No, this is Neal Adams while stone cold sober. That's what makes it so terrifying. Jokes aside Adams can be a crackpot but he's also a real bro, he helped Siegel and Shuster fight for their copyright and helped Frank Miller get his health out of the pithole, and you've gotta respect him for that.

That’s actually a Peter De Vries quote

gold jerry

Hemingway would never have said that. He lived to drink and just happened to write, but he didn't believe in mixing the two.

@@mutuallysustainedhateboner1426 weed doesn't do this ...

A excellent choice sir.

Bruce Wayne as played by Arnold Schwarzenegger 😁

Cropped like that its amazing

@Sour Puss That's actually pretty accurate.

It really is perfect.

Damn right, it reminded me the A.I. made Batman wich had a lil more sense than this XD

The only thing I've ever read that I'd say felt like a fever dream was one of the early issues of venom where he gets injured and mercury runoff joins the symbiote. Not a nice dream

I think the idea of this arc was to combine all the historical variants of batman into a single character and narrative... with the conclusion being that any man who has had been through this many distinct phases in his life would probably be pretty crazy. The different variations of the character are inherently incongruous, so combining them all into a single characterization results in a character who is completely erratic.

​@@matthinton19 lmaoooo what happened

ROBERT RODRIGUEZ would be proud for this version of Batman

That happened to me in GTA the other day

Fact 🤣

Now that's an excellent theory for a batshit insane comic.

Batman drunk bruce wane sober Its a Quentin Tarantino batman

Batman might have a concussion after getting shot in the head but there is no way he’s not gonna finish this story

I really like the idea that this is how a spaced out Clark is interpreting a drunk Bruce trying to explain a complex adventure.

Dude, EXACTLY my feeling. Kept thinking that comics were too smart for me and made me feel stupid. And trying to look for a page to understand by the summary didn't help. Its like even DC Comics wants nothing to do with it.

exactly!

comic books became so stupid

I took the comics to the comic book store and asked the guy what was going on. He was baffled, too.

This feels like MAD mixed with every 90’s and 2000’s anti-hero ever

Good call. It does remind me of MAD.

Seriously, is there a consensus on what drug Adams was doing? Was it a psychotic breakdown?

@@dennisharrell2236 Yes, Neal Adams is crazy 🤪. Check out his Channel.

Bruce: "Ollie and I have this bet that you'd believe anything I told you, and I guess I lost." Clark: "Well I'm sorry for not being quite as naïve as you thought! ... So how much are you out?" Bruce: "Have you ever seen _Trading Places?"_ Clark: *"You put me through **_all that nonsense_** for a dollar!?"*

@@Wendy_O._Koopa "Bruce, its been 5 years, you still owe me 15 dollars"

​@@Wendy_O._Koopa wait I don't get what trading places has to do with a dollar

i was able to chat with neal at the sd con for about 30 minutes he is brilliant

@@thewkovacs316 why was he yelling at you about dead man?

Noah Farmer honestly you probably could XD

Noah Farmer XD

Gotta love this story, i promise ypu will love it XD

Seems more to me like a machine-generated script from an algorithm that's not very good at keeping track of it's own plot as it goes

@@cryptidproductions3160 basically the same thing lol

It was meant to be kind of an origin thing: he used guns in his first appearances, here's why he doesn't any more, etc. Adams just didn't have the ability to write it the way he needed to.

This made me laugh out loud, thank you, hahaha

He just like me fr

I like that Bruce insists on being naked for his interview with Clark

I actually read this during some dark times my life. It is a total mess but It was nice to read this mess while being a mess.

He has a youtube channel. It's great. He defends this though or maybe just clarifies

I wonder how much of this was editorial interference...or if it was a result of a LACK of it. It's hard to know. I worked at DC looooong ago, and there was an editor there who rewrote EVERY script on one book in particular. The writer still got the credit...and it didn't stop until said writer came in and blew up at the editor telling him to either fire him or stop rewriting him. (The editor was forced out a few months later.) The reason I tell this story is that things like that thought balloon on the same page as narration are the kinds of things he would do. Like, it LOOKS like someone saw that drawing and said "We need to explain the gun," so they added a balloon rather than asking Adams to rewrite. But, this whole thing is a mess, so it's hard to say.

it was the seventies

In the 70s, nerds were not important.

Sounds about right

It’s fucking great

Yeah, I can see that

A lot of Batman's dialogue does lend itself very well to being read in Tommy Wiseau's voice.

You just injected a supremely heavy dose of nostalgia into my veins. That is exactly how my dad tells stories about comics.

Feels like Grandpa Simpson from 'The Simpsons' telling a story about Batman.

Just wait padawan

Batman Odyssey if it was Directed by Robert Rodriguez

It's worse.

It was super nice of him to mention the good work he has contributed to and even praised him for the art while constructively criticizing his writing.

It strikes me as totally something he would do to pretend to get his hand cut. Kind of like an insurance measure, just in case anybody was getting suspicious of the resemblance and was wondering if he had impenetrable skin.

Someone clogged a Daily Planet john by trying to flush a chuck of Kryptonite down. Poor Clark ended up having to pull it out by hand.

Clark just thinks it looks cool.

Because even kryptonians get boo-boos

@@Scandal262 Under yellow sunlight, he has rapid healing.

Its a no brainer but i love it

@Trsum_ uh, im afraid hospice is not the same as hospital

he helps me get through work but ur story’s better

fly high jeff.

I really hope you're not gone Jeff

Rest easy Jeff

Except the one with the faux poop.

Beat me to it haha

@@anniatole Lol.

I'm growing increasingly fascinated with the downward spiral

Speaking of intros, let’s talk about this amazing Segway

Kind of a reductive view of the silver-age.

@@767scarecrow Yeah but it's very hard to take those comics seriously when reading them as a grown up.

I'm with you. I was warned going in that the story was batshit crazy and I had a blast reading it. If i picked it up the shelf and was expecting a continuation of the feel of Dennis O'Neil's Batman, I'd have been pissed.

Obiwan Kenobi There is some good shit in the Silver age though, like The Night Gwen Stacy Died.

@@thelittleredhairedgirlfrom6527 but the good stuff is the exception, not the rule.

Actually they are a bit similar in a weird sense: They’re both Batman stories with bad writing but pretty good art for the most part. ASBAR is definitely more mean spirited than odyssey

12:57 looks like it came straight from all star haha

Jason Garrett ive never heard someone describe asbr as “mean spirited” before. that being said, it is definitely the most fucking apt description of asbr ive ever heard.

Well, at least All star Batman & Robin took place in a different continuity, so the fact that Batman acts like a psychopath is explainable, it' s just another interpretation of the character. Batman Odyssey however is set in the main continuity, thus it makes no sense

@@albertoorani5427 Batman Odyssey is outside of continuity

THAT would’ve made the story much better.

Gabreya Bradley yes because it would at least make a lick of sense

I actually wondered if it was some past life experiences, all jumbled up. Because of Darkseid taking Batman out during Final Crisis. Which I believe was at the same time 🤔

Because Adam West's Batman had some meaning and coherence.

@@edatthegovernance exactly

Adam West's Batman is the straight-man in an absurd universe, and he just rolls with it.

@@chrisossu2070 ah..

How come is it MORE funny than Adam West's Batman?

I've published a randomly generated comic book, that made more sense than that story, lol!

@Darla Lathan Really? What's the name of it?

You might be onto something there - I couldn't help thinking that this looked for all the world like maybe a pile of artwork made for a handful of stories that were commissioned but never finished, which were then stitched together with a framing device and new text to make a "complete story" out of the disparate bits and pieces. The artist's evident love of experimentation suggests he did it just to see if he could, and also as a showcase for a couple other experimental ideas (like maybe that hollow-earth storyline).

I know there's a writing exercise where writers take turns adding lines to a story. It makes me wonder if Adams did that with someone and they were just hardcore trolling him.

Actor/singer and coldblooded killer!

Funny 😄 that the guy doing this podcast/Whatever also seems to not have a clue as to who the legendary Singer/actor is. Lol 😂 I'm pretty sure that was a Neal Adams inside joke.

I’m assuming that he’s more familiar with Mexican Spanish, and figured that people spoke the same in Spain? I don’t speak Spanish, but Americans tend to be more familiar with New World dialects of languages, aside from maybe French, depending on where they live

important artifact of Batman history and also completely insane. its like half the reason i bought the Neal Adams omnibus

I dunno, maybe it's best to remember it because it taught us some important things about Neal Adams (he can't write, and he's a crackpot who really believes that the Earth is hollow and expanding.)

@@billvolk4236 Couldn't care less what he believed, he was a pioneer of creator's rights in the industry. Nothing can take that or his brilliant artistic talents away. Being creatively weird is wonderful and interesting, not something to shun. The important thing this teaches us is that lots of superhero comics readers are conservative and boring.

Finally, someone has discovered its main theme.

From what I’ve read, he’s just not a very good writer, but I’m still new to comics, so I very well could be wrong, but from what I’ve gathered, he’s much more of drawing guy, and he just went off the cuff

Seconded

Thirded

Forthd'ed?

Forded

Yup

Check out the deep-dive Potholer did about Neal's Expanding Earth notion. It's here on KZfaq somewhere. Yeah, the theory is pseudoscientific nonsense, but Neal did make a cool animation depicting it that you get to see on Potholer's debunking video. Now, here's a goofy thought: What if the Earth is REALLY an artificial construct with a 'crust' situated atop an inner truss-work that can expand and contract like a Hoberman sphere? That could provide for the mechanics of his expanding planet idea. It might make for a cool goofy pulp-style adventure no more outlandish (or 'in'-landish...?) than Mike Grell's hollow earth WARLORD comic from back-in-the-day.

Spawn was a hit though

@@xyzz8722 that doesn't mean anything. Spawn was a hit because the character and concept of Spawn is really cool and also because it was Image's flagship title.

Yes do not ever branch out. Tf you on about

Dear God, it is. It's the most accurate description possible

THATS IT! I was saying this feel like if Batman was an adult swim show but it def feels like archer

But Archer has a story that you can actually follow… You have bad taste btw

What story?

@@ridhosamudro2199 hahaha, good one.

Don't feel bad: no one understands it.

Wh!..wh!!....WHAT??! 😂🤣

It’s about Batman killing. Will he or won’t he kill the Sensei? We open on the lesson he learned about guns on the train, one of the two rules that define the modern interpretations of Batman. The other lesson is “nobody dies,” and that’s what this book is about. The mint serves to set up a conflict. Batman becomes so overwhelmed with anger when a little girl gets shot that he nearly crosses a line. The conflict of the book is “does/will/can Batman kill?” Chris didn’t cover some of this, but essentially Batman discovers that Ras al Ghul is in control of his life much more than he thought. He learns this in a few ways. When Deadman is there in Joker’s body telling Batman he’s chasing clowns, we are learning with Batman that Ras has assigned Doctor Slattern/Trigger to release the Rogue’s Gallery from the asylum at specific intervals to distract Batman from his machinations in the Underworld. This is meant to explain why he never knew it existed. But Ras’ son has usurped him and is extremely dangerous. This means Batman doesn’t know if he can trust Ras or Talia, but they have a common enemy in The Sensei, a much more devastating force. Another connection they draw is the one between Deadman and Robin. Chris is wrong about just one thing as far as I can tell. The League of Assassins doesn’t require you to kill trapeze artists. That was the one test for this one person that one time. Either Deadman or Robin’s parents were the practice run, and the other death was the real exam. I’ll have to find my copy to remember the exact details of why you would need to practice an assassination. But this gives him an enemy in The Sensei. This whole book, Ras is pressuring Batman to kill The Sensei. Unlike Ras, The Sensei is a psychopath with ambitions so deep and strident that Ras has refused to give him Lazarus potion for decades in the hopes it would make him weak, and yet The Sensei is still a lumber master of the martial arts to the point that he can deflect a missile with one hand (that really happens in the book). Aquaman’s appearance is another challenge to Batman’s ethic, stating that he should be comfortable with killing. Many points of view surrounding the topic are seen, including the scene where Robin appears to explode. Chris never explained that either. It was essentially a special device Robin wore in his outfit that allowed him to perform a high jump propelled by a burst, which gave the appearance of death. Batman seems unfazed by this because he knows Robin isn’t dead, but until the reader and other characters know that, he is challenged on his glibness towards death. So when Batman forms a posse and heads into the Underworld he sees how chaotic it has become, and we see Batman join the rebellion against The Sensei’s forces. They meet on the battlefield and they agree that they will fight under Arkham. The strangeness of the underworld accentuates the alien territory Batman finds himself in of having agreed to kill somebody. But as time goes on, he gets the hang of the place in the same way that he comes to terms with the charge to the point that by the end he’s riding a pteranodon with ease (personally I think it should have been a giant bat). We watch as they fight and the whole time this audience of his villains, Ras, Talia, Deadman, Robin, Alfred, and maybe more are commenting on whether Batman is going to kill The Sensei and why. When he finally does it, he satisfies Ras, and frightens the villains, which is meant to in some small way thwart Ras’ scheduled release of criminals mattering. At this point, Robin is disappointed in Batman. We only learn later that when they met on the battlefield they had a secret telepathic conversation where they agreed that Batman wouldn’t kill The Sensei but would instead revert him to a baby, which was all The Sensei wanted in the first place. So Batman makes a declarative statement at the end as he reveals to Robin that he will always do everything in his power not to kill somebody. And then we discover that the whole story was being dictated to Superman, who says he’ll get the Pulitzer for Journalism and flies away. Maybe it’s unbelievable but in the world of superheroes where random thugs can drink various serums and become planty or icy or Bane-y or crazy or babies, maybe it would win a Pulitzer.

Yeah, I tend to like videos like that too.

If anything, the craziness and being ironically funny is a requirement for that. After all my time in art school, something like this doesnt even phase me anymore, but it does still give me a chuckle.

I'm with U on his art being very sub-par here... I mean U could tell it's Neal but it's like the finished inks were done straight on the thumbnails. Not finished drawings..

24:15 batman: "whut?"

Adams, Aparo and Giordano are my top three Batman artists ever since my uncle gave me Batman: From the 30s to the 70s. I’ve never really been a fan of the huge ripped version of Batman. Or Superman, as Christopher Reeve just looked how I believed Superman would look if he were real. The guy’s an alien who converts solar energy for his strength, he doesn’t technically need to workout unless the sun blew up.

Jerry Robinson and Neal Adams will probably always be my two favorite Batman artists.

Aparo, Adams & Rogers are my favorite s.

Neal Adams Batman was what hooked me to comics at 8yrs old.

@@AC-gb7do I agree that Giordano was DC's best inker.

Sauron is Marvel. But a ManBat vs Sauron crossover would be awesome!

He's a legendary salsa musician, too

That sounded better.

Nah. That would be fun. China hates fun, apparently.

I hope it was homemade CGI.

rogério Miranda Same here. I mean, I do appreciate the comic value. But don’t want him to get really hurt.

Probably just water or something.

At least, we hope it was simulated.

He's actually so dedicated to his intro bits he'll dump hot tea on himself.