News & Notes

A poster from Rolf today, featuring the Man-Bat. Can't say I like the tagline, but otherwise the poster is top notch.

• Robot 6 has some comments and links on a recent news story on whether, with a black president, America is now ready for a black superhero. There are obviously plenty of black superheroes already (wikipedia has a giant list), but the Batman "family," Batman and his allies in his war on crime, isn't a very diverse group. There are a few black characters in Batman's life, but almost everyone of color is in the police and not on the heroic end of things. Batman is white, all five Robins (including Carrie Kelly) are white, Barbara Gordon too. The lone example of diversity from a regular I can think of is Cassandra Cain whose mother is Asian.
  
  There was an attempt in the early 2000s to introduce two heroes in Gotham of African descent in Orpheus and Onyx, but neither arose very organically and ended up stinking of tokenism. In the end, (spoiler alert!) Orpheus died at the hands of Black Mask and Onyx just stopped appearing shortly after. It would be nice to have someone of color with a more meaningful role introduced, and I hope that the movies aren't opposed to casting an actor of a different race from the comics if he or she fits the part, but at least we've got guys like Lucius Fox, so Batman's world isn't too bad.


• The Society for the Advancement of Dave has a great article on How to Kick Drugs the Batman Way:
  

  Are you short-tempered with friends, co-workers, or your butler? Do you take out your anger on innocent household appliances that have never done you wrong? Have you ever "hulked out" and ripped your clothing?
  
  These warning signs should not be ignored.



• And Gamespot has the trailer for the upcoming Batman: Arkham Asylum videogame, which looks pretty cool (and features some of the voice cast from the 90s animated series):