Batman: The Animated Series- The Man Who Killed Batman

 "Without Batman, crime has no punchline."

We begin with rain, with night-time darkness, with interesting camera angles giving a very noir feel, matching the '40s fashions and cars for which the Animated Series is known. And a small time crook, one Sidney Debris, face drawn in that slightly cartoonish way of which the Animated series can be fond, seems to have killed Batman, in circumstances which he relates to Rupert Thorne, and to us.

This is one op those episodes that are "Batman-lite", and are told from a specific perspective. Such episodes are often among the best, and this is certainly no exception.

Debris, except in his head, is a hopeless loser. Set up to take the fall, he accidentally seems to kill Batman, but the fame proves too much for this mouse of a man. Violence, suspicion, a dangerous encounter with a fascinating nuanced and unstable Joker (by this point the character of the Joker, and his rapport with Harley Quinn, is very interesting), all drives him to desperately seek help from Thorne.

And here we have the two clever twists that really make the episode: Thorne doesn't believe him, thinking him a dangerous rival and, less surprisingly, Batman is not in fact dead (interestingly, not only Montoya but also Bullock must presumably have been in on it) but using Debris as a reward to get to Thorne. It's all delightfully clever, and the ending- Debris finding respect as a big man in prison- is perfect.

As is, perhaps, the episode itself.

Generation X (1996 TV Pilot)

 "No one's touching my butt!"

So this is a very, very obscure '90s TV pilot for a vaguely X-Men-themed series that never led to anything, mainly because the pilot is so awful. But it's fascinatingly awful.

I stopped reading Marvel comins around '93-94- I was sixteen, turning to other things, plus in hindsight I wasn't quite as enamouredwith how things were going, the shiny covers, gimmicks, endless first issues, the lack of respect shown to writers as opposed to big name artists who promptly sodded off to Image Comics anyway. But apparently this is based on a title from after my time, where a bunch of new mutants (no, not those ones) are taught at a secong, spin-off mansion by Banshee and Emma Frost, who is apparently a goodie now.

Apparently some of the characters are based on equivalents from the comics, although only those whose powers are easier to do on television. The only characters I know are Emma, Banshee and Jubilee... who, incidentally, is played by a white actress. Yeah.

What's frustrating here is that this is a concept that could have worked. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with the format or characters. There's some nice world-building, with the Mutant Registration Act, the lack of civil rights for mutants, and the sheer injusticeof it all, although it's not entirely clear to me whether or not Emma's "Xavier school" is known and sort of tolerated by the authorities.

No, it's basically just a really bad script for this pilot that makes it fail. The baddie, Russell- played by Max Headroom himself- is not related to mutants at all but just wants to control people through their dreams. Oh, and dreams exist in a "dream dimension" which is a real, physical place. And mutants have a particular sensitivity to said dimension for reasons of plot convenience.

Matt Frewer chews the scenery with aplomb as Russell, and is the best thing in this, at least being entertaining. But the tone is all over the place, as is Banshee's accent. None of the other characters are remotely likeable. There's a scene where a whole board of directors have a simultaneous fart and... yeah, it says a lot that this is probably the best scene.

Still, bad though this is, it's fun to watch, in a car crash sort of way.

Watchmen (2009)

"Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon.

Never have I been so favourably surprised by a film. Yes, Alan Moore refused to be associated with it for the usual (understandable) reasons and yes, Watchmen is as much about its form as its content, and form doesn't translate to other media. But that doesn't make it unfilmable, and I'd say this is the best possible cinematic version of Watchmen. The characters, the plot, the aesthetic- barring a major departure for the ending of the film it's an extremely faithful adaptation.

The cast, none of whom are huge stars, are perfect with the exception of Matthew  Goode, whose American accent is deeply unconvincing- and I'm a Brit. Jackie Earle Haley, so rubbish as Freddy Krueger in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, is a revelation as Rorschach, seemingly born to play the role.

I won't comment on the plot other than to urge people to read the original, but the film made me ponder the contrast between the Comedian and Rorschach, both dangerous Far Right borderline Nazis but very different. Not only is the Comedian a completely amoral bastard but we're further alienated from him by the fact that his place in the narrative is to be seen and understood through other characters, not on his own terms: we see his exterior actions, and subjective versions at that. It's quite a contrast from the way we are made privy, through the device of the diary, to Rirschach's interior monologue. Both are psychopaths but we are made privy to Rorschach's poor and unpleasant upbringing, while his misogyny and distrust of sex strongly imply that he is, definitely unlike Edward Blake, a virgin. And yet... both are equally reactionary and equally psychopathic. So why does Moore allow us to, if not like Rorschach, feel empathy for him, and accept him in the narrative space of the hero? I suspect it's because of the gulf in terms of social class and status between the two.

On a more prosaic note, the shifting patterns on Rorschach's face look amazing. As does the whole film, brilliantly realising Dave Gibbon's visual aesthetic. It doesn't quite have the depth of the original- that would be unfair to expect-but there's still so much to say about authoritarianism, about misogyny, about nuclear weapons, about poverty, about how superheroes in real life would be Nietzchean Supermen, not a liberal wish fulfilment figure dreamed up by two Jewish creators in the year of Kristallnacht, sadly.

This is easily the best superhero film I've ever seen, but then, the source material is sublime.