Friday, January 29, 2010

Goddamn, Batman

Throughout the years fans and industry insiders have pointed to All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder (or "ASBAR" as it's usually referred to) and its assorted eccentricities and excesses as evidence that comic book icon Frank Miller has lost his damn mind.
They also point to The Spirit, the movie that marked his debut as a solo director, as further evidence. While I'm one of maybe six people in the world who actually enjoyed The Spirit, and I haven't read all of ASBAR, I can kind of see their point.
After all, ASBAR gave the world the goddamn Batman:

(Speaking to the recently-orphaned Dick Grayson, whom
Batman has abducted from the scene of the murder of Dick's parents - saving him
from the corrupt cops who were going to finish wiping out the family by killing
the future Robin - who has asked Batman who he is)
"What, are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I'm the goddamn Batman."


Like many fans, I initially found this off-putting and thought ASBAR was...err...bat-shit insane, but in time I came to appreciate the insanity, on some level, and eventually became greatly amused by the goddamn Batman.
Today, while reading Fan Fiction Friday over at Topless Robot, I encountered a bit of dialogue that makes Frank Miller and all of his insanity seem completely and totally sane by comparison.
The dialogue in question comes from a fan-written story featuring spelling and grammar so atrocious that I have to assume that English is the "author's" seventh language, which posits a team-up between Batman and Robocop.
And by "team-up" I mean Batman and Robocop fucking.
Each other.
By the way, it's worth noting that Miller's first attempt at breaking into Hollywood was writing the screenplay for Robocop 2, which was pretty much torn to shreds and resulted in the finished prodcut bearing little or no resemblance to what he actually wrote, which left Miller wary of dealing with Hollywood again until Robert Rodriguez came along and more or less courted him.
And speaking of courting...
In the course of their "adventure" together, Robocop learns Batman's secret identity. While Robocop himself can be counted on to keep it to himself, everything he sees and hears is recorded, and when he returns to the precinct his memories will be downloaded and reviewed.
So they need to remove those memories from Robocop before that can happen.
Which leads us to this:

"I need to fuck you Batman. This way, my memories backup is ejected from my butt
and we can delete what is important to preserve your identity."


Somehow that makes Batman calling a traumatized boy who's just seen his parents die retarded and referring to himself as the goddamn Batman seem downright reasonable and even wholesome.

Update: Also, this:

"There is a problem Bruce. I'm not with my penis now. I can't fuck you."

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