Around the Office: Deluxe Miracle Jesus

Man, April was a crazy, crazy month, as evidenced by the fact that I only posted six times. May (so far) looks like there will be more time for the three R’s – reflection, response, and writing stuff.

A friend of mine bought this for me a while back at a toy store in Austin. It’s not just any old Jesus action figure – it’s Deluxe Miracle Jesus! He comes with five loaves and two fish, and a water/wine jug (on one side the interior of the jug is blue, the other is red – awesome).

And – the best of all – glow-in-the-dark hands!!

There is a lot to say about Deluxe Miracle Jesus. A lot. I’ll break it down into categories.

I. Deluxe Miracle Jesus As A Toy
I think we’ve all seen action figures of Jesus, but have we really given much thought to Jesus as an action figure? I can only speak from my own experience, but the primary utility of an action figure, to me, was to create and live out your own adventures. In the cartoons Superman might never make it out to the Sahara and discover that Skeletor had kidnapped Wonder Woman, and he certainly wouldn’t usually team up with Spider-Man to save her (two different comic companies, you know), but that could happen in my sandbox.

Is this an appropriate thing to encourage children to do with Jesus? It seems like you’re veering uncomfortably close to blasphemy if you have Jesus team up with Batman to fight the Joker, or the Devil, or a Devil-possessed Joker (though stranger things have happened in comics). Wouldn’t children be encouraged instead to stick with the canonical stories? Get yourself a “Herod’s Temple Playset” with flipping-over-table action? Ok, that actually sounds fun, but essentially what you are doing is re-enacting stories you’ve already seen – is that fun? By a strict definition, it’s not “play.” “Play” has no rules. Sports have rules, and games, and art, but not play (my wife does play therapy a lot with children– she takes this distinction very seriously). Can you really “play” with a Jesus action figure? Can you really “create” with one? (There’s a theological pun in there somewhere.)

Now - other Biblical characters? I think there's a lot more potential there. A quick Google search reveals a LOT of Bible action figures, including Moses, Noah, David, Goliath, Samson, and...Esther?

Ah, I see now, Esther, as a queen, and a girl action figure, comes with a ton of changes of clothes. And a tambourine. There is a lot of potential here. A LOT (strangley, there is no Lot action figure...). But it would take us too far afield from the present topic. Come back soon for more on Bible action figures.

Putting these more theoretical issues aside, here are the pros and cons to this particular Jesus action figure.
Cons:
* Not much articulation, he can only move his wrists, hands, and head. In other words, this version of Jesus will not be drop-kicking anyone, through goal posts or otherwise (though he could flip over tables).
* Those little loaves and fish aren’t going to last long.

Trust me on this – accessories are the first thing to disappear forever from a toy collection, followed by removable costume pieces like helmets and capes, then arms and/or legs. I still mourn the childhood loss of The Lone Ranger’s tiny, tiny guns.


Pros:
Four words (hyphenated) – glow-in-the-dark-hands! Glow in the dark toys remind me of these bad boys:


II. Deluxe Miracle Jesus as a Product of Our Culture
I heartily recommend to you the book “They Like Jesus But Not the Church” by Dan Kimball.

It will make you think – a lot – about the culture around us and how best to reach them with the gospel that changes lives.

In chapter three, “Jesus as Son of God and Plastic Action Figure,” he says:
“Something about Jesus fascinates us. Whether we want him on our dashboards or on our T-shirts or in the lyrics of our songs, he has become something of a pop icon in our culture. ..It’s almost impossible to tell sometimes which Jesus paraphernalia comes from Christians and which comes from pop culture.

What makes all of these products and all of this attention to Jesus interesting and exciting is that, combined with all the interest in and respect for Jesus among many people, it is becoming easier to talk about Jesus. Most people today, whether in a church or outside the church, believe Jesus is a good person who has some sort of spiritual insight.”

Deluxe Miracle Jesus is a great example of this. The sides of the box have the passages which talk about the miracles which the accessories are based on (both from the gospel of John). The back text of the box talks about the meaning of his name, and his place in various world religions, from prophet of Islam to avatar of Hindus to the Christian designation as Son of God.

The text box on the back concludes, “Although he is understood in many different ways, everyone seems to agree that he was an extraordinary man.”

Which leads us to our third point…

III. Deluxe Miracle Jesus as a Theological Statement
As a toy, glow-in-the-dark-hands are awesome. As a statement of belief, this is completely wrong, and a fun little heresy that has been popping up since the second century or so. In the theology world, we call it docetism. In the real world, we call it “believing Jesus wasn’t fully human.”

It’s understandable why we would fall for this. We worship the resurrected Christ, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the agent of creation, the image of the invisible God, etc. When we read the gospels, especially those stories involving miracles, healing, and God-given foreknowledge, we transpose the heavenly Jesus onto the figure who lived in first-century Palestine. We imagine Jesus as almost but not quite floating six inches off the ground. We see him as untroubled, sinless, always in control of every situation, able to read the mind of God and everybody else, able to perfectly discern God’s will, and maybe even with glow-in-the-dark-hands. We even imagine such thoroughly human people as Abraham, David, Peter, and Paul in this or similar ways. We take our heroes of the faith and make them more than human. We make them angels.

But – none of these people were angels. And neither was Jesus. He was a man. Everybody who met him saw him as a man. No one who saw his physical appearance said “That guy must be divine.”

And – get this, no one who saw him do miracles thought he was divine. When he calms the storm the disciples say, “What kind of man is this?” The Samaritan woman to whom he revealed knowledge he could not have received on his own did not say, “Sir, I perceive that you are the Son of God.” She said, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.” And prophets were human.

There has been a lot of ink spilled over how the human and divine nature of Christ are related – that isn’t my concern here. My concern is a more practical one. How did Jesus do what He did? How did he know what he knew? And what if (cue ominous music) the power that he used to do such things were also available to His followers – to those who are in him?

Jesus got hungry. Jesus got tired. Jesus got worn out by crowds. Jesus got angry. Jesus got stressed out. Jesus got thirsty. Jesus was deeply moved and upset by the sin around him. Jesus was deeply moved by compassion for those hurting around him. Jesus wept for his dead friend. All of these things are part of what makes us human.

Jesus wasn’t afraid when all others around him were. Jesus wasn’t confused when everyone else around him was. Jesus knew what God required from him, and he didn’t waver in doing it. He knew His life’s purpose. Jesus spoke with authority. Jesus loved with abandon. Jesus healed the sick. Jesus saw people as God saw them, not as how they were labeled by their culture (especially their religious culture). Jesus did not sin. And I propose to you that all of these things are every bit as much characteristics of humanity as the characteristics in the paragraph above. They are characteristics of a human who is in right relationship to the Father.

When we think about humanity in religious terms, we usually think in terms of negatives. Sin, brokenness, and eventually death. But God made humans to be good – completely good – righteous, whole, and alive. That’s what it really means to be human. We see Jesus' example of being righteous, whole, and alive, and we think “he’s more than human.” He’s a Deluxe Miracle Action Figure, a superhuman in human form. But we’ve got it backward. Jesus is the only person who did “human” the way it was always supposed to be. It’s not that he was more than human – it’s that we are all less than human. We’re missing the one key thing that makes a human fully human – a right relationship with God.

How did Jesus, the human, get this right relationship? Well, you’re not going to believe this, but apparently – according to the gospels - Jesus got this right relationship through prayer and reading the scriptures.

We read the divinity of Jesus that we believe now back onto the Jesus of the first-century, and we imagine that Jesus had some sort of heavenly telepathy, and powers of transmutation. We read the divinity of Jesus that we believe now back onto the Jesus of the first-century and we miss that he asked the Father to give his disciples (that’s us, too!) the same kind of connection as he had to the Father.

The last word here is that, of course, Jesus is also divine. He is, in a sense that is very difficult to articulate, but not hard to believe, God. What we sometimes miss is the moment that people started saying these kinds of things about Jesus. It was after his resurrection from the dead. “You know, what, everybody,” the disciples said to each other, “I think we can now safely conclude that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of God.” The same Jesus they ate breakfast with, took long walks with, saw perform miracles, saw DIE, and then – saw alive again. Not a ghost, zombie, or angel – but the real, honest-to-God Jesus, back from the dead, never to die again. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t the Son of God before (that’s another heresy that’s been around a looong time). It means the resurrection confirmed for the disciples and the world what had already been true in the kingdom of God.

We'll let Peter have the last word here, from his Pentecost sermon - but pay attention to how and when Peter refers to his friend and master, Jesus:

“Men of Israel, listen to these words! Jesus the Nazarene, a man accredited to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know – this man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death. But God has raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power…This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses…Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ – this Jesus whom you crucified.” – Acts 2:22-24, 32, 36

Movie Moment: "Conservative" Movies?

I came across an item yesterday that I couldn’t pass by without commenting on. It’s the National Review Online’s reader suggested, editor ranked list of the "25 best conservative movies of the past 25 years."

I’ll lay my cards out on the table right here at the beginning. If you pinned me down and made me declare a political position, I’d tell you “moderate.” I’m not a moderate because I can’t make up my mind, however. I’m a moderate because my standard for what would make good public policy cuts across Republican, Democrat, and other party lines. I won’t go into the details here, but my goal, for reasons of faith, is to let the Bible inform how I vote on issues. And no current or past political party has created what I would call an ideal platform.

So, I try not talk about politics much. But I do talk about movies a lot. And some of the interpretations of the movies in this list are…odd. This is not intended to be a post about bashing conservatives. I am one on some issues, after all. It is intended to be about something else, which I will reveal at the end. I will restrict my comments to movies I have seen, and to reviewer comments (each entry is by a different reviewer) that struck me as strange. Some of the reviews are actual reviews, while others appear to be manifestos disguised as reviews. Of those, I think they say a lot more about the reviewer than about the movie.

Starting at the beginning, the introduction states: “We do not claim that the writers, directors, producers, gaffers, and key grips involved with these films are conservative. We certainly make no such assertion about the actors. Yet the results are indisputable…”
This is spectacular. The guys who hold the microphones, the actors, the directors, and the writers may have accidentally made conservative movies. This sentence alone was worth the price of admission. It also provides an important clue…

“Conservatives enjoy these films because they are great movies that offer compelling messages about freedom, families, patriotism, traditions, and more.” This is an honest question: does this sentence insinuate that people who do not classify themselves as conservative dislike freedom, families, patriotism, and traditions, or movies about the same? We’ll come back to this…

Now starting at the bottom:

“Also-Rans” – Thank You For Smoking – Really? If you consider yourself a conservative, and you liked this movie, can you tell me why?

Amazing Grace - Abolitionists, whether here or in England, were without a doubt considered dangerous liberals in their day.

25. Gran Torino (2008) – “Clint Eastwood directs and stars in the ultimate family movie unsuitable for the family. He plays Walt Kowalski, a caricature of an old-school, dying-breed, Polish-American racist male, replete with post-traumatic stress disorder from having served in the Korean War. Kowalski comes to realize that his exotic Hmong neighbors embody traditional social values more than his own disaster of a Caucasian nuclear family. Dirty Harry blows away political correctness, takes on the bad guys, and turns a boy into a man in the process. He even encourages the cultural assimilation of immigrants.”

This movie is too recent for me to explain why this review may have missed something extremely important about this movie. And it is a great movie, primarily as a direct result of what this reviewer missed. I guess you can email me if you want to know what I think that thing is.

24. Team America: World Police (2004) – If you are offended by anything, DO NOT see this movie. It made the list because of its scathing take on politically active Hollywood types. It also apparently made the list because the reviewer didn’t realize that half the jokes in the movie, including the title, were about conservatives.

20. Gattaca (1997)– “The movie is a cautionary tale about the progressive fantasy of a eugenically correct world — the road to which is paved by the abortion of Down babies, research into human cloning, and “transhumanist” dreams of fabricating a “post-human species.”

That sentence is correct up until the dash, at which point, I’m not sure we saw the same movie. The movie I saw was about people being excluded because of genetics like near-sightedness and the propensity for heart disease. I’m not saying the things listed are not deplorable – but I don’t think you can just start listing things you hate into a movie review if the movie isn’t at all about those things. Speaking of which…

17. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)– This review just made me sad. I won’t even quote it. I will say it mentions hating Santa Claus, compares the White Witch to Kim Jong Il, criticizes land-for-peace swaps, and mentions the redemptive death of Jesus primarily as an excuse to criticize “leftists,” all in four sentences. Would this reviewer have been pleased to see Edmund and Mr. Tumnus imprisoned or killed as traitors? I suspect C.S. Lewis and the filmmakers were going for more.

16. Master and Commander (2003) – This review I actually agree with. I also liked this movie a lot.

13. Braveheart (1995) – “Braveheart taught that freedom is not just worth dying for, but also worth killing for, in defense of hearth and homeland. Six years later, amid the ruins of the Twin Towers, Gibson’s message resonated with a generation of American youth who signed up to fight terrorists, instead of inviting them to join a ‘constructive dialogue.’”

I'm going to try and tread very carefully here. I don’t think this review is saying that Braveheart directly inspired soldiers to volunteer after 9/11, though it could be construed that way. I think it is saying that movie Braveheart embodies the spirit of those who volunteered. However, I think that trivializes the volunteers by boiling their motivation to fight for their country down to one sentence in a movie review.

On a separate note, a friend of mine proposed another “American” interpretation of this film – a native people, seen by their neighbors as barbarians, are betrayed, slaughtered, and oppressed. In other words, the American hero most like William Wallace might be Crazy Horse.

Here’s a favorite line from another Mel Gibson movie, Maverick. “Oh, I hate Indians. I try to kill at least one a day. I figure it’s their fault for being on our land before we got here.”

Now, I’m not saying Braveheart is about Native Americans. I’m saying metaphors are tricky.

12. The Dark Knight (2008) - "This film gives us a portrait of the hero as a man reviled. In his fight against the terrorist Joker, Batman has to devise new means of surveillance, push the limits of the law, and accept the hatred of the press and public."

Wow, just, wow. Where to start? Batman is an anti-death-penalty activist, as well as a strict enforcer of gun control laws. (Batman and I go way back.)

The best scene in the movie, to me, was when the Joker offered two ferry-boats the chance to blow the other up – one filled with criminals, one with normal folks. A healthy debate ensues. Perhaps you remember how it turned out – Batman tells the Joker, “Not everyone is like you.”

Batman agrees to use his super-surveillance just once, provided it is used by the most trustworthy man in the movie, after which it is destroyed forever, because it is “too much power for one man.”

This movie as a whole is about escalation, as set up in the last three minutes of Batman Begins. It is about how fighting evil draws one perilously close to the edge of evil, and how much personal cost is involved even in a righteous battle. Not just the cost to one's reputation, but to one's loved ones.

11. The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) - Author J. R. R. Tolkien was deeply conservative, so it’s no surprise that the trilogy of movies based on his masterwork is as well.

I can only assume the anti-industrialization and anti-deforestation message of the books and the films slipped past this reviewer.

When Frodo sighs, “I wish none of this had happened,” Gandalf’s response speaks to us, too: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

That is a great dialogue, and I agree with the reviewer that it speaks to us. So does the one about two minutes before that, when Frodo says, “It’s a pity Bilbo didn’t kill him [Gollum] when he had the chance.” To which Gandalf replies, “Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. There are many who live who deserve death, and many who die who deserve life. Can you give it them? Do not be so quick to deal out death and judgment.”

7. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) - Gardner never succumbs to self-pity, even when he and his young son take refuge in a homeless shelter. They’re black, but there’s no racial undertone or subtext.

Again, this is an honest question: It’s ok for the actors to be black, but if they talk about it, and how it affects others’ perceptions of them or their perception of themselves, that’s not ok?

4. Forrest Gump (1994) - "Tom Hanks plays the title character, an amiable dunce who is far too smart to embrace the lethal values of the 1960s."

Like racism. He is a Congressional Medal earning veteran, and the keynote speaker at an anti-Vietnam War rally. I think you could make a good case that this film’s take on American history allows for some moral ambiguity.

But this is the one that really got me:

1. The Lives of Others (2007) – I saw this movie this weekend, and it is a truly remarkable film.

"It chronicles life under a totalitarian regime as the Stasi [East Germany’s secret police] secretly monitors the activities of a playwright who is suspected of harboring doubts about Communism."

Oh, but it’s about so much more. You need to see this movie.

The thing that absolutely floored me about this movie’s inclusion in this list, and at the #1 spot no less, is that apparently nobody realized that one of the things this movie is about is the effect things like domestic wire-tapping, inhumane interrogation techniques, widespread paranoia, imprisonment without trial, and a culture of suspicion toward one’s neighbors and co-workers have on the people living in such a system.

So, the number one pick is a good example of what this post is really about – people often see what they want to see in art, and movies apparently are no exception. In fact, I think truly great art, and truly great movies, allow for a variety of interpretations. And everyone goes to the movies with their lens preset, so to speak. I tend to watch movies primarily through the filter of my faith. I see meaning when someone dies in a cruciform posture (which happens a lot in movies). My supposition is that good filmmakers include things like that on purpose. Others appear to primarily watch movies through the filter of a specific political agenda, and may assume that elements which fit that filter are there by accident. I don’t think any of the filmmakers involved with the films in this list accidentally made conservative movies. I do suspect that some people may have accidentally watched them as conservative movies. Or put another way, some people took values which are embodied in these movies in an “indisputable” way, values which were probably intended to be portrayed as universal – values like freedom, family, patriotism, tradition - and put a label of “conservatism” on those values, and thus on the movies.

Comic Book Stuff: Black Superheroes

After my link to Batman’s political endorsement, my brother Joel asked, “Why aren’t there more African American superheroes?”

And for some reason, today seems like a good day to talk about black superheroes. Probably because yesterday was when new comic books come out. Yeah, that’s it.

I’ll break this down into three categories:
I. The Answer to the Question
II. Important Black Comic Book Creators
III. Important Black Comic Book Characters

I. The Answer to the Question
I think the most likely answer to “why aren’t there more black superheroes” is: there aren’t very many black comic book creators. And there were almost no black comic book creators involved during the most prolific and influential periods of comic book creation.

In the Golden Age of Comics of the 1940s, when millions of comic books sold every month, there is one (1) known African-American artist, Matt Baker. This is the period in which many iconic characters were created and a lot the mythos of comic books became concrete. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Aquaman, secret identities, arch-nemeses, and the rest were created in this period. All of these heroes are white, and all of their supporting cast members and villains were white. (Lucius Fox, the CEO of Bruce Wayne’s family business, played by Morgan Freeman in the movies, first appeared in 1979).

The next big comic-book universe building period (the “Silver Age”) was the 1960s, and again, there were not many black creators at the time. Marvel comics and all their characters started then – Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, the Hulk, X-Men, etc. DC revitalized several of their older characters, like Green Lantern and the Flash. Again, all of these characters were white, and all of their original supporting casts and villains were white. So the two big character-building eras of comics were (mostly) devoid of black creators, heroes, and characters in general.

It really wasn’t until the 1970s that black superheroes started showing up with regularity in Marvel or DC comics, and it wasn’t really until the 1980s that black creators began working on, and especially writing, comic books to any large degree. Since that time comic companies have done a much better job of having their fictional universes reflect the diversity of the real world, featuring black, Hispanic, and more international characters. There have been interesting, exciting, black characters since the 1960s (see below), but they usually didn’t have their own comic books. So, black superheroes have been playing catch-up in a lot of ways with older, more established characters.

II. Important Black Comic Book Creators
The most influential black comic creators are, in my opinion:

Christopher Priest – starting in the 80s, has worked steadily as a writer and editor for both Marvel and DC, working on such titles as Conan the Barbarian, Wonder Woman, and Spider-Man, and many, many more, including a long run on Black Panther

Kyle Baker – a multiple award-winning writer and artist (no relation to Matt)

Reginald Hudlin – A former BET executive and movie director who writes Black Panther for Marvel

Dwayne McDuffie – One of the writers for the cartoon Justice League and then Justice League Unlimited, he has written a LOT of comic books and is currently writing - wait for it - Justice League of America

III. Important Black Comic Book Characters
A. The Replacements –
A persistent trend concerning black superheroes is that a black hero will serve as a replacement to an existing white hero, or take on the role as a sort of legacy to that hero.

This has happened most notably with:
Green Lantern – John Stewart took over for Hal Jordan starting in 1972, and the two have been co-lanterns since. Stewart is obviously the one they picked to be on the Justice League cartoons.

Iron Man – James Rhodes (played by Terrence Howard in the movie) takes over for Tony Stark when Stark was recovering from alcoholism. He later got his own (black and silver) suit with more guns on it and calls himself War Machine.

Steel – When Superman was dead for a while back there in the 90s, John Henry Irons built himself a big flying suit of armor with an “S” on the chest and was the new “Man of Steel.”



This has happened with a bunch more minor DC characters like Firestorm, Dr. Mignight, and Mr. Terrific. Yeah, that’s right. Mr. Terrific.

One of the strangest, coolest, and most important replacement is Nick Fury, head of the secret spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D. In his 1960s debut (another Stan Lee and Jack Kirby collaboration), he was white. When Marvel launched a parallel line in 2000 featuring versions of popular characters with origins in the modern day, Fury was re-imagined as black. And every time Bryan Hitch drew him, he looked like this:



Remind you of anyone? A certain Mr. Jackson? Look for him in the movies.

B. The Originals -
Black Lightning – The first black hero to appear in DC comics, he debuted in 1971. He has yet to appear on TV or movies, although a version of him was on the SuperFriends cartoon.



Marvel has a near monopoly on original, cool black characters.
There’s Luke Cage, aka Power Man, who first appeared in 1972.


Dig those crazy threads! Blaxploitation? Maybe a little.
These days he's not really a costume kind of guy, and fights crime in jeans and a black t-shirt.

There’s Blade, the vampire hunter, who showed up in 1973.



There’s Storm of the X-Men, who debuted in 1975.


And there’s the Falcon, who is the first African-American superhero. Created by Stan Lee and Gene Colan in 1969, he started out briefly as a villain before changing sides. He was a longtime crime-fighting partner (not sidekick) of Captain America. He is a cool character.


But the coolest black character, in my mind, is a native African, and also happens to be the first black superhero. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and debuting in Fantastic Four in 1966, it’s the Black Panther.



The concept here is cool – at one time in history, tribes in Africa were forging iron while everyone else was still using stone tools. The Black Panther is the king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, whose people stayed that far ahead of everyone else on the technological curve. They were a strict isolationist nation until the mid-20th century, and are now a minor world power. The Black Panther is the nations’ spiritual symbol, and the king wears the costume as a result.

The current Black Panther’s father was killed by a supervillain trying to steal Wakandan technology, inciting his meeting of the Fantastic Four. He has served in the past as a member and leader of the Avengers (the Justice League of the Marvel universe). A few years back he married Storm.


So, as far as superheroes go, he’s got it all. A semi-believable motivation for dressing up to fight crime. A heart-breaking back-story. A very cool costume. He is an expert combatant (think ninja), a scientific genius, and king of his own country. Look for a movie about him in the near future.

Except…

The only thing missing from bringing him to Batman-level prestige is: he doesn’t really have very good villains. There’s Ulysses Klaw, the guy who killed his father:


Yikes.

There's the Man-Ape, a guy in a gorilla suit with super-human strength who wants to take over the throne of Wakanda:

Double yikes!!

And there's Killmonger, who wants to – kill things:


(Yawn) They don't exactly seem like epic villains, do they?

Black Panther's best conflicts have been with enemies he’s borrowed from other people, like the Red Skull from Captain America, or Dr. Doom from the Fantastic Four.

Oh, well. He's still awesome. And will always be first.

C. Random! –
1. Aquaman’s arch-enemy, who you may remember from Superfriends, is Black Manta. Underneath that helmet, Black Manta is...black. Crazy.



2. Muhammad Ali called himself the “Black Superman.” I’m not sure if that makes him a superhero or not, but it earned him a shot at the title.



This is one of the best comic book covers ever. Know why? You want to know what happens next, don't you? Well, I can't tell you - cause I don't know. What we can tell from the cover is that "they fight to save the earth from star warriors," both Batman and Jimmy Carter showed up to watch the bout, and Superman is hovering. Float like a butterfly, indeed.

3. Finally, watch out for this guy, as painted by Alex Ross – if he starts flying or develops x-ray vision, he could really go places.

Comic Book Stuff: How Batman Votes

In case you were wondering who Batman endorses in the current presidential race,here's your answer.

My favorite part is his explanation of why the candidates' stance on terrorism doesn't really influence him, because he normally just fights the terrorists himself.

Movie Moment: Villain Plummeting

You know something that happens a lot in movies? Villains plummet to their deaths.

Think about it. In any movie that has a villain – generally in the genres of action, adventure, or horror* – there tend to be fairly standard ways for villains, both the henchman and boss variety, to come to their ignominious end. And one of those ways is plummeting.

This makes sense, I suppose. If you have a conflict-based story, the audience needs an act of great dramatic finality to signal the end of the conflict. And falling from a great height certainly fits that bill.

Here’s a partial list of movies that feature plummeting as the means of dispatching the bad guy, and the villain who falls. These are often combination deaths – featuring some sort of wound and plummet. The only one on here that I think is recent enough to be a spoiler is “The Dark Knight” - so skip that one if you haven't seen it.

“King Kong” – King Kong (Maybe the First Movie Plummet, and the one by which all others must be judged – also, combo! – shot by bi-planes – but really, ‘twas beauty killed the beast)
“Snow White and Seven Dwarves” – The Evil Queen (combo! – hit by lightning, crushed by boulder!)
“Sleeping Beauty” – Maleficent (combo! – stabbed with sword)
“The Land Before Time” – Sharptooth (the T-Rex – combo! Then the cute dinosaurs push a rock on him!)
“Return of the Jedi” – Emperor Palpatine (Darth Maul doesn’t count – he was already cut in half)
“Cliffhanger” – John Lithgow (combo! – helicopter he’s in blows up!)
“Die Hard” – Hans Gruber (combo – shot!)
“Masters of the Universe” – Skeletor (the live action one – oh yes, I went there)
“Batman” (1989 – Tim Burton) – The Joker
“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” – Mola Rom (combo! – eaten by crocodiles!)
“Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” – that blonde lady
“Last of the Mohicans” – Magua (combo! – repeatedly stabbed by Chingachgook)
“Beauty and the Beast” – Gaston
"The Mask of Zorro" - Both bad guys plummet (the cart one is tangled on actually falls on the other one, and then they both fall some more)
“James Bond: Goldeneye” – The Main Bad Guy (combo! – crushed by falling antenna!)
“The Dark Knight” – Two-Face

And if you consider being sucked into the eternal void of space “plummeting,” there are several more, most notably the Aliens in “Alien” and “Aliens.”

Sub-genre: Plummeting Into Lava/Molten Metal
"Godzilla" (1985) - Godzilla
“Terminator 2: Judgment Day” – T1000
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” – Frollo
“Alien 3” – Baby Alien (and Ripley, sniff)
“Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” – Gollum

(Frollo and Gollum's demise are straight out of the books.)

This is in no way a complete list, of course. Feel free to share your favorite plummet that I may have forgotten.

As you can tell from the list, Disney villains have a great habit of plummeting, which, as this site points out, is useful because you don’t have to show the body, and it removes the hero from being the person who actually kills the villain.

Other common ways for villains to die are being consumed by cosmic forces, blown to smithereens, electrocuted, crushed to death, or some combination of those. And as much as Disney has used falling, they have also come up with some truly horrifying final fates (thanks Alex!), like being stabbed by a boat (Ursula in “The Little Mermaid”), and being eaten by hyenas after surviving a plummet (Uncle Scar in “The Lion King”). As we said above, these kind of endings provide great dramatic finality, and put the villain – who usually spends the movie trying to exert power over others - up against forces over which they have no control. Plummeting certainly fits that bill, as the force the villain comes face to face with is, well, gravity.

*Interestingly, westerns tend to avoid this kind of thing. Let’s chalk it up to thematic need for one man (or woman) to triumph over another (or several).

Movie Moment - The Other Comic Book Movies

The recent death of Paul Newman made me start thinking back on great movies I had seen him in (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting), and ones I haven’t seen and really need to (Cool Hand Luke). I also remembered the last movie I saw him in was the excellent Road to Perdition, with Tom Hanks and Jude Law. And that led to the recollection that Road to Perdition was originally a comic book.

I have resisted writing about comic books in the past because, well, most people think comic books are dumb. Guys tend to have a more nostalgic attachment to them due to things like Halloween costumes, Underoos, and the Superfriends cartoon which translates into a mild to medium appreciation as adults. But most girls tend to think comic books are dumb. At least, the girl I am married to does.

I’ll probably attempt to explain why I like comic books later, in a very long post in which I will reveal waaaaay too much about myself. Hollywood, at least, is very much in a comic book mood lately – with the highest grossing blockbusters this summer being based directly on comic book characters or on conventions found in them (Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Hancock). But Hollywood has also realized something for a while now that the general population has not – there are more kinds of comic books than superhero comics. It’s just that in general when we think comic books, we think Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, but since the beginning of comic books they have encompassed multiple genres, from Westerns to horror to romance to biography.

So, in the interest of broadening horizons and deepening knowledge – some notable movies based on comic books, arranged by genre, with brief commentary.

The Supernatural:
30 Days of Night – vampires in Alaska!
Constantine – Theology, horror, and superheroes meet at last!
The Crow

More Traditional, But Not As Famous, Super-Heroics:
The Mask – A fine film!
Men In Black
Mystery Men
The Rocketeer – An underrated film, I feel.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Timecop – Van Damme! at the top of his game.

Crime Drama:
Art School Confidential – Art school murder mystery.
From Hell – Johnny Depp, Jack the Ripper, and based on the comic book by Alan Moore, who may be the best comic book writer ever.
A History of Violence – Viggo Mortensen. Be warned – we were expecting the violence – it’s in the title. We weren’t expecting all the sex.
Road to Perdition
Sin City
Wanted – In the original work (which features way too much of – well, everything – the characters are supervillain assassins – you know, with powers and stuff).

Miscellaneous:
300 – Pectoral muscles feature much less strongly in the source material. Both this and Sin City were by Frank Miller, whose "Batman:Year One" was a major influence on Batman Begins.
American Splendor
Ghost World – Scarlett Johanson and Steve Buscemi. Suburban teenage drama.
Persepolis - Academy-award nominated animated movie of the autobiography of an Iranian immigrant.
V for Vendetta – Jeni really liked this one – another Alan Moore piece.

Ones to Look Out For In ’09:
Whiteout – Antarctic murder mystery.
Watchmen – Maybe the best work by the best comic book writer. We’ll see how the movie matches up.

Of course, these are only the English-language movies. There is a whole world of Japanese and European comic books, and comic book movies, that is too vast for me to even try to comprehend. These are also only the movies based on comic books, as opposed to comic strips - like The Addams Family (snap, snap).

Movie Moment: The Not-So Dark Knight

Another day, another Batman movie. No, just kidding, I am very, very excited about the Dark Knight.

The rule of thumb for what makes fantasy/science fiction/superhero films and stories good is that the audience is asked to suspend their disbelief for one or two fantastic elements, and as long as everything else around the fantastic elements follows naturally, the story can be considered a good story. So, for instance, in Christopher Nolan's Gotham city, police, criminals, assistant district attorneys, and faithful butlers react as you might expect them to when confronted with a man dressed as a bat.

And then there's the movie pictured above. Which goes in....a bit of a different direction.

Let me be clear here. I love the 1960s "Batman" show. When I was a kid, we lived in the boonies and got three or so channels. When we went to Ft. Worth to visit grandparents, we were flabbergasted by over ten channels! Ten! And on one of those channels, in the afternoons they would show reruns of "ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-Batman!" I can count on one hand how many times I saw both parts of a two part adventure, but that was a minor quibble. There he was, on screen, driving the Batmobile, flinging Bat-a-rangs, and answering the phone from Commissioner Gordon. It was (intentionally) comic books come to life.

It catches a lot of grief these days from people who prefer their Batman to be a grim avenger. But this show came out during the heavily censored era of comic books, when Batman and Superman were best buddies, and when he had a dog named Ace, the Bat-Hound. The next big media adaptation of the "Dark Knight" would be on Superfriends. It wasn't until the '80s that a certain Frank Miller brought Batman wholly back to his pulp era roots (though others had helped take the first steps). Until "Batman Begins" everyone else has tried for a mish-mash approach, blending the camp of the early days with the grit of the present (and the very, very early days, when Batman would occasionally push people out of windows) with varying degrees of success. But there is no mish-mash to 1960s-era "Batman."

As a kid, I loved this show. And one day my dad came home with "Batman" - the movie! The first feature length Batman film, it was originally released in 1966, after the first season of the TV show. But for me, it was brand new. It had the Joker, Penguin, Riddler, and Catwoman - all together! They team up with a gadget that dehydrates humans into dust, and they decide to hold the "World Security Council" for ransom. (Not a bad plan, actually.) It features a whole lot of Bam! Pow! Zap! action, a Navy surplus submarine, a very funny scene where Batman is trying desperately to get rid of a bomb and keeps running into nuns, women with baby carriages, puppies, etc., and the infamous "Bat-shark-repellent." I got to see the whole adventure - no "to-be continued" no "same Bat-time, same Bat-channel." It was the greatest thing since Batman and Robin teamed up with Scooby Doo and Shaggy. It was completely ridiculous - and it was great.

I could read at the time, and had some 80's era Batman comics, including part of Miller's "Year One." They were quite different from the televised Batman. But in my childlike innocence I could more clearly see and celebrate the similarities (Batman - on screen!) than criticize the differences.

So, here's to the Batman in all his varieties - whether driving a Tumbler or a sweet red and black number with tailfins, whether "old chum" or "dark knight." Long may your Bat-Signal shine!

P.S. My sister reminded me of the denouement of the "Batman with a lit bomb scene" - the priceless line, "Sometimes you just can't get rid of a bomb!"