It's not easy to admit you're not Batman.

It's been a week. A week of learning. A week of terror. A week of struggle. Frankly it doesn't make it any different from any other week.
Except. I decided to write about it. Which in and of itself is part of the problem.
I have no idea where it came from. I don't know the idea from whence it was born. It wasn't given to me explicitly by my parents or upbringing. It wasn't an expressed command from a higher power. It wasn't rules or laws magically burned into stone. It was just me. Growing up. In the era and time that I did.
I honestly think I'm Batman.
And if not him, then I am meant to be a hero. To save others. To protect.
What I ever really understood is that no one needs my protection. No one expects me to be a hero. There is no one to save.
Except me.
 Yeah. Yeah. Hero save thyself. How trite. How quaint.

I wrote the above several years ago and never posted it. I felt it was whiny. It was not that introspective or original. But recently I have been thinking about Batman again. Zack Snyder, the once herald of DC Comic movies and their tone said that "Batman kills, Superman kills, Get over it" I was interested in Snyder's vision for DC's universe at first. But this just once again shows that he wasn't the right man for the job. He wanted to tear down the ideals of Batman and Superman, make them "modern". And while that might work for 300 or even some elements of Marvel or The Umbrella Academy, Runaways and other fringe comic related properties, it doesn't work for icons. Snyder wanted to watch the comic world burn and missed the point that his audience didn't.

His tone and cinematic style are enjoyable to watch. He would have been the perfect director for a Moon Night or Lobo movie. Play fast and lose with the rules, break walls, break convention. But he took that tactic to the wrong properties. Batman turned 80 today. You can't fight that much history. It's like remaking the Babe and having George Human Ruth be a vegan who is into Crossfit. You simply took it a bridge or continent too far.

I feel that Snyder is an amazing director. But DC was so desperate to separate themselves from Marvel, they lost the plot. The pendulum swung so far that they couldn't hold it from swinging out of control. It happens in sports and business all the time. We fired this leader so we need to find someone the polar opposite. They go too far and then they find another opposite for the next job. Look at what happened when they replaced Snyder. They went to JJ Abrams, proven hit maker and subtle boat rocker.

Today is Batman's 80th birthday. In a sense. More often than not over the past 80 years the one thing that seperated batman from his villians was murder. He broke the law over and over again. Breaking and entering. Stealing evidence. Assault on a daily basis. Not to mention how he could use his wealth and prividlege to consistently evade consequences. From assault charges, to speeding, to using drones without proper FAA clearance.

He broke a lot of rules. But one of the things that made him different from his foes was murder. Yeah he would beat you up and then tie you up but it was never with a limb or a lung missing. When Zach Snyder casually says Batman kills people. He proves that his Batman was never based on the history.

Snyder wrote an Elseworlds story. A What if? He was brought in to do that very thing, challenge the status quo. And DC is in a bad place overall because of it. They have taken their two most marketable icons, Batman and Superman and have tarnished them. Meanwhile, Aquaman and Wonder Woman have thrived. Flash on TV is good and Flash in the movie is a blatant rip off of the Spiderman/Iran Man Marvel dynamic.

But here is were DC's troubled comic history can actually make all this work. Admit your TV heroes are more loved than your movie heroes. And then drop the ultimate reset that is already cannon.

Crisis on Infinity Earths.

Bring it all together. The CW version of Arrow, Supergirl, Flash and others. But keep your broken movie versions as well. Epic battle after battle. Let Ezra Miller's Flash try to bet the TV version. Let both versions of the Suicide Squad face off. Make Supergirl from TV shame the movie version of her cousin for being a 90s emo kid.

The possibilities are endless. In the comics when DC realized it had gone way too far and needed a purge, the crisis was the answer.

DC remember your history, take all of these disparete parts and reset. Don't reboot and pretend this time you have it figured out, own your mess cinematic and TV recent history or hell even bring back past versions of all. Do you really think Michelle Pffiefer as Catwoman vs Halle Berry vs the young Selina from Gotham wouldn't be worth the price of admission? Or a Luthor face off of Hackman, Jesse Eisenbern and Michael Rosenbaum wouldn't be interesting?

DC you have massively failed this version. But look to your history and bring all of the infinite versions together. Make it epic and take back the icons.

Snyder wanted to let them all kill and die. Your true power and your most unique story can be your inspiration, let all the versions live, at once and then sort them out.

Just don't bring back Jason Todd and let us vote...

The Story in the Lacing

The beer has a quarter inch of head. It is cloudy and mysterious. The foamy bubbles slowly pop and end their existence. There is a calmness to the beer as it sits and waits for consumption. It settles. It is stable and yet full of possibility. The head begins to dissipate. I do not love ice cold beer. It feels rushed, hurried. Full of over eager moments. I like to let the beer settle into the glass, to absorb the spirit of the room. As the coverage of foam begins to fade, and the color of the beer shows through, I know it’s almost time for the first sip.

I lift the glass and the coaster comes too. A pet peeve but also just science in action, right? I try again but add a pinky as a blocker to keep the coaster from coming along. It leaves my hand with a pinky out perception. And my anxious mind begins to wonder if the coaster lifting or the pinky out is a worse event.

I lift the glass to my lips and the melancholy slightly warm nature of the glass presses against my lips. The hazy nectar flows against my taste buds. Tart at first, then sweet. Chilling but not shocking my mouth. As the glass returns to its protective station, the lacing on the glass begins to form. Bubbles, unique as snowflakes cluster against the glass. The music from the jukebox flows seemingly in time with the lacing as it takes residence on the side of the glass.

It is in this moment where you can begin to feel like a child laying on a hill, staring at the clouds. Images and shapes and imagination becoming apparent, things that once are seen can’t me unseen. A baseball diamond. A constellation of stars. A honeycomb shape which makes the mind think of colony collapse. Something that is not as easily understood as it seems.

The glass waits for round two. The color and haziness never fading. I lift the glass again and the impetuous coaster follows along. The pinky defense succeeds again this time with my chaos than class. Again the hazy liquid crosses the lips and tames the taste buds as it continues down the gullet. Another layer of imagination inducing lacing appears on the glass. Is that a ship? Florida? Or the ghostly face of a hammerhead shark?

The second sip leads to a third and then a forth. Helps to fend off the image of a ghostly hammerhead shark. As the drink begins to absorb into the system, the desire to see the imagination in the lacing fades. Maybe it was the shark. More likely it was the end goal all along. Each sip is savored. Yet the lacing begins to go unnoticed. The imagination and dreaming left behind.

Eventually there is a burp, a gastronomic moment that belies any inspiration or purpose. And then as I cover my mouth in shame. I glance at the glass. The lacing catches my eye. Is that a deer? A giraffe? A friendly llama - as if there is another kind. And for a moment again the imagination, the wonder is present again.

I turn the glass, examining the lacing again for mysteries and symbols. On the back side I see an aqueduct leading to a sea monster, it’s long arms lashing at the ancient waterway. Above it, birds of prey, trydactles or some other kind of scavenger wait to pounce and enjoy the impending buffet. As I turn the glass, it appears that there is a beam or a vein of energy or even lightening flowing toward the sea monster. I follow the stream back to its end, in the shape of a bat or perhaps when taking perspective into account, a dragon. Here on the other side of the glass is an aqueduct under attack from a sea monster with long limbs and his scavenger pals in tow that is being protected by a dragon spouting fire. What could be a more natural battle, water against fire.

The music distracts from the story being told in the lacing of the glass. I look away. And then instinctively take another sip. The scene changes. Gone are the sea monster and the dragon, the aqueduct has vanished. In its place a skeletal structure reminds. The bones of the dragon? Of the monster of the sea? I will never know. My inattention and haste took a portion of the story from me. And from you.

I lift the glass and the liquid catches the light from above. Still hazy, still blocking truly seeing through but weaker, damaged, at a level of distraction. Something makes me uneasy - either that I missed the next part of the story or that I destroyed it with my thirst.

The glass is empty. The lacing a scattered history of the story and of the waste left behind.





I tell myself that it doesn’t matter. But deep down I will always wonder.





Was the wreckage the sea monster or the dragon? And did I cause it all?