I’ve been looking forward to this article ever since it was announced that Bane would be appearing in The Dark Knight Rises, and not just because the title rhymes.  I’ve been looking forward to it because Bane is awesome, and not many people outside of comics fans have much of an idea of who he is.  This is because his appearances in media outside of comics and cartoons have been pretty much limited to two: he was an almost unnoticeable tertiary badguy in that movie-that-shall-not-be-named Batman & Robin, and he was the first boss fight in Batman: Arkham Asylum.

But there’s much more to Bane than just “the Mexican wrestler guy who’s on steroids,” so allow me to explain why he makes my short list of awesome Batman villains that most people don’t even know exist.

(Which also includes Mr. Zsasz.  Yes, I freaking loved Batman: Arkham Asylum.)

Poisoning talk show audiences [spoilers at link] and blowing up hospitals is bad enough, but discouraging promising students? That’s just evil.

(Reddit via BuzzFeed)

This is not a rumor.  It’s in the freaking New York Times. The Dark Knight Rises will star, among others, Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, an Tom Hardy as Bane.

At least we now know, at long last, that Tom Hardy’s beard has nothing to do with his role in TDKR.

While I am told that these images have received some acclaim across the internet, my first thought was “my god, we have dodged a bullet.” Behold, Gotham High, a re-imagining of Batman as high-school drama with Bruce Wayne attending classes with pubescent versions of all his worst enemies. Thankfully, this series will not be going into production. I’ve been told by friends and colleagues that I need to stop using the term “threw up in mouth,” but pocket-wretching is about the only way I can describe my reaction.

(more…)

Behold, a pictorial history of the most lawbreaking car in Gotham City history, the Batmobile.  Turns out, in the 70′s Batman mostly drove… a regular car.  Like… with no markings.

Probably because the writers had used up their quota of WTF in the 60′s, when the Batmobile had two individual windshields for driver and passenger.  But, as we can see above, nothing beats the 90′s for WTFery.

Pixar Postage Stamps! (Bit Rebels)

Weird Wendy’s Musical Training Video Of the Day (StrangerRandy)

New Years Eve at Wayne Manor (The-BlackCat)

How to Recreate a 80′s Saturday Morning With Netflix (GeekSix)

The Best Wrong Rumors of 2010 (io9)

80′s Franchise Games That Never Were(College Humor)

2011, By the Numbers (Wired)

(pic by zero-lives, via That’s Nerdalicious!)

In case you’ve been out of the loop (and it’s a pretty tiny loop, so you could easily be excused) there’s more than one Batman now.  Also, one of those Batmans (the original flavor) has been travelling around the world recruiting more Batmans to be his Little Helpers.

I’ll let that sink in.

There has been some controversy over the French-Batman’s-Little-Helper Nightrunner, who is a young French-born Muslim from Clichy-Sous-Bois, the neighborhood rocked by riots in 2005, who was motivated by the death of a radical friend at the hands of the police to fight against Islamic nationals and terrorists in the French state.

And by controversy, I mean internet controversy.  Which is to say, some random people who have nothing to do with the comics industry and, in fact, nothing to do with France, said some racist and religiously intolerant stuff about the choice; and no one in the comics industry or, in fact, France, has yet responded.

If you have been following gaming or movie news in the past month, you may have come across a man called Hugo Strange.  Not only has the psychologist been revealed as a major character in Batman: Arkham City, he keeps being mentioned in the swirling gyre of rumors surrounding Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises.  (Probably because Tom Hardy has been confirmed to play a role in the movie, but nobody knows who he will be, and so the gears of fan speculation are grinding.  Our hopes are pinned sky-high on Tommy Elliot).

We know first hand that there are all kinds of geeks in the world, and not all of their interests overlap, and so fans of The Dark Knight and Batman: Arkham Asylum might be wondering who the heck this obscure Batman villain is, what gives him any appeal, and what his role as antagonist may mean for a plot.

Allow us to explain.

Batman: Arkham City Trailer (GameTrailers)

Mortal Kombat Trailer (GameTrailers)

Thor: God of Thunder Trailer (GameTrailers)

Guillermo Del Toro’s Insane Trailer (GameTrailers)

Resistance 3 Trailer (GameTrailers)

Mass Effect 3 Trailer (GameTrailers)

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Trailer (GameTrailers)

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Trust us. The above image is one of the more sane, but awesome, images in this repository of dozens of illustrations of what looks like a series of Russian TMNT knock offs. (Our favorite thing about it is how obvious it is that the person who drew Shredder didn’t draw that triceratops) The series starts off weird, even for the Turtles, whose chief opponents were an evil samurai and a brain living in the stomach of a robot who hung out in a giant round tank-like fortress underground. But then you find the crossovers.

Just… make sure you don’t have anything to do a spit take with.