MADAME MIRAGE

"FADE IN" | "SNAP" | "GIRL TALK"
"THE GAUNTLET" | "MIRAGE AT BAY" | "FADE OUT"
Created and Written by: Paul Dini | Art by: Kenneth Rocafort
Colors by: Imaginary Friends Studios with Kenneth Rocafort & Blond on issue 1
Letters by: Troy Peteri | Edited by: Rob Levin

This one has been on my to-read list for about a decade. I first saw some promo art, or maybe covers, for Madame Mirage not long after she was created in 2007. She looked to be right up my alley -- a pulp-style heroine with an enormous rack, apparently wreaking vigilante justice in the thirties or forties, conceived by one of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES' best writers. I decided to pick up the trade paperback whenever it came out. I think I even ordered it at one point, but it was back-ordered or something and it wound up getting canceled.

Then, at some point, I learned that the series was not, as the promos had made me think, set in the past, but rather in the future -- that the series was basically sort of a sci-fi pulp thing. That revelation dampened my enthusiasm somewhat, and MADAME MIRAGE dropped down my shopping list, relegated to "maybe someday..."

Then, as I mentioned a couple weeks back, last year Comixology had a Top Cow sale and MADAME MIRAGE was one of the offerings. I decided someday had arrived, picked up the six issues, and here we are.

ODE TO AN ANIMATED SERIES

So last week after posting my little BATMAN 232/"The Demon's Quest" mash-up picture, I decided I wanted to write a bit more about BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES. Since my son's birth a couple months back coincided with La La Land Records' release of their BATMAN: TAS Vol. 4 soundtrack album, I found my interest in the series piqued, as is periodically the case, and as a result I spent more than a few late nights rocking the baby to sleep while streaming random episodes on my iPad. I thought it would be fun to write about them -- nothing in-depth, mind you; you can't spit on the internet without hitting a full-blown TAS retrospective series -- but at the very least, I wanted to compose one post boiling down exactly what it is I like about BATMAN, and what makes it so enduring for me personally.

I still vividly remember the very first BATMAN: TAS episode I saw. Somehow the series' premiere had slipped past my radar, so I missed the first few installments. Thus my initial exposure to BATMAN was the episode "It's Never Too Late" which, according to the internet, aired September 10th, 1992 as the seventh episode broadcast. It might be a good thing this was the first show I saw, because it immediately demonstrated to me what the animated Batman was about. This was not the Adam West version or the Hanna Barbera or Filmation iterations I had known on TV up to that point.

"It's Never Too Late" is a character study of an aging gangster at the end of his career, struggling to defend his crumbling empire from the younger competition. It tackles drug abuse -- something typically taboo in kids' animation back then except for the occasional "very special episode" -- but only in passing as part of the larger story. There are no colorful, costumed villains. The antagonist of the piece is Rupert Thorne, a character I knew at the time from a couple issues in my dog-eared GREATEST BATMAN STORIES EVER TOLD trade paperback, and he and his goons use conventional firearms rather than the laser blasters I'd become accustomed to in my normal weekday afternoon fare.

"It's Never Too Late" may not be the greatest of the animated Batman episodes, but it's a solid entry and holds a special place for me personally as the one that won me over that Thursday afternoon twenty-four years ago.

THE UNBOXING - MARCH 2014

This may be my smallest box ever from Discount Comic Book Service: two books. It was supposed to be three, but the CAPTAIN AMERICA EPIC COLLECTION: DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT volume dropped off my order to ship next month instead, due to a shortage from the supplier. I had no plans to read that book any time in the immediate future, however, so I'm fine waiting another month. Thus, without that sole Marvel offering, all I have this time are two volumes from DC -- and just as receiving only two books is a first, so is having my entire order be in the form of DC volumes.

First is BATMAN: MAD LOVE AND OTHER STORIES, a trade paperback collecting most of the Batman comics by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini set in the universe of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, along with works from some of their other BTAS collaborators. I have most all of these stories in comic book format (I read the cover off of the single issue MAD LOVE when I was a kid), but this is the first time I will have purchased them as a trade. I believe this book came out a while back in hardcover format, but I passed it up. The trade may in fact have been released previously as well, but when this edition came up for pre-order a couple months ago, I jumped on it.