I'm not a huge comic book super hero fan, but I did manage to see the two recent Batman films for the first time this week, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight . Surprisingly, I very much enjoyed both of the films and I'm now looking forward to seeing the 3rd installment which comes out later this summer, see the trailer:



Out of curiosity, have any authors written any decent novels on Batman? I might be able to tolerate a graphic novel, but I prefer a regular novel format.

Way to poach my username mangg

You JUST saw Dark Knight for the FIRST time? Blasphemy!



If you are, Killing Joke and Long Halloween are both great. Year One is also good.

I saw some reruns of the '60s version when I was little. I also saw the '89, '92, and '95(?) movies. I haven't seen any of the newer stuff.

Funny you should mention Batman. My avatar, "The Shadow" was created well before D.C. comics developed the "Batman" character, from which he was born.

Batman was created, in part, by The Shadow's influence during the mid-late 1930's, after The Shadow was already fighting criminals, during the era of the Great Depression.

Unlike The Shadow, Batman does not use firearms, nor is he be allowed to kill people directly as The Shadow can so, if need be, nor can he influence peoples minds, as The Shadow could.

But, like The Shadow, his alter-ego is a rich, playboy philanthropist and businessman who has a hiding place or sanctuary where he fights crime, in The Shadow's case, using the help of good, honest and decent men that he saved from death by thugs and gangsters, to do so.

looking forward to it, the dark knight ruled

..w-what?!

Rectify this immediately.

There are quite a few Batman novels out there.
Batman: The Ultimate Evil by Andrew Vachss---I've read this one, it's pretty dark. Batman fights to stop child sex-traffickers.
The Forensic Files of Batman by Doug Moench---I've heard this is supposed to be a good one.
Batman: No Man's Land by Greg Rucka--- I haven't read the novelization of this, but I've read the graphic volumes. It's really one of my favorite Batman stories, it's about an earthquake that destroys most of Gotham City. Two-Face is great in this story.

Sorry for the poor quality but the point should come across. And it's not just Gotham city that needs a good enema....

I tend to avoid movie theaters although I do enjoy films. This might sound like double blasphemy, but I actually liked Batman Begins slightly better than The Dark Knight.



I've added those to my amazon wish list.

The newer films are definitely worth checking out, although they're less "comic-bookey" than the previous films. (that might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your personal taste).

I loved the 1989 Batman with Michael Keaton. It had the best bat-mobile by far!

I'm a huge fan of Bane. I can't wait for the movie, from the trailers it looks pretty good. I've long been a fan of Christopher Nolan.

Fascinating. Nice history lesson in comics.

To the OP,

The Nolan Batman movies are highly well done. Robert Ebert (movie critic) once joked it was the only Batman movies he could sit through. I am certainly looking foward to seeing this movie.

Arkham Asylum is what has been described by fanboys as the video game equivalent to The Dark Knight.

Maybe not blasphemy, as I've heard other people say that (though only on the internet...I've never heard someone in real life say that), but I can't for the life of me understand it. Batman Begins is an above average superhero film, but it did have flaws, whereas I didn't think Dark Knight really had any. To me, BB just got too campy in the second half....the Bat-mobile jumping from building to building, Gordon driving the Batmobile, an nefarious plot to poison the water supply (how original...not!), and the fight scenes were hard to follow. Dark Knight had none of those problems...the only thing that pisses me off about Dark Knight is there's no Batcave in it. They better fix that in TDKR (I think they will, as I think I see it in the trailers).

Killing Joke and Long Halloween are very good indeed.

I like Batman Begins better than The Dark Knight too! I thought I was the only one. I really like the character development and training scenes at the beginning, and Ra's al Ghul is a more interesting villain to me than the Joker. Saying that, Dark Knight has a better storyline overall.