The more things change….
07/20/08So, I’m cleaning and I find a random issue of AMAZING HEROES from 1989. I leave it out and save for…bathroom reading later in the day. I see that THE BEAT (before she went by that name) has a column in this issue and one of the subjects is BAT-MOVIE HYPE. How timely. So, here’s what “the Princess” had to say on the topic back before some of you kids were even born.
batmania: I swore I wouldn’t write about Batman anymore, but I can’t help it !!! Batman is everywhere! At Once.
Here in LA, the bat symbol has become synonymous with the city’s underground scene. Just as the (no doubt at least sub-consciously WATCHMEN-inspired) happy face was the symbol of last year’s Acid House music craze in Britain, the Bat Signal rules in LA. A little giveaway touting a hotline for the hottest new dance clubs is called the Batline and sports that ever-ubiquitous Bat Signal. the LA club scene is littered with kids in bat-shirts and hand-painted Joker jackets. Warner’s must be spending all of the profits from the Batman comic just on policing the bootleggers and trademark-infringers.
A recent tour of Melrose Avenue (LA’s Mecca of overpriced haute camp and black-dressed hipness) reveals that it should be renamed Batman Boulevard. An antique shop features nothing but honest-to-gosh 1960’s plastic Batman toys in its front window. Bat-symbol rings, t-shirts, and earrings appear in every gloom-rock boutique worthy of the name. The Golden Apple reigns as “Bat-man T-shirt headquarters” selling a dizzying assortment of styles.
Batman is so hot he sizzles. I dunno, it’s kinda weird…almost like the Sons of the Batman have come to life or something.
Of course, it’ll all end when the movie comes out…
Posted by Mark Coale















Michael Chabon goes on for pages and pages about 







Speaking of superheroic dressing methods, they are about to get the highest accolade possible: 
