easy peasy nice and easy, and one MO time.

MY my my what a venomous pit i stumbled into.Mr. GAIMAN you should really thank whoever for so much ravenous defending in a time where no defense is required. PEOPLE PEOPLE i enjoy gaiman's work so much that i joined this forum to talk to other gaiman lovers, not to bash him..geeeeez.okay we got that out of the way now it's time to set things "proper straight".
let me start with the less venomous DOMITELLA,
if you did not catch the spiderman reference than disregard this whole thing and up the prescription , chill plz really, if someone hasn't discovered how to type and project absolute anger , i nominate you my friend.
if you caught the part about 'in my opinion' kudos if not here's your second chance.
Also ed is pictured next to smaug's name , ala the cowboy bebop comment.
lastly dear domitella i have a formidable comic collection i started in 1988 plz don't go there about sandman or gaiman's work to me ...to shy away from the thought that his work is heavily steeped in the unnatural is to believe the sun is not known for it's heat.
whew... of course this is all in my opinion domitella so relax .
ahhh and now to speak to ed...oops...smaug my whole point to you is look at the old batman movies(keaton) oh so horrible and the new batman movie series the return(bale) night and day one might go as far to say good and bad . Both writers and directors had a vision . Ask any batman fan (comic and movie ) which they prefer. WE have a saying where i'm from" you can farm all your life that doesn't mean you're good at it". all i was saying really is gaiman is a true gifted writer but the batman platform may not be his thing. OMG did i say that alert the firing squad.


truce

All the Batman Spider-Man "can he write this" "no, he probably can't" hoo-haw aside Furry, you might consider dialing back on the oh-so-patronizing tone.

You call others venomous, but -you- are coming across as an insufferable snot.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BeeZee,

we are happy to discuss Gaiman with you, but you're not discussing, you're saying "Gaiman can't do Batman because all he does is Gods."

we are asking where you got that opinion and why you are so sure.

I've read plenty of gaiman, both comic and prose and batman. gaiman's previous batman did not involve gods of any description.

this next one might and it might not, i'm going to give it a chance anyway and i'll probably enjoy whatever he does with the character. its only a two part comic, he can do what he likes and it doesn't have to stick to the current mythology, you can pretend its "alternative universe" and didn't happen if you don't like it.

and yeah, miss ed is my avatar, but "chill ed" is not a good way to make friends and influence people, if you spent time looking at the posting style of the board, we tend not to call people by the avatar when they have a perfectly usable handle.

as domitella stated, we are on a message board dedicated to an author, we tend to be use to a certain level english and of clear, readable posting styles and can find large unbroken paragraphs and sentences that use u instead of you and urself instead of yourself very difficult to understand.

i'm sorry you've had such a bad start to the board but if you join a message board dedicated to an author and the first thing you do is attack that author

quote:

huge mistake to think batman will be the better for this.I'm a huge batman fan as well as GAIMAN but his writing style does not bode well for batman fans.

did you really expect us to go "oh, yes, you're right, why didn't we think of that!"?

feel free to draw a line under this and continue posting on the board, you'll actually find we're a friendly bunch at heart, but continue attacking us and we'll not be so friendly.

quote:

if you did not catch the spiderman reference than disregard this whole thing and up the prescription , chill plz really, if someone hasn't discovered how to type and project absolute anger , i nominate you my friend.

...

translation, anyone?


Mate, no one's getting at you because you critisize Gaiman - read around the board and you'll see there's plenty who don't like stuff he writes, and there's discussions about it.

But discussions, as Smaug said, is what they are - not someone saying the same thing over and over and being willfully obscure.

smaug,
i agree with you totally, i did come on a bit strong .My feelings are unchanged but i agree none the less.But just to stoke the fire with you and only you please , because name calling is just not my cup of tea, what exactly makes the batman title tick for you what is your attraction to batman not the author or art but the name?

dude, if English isn't your first language that's fair enough, but at least try some punctuation.

Oh there's punctuation there alright, it's just trying to mate with the words.

quote:

Originally posted by luckyfurtrapper:
smaug,
i agree with you totally, i did come on a bit strong .My feelings are unchanged but i agree none the less.But just to stoke the fire with you and only you please , because name calling is just not my cup of tea, what exactly makes the batman title tick for you what is your attraction to batman not the author or art but the name?

you know what, i'm honestly struggling to understand your post, and you can't ask just one person on a message board to answer your query, it's a public message board, but if i do understand your question, i think i'm going to start a thread based around it as it is an interesting question.

I'll link to the thread here when i am done.

quote:

maug,
i agree with you totally, i did come on a bit strong .My feelings are unchanged but i agree none the less.But just to stoke the fire with you and only you please , because name calling is just not my cup of tea, what exactly makes the batman title tick for you what is your attraction to batman not the author or art but the name?

Sorry for butting in, i'm late.
This is an extremely interesting question to me, if i interpret it right.
Batman as an icon gives a *lot* of room for -pardon the word- projection.
It would be interesting to see Gaimans take, as it was interesting -back in the day- to see Burtons take. (though obviously the argument still stands that Batman and Batman returns we more Burton than Batman.)
Not all Batman stories, obviously, have been cannonical (sp).
If i may answer the question even if it was intitially directed at Smaug, i see Batman as the perpetual outsider despite the succesful, functional facade. I am (for people who know me here, unsurprisingly) close to Burton in that.

okay, i may or may not have answered your question in this thread but i did try to think about it.