Det. Munch: A Threat To The Multiverse?

Though I'm a proud NYC nerd, my geek roots rest firmly in Baltimore... and as a prouder son of Baltimore, Homicide: Life on the Streets remains one of my all time favorite shows. So I found it particularly intriguing when fellow g'nerd, Bishop, pointed out that Richard Belzer has played the character of Det. Munch on a record breaking 8 separate shows-with 10 credits on the character's IMDb page.

I'm not entirely surprised; the character's great. I was thrilled to learn he was going to outlast Homicide and move on to the Law & Orders (though I can't say I've ever watched a full episode of SVU). And I was ever further delighted to spot his cameo in the last season of the Wire. However, once I looked at the credits on his IMDb page, a terrible truth became clear: Det. Munch is going to obliterate all of Space and Time.

How? Read on.

Its no shock that he has appeared in Law & Order since Homicide-the two shows clearly exist in the same fictional universe as they've enjoyed a handful of crossovers. And it doesn't require too much of a leap in logic to assume the Wire exists in the same universe-though the world is considerably grittier and... Wire-ier than both L&O and Homicide.

But Munch's diabolical show spanning isn't limited to cop show universes. No, he's appeared in an episode of Arrested Development, an episode of X-Files; Hell, he's even traveled into the Muppetverse and has been featured as a Munch muppet on an episode of Sesame Street! He's opted to explore the furthest reaches of what has been called the Westphall Universe, a fictional universe that comprises at least 60% of all television. The crux of the Westphall hypothesis being that the entire series of St. Elsewhere (created by Homicide showrunner Tom Fontana) took place inside the mind of a minor character-an autistic child named Tommy Westphall. This wouldn't be too big a deal, except for the fact that St. Elsewhere characters appeared in an early episode of Homicide... implying that Homicide, too, took place in Tommy Westphall's head... implying that ALL of the Law & Orders took place in Tommy Westphall's head... and, as prof. Brian Weatherson has pointed out, Law & Order has featured real life figures such as NY mayor Mike Bloomberg... implying that... um... we took place inside Tommy Westphall's head? You can see where the theory gets sticky.

But clearly, none of the great minds piecing together this delicate theory of the Westphall universe have accepted the obvious fact that the Westphall Universe is in fact, the Westphall MULTIverse. Surely, you can't expect us to believe that the Wire, Arrested Development, the X-Files, and Sesame Street all exist within the same fictional universe. It Must be a Multiverse! And Det. Munch is slowly eroding away at that Multiverse, WHICH INCLUDES OUR OWN UNIVERSE! As the Monitors of the DCU have pointed out, time and time again; all this inter-universal travel isn't healthy for the multiverse!

Something must be done, and fast! If his cross-universal travel continues unchecked, who knows what untold destruction he may reap. Even as we speak, Det. Munch is set to appear in an episode of Paris Enquêtes Criminelles-the french version of Criminal Intent... which apparently takes place in some strange universe where cops speak french. Richard Belzer, I implore you, stop your nefarious counterpart! Pick a universe, and stick to it! Save our Multiverse! Otherwise, I'm not responsible for any action a rogue Monitor may take...

May God help us all.

DC I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down

Dan DiDio, you've been made a fool.

SPOILER ALERT for Final Crisis #6 after the jump...


DC Comics, you blew it! You took your best shot at a mainstream press event since Jason fucking Todd, and you blew it!

Remember this?


Sure you do, cause it was big news! The Death of Captain America! A sad commentary on the Post-9/11 world! Collectors item!

Well, this Wednesday, DC went ahead and killed Batman. That's right, they offed Bruce Wayne, good old crazybrain, everyone's favorite agreived sociopathic hero.

This should, by all rights, be big news. Batman is a huge character. Roughly 17 times as popular as Captain America. And now he's dead. People should be weeping. Remember when Superman died? People were horrified. And at this point, what with the Dark Knight, Batman is a BIGGER, more recognizable character than Superman. He is, perhaps, the MOST FAMOUS comic book character in the world.

How did DC manage to kill the most famous superhero in the world without anyone noticing?

Let me count the ways:

1) OBAMA!

Marvel completely pwned DC this Wednesday, and they didn't even have to try. They simply put out a comic in which Spider-Man meets Obama. It's practically a goof, based on the fact that Obama has said on several occasions he collected Spider-Man comics when he was a kid.

And what happened? Lines out the door! 1st and 2nd printing sold out in hours! ebay auctions for hundreds of dollars! I want to give Joe Quesada a gold medal to wear that says "I KNOW WHAT PEOPLE WANT". America is at a major turning point, and people want to see their cool new future prez fist-bump with Spidey! It's called monitoring the national mood, DC, look into it.

2) Batman CAN'T BE DEAD!

Batman isn't dead - we all know Nolan's third movie is coming out in a few years! Plus I could have sworn I just saw him on Brave and the Bold a few days ago. If you told someone on the street that Batman died on Wednesday, they'd react like you told them Santa Claus died on Wednesday. Batman is too big a character to die - what he does in DC is just a blip on the radar of the American public.

Killing Batman in the comics is admitting that no one at DC could figure out how to make people pick up a Batman comic, DESPITE the fact The Dark Knight was seen by every person in American three times.  People who saw the Dark Knight don't want to read about Jason Todd and Tim Drake ("Who??") battling for the cowl.  They want to read about Christian Bale's facinating new "dark" take on Batman!  Talk about EPIC FAIL.

3) DEATH FATIGUE

DC has killed roughly every single one of their characters in the last few years, including:

The Flash
Martain Manhunter
The Elastic Man
The Wonder Twins
The Ventriloquist
All The New Gods

That's like half of the Justice League right there.

4) RESURRECTION FATIGUE

DC has brought back roughly every single one of their dead characters in the last few years, including:

Jason Todd
Stephanie Brown
Barry Allen
Hal Jordan

The result of all this? NO ONE CARES.

5) Batman's death didn't even happen in his own book.

One might hope that the death of Batman would be the result of a long series of events that reflect the life and themes of the caped crusader. That there might be some sort of, I don't know, EMOTION associated with this character's death.

Nope! Batman dies shooting an evil god alien with a space-gun, thus burning his body to a cinder and sending his alternate self to another multiverse, where he will live out his days in suffering. OMGWTFLOL. So is he even dead? How can we have an emotional reaction to something so convoluted? I would hate to write his eulogy.

I would like to close this rant by saying, I love Grant Morrisson. I don't blame any of this on him. I blame the editors at the top who thought it would be a good idea to have Bruce Wayne die at the end of a immensely complicated "Crisis Event" that was clearly a financial and critical failure from the first few months of it's release. Could they not have just bailed out, and thrown a new ending on? Saved the Batman death for later, when maybe it could evoke some sort of emotion in it's readers other than, "That's it?"

The Death of Batman could have been a heartbreaking story. Batman is a deeply sad character who in many ways, I think, has always longed for death. For retirement. For escape. I'm sure his fans can imagine millions of ways that the Dark Knight could have gone out that would have made them cry their eyes out. But that opportunity is gone now, and can never be regained. Even after Bats gets resurrected, there's no death like the first death. They blew it.

Oh well, there's always fanfic.


PS, the title of this post is taken from a lovely LCD Soundsystem Song. Here is a video of Kermit singing it:

Did The Dark Knight Really Win the Summer of '08?

Summer is officially over, and what an awesomely geeky summer it's been! Giant green men, slightly-less-giant red men, robots, rich narcissistic superheroes, rich emotionally-traumatized superheroes... something for everyone! But which geek movie came out on top?

I think it's official, right? Dark Knight has definitely won the hard fought, Geek Movie Summer cage match. Not only has it been carelessly barreling through previously untouchable records, it will go down in history as arguably the finest comic book movie yet. Even the MTV movie awards (held early in the summer) anticipated the coming cultural landmark and created a new category with which to award the summer's runner-up, Iron Man: "Best Movie of the Summer... so far". Yet despite the unstoppable juggernaut that has been the Dark Knight, it's Marvel that's going to end up on top. And DC should pay attention and take notes.

While the Dark Knight was busy smashing records (and winning hearts), Marvel was busy laying the groundwork for a future empire. This summer marked the beginning of a bold experiment for Marvel... a fully autonomous "Marvel Studios." Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk were the first films completely produced under Marvel's banner (relying on Paramount and Universal for distribution and marketing only). Marvel is treating the movie business the same way they do their comics; a unified editorial board that oversees all the projects coming and going.

This is an extremely novel approach to making movies-and one that is sure to be criticized. But in the end it's going to win the day for Marvel. The filmmakers are given the same freedoms that Marvel's comic writers and artists are used to, but they have to conform their "vision" to fit within the greater Marvel Movie Universe. And this is what your average comic geek movie viewer craves. We geeks love our continuity. But it'll have benefits the reach far beyond the geek audience.

"Clearly, we got into the business of doing these movies ourselves because we believe in our vision for these movies," says Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios, in an interview with Newsarama, "and we believe that the success that we’ve had over the years is based on our instinct and our abilities to translate our characters. Now to be able to do that completely unencumbered.... It’s nice to have full control to bring these characters to life the way we think they should be."

It is nice. But granted, even if none of the movies they ever produce can match the individual success of The Dark Knight, is that such a bad thing? So far, DC's film offerings are completely self contained. And The Dark Knight especially so. There is no room in the TDK universe for Superman, Robin, a Justice League-nothing that makes the DC universe the DC universe. Hell, TDK is so aggressively insular, there's hardly even room for another sequel. Even the Nolan brothers have expressed concern as to how they could follow up a film like TDK.

While DC is building fences around its intellectual properties, Marvel is openly inviting their properties to play in each other's yards. Some cynics thought the Robert Downey Jr. cameo in The Incredible Hulk was a play for more ticket sales-but we geeks knew better. It wasn't a cheap ploy-but instead a brilliant maneuvering to create the sense of a greater universe. One in which Tony Stark could wander into a bar with Bruce Banner, and take a call from Nick Shield about Hank Pym's latest discovery. To make matters more exciting, they're using this character crossover to build up to the eventual Avengers movie... which has geeks every where salivating.

Now I'm a DC guy-always have been. I enjoy a Marvel title here and there (Bendis' Daredevil is some of the best superhero writing I've ever read) But I don't care too much about the Avengers... at least, I didn't before. But after Iron Man's Sam Jackson cameo and then TIH's Robert Downey cameo-you can count me in! And they're going to introduce Ant Man, Thor, and good ol' Captain America in their own movies. All in the same universe. By that point, I'll be chomping at the bit to see the Avengers.

Now DC is planning a Justice League movie. And yes, I'm excited because I love the Justice League. But you know what? Is there any chance it'll be good? The poor writers will have the herculean task of squeezing origin stories for Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, and the Martian Manhunter into a story that gets them to team up with a DIFFERENT Batman and Superman... one that doesn't fit into either the Superman Returns universe or the current Batman movie universe. That's the kind of thing that'll' bug not just the stickler comic geek audience, but also confuse the hell out of the general public. Warner Bros already had a hell of a time convincing people that Batman Begins was, in fact, not the same Batman from the Burton or Schumacher films (and thankfully so).

So Marvel has established for themselves, an incredibly easy way to branch out into all of their remaining intellectual properties. Sure, today it'd be a hard sell to get people to see a Hawkeye movie... but imagine after a half dozen semi-successful/successful Marvel movies, including The Avengers-you'd just have to say "he's the next member of the avengers, kids!" On the DC side, is there anything you could tell a kid to get him into a theater for The Green Arrow?

So even though DC may pop out a genre-re-defining masterpiece like TDK... does that make it any easier for them to utilize any of their other countless properties? Whereas, the time and effort Marvel spends now creating an expanding universe, will give them the ability to easily market any of their characters or even recreate any of the existing movie properties that don't currently fit in.

"The summer of 2008 has been a huge, huge victory for us so far, and tells us that people enjoy where our instincts are leading us so far." -Kevin Feige (pres. of Marvel Studios).

I just hope DCs paying attention. I'd really like to enjoy The Justice League.