Shortpacked! by David Willis
Toys are serious business.
Convention appearances:
Calgary Expo Calgary, AB: April 26-28
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
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Sorcery 101
Templar, AZ
The Transformers Wiki
Hail to the Slash
80 page GIANT
Axe Cop
The Book of Biff
Butt-Taco
Comics Curmudgeon
College Roomies from Hell!!!
Diesel Sweeties
Dinosaur Comics
Dr. McNinja
Dresden Codak
Fans!
Fleen
Gastrophobia
Girl Genius
Girls with Slingshots
Goats
Hark, a vagrant
Hijinks Ensue
Intrepid Girlbot
Legend of Bill
Medium Large
Not Invented Here
Octopus Pie
Overcompensating
Penny Arcade
PhDcomics
Power Nap
Questionable Content
Real Life
Rob and Elliot
Bad Machinery
Schlock Mercenary
Sheldon
So Far Apart
Something Positive
Two Lumps
Wapsi Square
Wonderella
Wondermark
Frumph.NET
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If Jason Todd is alive again now, why the hell does he still keep the case?
Because writers love breaking the thing.
Oooh, I know, they can have Jason Todd get killed again… and he can die crashing into the case!
This needs to happen.
yes yes yes yes yes
BECAUSE OF REASONS
Can you imagine the clutter at JLA HQ if this is standard procedure?
Because “our” Jason Todd is dead. The current Jason Todd is from another universe.
He’s like Peter Bishop on Fringe.
yes there’s alternate universe todd, but main evil todd is the same todd ressurected with a lazurus pit, i have come from the future to express my nerd rage!
Because Jason Todd died, and Bruce failed him. The fact that Jason came back doesn’t negate the fact that Jason got killed and it was partly Bruce’s fault.
In other words, the DC universe is the textbook definition of a “clusterfuck”
And it’s even moreso now. New52 = UNIVERSEFAIL.
cause he’s not really a gardner…..
He keeps the case as a reminder of what can happen. Plus, Jason Todd is a nutter.
By Timm, I think you’re onto something.
So, is this like cannon? Is Ethan going to open mic night regularly, or at least when he needs to yell at someone who is not the internet?
wth do i care about this being cannon its funny shut up me
Just gonna rip this bandaid right off. This strip cannot be cannon. Is not nearly big enough for make cannon.
It’s “canon.”
…and before posting this, I deleted a lot of boldfaced and italics and “rrraaagh” and “kill you all.” I guess the cannon/canon thing is starting to bug me.
If people call it cannon, they are likely to get shot with one
But the writers at the big comics companies are all firing canon at each other.
And the readers.
I hope so. I think it’s good for him.
Incidentally, that “Super-cliche” is awesome. I now want to have Willis’s Manbabies.
I would hope he would go to open-mic night with less obtuse material than that. I mean, unless the crowd is really into Batman, he’s gonna get no response. Maybe he’s at open-mic night when Comic-Con’s in town.
As long as that’s not his only joke material he’s good. One or two geek jokes tend to go well with any crowd, and he explains enough before the punch-line that it could easily be funny for a non-geek.
Not even slightly.
But it IS funny to geeks like me, which is all I care about!
I dunno, “Batman’s eyes narrow” made me laugh and I’m not a comic book geek.
That was explained in the story about how Ethan and Amber met. Ethan wants to be a stand up comedian, but he’s not very successful because his gimmick is “Batman makes anything funny”. It doesn’t really work very well because that targets a niche that isn’t terribly big.
Well, jokes about Batman the concept are fine for mainstream audiences. The reason this routine isn’t is because they’re jokes about specific story lines and the habits of comic book writers.
But when he came back to the stage in the more recent storyline with the prostitute from Wal-Mart, he did well with the Batman jokes. I think the problem was his self-confidence rather than his material.
At some point during this chain of events, Gordon must shatter the Bat-signal, signalling the end of his trust in Batman… FOREVER!
And then Tim kills Stephanie. Don’t ask why. NEVER ASK WHY.
And then Batman must apologize to the Bat-Family and his JLA colleagues for being all jerkassy, closed off and paranoid, and promise that from now on he’s going to be kind, open and trusting…at least until the next major storyline.
Yes.
Annnnd..uh..the “evil Nightwing” is dressed up as Cosmic Boy for some reason?
Everyone knows when you go evil, your color scheme changes, just like how at the end of this story when Batman has been forced to use guns, he will have to change his costume to something more gritty. Or he will take some time off and let Tim Drake or the Birds of Prey or somebody protect the city.
“Tim Drake”
But he’ll have gone EEEVIL
But then the city gets blown up.
Then they all break into song!
But where in all this is the part where Batman beats Superman up while indicting American society in some vague way?
Right after Superman dresses down Batman for some “stepping over the line” thing he did recently.
It never stops being hilarious that Superman is “faster than a speeding bullet”, but apparently not “faster than a dude in a bat costume with kryptonite gloves on”.
The bullet makes a sound. Batman does not.
Because he’s a ninja.
Superman is always on his low-power settings because of “World Of Cardboard” compensation.
Sort of like how Green Lantern can fly across space, which means he’s gotta be going way over the speed of light, but if we need someone to get somewhere or do something fast, it’s Flash’s job?
That one always made more sense to me; getting up to the speed of light in space has to be easier than doing it on the surface of the Earth.
It’s never a good idea to jump to warp speed in an atmosphere.
GL has POWER and VERSATILITY. The Flash(es) do one thing with ABSOLUTE CONTROL.
But Batman never uses guns!!! T.T
Tell that to Grant Morrison during Final Crisis…
Except for in the 1930′s and 40′s when he did…
Different continuity/alternate Earth. At least… I think that’s how they justified it. Wasn’t the origin era of a gun-carrying Batman turn out to be Earth-2 Batman, and that Earth-1 Batman never used a gun… Or… >winces< Ow… Brain hurts… Damn changing DCU histories…
Morrison wants us to believe that it all happened. All of it. Including the silly, impossible, and self-contradicting stuff.
Sure, Grant. Whatever you say.
This is only a problem if superheroes shouldn’t be silly, impossible, or self-contradicting.
Okay, it’s time to lay this one to rest.
Y’know, all of this stuff is back in print now. If you sit down with the first volume or two of The Batman Chronicles, you may find a couple of splash pages depicting Batman with a holster, but the only time he’s ever seen using a gun is the infamous scene in “Bat-Man and the Monster Men”, where he guns down the titular monstrosities with the machine guns on the Bat-Plane.
And even then, his dialogue boils down to “I hate to do this, but those poor souls are as good as dead anyway.”
If there’s a story where he actually draws a handgun, much less fires one, please, please, point it out to me!
Batman verse the Vampire in the Red Hood. He pulled out a gun and shoots two vampire people in the heart while they’re sleeping. It’s still killing people with guns. Two things Batman now a days is adamant against, until the thing with Darksied in Final Crisis
i havnt read that issue yet………well at least now i know what to expect hahahahahahahahaha
I have to admit… I would buy that book. An entire book where they do every single Bat-cliche? But he has to say “I’m the Goddamn Batman” after he shoots evil Nightwing.
And you just know that somewhere at DC, someone is reading this and plotting…
Up untill that issue, I was enjoying the Batman Beyond comic -sigh-
I was enjoying it up until Hush appeared as the villain.
You, and me and everyone else. But what to you expected from Adam Beechen, the guy who ruined Cassandra Cain? This is par for the course isn’t it? The story starts off really interesting and fun, and then takes an abrupt and disappointing turn that comes off making little sense.
Ethan’s right. The whole “Robin is Evil” thing isn’t even original or shocking anymore. And honestly, if it turns out Dick really IS Hush, it hurts all the more. Batman Beyond already did ONE evil Robin with Tim Drake turning to the Joker. It might be different characters, but the premise is the same.
I really hope the whole Dick Grayson as Hush thing is a red herring.
Oh, jeez, I really hope that’s the case. It’s the only thing that could salvage the plot structure of the last issue: “Dick Grayson’s the obvious suspect. It’s too obvious, it can’t be Dick Grayson. I’ll talk to Dick Grayson. Dick Grayson has a tragic history that makes me rethink my relationship with Bruce! I don’t think it’s Dick Grayson. Oh, look, it’s Dick Grayson. WHAT A SURPRISE.”
yup, thats a pretty perfect summery.
Well , aside from the “cat woman” wtf
It’s going to end up like the original Hush arc where it was like, it’s Jason! …but it’s not! But we’re bringing back Jason anyway!
Really though I mean, even if it is a red herring, it’s a pretty awful, painfully obvious one.
Oh, I totally agree. The second they showed Dick in the issue and he started talking about how he got screwed over by Batman, I was groaning.
But at least if it turns out to be a red herring, Dick Grayson won’t be another bad cliche that we have to read about again and again for the remainder of the BB comic series.
I mean, look at Jason Todd? How many times can we do the whole “Oh noes! It’s the evil Robin!”
I’m still bitter that what they did to Tim Drake in the “Return of the Joker”. Every time I watched the old series with him, I got depressed and kept thinking… “Poor kid… you have no idea how screwed you are, do you?”
Screw Return of The Joker, man. I choose to explain it away in the time honored comic book manner– it’s an alternate universe. That shitty alternate universe where Tim got chrisangelmindfreaked by the Joker, instead of the correct universe where Tim beat the Joker ten ways from Sunday and accidentally knocked him into exposed power lines, causing the Joker’s death and a huge fight with Batman, after which Tim says to hell with all that and moves out west to start the awesomest super team that was ever animated.
*shakes fist at Bruce Timm for trying to pretend the Teen Titans animated Robin was a Dick when he was clearly Tim*
For the first time, I am moved to comment by the awesomeness of that strip. Oh, Batman angst tropes. Like Batman himself, you apparently cannot be beaten to death.
Well, I guess there’s no need to watch Under the Red Hood now.
*Thanks* for the spoilers, David.
You’re kidding right? The graphic novel came out in 2005.
This will probably shock and horrify you, but some of us neither read nor follow the comics.
Fortunately for me, I bought that DVD on sight back when and am thus spoilerproof.
I do realize that, I just thought it was common knowledge by now.
IT WAS HIS SLED.
I didn’t know it until I saw the movie.
But yeah, this red hood thing is totally an integral part of pop culture now.
Total casual Batman reader. Had no idea the DVD was based on a graphic novel.
I’ve also got the Dark Knight Strikes Again on my shelf (which I’m also yet to read, but I wasn’t going to complain about that one because it’s been out a while)
I need me some paper Shortpacked! How are Book 3 Pre-orders coming along?
I think Batman is going to do a pass the torch thing with Dick and stay in the background a while. If Captain America can do it so can Bruce.
Actually, Bruce is going to franchise the Batman name. I’m serious. They’re bringing out a series called “Batman Inc.” Where Bruce essentially hires other heroes to be “Batmen”. Dick and Bruce are both going to be Bats.
Yeah, I’m hurting a little inside too…
I was with you up to that last sentence. Multiple heroes with the same identity working together! Pure awesomeness!
If you say so. I personally prefer their to be one Batman, because that’s how it works. Bruce Wayne is Batman. Having an army of Batmen copies kinda ruins the mystique and awesomeness of Bruce being the one and only ultimate super-hero.
I dunno…if they kept it a secret there was more then one it could make some interesting storys. Heroes might want to be batman for a bit to up their game.
You forgot Damian “making a deal with the devil” and becoming a Batman who kills in a possible future.
And once again Tim Drake gets overlooked . . . (Sorry, I’m just ticked that the Robin in the upcoming Young Justice cartoon is Dick, and not, y`know, the one who was actually IN YJ) If creators are going to stick every Robin from now on in Tim’s suit, shouldn’t more of them actually be Tim Drake? Well, apart from Brave & The Bold, who got the “grown up Dick Grayson Robin” look right – Earth Two FTW!
I agree. Whats the matter with Tim Drake anyhow? Anytime the animators or the writers of any cartoon series do a rescent Batman cartoon they completly forget about Tim Drake. waht is it. They hear his name and go AHHHHH and jump out the window. They only did Tim Drake proplertly once and that was with Batman Animated Adventures.
Yeah.. the last time we got Tim Drake in a cartoon was DCAU – when they skipped from Dick to Tim – skipping Jason altogether.
Which everyone is thankful for.
(And of course they always put Dick in Tim’s costume… Tim’s costumer MAKES SENSE
)
Dick’s costume made sense, too. He was brightly colored to draw gunfire from Batman
And the short pants were to show off his legs to certain alien princesses. I maintain that an adult Dick Grayson Robin should be based on the Earth-Two version, or Nightwing. Tim’s uniform should stay Tim’s.
Except that the “Tim Drake” in the DCAU wasn’t anything like comic book Tim Drake. He was, essentially, “Jason Todd done right” rather than Tim.
And the reason Tim is never used is because to use him, you have to first have Dick, since he’s the Robin that people “remember”. So Tim has to be a legacy Robin (like in the DCAU), because if he’s the first people will go “where’s Dick”?
(Regarding TT Robin, there’s an episode with Larry, his Superfan where the words “Dick Grayson” fly past the screen backwards.)
Yeah, you need Dick around, but there’s no reason he can’t be Nightwing and not Robin. A quick line about Tim getting a better suit than Dick did when he was in the role is all we’d need to establish the relationship there.
ANd I’m well aware of the little references about TT Robin being Dick, but the day to day design, fighting style and characterization all point to Tim. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck & quacks etc etc.
I guess he’s just too cool to be a “Robin who goes bad”, well outside of the Teen Titans comic, at least. And I still consider the Robin of the TT cartoon to be Tim. The uniform, attitude and weapon of choice all point to Tim Drake. Did Dick ever even use a staff?
Let’s see here:
Grows up to be Nightwing: Check.
Love interest in Starfire: Check.
I think it’s pretty safe to assume Robin is Dick.
Also, that’s at least one more that isn’t mentioned by Ethan, Robin in TT goes ‘evil’ as Slade’s apprentice.
Also, Teen Titans Robin has that flashback of his parents falling from the circus trapeze.
So… either Dick Grayson… or pre-Crisis Jason Todd.
I think Dave’s point is that his presentation is total Tim Drake Robin. ANn I have to agree. I hadn’t followed the cartoon too closely, but I figured it was Tim until I heard people talking about him as dick.
Robin in TT Animated is basically Robin from the original Young Justice… slightly uptight, trying-a-bit-too-hard-to-be-Batman but still a (relatively) normal kid.
Exactly!
Well, you can’t blame them for sticking Dick into the Tim Drake Costume. Tim’s costume made a lot more sense than Dick’s. Speedos and pixie boots? I’m kinda creeper out by trying to imagine that in the Titans Animation style.
I think that’s really the core of it. I think it makes more sense for the character to be Dick so he was roughly the same age as the others, it’s just kind of a natural character placement. But coming off the coat tails of TAS and TNBA it made more sense to make Robin more like Tim which had become the familiar version of the character.
It’s definitely Dick Grayson. There’s loads of hints to it, like here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh2MYGW6Pfc
and the flashback to the circus, and the Future!Dick (as Nightwing) who Starfire meets and recognises as the Robin she knows.
I’m a total geek for the cartoon, and the comics of Teen Titans.
Sorry.
I think Tim is seldom evil because, frankly, of all the Robins, he’s the only one who’s ever had a healthy relationship with sanity. Jason and Damian are inherently crazy/evil. Dick became Robin Batman-style: dead parents. All the angsty-shit happened to Tim after he was Robin. Making the others go evil is easy; Making Tim go evil is work.
However, Tim’s relationship with Stephanie proves that even if it’s hard to make him evil, it’s stunningly easy to make him inadvertently be an ass.
Well to be fair, considering all the stuff Stephanie has done to him during the course of their relationship… you know… hiring assassins to making him a ‘better Robin’, faking her own death, stalking him to find out his identity, taking on the Robin identity behind his back… you can’t entirely blame him sometimes for being an ass.
Unless I misremember (which is certainly possible), didn’t it turn out she’d hired the assassins on Bruce’s say-so? Faking her death, though… well, I just think that whole storyline was effed up six ways from Sunday, and we’ll leave it at that.
Bruce told Stephanie to help Tim be a better Robin. He never however told Steph to hire assassins to do it. I think she came up with that gem on her own. Before becoming Batgirl, Steph never had any real good history regarding master plans
Well… so long as you don’t count his “Superboy, dad, girlfriend and mom are all dead! So I’m going to re-clone Superboy 100 times so that way I’ll be happy again, oh and I’m going to make out with his girlfriend” period. That… wasn’t quite sane.
Robin is actually the Clock King. And Evil knightwing was a split personality program in Starfire planted by DR. Venom.
Watch out, Willis! His eyes narrowing is a sign that he has understood he’s in fiction and you caused him to do bad things! He’s going to reach out of the page and punch you!
Punch him? No hes going to set him on fire, and watch him burn while talking about he’s gone mad…
Batman would never narrow his eyes! Never!
The opening credits of B:TAS beg to differ.
But it’ll be DIFFERENT this time! See, Batman will be Dick! And the evil Nightwing will be Jason Todd, back from the dead and having taken over Nightwing from Dick because Dick’s Batman. So we’ll /kill Jason Todd/ by shooting through Jason Todd’s memorial case.
That’d be new… ish, right?
No wait the evil Robin will be BRUCE WAYNE and Batman shall be Jason Todd. Who doesn’t use guns. But he still lights people on fire. And evil Robin shall be dressed like 1960′s Robin, only with inverted colors. And the memorial case shall have Dick Grayson’s Nightwing costume, because he was murdered by one of his ex-girlfriends for sleeping around.
No no, evil Robin will turn out to be Granny Goodness. There will be bees. My God.
Its Bruce Wayne pretending ot be Granny Goodness pretending to be an Evil Robin.
But they’ll all secretly be Uncle Ben, who never actually died and was instead sent to a parallel universe!
And it turns out he was adopted, and is actually a Summers brother. From the ancient past!
“Bruce as Evil Robin” is pretty darn close to Damien’s character concept as it is.
I’m surprised everyone is believing the whole hush beyond thing. Consider how paranoid Bruce has been consitantly written in the comic- he see’s a man get shot dead in front of him and knows enough comic tropes to ponder if its all just a trick. Not to mention its hush… you know, the guy famous for making everybody think he was Jason Todd. Either way I blame zoidberg
Dammit. This whole comic was one big spoiler. *ducking*
This is a true truth about Batmans.
Also, in my mind Ethan is at a nerd-centric comedy club. Something I wish someone would open.
Batman should hypnotize Jason Todd so he thinks his own body tissues are food and he compulsively eats his own flesh until he dies just like that guy in the “don’t take PCP story” my parents told me in 1978. Batman should claim to have learned this hypnosis technique from Zatara while he was traveling through time and interacting with the JSA.
Then Batman can think stuff like “Jason, I made you eat your own flesh. What have I done. Yawn. Time for bed. Gotta get up early tomorrow because Aquaman’s coming over to help train my Bat Dolphin diarm naval mines and fight Ras Al Ghoul’s evil pod of dolphin assassins. ”
Fank Miller should write it so it can be quickly disavowed in case it doesn’t go over so well. Also it should be revealed that DC’s current official position is that Monarch was REALLY the Time Trapper who was really Monarch who was really the Time Trapper in a recursive loop that goes on and on so that the original Hawk, Captain Atom, Superboy Prime, and Cosmic Boy can all get off the hook.
I honestly didn’t realize this was a spoiler to the Batman Beyond comic til I started reading the comments.
I would also like to point out that Dick Grayson can’t be Hush because Bruce Wayne is supposed to be 80 and at best, Dick’s only 15-20 years younger than him, unless he got caught in a time warp. Which wouldn’t surprise me.
As for TT, Robin fits Dick better than Tim. For starters, being one of the founders of the team. A relationship with Starfire. The circus accident. The theory that Red X is Jason Todd.
Eh. He’s ranting an awful lot for a stand up routine. Jokes are few and far between. Honestly, I’d change channels.
Ah, but Ethan’s not your typical mainstream, Second City-type comic. He’s justified in emphasizing rants over jokes, because he’s an alternative comic, like Bill Hicks. Only instead of ranting about organized religion and the right to get zonked on shrooms, he’s ranting about Batman. He’s an alternative geek comic.
This would have almost worked better with only the last row.
(Maybe with “Batman bingo!” at the bottom of the last panel.)
Heh, “Batman’s eyes narrow” is still good 4-5 times later.
Crap, that sounded sarcastic. It wasn’t.
Just came across this and had to share it! XD
Wondermark #178; A display of Circumstantial Evidence
Figured you’d get a laugh out of it.
I predict distant (or near future) some strips on DC/Batman will include something about a Batman Clone Saga/Age of Darkseid and some individual that goes by the name of Bob Harras.
That story would still be better than Batman R.I.P.!
Willis, I don’t think you realize how much money I would pay to read this story.
I absolutely love that evil!Nightwing is pink.
That’s close to Royal Purple.
Damian Wayne.