Batman has an X-men-like mutant ability. It’s passive and he has no control over it, but he’s got one. See, he got a little Marvel in his D.C. and there’s some pretty good evidence that shows what I’m talking about.

First, we’ll start with Superman. I’m not a huge fan of his, but he’s certainly more than capable of standing on his own as a character. As a Heavy Hitter, his combat is pretty one-dimensional and some of the more exciting Superman moments are when he squares off with another Heavy Hitter and he’s the underdog. Of course he’s Superman and more often than not he wins because he’s the protagonist. Even when he’s in a situation in which he must outwit his opponent, he wins. Superman is a smart guy to say the least.

Batman is at his core (other than a tortured soul) a detective – the greatest detective the world will ever know and R’as al Ghul especially knows it. Batman can outsmart anyone, period. As a member of the Justice League, he has detailed files on every member, including himself, with strengths and weaknesses as a contingency plan should they run amok. This level of wisdom and intelligence he possesses can count as his Superpower, just as Tony Stark (and even Batman himself) claims his near-infinite supply of money as his.

Batman’s mutant ability manifests when he and Superman team up together.  Superman becomes outright moronic in Batman’s presence. Look at the times they have teamed up together. Superman doesn’t get like The Incredible Hulk, but he just doesn’t have that smug, smarmy, “checkmate” attitude about himself – he’s simply a big brute that can hit things really, really, hard. Batman on the other hand becomes even morecalculating and thoughtful, if that were possible, and many more moves ahead in the game than usual. Batman has stolen Superman’s intelligence!

This explains Robin too! Robin, in any of his incarnations, is pretty capable on his own. Sometimes the plot will get him caught or kidnapped, but he’s just a kid; kids in comics get kidnapped, and I can’t really hold it against him and he’s a smart kid. Pair him with Batman though?

“HURRRRRRRR!”
-Robin

Instant M.R.

Batman’s intelligence stealing ability is passive and similar of the Brains from Futurama. Like gravity, the amount of vampiric brain-drain is inversely proportional to distance and I’m sure there’s a geometric regression for how dumb one gets depending on how long one remains within Batman’s stupefication field. He may or may not be aware of this field, but because he is so intelligent, he understands

1. He cannot control it or wield this ability consciously
2. He can strategically create situations in which he can take advantage of its effects
3. He gains no benefit by acting like the playboy billionaire goof that is Bruce Wayne

A note on that third point though, Bruce Wayne’s clumsiness may be an after-effect or a hangover of having sucked in too much IQ from others. Evidence shows that Batman as Bruce Wayne is just as capable and smart though, so that gets tossed out

To be honest, this is not an original observation of mine. This originally came from Rich, my old coworker, and I hadn’t had a chance to really expound on the idea, but I really like it just the same.

Not much to say, check it out!

Harley

All in all, this took only a few hours to complete from thumbnails to end-product. Not perfect, but no piece is. I’m glad this kind of fell out of my head the way it did and Ame helped a little on the editing process.

With this eczema, I think I might know how The Incredible Hulk feels when he hulks out and grows in size – or at least his shirt. I want to say pants because it’s funnier, but his pants never seem to burst.

My eczema is mostly on the knuckles of my right hand, and when it flares up badly, I can feel my skin stretch tight over them. And by feel, I mean pain. I feel like if I grip a pen too tightly, my hand will explode right out of its skin.

A funnier take on this whole pain thing though, my hands can look somethin’ awful bad with splits and cuts, and a general redness on the affected area. It’s as if I could start some shit with some toughs and they’d take one look at my hands and back off. “No way man, you’re a bare-knuckle boxer. No pussy’s hands look like that, and I’m not risking getting my ass kicked over this. We out. Peace.”

This story highlights what a dork I am and the way I think tough guys talk. Also I called them toughs.

Late.

Turkish: Well, do you want to do it?
Mickey: That depends.
Turkish: On what?
Mickey: On you buying this caravan. Not the rouge one, the rose.
Turkish: It’s not the same caravan.
Mickey: It’s not the same fight.
Turkish: It’s twice the fucking size of the last one.
Mickey: Turkish, the fight is twice the size. And me ma still needs a caravan. I like to look after me ma. It’s a fair deal. Take it.

My Watchmen experience has come to a close, and what now? I don’t want to reveal the plot or the ending or anything, so it makes it a bit hard to really talk about. Number one: I recommend it. It’s a quick read, and just so you can gauge for yourself, it took me about 7-10 hours to complete it and I’m a slow reader. The protagonists are engaging, and, just like everyone else I’m sure, my favorite character is Rorschach.

Rorschach is popular because he’s one of the three really developed characters. Nite Owl is realistic in that he’s an aged masked-vigilante, and having a bit of a mid-life crisis. And then there’s the chick – I guess that really speaks to how great I thought she was, eh? But Rorschach is a man of action, and while we can sympathize with Nite Owl and his problems on a more human level, we want to root for the hero who can (or tries to) get things done! The other characters don’t really seem that involved or important.

One thing I really love about the setting, is the “norm” is there are no heroes with super-powers save for Dr. Manhattan, who, funny enough, suffered a super-science accident to get his powers. The heroes are simply people with their own agendas and problems. Again, I don’t want to reveal anything, you’ll just have to see what’s under the hood (hah!) for these folks.

I’ve got a major gripe about a part of the book’s presentation though. At the end of each chapter, there’s a bit of extra “world-building” thrown in. It could be an excerpt of a character’s autobiography, a news clipping, or a journal. I tried reading them, but these sections seemed to get in the way. After the first couple of these, I outright skipped them. Honestly,  I skimmed a couple of them, and if a phrase looked interested, I looked a little harder, but for the most part, it was boring. I imagine there were complicated back-stories for all the characters, and, rather than fully developing them for a graphic format, the authors went for the “brick of text” approach. Yawn.

In contrast, I would, however, love to see the adventures the characters allude to in their eariler days. I guess that’s what I love about The Venture Bros.. Much of its meaningful story-telling narrative is in flashback. Some are put-off by this, and I can understand completely, but what I believe they’re missing is the presentation is internally consistent: moving pictures, action, and dialogue. Watchmen is not consistent in this regard, and the curve-ball is not appreciated.

The story as a whole is quite good, the plot is well-laid out, and the ending has a nice twist if a little… odd.

Milhouse: When are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?

The Watchmen movie is supposed to be coming in 2009, so I picked up a copy of the graphic novel and have started into it. I’m not too far into the story, but it is very well done. When I first started it, I thought it was good, but I’d seen better: Fables came immediately to mind.

Bobby: if doc manhattin isnt nude in the movie im boycotting it
Bobby: >: |
Bobby: ill have a little sign
Steneub: like a no smoking sign, with a penis instead of a cigarette, INSIDE of a similar symbol – to show you’re against the banning of penises

Of course he’s kidding, but Dr. Manhattan is a blue energy man and he walks around naked (That’s not a spoiler – this happens in the first couple issues), and well, you see cock and balls. It’s not gratuitous and it’s makes perfect sense to see block and tackle there; one is simply used to censorship or to have it obscured or just out of frame.

I know pretty much nothing about Watchmen other than what I’ve read so far. It’s very good, and I want to see where it goes. I’ll probably have a 23 year-old late review posted when I’m done!

I’m a big fan of 8-bit Theater over at Nuklear Power. I keep up on the strips regularly, and I’m happy to have it in my rotation. There was a feature that updated fairly often called Twinkin’ Out with Red Mage. In it, Red Mage, answered questions about anything, usually geeky, with a geeky answer. Sometimes people asked for relationship advice, ”Who would win in a fight,” or which combination of feats in D&D 3rd Edition would make a Monk godlike (It’s a trick question by the way: Monk’s are godlike without any feats).

Red Mage hasn’t updated in a very long time, and I want something like that to exist. So! Without further ado, I’m launching Ask Steve. It’s very simple. Send an e-mail to asksteve@pie-hole.com and I’ll answer anything you send. Even without incoming mail, I’ll still have something geeky to write about.

Go on! Ask me! I dare you!

xkcd had a comic a long time ago; something to the effect of “I just can’t get passionate about copyright law.” It’s true, I tend to be pretty apathetic about the whole situation, but sometimes little things grab my attention.

For example, I believe the nightmare, What Happens in Vegas, released on DVD with “Digital Copy.” This promotional doohickey allows you to view the DVD on your digital media devices with very little hassle. I don’t know if the “Digital Copy” copy of the film is copy-protected or has other DRM schema associated with it, but the simple fact that studios are willing to provide a more… “volatile” (?) format for consumers is a step in the right direction.

I promised myself I’d keep this entry short, so I’ll cut to the chase: Even if the movie is terrible, I may be willing to purchase the DVD for the sole reason of supporting this practice.

“Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation.” – R. Feynman

It’s been good, but I’m going to be moving on to a wordpress on a fancy sub-domain. My hosting company, Dreamhost, is awesome by the way. I had trouble setting things up, and they helped me in practically no time flat. I highly recommend their services.

“Why the sub-domain,” you ask? I won’t lie, I love the format of the xkcd website with blog on the subdomain and comics on the main page. That’s right. I’m going to have comics on the main page. In a perfect world, there will be comics regularly posted on the front page. In a great world, it will be regular updates of comics or my latest art projects.

In reality, it will be comics or art on a semi-new basis, catalogued by number, rather than date. I’ll likely reference the frontpage from the blog, but not the other way around. To make it easy on me, I already have a ton of stuff stashed around here (here being my two hard drives at home and the space this site is hosted on).

Bobby, a friend of mine, sent me a link for a comic today. It’s pretty disturbing, but it holds your interest. I might liken it to a train-wreck, but this is actually compelling, so that’s not right at all. Just check it out for yourself.

I’m up to page 100, so don’t spoil the story for me!

After cruising over to Penny Arcade’s own Gabe’s (I can never remember which one’s real name is Mike Krahulik) gabeart, and some clicking around, that Blogspot is supereasy to set up, just as easy to host on your own space, and just as free. I’ve had this domain for what seems like an eternity. It served as a short-lived blog that I wrote all the software for myself. I was proud of the pile of shit, let me tell you.

The domain was just so cool that I couldn’t just let it go. The only thing I don’t have going for it is I’m forced to use a hyphen. In that way, I guess, I’m sort of a kindred spirit to the folks over at PA. I guess the similarities don’t end there ’cause I’m an artist too – just not nearly as practiced. I had a deviantart account for a bit, but I didn’t like the fact that I didn’t completely own the works while they were hosted there – or at least that’s as far as I understood the ToS.

So! It all culminates in this place. I’ve gone on long enough, and this is only the first post of nobody-blog. Enjoy your Internets.

I hear it’s now a bunch of tubes. Definitely not a truck. Oh God, I’m so damn topical and my timing is impeccable.