Heroic hype: the Batcave

August 21st, 2009

As adults we forget how strange things are. Take caves, for example.

On a recent holiday, my wife, son, and I found ourselves on a guided tour through a cave system. The group was large, and the cave as well lit as the intersection between health and safety and the management’s sense of theatricality would allow. The guide’s patter was honed and confident, glinting with comfortable jokes that didn’t require laughter, and just the right blend of folklore and history to keep us interested. The package offered no reason this side of phobia to feel unsafe, or uncertain. No-one was going to get lost, and no-one was going to get hurt, even boredom was unlikely to be much of a problem given that the tour was, quite sensibly, rather short.

But somewhere in the darkness beneath the spotlit consumer experience the real appeal rustled. Awe. It went unspoken of course only ever hinted at or skirted. The guide spoke of a gigantic network of which ours was but a fragment, of divers who had squeezed their way through small spaces in the deep and discovered gigantic caverns, one of which was thus far inexplicable to the geologists and engineers that had pored over the photographs, the mega-tonnage above the vast cave roof apparently unsupportable. The guide also spoke of deeper passages still, of underground lakes and streams, and of tunnels yawning forever into the earth. Even the history of the place hung like a heavy shadow. The caves had been sacred to the Celts, who offered up sacrifices to the dark. Later the Christians came and banished the old religion, a conflict hinted at in the local legend of a witch turned to stone by a priest. The guide showed us the rock where, if the light is right, the witch’s petrified profile can still be seen glaring into the blackness, and claimed, as a good tour guide should, that late at night her mordant laughter can be heard echoing in the depths.

Perhaps from sub-level 7, perhaps deeper

batcave

Down, down, down…

Batman 666 #4, Mothafucka!

March 6th, 2009

And so ends part one of our batbook. I hope you like it. I can’t tell you how fun it is writing this stuff, and in my not so humble opinion, it’s a million times better than most superhero comics out there. But then, like all fan-fic people, I’m writing it because it’s what I want to see. This one over-runs by a few pages, but hopefully the book’ll be so popular by the time we get to the fourth installment DC editorial won’t mind! I know I should’ve reigned this monster in, but I want you to be able to read the uncut version. And I wasn’t ripping off Grant – I wrote it before…. YOU KNOW ALL THIS……

There’s lots of fighting this time. Some secrets are revealed. Others will have to wait. There is an overall arc to this stuff.

I’ll get back to some real criticism next week