Reading a bunch of critic's best-movies-of-2022 lists made me curious, so I went back and counted. I watched 16 movies released in 2022 in 2022.

Six were documentary/biopics. Four were mysteries. Three were cartoon/superheroes. One was Downton Abbey. And these two were on most of the aforementioned "best" lists:

153/2162. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Friend Ken was a big fan of this nearly indescribable sci-fi action film, and he has been encouraging me to see it since it was still in limited release. The last movie Ken promoted this much was Into the Spider-Verse, and I'm happy to report that both lived up to Ken's hype. This is bonkers in all the right ways. I'm sure it's destined to become a beloved cult film in the Buckaroo Bonsai tradition.

157/2166. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
After a great deal of thought, I think I've decided this might be my favorite film released in 2022 that I watched in 2022. Re-teaming the actors and writer/director of the fantastic In Bruges in a character piece, it's much, much smaller in scope than Everything Everywhere but every bit as enthralling in its own much, much more focused way. (I cannot believe that the Colin Farrell in this and the Colin Farrell in The Batman [or Miami Vice or Daredevil] are the same actor. Give this man all the Oscars!)

More of both of these sorts of films in 2023, please!

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Variety reports that an upcoming Propstore auction of television and movie memorabilia will include a Batarang that is expected to sell for between 11 and 17 thousand dollars. Sure, Bruce Wayne is rich, but there's no way that he pays that much for those things; he leaves them everywhere.

What really gets me about that price is that it's not a 1960s-era Adam West Batarang (a giant blue banana grappling hook) or even a 1980s-era Michael Keaton Batarang (a snap-out palm-sized bolo), but the chest-logo machete Batarang used by Robert Pattinson in The Batman, which came out earlier this year!

Which makes now as good a time as any to do this:

120/2129. The Batman (2022)

Short review: I hated it. Yes, it's a (marginally) new take on the character in cinema, but it's a spectacularly dumb one. For more than three hours, Batman wanders through leftover Fight Club sets acting like a plainclothes detective (wearing fancy dress-up) from Se7en who breaks every law and needs his butler to feed him clues. Catwoman is in the film just so Batman can look heroic by comparison! I think Robert Pattinson got the role because Peter Sellers is dead.

That said, I really don't want to be too hard on scrawny little Pattinson here, especially in the COVID era. Like poor Christian Bale, who had to talk while his bat-cowl squeezed his lips like a toothpaste tube, Pattinson is clearly trying to do the best he can with the lackluster material he's given to work with by writer/director Matt Reeves. For example, at the climax of the film, as a determined Batman injects himself with... well, I don't know what — it's neither telegraphed nor explained, I expected to hear Boris Karloff's voice saying "Batman's heart grew three sizes that day." There's only so much craftsmanship and subtility that you can expect from the guy who co-wrote Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.

My condolences to whoever pays $15,000 for that Batarang.

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I know that it's still Football and Batman Month, but this movie rundown has no Batman or Football content in it. Sorry about that. I'll try harder next year.

109/2118. We Met in Virtual Reality (2022)
This documentary shines such a colorful spotlight on some of the most virtuous and positive aspects of the virtual reality metaverse that it often feels like a sales pitch. If I didn't already have decades of personal experience that the reality seldom matches the brochure, I might have been swept away. Still, it *is* nice to think that someday maybe we *can* build such a utopia. (If you ask me, no place can be a paradise without Coca-Cola.)

110/2119. Hollywood Shuffle (1987)
Robert Townsend created a very funny movie about the very serious problem the American movie industry has representing Black people on film. It's very good.

111/2120. Promising Young Woman (2020)
I like a good revenge movie, and this is a great revenge movie especially because instead of terrorists or mafia, the villains are apologists for boys-will-be-boys sexual misconduct. It also helps that the cast is chock full of talented comedic actors, an unusual casting choice that really underlines the theme of a two-faced society. Recommended.

112/2121. Danger Lights (1930)
The "danger lights" in the title are railroad markers that warn engineers of obstructions on the track. In this case, the danger is a love triangle. It's not a great film, but it does have some great shots of period railroads. Consider it an historical curiosity.

113/2122. Licorice Pizza (2021)
A very episodic story of a May/December romance based on actual events in early 1970s Los Angeles, Licorice Pizza gets by largely on the freshness of its lead actors. As you must know by now, I'm a sucker for coming-of-age stories, even when the outcome of the love story seems completely unearned.

Paradise is a 1970s analog radio booth.

More to come.

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How'd that old commercial go? "You got chocolate in my Batman!"

I didn't know it when I picked this up at my local Fine Foods Store, but this is the third year Hershey's has produced a DC's Super Hero Bar. I think it's a fun idea, even if the candy itself doesn't really seem to understand how sequential art is supposed to work.

This reminds me that back in art school in the 90s, I made a white chocolate candy bar in which each "panel" told a different chapter of my life-up-til-then story. I created a custom wrapper, too. I assure you, it looked better than it tasted.

By the way, don't miss out on International Batman Day 2022, which Warner Bros has decided is tomorrow, September 17. (It used to move around the calendar a lot, but this "holiday" seems to have settled into the third Saturday in September in recent years.) Celebrate it however you like.

Personally, Batman recommends chocolate.

Source: gifer.com

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104/2113. The Green Slime (1968)
The important thing about this movie isn't that its monsters are lame and its human characters are stupid — were the first 15 minutes of this the inspiration for Armageddon? No, it's that the script was co-written by the guy who co-created Batman, Bill Finger. Viewed through the lens of a Silver Age comic book story, it's not *all* bad.

105/2114. Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Should have been titled "Catharsis: The Movie." The whole point is that all characters are having the very worst weekend of their lives, and if you can laugh at that, maybe you can laugh at your own problems, too. Kudos to the entire cast for pulling this off so well.

106/2115. Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)
Another movie that I'd seen in bits and pieces over the years. Well, now I've seen it all in one sitting, and it is very much just as depressing as the album (which is probably why I haven't listened to that all the way through in decades). Sadly, its key themes of the loneliness of mental illness and the seduction of fascism as a panacea to difficult problems is probably just as relevant in modern America as it was in early 80s Britain, and I'm pretty sure we don't have any better solutions now.

Coke is for crazies!

107/2116. In Harm's Way (1965)
John Wayne and Kirk Douglas lead an all-star cast through an epic that equal parts soap opera and war film, and in typical fashion for director Otto Preminger, it's pretty darn ambivalent about both. I've generally liked the Preminger films I've seen, this included. Maybe I should make an effort to see more.

Coke is also for rapists!

108/2117. Car Wash (1976)
"A Day in the Life of a Full Service Car Wash" is a great idea for a film and I loved it. 'Nuff said.

More to come.

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I posted this panel from of Mary Marvel and Hoppy from New Champions of Shazam #2 (a delightful comic) on Twitter yesterday, and it has far, far more retweets than anything I've ever posted in the 11 years I've been on that site.

words by Josie Campbell + art by Doc Shaner = 100% Marvelous

Granted, most of the things I post on Twitter are related to an entirely different and much less well-known comic book character (no, not Batman but Booster Gold), but whatever. If it influences more people to read the comics I like (which in turn encourages DC to make more of the comics I like), I'll call it a win.

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Believe it or not, we've finally reached the 17th Annual Wriphe.com Batman and Football Month. Am I excited? You betcha.

Earlier this year, the University of Georgia Alumni Association urged me to take a picture of myself "Calling the Dawgs" to drum up support for giving more money to an institution with over a billion dollars in endowment. (If you have a billion dollars what do you need more for? Is UGA planning on starting a space program?)

But I'm a loyal dog. So since I'm not on Facebook or Friendster or whatever the kids are doing these days, here's my picture on my own anti-social media.

Now that I've done as you asked, put those unpaid football players* who earned the University $46 million in net profit last year back to work for my entertainment!

*Okay, fine. They get Tuition and Living Expenses out of the deal. For an average student, that's about $27,600 in value. So it's not like they get nothing. But $46 million in profit could pay for an additional... 1.6 thousand students. That'd be a big football team!

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I like to think I know a lot about comics, and this sure seems like something I should have been aware of before now.

"Superman Jr." (drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and inked by Dick Giordano) is from the 1982 DC Comics Style Guide, where it is accompanied by the following description:

SUPER JRS. give licencees the opportunity to use pint-sized versions of DC's most popular heroes, including Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Robin, and Flash! All have been transformed into the most loveable and huggable mini-heroes you've ever seen!

I mean, yeah, like everyone else, I knew there were Lil' (Justice) Leaguers who have occupied their own corner of the DC Multiverse — Earth-42, 'natch — since 2008. For some reason I assumed that the Lil' Leaguers had been inspired mainly by the popularity of the late-1980s X-Babies comics, an adorably alternate-reality version of the best-selling X-Men from DC's chief competition, Marvel Comics. As it turns out, those 2008 characters were more likely descended from the only Super Jrs. comic appearance: The Best of DC Special #58 digest-sized comic in December 1984.

The really weird part is that 1984 story had actually been created seven years earlier for a format nearly twice the size! According to October 2014 issue of Back Issue magazine — which also includes a list of all known Super Jrs. licensed products — the Super Jrs. were originally developed (by Tom DeFalco, Vince Squeglia, and Kerry Grandenetti) to be used in a DC treasury-sized comic book in 1977 as the first in a whole series of Super Jrs. comics. But the treasury edition line was canceled, and DC instead decided to shop the Super Jrs. characters around for a cartoon series that never materialized, finally printing the comic in '84 to give the digest series a "new" Christmas story.

(I find the Super Jrs. an interesting contrast to DC's Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew, also a kid-friendly take on DC's Justice League of America characters — the Zoo Crew began as "Just'a Lotta Animals" — created in the early 1980s as a cartoon pitch only to become a comic series in 1982 yet doesn't appear in that Style Guide. Did the Zoo Crew perhaps have a different licensing agreement?)

Anyway, that 1982 Style Guide entry up there is for a character created in 1977, licensable for a television cartoon that never happened, and who wouldn't see print until 1984. In hindsight, I've certainly seen the cover of that Style Guide before, and I must have confused the Super Jrs. with the likes of Superbaby (first appearing in 1948) or any of the many Superboys or even the several Sons of Superman (some more imaginary than others). But no, it turns out Super Jrs. are their own thing.

Aren't comic books great?

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Think your headlines are bad? At least you don't live in Gotham City.

Batman #120, December 1958

They saved the elephant, but Batman had to be put down.

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What's under Batman's cape?

Perhaps that's best left to the imagination.

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