Et In Arcadia Ego

Screw the previous, mild mannered, coherant post. I am FURIOUS and it is the fury of a scorned lover. I feel very, very betrayed.

The title quote comes from Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns", one of the Batman books. It was among the first I read, and I thought it was brilliant. But at that time, I'd read few comics so tended to think them all great. If you showed a savage his first movie, any movie, he'd be amazed - it's only after viewing 20 he would understand there were good films and bad films. After 100, he could start making judgements. And I regard most of the world as savages in that regard. I remember the moment I realised I was not a savage. I was 11 or 12, and I'd just finished watching The Sixth Sense. I understood that that was a good movie, and by extention, that there must be bad movies. It's Lacan's mirror stage for movie buffs. The existance of lazy rom coms, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans and all manner of cine-shit prove my theory to an extent. People who don't go to the cinema often, tend to enjoy everything they watch there. What have they to compare it to? If there is a certain proportion of great films to bad, how many greats can they find at a rate of one a year?

This isn't pure snobbery, as I believe the same goes for all artforms. I am a literary and musical savage, for example. I enjoy most of what I hear and read. Maybe I'm very generous, or perhaps I've just never read a bad book or heard a bad song. But I believe it is because, as a savage, I have no standards on which to judge them. I can call up a film for editing, direction, production design, sound design, costumes, three-act structures, style, tributes and pastiches, music both diegetic and non-diegetic, characters, storylines, montages, flashbacks, auterism, genre, to name but a few, and judge how far I feel their use was suitable. I literally don't have the words to discuss books and music much of the time. Nor do I feel I have the expertise. I'd go to blows with anyone to defend my favourite films, actors or directors, because (frankly) I am the most qualified person I know on the subject of film. And that is, in a nutshell, my savage theory.

Turns out with comics, I genuinely have been reading the classics. But now I feel myself semi-civilised - I regard Watchmen as my mirror moment - I am re-reading all my old favourites to judge them against my new standards. Numbers below refer to IGN's 25 greatest Batman list, one I'm actively working on.

The Dark Knight Returns (#2) is one of these, and it's damn great. Set at the end of Batman's life, in a very Watchmenly world where Superman is working for the government and masks have been outlawed, it is nasty and dark. There's some great dialogue, particularly as a critically wounded Batman is chasing Joker. A kid cries "Go Batman! You can kick his -", and you get a small panel of him bending down and saying "son...mind...your language..." A terribly cute moment. Plus, Green Arrow turns up.

It's also the one when I fell in love with Commissioner Gordon. I feel he is the true heart of the Batman series. Him and Alfred. Particularly in the films, he represents a sort of normal heroism. "I think of Sarah. The rest is easy" is his catchphrase, more or less, in the book. Thats what I mean by normal. Psychoanalyse Bruce Wayne's vigilante revenge all you like - and this book makes Batman into a virtual alternate personality - but Gordon just wants to make things better then go home to his wife. I wonder if he's been killed in mainstream continuity yet? I hope not. I'd cry. "Lucky old man"

It's certainly the reason I didn't appreciate Batman Classic The Killing Joke, #3 on that list. Nasty piece of work. It reinvented the Joker as a sadistic bastard, an act we can be thankful for, but it was just too grim. Maybe because I can't handle people being mean to Gordon, and he goes to some horrible places in this.

At the time, I enjoyed Dark Victory (#8) so much because it's effectively the sequel to The Dark Knight movie. That's because it is the sequel to The Long Halloween (#5), on which Dark Knight was partially based. I've yet to read that, but am looking forward to it. Long Halloween/Dark Victory, like most of the aforementioned comics, are items I would love to own but will never buy.

If you asked me now what my favourite Batman story ever was, I would choose (from my admittedly limited experience) Hush. It's so GOREGOUS. It's not very dark or challenging, but it just contains these huge comic book panels illustrated with luminous light. Ignoring the genre's many revisions, and the concept of the graphic novel, this is the ideal of what sheer "comic book" joy can be. Best of all, I've only read vol. 1 - vol. 2 is waiting for me, in my own sweet time.

I'm looking forward to revisiting Green Arrow: The Archer's Quest, as I found it very moving at the time.

Finally, while we're talking comic books, I discovered IGN's Rorschach vs. Batman arena. Check it out: http://uk.stars.ign.com/articles/960/960169p1.html. Cute, and I think it'd be a tough one to call: there's no clear winner. They're currently doing Wolverine vs. Batman, and I await the response with some anticipation. But Wolverine is currently their reigning champion after surviving 5 in a row. Plus, a fellow Geek pointed out that unlike Wolverine doesn't actually have any exploitable weaknesses. At all. The quest continues.

You're all probably aware that I'm a sucker for film classification system.

The BBFC have actually published an article about The Dark Knight's 12A rating. This is fascinating to me, because practically the first thing I said after coming out of the cinema was that "if this is a 12 then Ed Wood deserves an Oscar", dodging a 15 but for the grace of editing. I love and trust the BBFC, so I was suprised to see them do what I regard as a mis-step.

The BBFC are governed by rules, they have to be. But it's wrong to do that at the expense of the human hunch. They say:

Though these and other scenes in which characters were held hostage or
beaten had considerable psychological impact, they contained little in terms
of strong detail – thus presenting a dilemma, should the BBFC be classifying
what is actually seen, or what is imagined by the viewer?

I understand imagination is hard to police fairly, but it has to be taken into account. Ignoring content, The Dark Knight is, well, dark in terms of tone. What the Joker does is twisted and savage, and the film does not back off from it. In my first review, I noted it's been a long time since exploding buildings, bombs on public transport, terror campaigns or hostage taking was entertainment: long gone are the days of Die Hard (15). I'd even argue that it was one of the first mainstream movies to start doing this again, yet not with gleeful abandon, but a knowing nod to the audience "he's dressed up as a bat, but don't pretend you don't knows what this feels like". They don't say anything, but it's there in the room as it's written, performed, directed, viewed. We've all seen the hostage-tapes on the news, so while the fat-batman sequence is unpleasant and scary on its own merits, it has the added horror of personal experience for every member of the audience.

I'm not criticising it, as it was tastefully, brilliantly done. Yet, see the BBFC's response:

In the case of The Dark Knight several factors were noted which supported a
‘12A’ certificate. These included the film’s comic book style, the appeal of
the work to 12 –15 year olds, the clear fantasy context and the lack of
strong detail, blood or gore.

I strongly disagree with this. What comic book style? What fantasy context? The film knowingly draws on the personal experience of the audience, and is far closer to Heat (15) than it is to Batman Forever (12). And praised as such, for its realism. Even Watchmen(18) is more clearly comic-booky, both in tone and content. Yes it was based on a comic book*, but it was as far from four-colour fantasy as it could get. Admittedly, there was very little gore at all - but that's pure artifice on behalf of the editors, and behind them the production company keen to sell lunchboxes. It's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Disguising the claws and shielding the teeth can't hide the dark core of a 15 rated film.

*Imdb tells me the specific comic books included "The Killing Joke". It's clear there are no Batman fans at the BBFC, because that is one sick graphic novel....

My point is, this film did not disguise it's darkness for an instant. A comparison would be Last of the Timelords, in which the Master rules Earth for a whole year. The show, quite correctly, brushes straight over it: "oh, well he was a bad guy, so he was doing bad stuff". If you pay attention to the dialogue, give it five moment's thought, and suddenly your brain goes to some unbearably dark places about what he was actually up to for that whole time. And if you think my imagination is sick, that's nothing compared to the Master's genius for inventive destruction. One word: Brigadier.

That's how you do darkness for children. Don't ignore it, but don't dwell either. Dark Knight dwells. Even if you assume that contemporary parallels will be missed by the kiddies, there's something very unrelenting and cruel at the heart of the film.

OK, that's enough on themes. What, about what we actually see. Let's talk about the knife. Here's a quote from Malcassairo, discussing one of my candidates for most shocking Doctor Who moment of all time:

The BBFC don't like it because its a household object - that much closer and
copyable. But they're also scarier to watch - because imagining a gunshot is
abstract, most of us don't have a comparable experience; but we all know what it
is to catch our finger on a knife, the flesh, the blood, the moment before the
pain hits. Now imagine that, but bigger, and you have some very graphic detail
running through the minds of the kiddies at home. Watching him prowl around Peri
and Jamie with a massive shiny blade was terribly unsettling. Stabbing Oscar may
just be the most violent piece of violence in the show ever.

You'll note, at the time, I had faith in the BBFC's avowed knife policy. Let's talk about the guy who the Joker cuts a smile for. You get to see the blade go into the mouth as he's speaking. Unlike being threatened with a gun, which mercifully few of us will ever have to go through, we know the feel of a knife blade. Couple that with scary music and that performance - well, I know that I, gleeful Tarantino fan, swore under my breath and prepared to hide behind my fingers.

The fact the film cuts away to a falling body means nothing, because the audience know, see, feel exactly what happened. The BBFC, ironically, compare it to the Reservoir Dogs (18) ear slicing, at which I say EXACTLY. It's been noted before that not-seeing is often worse than seeing, and a majority of people remember the ear coming off - when in actual fact, the camera coldly averts it's gaze to a different part of the room. Any horror fan can tell you that the quantity of gore means nothing when it comes to the disturbing quality of a film. Things get in you brain and they stay there. What shocked me about the Doctor Who episode above is the moment Shockeye whacks the Doctor in the leg with a huge meat cleaver. It didn't matter that the BBC restrained themselves from soaking the set with an anatomically correct anime-spurt. Because I knew it was there.

They then drop the ball again for claiming "There are many examples of films at ‘12A’ which contain scenes which imply violence far stronger than seen onscreen (such as the torture scene in Casino Royale)". Casino Royale is the only other film on which I've ever strongly disagreed with the BBFC rating. Just because there is a precedent, it doesn't mean the precedent can't be fundimentally flawed.

So to recap, The Dark Knight is a film based on 9/11, in the style of Heat, with elements of Reservoir Dogs. Any other influences a concerned parent should be aware of? Yes. Saw (18). The Joker's nasty little traps, the Boat Scene, or giving Batman the choice between saving Harvey or Rachel. Or the mobile phone being sewn inside someone's stomach.

I went to a great talk by one of their film reviewers, and she said she could usually just feel what a rating is, even before noting down reasons. There's a reason I haven't compared The Dark Knight to a low rated movie yet. The first 12A movie was Spiderman, and it was introduced more or less because the company would have been in trouble if it didn't appeal to the kid audience. Even if you compare cute Peter Parker with his Mary Jane, to psychologically screwed up Bruce Wayne, everything from imagery to tone screams that these are two different animals.

It's about brand awareness. I knew, as did all the movie-buffs, that this was going to be dark. Can yout trust the average parent to not think "comic book movie!". This is why I got so cross about Casino Royale, because for many parents Bond means Roger Moore dashing about. Even the Pierce Brosnan Bond was basically light hearted. Casino Royale was a major departure for the series, just as Batman Begins was a departure for the super hero genre. They say:

The BBFC was also careful to ensure that additional advice was available to
parents and other moviegoers through the websites pbbfc and bbfc.co.uk. Both
sites included extended information about the film detailing how and why it was
classified ‘12A’ and urging parents to think carefully before taking youngsters
to see it.

This trusts your average parent to understand the system, to know 12A involves a choice, and do their own research. I saw no such urging, and as a censorship nut I would have noticed instantly. Your average parent thought "golly gazooks Batman", saw the number "12" and shrugged. 12A is a loophole, which allows kids of any age to get in, and is a betrayal of the BBFC's role. Their job is to make the decision. They freely acnowledge that the catagory is misunderstood by parents, so why is it still there?

Furthermore, this leaves the film languishing as a 12 for DVD release.

If anything, the rating to change is 18. When I was 12, I did not constantly gripe about not being able to watch high rated movies. But from 15 onwards, my life was a constant torment of 18-ratings I was mature enough to appreciate. Teens do have that right, that tension where some age quicker than others. There should be a leap between 12 and 15 rated films. One is for old kids, the other young adults. Between that there is the border between "child" and "adult", and thus suggesting it is by far the wrong floodgate to open. One final quote from the BBFC:

But it is important to set the complaints in the context of the number of people
who saw the film. In the case of The Dark Knight the 200 plus complaints
are a tiny proportion of the five million people plus who saw it in the
first two weeks after it opened.

Incorrect. 200 people actually wrote in. What of the others, who couldn't be bothered, who
forgot, who just aren't the writing in type? I almost wrote in. Batman Begins I will admit deserves its 12A rating. But The Dark Knight? That was not a film for 10 year olds. Any 10 year olds. I'm suprised it wasn't pushing 18.

Also, it's bloody brilliant and I need to see it again. Soon.

I'm doing Latin because I love it, but often come to the stumbling point that I love it too much. We're doing packs of texts for our exam, four on JC's assassination, two on sleep, two on the creation of the world. Four on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, which sucks because that story is so damn sad. I can read it once. Reading it four times in a row destroys me.

Same goes for the Rape of Lucretia, only that makes me angry. I'm a historian, I'm supposed to be impartial, and supposed to understand that different ages had different standards. But it still makes me foam at the injustice and idiocy of it all.

The poor dear is sitting there, recounting the story to her unhappy father and husband. Livy tells us they "try to comfort the heartsick woman by fixing the guilt not upon the victim but the transgressors: the mind sins, they said, not the body, and there is no guilt where intent is absent."

And so they should: all very sweet of them. This is what Lucretia has to say in reply:

"It is up to you to punish the man as he deserves. As for me, I absolve myself of wrong but not from punishment. Let no unchaste woman hereafter continue to live because of the precedent of Lucretia!" And then she stabs herself. And her father and husband found the Roman Republic after her example.

It makes me really, really angry, because it's not on for her to suddenly turn into some self-hating Rorschach. If I were writing the story, I think I'd point that desire for retribution in a more healthy direction - i.e. Sextus Tarquinius's nether regions. And then she can found the Roman Republic. Rome might have been better run with a woman in charge anyway...

Acting was a total shocking novelty to the Greeks. The idea of becoming another character was just downright odd to them, capturing another identity. One actor was once asked if he was “ashamed to tell such lies in the presence of so many”, and you can imagine Mathesar from Galaxy Quest being the one to do it. I'm not sure if any of us can understand the downright creepiness of it, used as we are.

Its roots were probably in the live performance of epic poetry, which despite lacking the visual dimension of plays, would involve the poets putting on fake voices for their characters. And indeed, though I am getting ahead of myself here, when Greek drama took off it was still about the voice.

Athens quickly capitalised on drama, turning it into a civic thing. Contrast, say, with Elizabethan England who quickly exiled it across the river and went aaaaah danger acting!. For Athens, it was an inextricable part of religious life and civic calendar, as part of the ritual of Dionysus. The theatre was close to the Acropolis.

Today's chief aim: learn to spell Dionysus. It can be done. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to figure out that reservoir had an "r" in the middle - I guess I just got to a point where I was using the word a lot. Hmmm, funny that.

So the chief play-performing event was the City or Great Dionysia, – massive international civil affair, public holiday and spring festival in Attic month of Elaphebolion (end Mar)– in honour of Dionysus Eleuthereus. The second most important festival after the Panatheneia. It was controlled from the top, organized through the city, and had a definite whiff of promoting ideology.

The Eponymous archon - there were three archons in Athens, and this one was the one who gave his "onema", name, to the year - ran the festival. A little fake-fan-canon, but considering it's other Greek debts, I bet Gallifrey has Archons.

Plays were not allowed to be performed independantly, so the archon's first task was to pick 3 tragic, and later 5 comic, poets. His second task: finance the performance, via wealthy citizens. This was particularly handy for funding the chorus of 13-15 members who mediate between audience and actors. This wealthy citizen was known as the Choregos, and his task was seen as a public duty. If the play won, he collected the prize along with the playwrite.

Immediately before the plays, ceremonies would take place. A libation would be poured by 10 generals and 10 of the most important archons - incedentally, libation is one of my least favourite words. A herald would announce the names of citizens who had benefited the polis, encouraging onlookers to do the same. Then would be the parade of young men orphaned by war as they came of age, wearing full hoplite armour. Taking care of heroes, honouring the dutiful, showing off military might: the works. Finally, in the theatre, there would be a display in the theatre that Athens' allies were paying to the Delian league. Day 1 included a huge procession on, complete with costume, model phalluses, bulls sacrifice, meat feast, the works.

Minor acting festivals included the Rural or Lesser Dionysia or Dionysia in the fields, and The Lenaea in the Attic month of Gamelion (late Jan). This had a more subdued international presence, probably due to bad sailing. Drama can mock the city, thus there tended to be more comedy. Aristophanes claimed in Acharnians, that Cleon had claimed he was slandering the city by jokes at the previous Dionysia.

Initially, all involvement had to be Athenian citizens – actors, creators etc. At the same time, plays were being repeated outside the City Dionysia: not everyone could make it to the centre.
Popular plays thus went on tour. The Ancient Greek equivalent of Deadheads would follow their favourite actors, poets and plays across the country. Sometimes new plays, not just reruns, would be performed outside the city. Competition is so fierce for the main festival, that naturally not everyone would be able to get in.

Thus it expanded from the purely civic. Hieron of Siracuse in Sicily started hankering for drama, and attracted poets to his court, including Aeschylus, who reperformed his Persae. Women of Aetna was written for him, not an Athenian audience or cause. Large theatres have been found in 5th Century Sicily, along with vase paintings of actors/masks from the same place and time. Increasingly, great actors spilled in from Italy and Sicily.There was universal respect for plays – Plutarch recalls that Euripides was so much in demand that captives were released who could recite a verse. That's probably bull, but the idea that it could be plausible is what is important.

I've a brilliant quote from Plato about how things were run there, in which he argues:

"true judge must not learn from the audience, and be thrown off his balance
by the noise of the multitude...the present practice of handing over to the mass
of spectators and deciding the winner by a show of hands has corrupted the
poets, because they regard the vulgar pleasures of their judges as a standard
and let the audience be their teachers. It has also corrupted the audience's own
pleasures".

Oh yes, Plato would have loathed Britain's Got Talent...

Dramatists and actors

In 5th Century Athens, the poet was not so much script author as producer – their name came not graphein, to wriote, but poein, to make. Writing a play wasn't so much about putting it on paper, as crafting the whole live performance.

So imagine the roots of Athenian drama resembling our rendition of Fellowship of the Ring. The poet taught actors, composed music, devised choreography, oversaw masks and props. Furthermore, they were also initially the principle performer. Soon a second, then third actor were added: all Greek plays can be played by this many, ignoring the chorus.

So the poet had full control, but this gradually lessened. As the focus on acting increased, so the content became less important. Much of this module is shocking in it's modernity, so cast your mind to any of your favourite films: who plays the main character? Right, now who wrote the script? If you can't tell me, then you'll understand exactly the problem that Greek poets started to have. There is evidence too that, like modern scriptwriters, poets did write for specific actors - but this changed in mid 5th Century as the Archon started allocating actors by lot.

And then there was the introduction of the acting awards, the nail in the coffin for the Poet-producer. Thus was the beginning of the professional actor. Actors could still win an award for a losing play, so poet and actor are no longer so dependant on one another. It was a big difference from the one-man show of the past. You can imagine there were arguments, as gradually actors came to control the show. Actors became responsible for re-runs outside of the city, financing them and all. They didn't need to reply on contemporary poets, when they could repeat old roles and build up a repetoire. Actors started to specialise - Hugh Grant, here are your predecessors! Look at Timotheus of Zacynthos, who was known as "The Slayer" for his performance of Ajax. Um, hello "The Duke" or "Man of a Thousand Faces"? This was exacerbated by the diversification of tragedy. Soon, actors would perform a short monologue or song at banquets, allowing them to have special repetoires and take requests. The singer Neoptolemus was asked at a banquet by king Philip to do something relevant to the campaign against the Persians, and chose something which apparently belittled them.

Performance!

Actors themselves have a problem of sources - we obviously cannot analyse their performances. Certainly, if you read written accounts, their aims appear to be very similar to those of modern actors. The aim of any classical actor was to get his audiences in tears, as attested by many sources. There's a cute story about the tyrant Alexander of Pherae sending Theodorus a message after his performance of The Women of Troy, apologising for departing half way through - but he was a great leader, who had never felt remorse for his actions, and did not wish to be seen weeping before his people.

This highly emotional style evolved into the first method actors! A story of the actor Polus claims that when he played Electra, he let rip with his genuine grief for his dead son, and carried his ashes in the scene where Electra carries her brother's remains. Again, maybe not true, but it must have been plausible to its readers.

Other acting requirements are doubtless familiar to you - Lucian complains about actors playing Creon whose voice is too humble for Hecuba, and criticises others for portraying Hercules so effeminately that he wonders whether Hercules would smash him to pieces! Because Greek drama was masked, there was naturally a greater emphasis on the voice than today. They were also up for verisimilitude, and praised actors for being true to life: "attempting to persiuade the audience in the theatre not that he is in the process of imitating others, but that he really is by nature the object of his imitation" as Choricius puts it.

Not everyone thought this was so good an idea - Mynniskos referred to Callipides as "an ape" on account of his over-acting, and indeed Callipides appears to have got a lot of rap for being too realistic in portraying lower class women, at which point I can't help but think Terry Jones of Monty Python. Aristophanes, cattily, remarks "like Callipides, I am sitting upon the floor sweepings"

Furthermore, as acting was a relatively new creature, the ancient Greeks tended to worry about the barrier between reality and imitation of such collapsing. So what's changed. Lucian recites the story of an actor playing Ajax who was so raving mad in his madness, that he appeared to be genuinely mad, almost killing Odysseus in the process.

In all these things, the most striking thing is how modern all these aspects are, and the cash is no different: Greek actors were rolling in it. As an example, when the Temple of Apollo was being rebuilt, Theodorus the actor contributed 70 drachmas - no other private contribution exceeds 15. In all, little different from today: rich, iconic and recognisable catagory independant from poets. They were so revered they took on the job of ambassadors - think Cloony'n'Jolie trying to save the world with their names.

The formation of the guild Artists of Dyonisis made things even cushier, negotiating rare rights for members. This included freedom of travel, and from imprisonment, exemption from taxes and military service and front seats at spectacles.

As Nostradamus, via Al Stewart, puts it "the more it changes, the more it stays the same". Stay tuned for more revision-blogs soon. But I'm off to do Latin instead now.

Last night, I decided to rewatch Watchmen instead of going to see X-Men:Origins.

I justified this by saying "well, Rorschach could wup Wolverine in a fight anyway..." - and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to illustrate this fight. Ignoring, of course, that the two can never exist in the same universe - not only because one is DC and the other Marvel, but because Dr. Manhattan is emphatically the only superpowered being in Rorschach's world. More than anything else, the idea was art practice in the world of the garish graphic novel.




Yet...Rorschach is obviously resourceful, has a talent for tactics and refuses to give up under any circumstance. But he's still human, and can be defeated by humans too. Within the Watchmen universe, Manhattan is obviously the most powerful hero, followed by Veidt. After that, well we could argue all night.

But Wolverine is superhuman, and presumably the world's coolest guy presents no more threat to him than the world's coolest termite. His senses are better, making him faster, and his strength and stamina are probably better too. This is even before you get to the fact he's Edward Scissorhands with a bad attitude.

He has been properly trained in combat - although Rorschach's unpredictability on that front is also one of his greatest strengths, so maybe that would balance out. He has the advantage of being able to heal quickly too, although the jury is out about just how quick that is. And similarly, Rorschach is about as hardass - he walks through the Antartic wearing only a trenchcoat and fedora. Rorschach is a fantastic tactician, but I'd estimate Wolverine was approximately equivalent.

What advantages does Rorschach actually have? Well, if he was on home ground he'd have a little chance - Calypso has already suggested a rubbish dump, which would give him a lot to work with in terms of props and places to hide. Occurring in a ring or empty room, he would be dead (c.f. A.V. again). Wolverine is capable of killing people, but not as capable. Yet this doesn't stem so much from his hesitance as Rorschach's enthusiasm. He's also a nutcase, which can only help if you're fighting someone sane.

To be honest, his biggest advantage is me leaning down to him and giving him the Lady's favour to carry with him into battle. Superhero fights have a HUGE element of authorial intervention governing them, more than any logic. I hold up as examples two of the great, great Batman novels: Hush and The Dark Knight Returns. In both of these, Batman bests Superman. Now, you can argue in one Superman was being controlled by Poison Ivy, and the other he had been weakened by a nuke, but the point still stands: strictly, Superman should have such an immense advantage he could win every time. Thus comic book authors can and do just tweak these things, and yet I hate comic book canon and its contradictions and refuse to be a part of it.

Initially, the problem was "can Rorschach could beat Wolverine in a fight?" Now, my pretty four-colour fantasy has evolved into "can Rorschach survive Wolverine in a fight?" If he stood and fought he'd be very dead, very quickly. His only chance would be to run for it, and get Wolverine into an improvised trap of some sort. And Wolverine is not as dumb as he looks. One of Wolverine's defining characteristics is his tendency to go bezerker, so if R. got him mad enough, maybe he'd stop paying attention enough to give R a slight upper hand - but he'd still need some way to survive while all that took place. I can visualise quite well the pair tearing across an urban wasteland, with Rorschach bouncing up buildings and staying just out the way of those claws.

I'm now sorely tempted to do an X-Men marathon, purely to size up Wolverine and work this one out - and if it does evolve into him tearing our favourite masked avenger into shreds, well, at least I'll be able to get his fighting style a little more personalised than the generic sketches I have at the moment.

So, folks, today's question: who wins? I do intend to draw and ink this one, so your votes count! And there's a comic book precendent for this too, when DC got readers to phone in to say whether they wanted Robin to survive or not. Curiously, they didn't get the answer they were looking for, and next week's issue saw the Joker batter him to death with an iron bar then blow him up. The worst thing is, I'm not exaggerating: I've read it, and it's shockingly nasty.

So who would triumph, and importantly, why? Add any important details, ideas or thoughts, and I'll incorporate them. Ideally both characters should survive. But accidents happen.



While we're talking about Watchmen, I dug up this great piece of art. I'm amused to see the artist has done exactly what I did with Rorschach, which was instantly give him an iron bar to work with. Rorschach vs. Batman? Now that's a close call, which Batman maybe would win - they're about equal on the smart, tactical, urban, batshit crazy front. But Bats is wearing body armour. That's the basis for that argument.

But the curious thing is the art is actually leading into a comic series called Multiversity. Quick lesson on the DC universe - there are 52 parallel worlds, created by "alternate version" characters. So Earth-3 Superman is evil, on Earth-172 Superman is Batman's adoptive brother, Earth-1938 in which Superman has averted WWII, an unnamed Earth where Superman is both black and president of the USA etc. Instead of just treating these like the one-shot absurdities they are, they've been incorporated into canon. Periodically, they've had matchups and crossovers featuring several of these Supermen interacting, and thus the same for all the other DC characters. Multiversity is a miny series focusing on seven of these worlds, featuring a plot somehow linking them: no one really knows anything yet.

Except the news regarding Earth 4, and that poster. Now Earth-4 is the designated home of the characters DC bought from Charlton Comics: the Question, Blue Beetle, Peacemaker, Captain Atom, and so on. If any of those names seem familiar, it's because Alan Moore originally intended to use them in Watchmen before DC realised most of their characters would end up dead and/or nuts. You can still see their very real influence: I've read the first volume of The Question, hated it for various reasons, but was creeped out by the Rorschachyness of it all.

And Earth-4 is one of the worlds that is going to be used. The phrase "Watchmen 2" is being bandied about, incorrectly, but it's still going to be an interesting exercise. They're pretending that the style of Watchmen is part of the internal tone and consistancy of Earth-4, so while you're going to be watching Question and Atom running around there, it is going to be very much the same universe with the same rules. Or, as Grant Morrison puts it:

"I thought it would be interesting to pick up on that sort of crystalline, self-reflecting storytelling method, so the mad notion I came up with was to do the Charlton characters in a story I'd construct as an update on that ludic Watchmen style - if Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons had pitched the Watchmen now, rooted in a contemporary political landscape but with the actual Charlton characters instead of analogues!"

Didn't think anyone would be so mad as to breathe on a sacred cow like that. Calypso has mentioned that she'd love to see a Minutemen spinoff: so say we all. But we learn everything we need to know from those slight hints in Watchmen. We don't need or, indeed, want it. It's a self contained entitity. Although I'm tempted to do some really corny old-style comics with them.

It's the closest thing we'll ever get. And I think, as a concept, it is fascinating. Bring it on! But I'm gonna wait for the trade...

PS - Wikipedia tells me Rorschach is also a municipality in Switzerland. If ever I go, I will buy so many tacky souveneers!