Cookbook Criteria

Tags

celebrity chefs, cookbooks, literary criticism

With the holidays coming up everyone is seeking new recipes or interesting spins on traditional dishes, trying to impress their family and friends because great-grandma’s secret recipes are getting old (just like her). There’s a surplus of cookbooks for everyone from amateurs to experienced cooks, but how do you find a credible cookbook that works for you? Who’s the Twain, Salinger, or Fitzgerald of cookbook authors?

Many people turn on Food TV Network and choose a favorite author based on their favorite TV personality. Every chef on TV—whether Guy Fieri or Paula Dean or Emeril Lagasse, each a household name—has released a multitude of cookbooks. Many people jump to buy these books with the face of their favorite food personality on the cover, hoping that the recipes are going to be just as delicious as they look on TV.

Most of the time cookbooks are simply judged by the cover, not the content. The amateur cook sees a famous person on the cover and they’re intrigued, hoping that the cookbook will help them to cook and eat just like that celebrity. It’s not only famous chefs that release cookbooks. It’s become an overall celebrity trend. Television stars like Eva Longoria (Eva’s Kitchen: Cooking with Love for Family and Friends), comedians like Jeff Foxworthy (Redneck Grill: The Most Fun You Can Have With Fire, Charcoal, and a Dead Animal), singers like Cheryl Crow(If It Makes You Healthy: More Than 100 Delicious Recipes Inspired by the Seasons) and even Maya Angelou (Great Food, All Day Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart ) are some of the celebrities who have put their own spin, but most importantly their name and face, on a cookbook. We know they can act and sing, but cook?

One should be hesitant about cookbooks on the best-seller lists (whether Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the NY Times). In the literary realm the best-seller list and various awards doled out to books seem unrelated to a book’s substance. More often than not these books are recognized not because of content, but to put specific books or authors in the spotlight. They simply function as an industry tool. The same holds true in the cookbook realm. Celebrities release cookbooks because their face and name sells the book. My father has been a professional chef for over 20 years. He was a student at the notable Johnson & Wales University culinary school, and everyone raves over his Italian cooking and personal recipes. If he were to publish a cookbook of his own and it was on the shelf next to a cookbook that, say, Ozzy Osbourne had compiled, my father most likely would be beat out in sales by Ozzy simply because he, chef or not, is more well known.

When looking for a genuinely useful cookbook a consumer should consider more important criteria than the author and their background. First, you should examine the intent of the book: what is the skill level it’s intended for? How comprehensive are the recipes? How does this cookbook compare to others with the same ambitions? Second, you should look at the actual content of the recipes, making sure they’re practical and coincide with the skill level, that they don’t require impossible-to-find ingredients, and that the instructions are clear and comprehensive. Even check the average cooking times for the recipes, or if they include helpful photos (not just fancy pictures of the finished product). Third, and finally, you should examine the nutritional information that accompanies the recipes.

The literary industry manipulates not only what people read, but also how people do things, like cook. So even when it comes to cookbooks, you should never judge a book by its cover.

Realism and Comic-Based Films

Tags

comic books, film criticism, movies

Something I’ve been finding quite interesting about comic book-themed movies lately is how they’re trying so hard to make them believable, to make them feel real.  Anyone that reads comics can tell you about how over the top details can get, yet they still sell and will always sell as long as it’s an interesting story.  When writers bring these characters to the screen, however, sometimes the more believable things are what make them more marketable.

Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies are a perfect example of this since he begins from scratch and rewrites the entire concept.  A seven-hundred-year-old ancient cult leader becomes a middle-aged criminal mastermind played by Liam Neeson, and a mobster that falls into a pit of acid that bleaches his skin and drives him insane becomes a criminal genius wearing makeup and scars on his face.  The upcoming film tackles Bane, who originally was an escaped prisoner that used a drug called “venom” to become super strong.  I’m curious to see how this is made believable, but also curious why it has to be.  I wonder if people are losing their imaginations and simply cannot handle seeing something too “silly” on screen.

A good illustration of my point is the film G.I.Joe.  Anyone who saw the cartoon knows how ridiculous the concepts are to begin with.  The movie surprised me by keeping the tone fun and silly, to the point where the training facility had an indoor ocean that wasn’t on the ground floor and everything had kind of a 90’s-styled, thumbs-up attitude to it.  I loved it and truly enjoyed the ride, but the movie didn’t do well commercially.  People tend not to enjoy straying too far from the truth or from reality.  Even Watchmen, which was an extremely successful comic, drastically changed the overarching plot for the movie because the original story was “too ridiculous.”  Batman has always been a huge character on or off a screen, but it seems recently as if movies have decided that he only works in a world we can see ourselves living in.  Even Iron Man tried hard to make things visually and logically understandable, which ended in a smash hit.

My own thoughts on the concept of reality-based rewriting are that movies are expensive to make and people are picky.  Movie makers want to make more money and spend less of it, so instead of paying for an animation of a giant tentacle monster terrorizing New York City, they made a big explosion and said that a bomb did it.  Instead of showing us Mr. Freeze in his bulky, silver suit and freezing gun, we see a man in a suit with a burlap mask shooting a gas of fear toxin at people.  It’s much more believable and makes you fantasize about it actually happening someday, but it isn’t true to its origins.

Whether it’s a budget issue or a marketing issue, it’s become apparent to me that hero movies need to be grounded in reality in order for people to buy into it.  It’s an even older issue when considering the lifespan of villains in movies.  In comics and TV shows, everyone lives and there is always hope of another encounter, but in movies, there is a chance higher than 90% that the villain will be dead by the end of the movie.  In reality, that may be more likely, but who ever decided that movies had to be so realistic?  Numbers don’t lie. People enjoy things they can relate to, so making an argument against this notion is futile, but as a huge comic reader, I feel that it is worth noting.  In some cases, I can jump on the bandwagon of reinventing characters (The Dark Knight is a good example of this), but in others, I am utterly disappointed in the outcome (as in Watchmen).

- Vic Frederick

The Literary Magazine

Tags

internet publishing, literary journals, publishing, reading

Last week, I drove to an Undergraduate College Literary Magazine in Danville, IL with seven other Creative Writing majors.  It was a conference featuring seven universities between Pennsylvania and Illinois and panels focused on various aspects of running an undergraduate magazine.  Preparing for the conference, I thought about how there is constant talk about how e-readers and Amazon change the book publishing and reading world (I get in arguments about the pros and cons of Kindle even outside the English/Writing major community).  Yet, I rarely hear talk about how these changes affect the world of literary journals.  This conference gave me the opportunity to see how literary journals have been dealing with the move from print to digital.

One of the biggest ways editors have been keeping up with this move is by creating online journals to supplement or replace the print journal.  People are more willing to browse a website than purchase a journal, so the pieces get more viewers. It also saves money on printing and distribution.  But editors seem under constant pressure to do more, to have more, in the online medium.  Some presenters talked about adding videos, audio, art.  One journal, for example, includes an interactive story of the month, which site visitors can add to and watch grow.  Susquehanna Review uses the online space to include interviews with writers and visual art.  There are hundreds of literary magazines in circulation, a large percentage being online, and many big name writers publish in them.  The journals range in prestige, in genre, and in taste.

The variety of literary magazines and the lengths to which they go to stay relevant raises the question of why they aren’t more well known to the public.  Annual, or in some cases monthly publications allow editors the opportunity to constantly take note of what the public wants and to mold their journals to fit this demand.  They are always changing, offering samples of the most recent writing.  As many of the panels at the Literary Magazine Conference suggested, these journals also help to build up a community of writers.  It’s a chance to get publications credits, test your writing against others’, and to get to know other writers.

But maybe this is the problem.  Maybe literary magazines are being made by writers for writers, excluding the general public.  Undergraduate journals, which feature student work, are especially likely to fall under this category.  Few students have the time or motivation to write stories and poems if they aren’t in the English or Writing departments. Therefore, it is the English and Writing students who are getting published, who the magazine is advertized to, and who create and launch the journal.  Is it any wonder that non-writers don’t show interest in them? It is a publication that exists in a bubble.  At the conference, some magazine editors spoke of opening their journals up to the university as a whole, encouraging non-English/Writing majors to submit.  Yet, these editors seemed to do this out of necessity, because of a lack of a Writing major on campus.  Their journals lacked the revised, professional quality of publications at other schools.  It seems difficult to strike that middle ground, creating a journal that doesn’t exist in a bubble, while also maintaining a high quality of work.

I believe that literary magazines are important.  They offer writers an opportunity to publish.  They provide motivation to write and redraft and can lead to eventual book publication.  To non-writers, literary magazines present an easy, fast way to read new literature. Unlike the Kindle or Nook, online literary journals are often free.  The huge number of journals out there is reassuring, because it shows that people still care about writing and reading.  It shows that stories and poems are circulating and part of the general consciousness.  Hopefully, as they continue to develop and improve, literature magazines will become more well-known and widely read.

-Dana Diehl

Internal Satisfaction Through an External Practice

Tags

poetry, reading

I recently took a stab at poetry reviewing after reading the poetry collection of Laura Solomon, The Hermit. This was a very taxing process and, to be honest, if I had realized how difficult writing a poetry review was I probably would not have taken on the challenge as the extremely inexperienced book reviewer I am. As I was preparing for my poetry review, reading through Solomon’s work over and over again, I understood the idea at the heart of the collection, but I was not excited or inspired in writing the review. I was looking for interesting uses of literary techniques and artistic plays on language. These key points were evident throughout the collection, but did not leave enough of an impact I thought. It was not until I began reading them out loud that I was truly intrigued.

I understand that the reader can visually digest the play on language, point out the use of poetic devices, and appreciate the visual flow of the wording. Some poetry is best taken in through visual exploration. On the other hand, one can better understand rhythm, the use of repetition in sounds, and the essence of the poem through its aural breaks and pauses. Some poetry is best taken in when heard. Solomon’s The Hermit seems to be one of them. Her use of different languages in poems such as Golosine, her choice of short verbs and adjectives to keep a certain pace, as in Tutti Fanno La Caca Perche Io No and I Explain Something About Spain to Emanuele Poeta, as well as many other precise choices are more obvious to the reader while being read aloud.

The idea that one has greater aesthetic pleasure through reading poetry aloud, whether the poet intended that pleasure or not, has been around for a very long time. Even poetry greats such as Shelley and Wordsworth have created works in this manner. Percy Shelley’s Ozymandias, for example, is packed with alliteration and assonance. This can be spotted even while reading it in silence, but the reader would not experience the sounds that play off of your tongue throughout the piece that way. When looking at William Wordsworth’s Upon Westminster Bridge the reader can experience the rhythm and the flow of the piece. The use of short words creates a pattern of sound that emphasizes certain words when vocalized. Famous poetry that is better read aloud does not stop there though.

This way of reading has personally helped me through a lot of poetry difficulties, such as what I encountered while writing my review on Laura Solomon’s The Hermit. It is a process that the average reader can practice to better understand the poem, or even to experience a new insight into the poetry. You would be surprised by how many poets use this process to better their piece, and you will never know the extent of it until you try!

-Kaylee Monga

Can Music Encourage Literacy?

Tags

Allen Ginsberg, Chuck Palahniuk, music and literature

Philadelphia six-piece The Wonder Years released their follow up to their second studio album, The Upsides, over the summer.  Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing has been said to be a “refreshingly honest and raw look into the lives of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania band,” yet inspiration for this album extends far beyond their roots.  Does the line “America, I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing” ring a bell? If you’re any kind of fan of beat poet Allen Ginsberg it certainly should!

Suburbia, I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing pays homage to Ginsberg’s poem “America” through much of it’s lyrical content.  The line “I don’t have roses in the closet, but I got pictures in a drawer,” from the song “Local Man Ruins Everything,” references the line “I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet” from Ginsberg’s immensely popular and heavily political poem.  The line “Two dollars, twenty-seven cents January 17th, 2006,” from the song “Coffee Eyes,” is also a reference to the second line in “America,” “Two dollars, twenty-seven cents January 17th, 1956.”  From song titles to lyrics, it is clear that The Wonder Years have intentionally created an album that serves as their own take on Ginsberg’s piece.  The very last line of the album (“But I’m putting my shoulder to the wheel” from the song “And Now I’m Nothing”) nearly mirrors that of the last line in America (“America, I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel”).

The Wonder Years aren’t the first musical artists to use literature as inspiration for their work.  Several tracks off of Panic! At the Disco’s debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, make references to various Chuck Palahniuk novels such as Invisible Monsters, Fight Club, and Diary.  Post hardcore six piece Chiodos has made countless nods to William Shakespeare in their music.  With all of this being said, we are led to wonder — what exactly is this doing for the literary community?

While the answer to that question is certainly open to interpretation, I can wager a guess that these artists who seemingly promote literature through their work can do nothing but good for the English and Creative Writing community.  In penning these innovative extensions of previously existing literary texts, artists are ensuring that the texts are accessible to a larger audience.  Additionally, they allow audiences to think more extensively, on both an intellectual and social level, about the text under discussion.  By reading the text and listening to the newer musical adaptation we are prompted to think about both and ask questions.  How is The Wonder Year’s Suburbia different from Allen Ginsberg’s America? How is it similar and why is that important?

As a whole, I believe that the practice of incorporating elements of pre-existing literature into songs is a way to get people excited about that literature.  All press is good press.

- Mandi Vivacqua

Let’s talk about poetry

Tags

can poetry matter, literary obsessions, poetry, reading

I’ve recently started to consider how absent poetry feels in the world of literary criticism.  There’s such a high volume of poetry being published, but so much of it never gets reviewed, and when it is the reviewer isn’t skilled enough to make a judgment other than a positive one.  I’m not sure why this is.  And then I hear about people who just don’t like poetry.  I’ve heard excuses—from just not understanding poetry to reasoning that it’s too dramatic or wordy.  You’d think that given all the books of poetry out there people would find at least something to connect with.  But poetry as an art form is so misunderstood that its meaning is completely lost to those who never connected with it to begin with.

I feel that connection because I’ve always enjoyed writing it.  Although people might not have the gift of writing, there are messages to be heard in the “good” poetry that speaks to so many different aspects of life.  That the world can just dismiss this kind of understanding is, perhaps, ignorant. I think that part of the problem stems from education, and that most students were introduced to poetry in high school.  They didn’t get a choice in picking the poems they read and they also didn’t get a choice in how to interpret them.  This is simply the result of most teachers failing to stimulate the creativity it takes inside the classroom to have a proper discussion.

Poetry might also get a bad rap because of the academic poets who keep it continually circling among other academic poets.  Of course I’m not looking for the drug addicted Allen Ginsberg of 2011, but it would sure be nice if I found him.  Poetry is allowed to get out of the box.  Poetry can be addicted and frantic and border line crazy as long as it’s creating a meaning for life that otherwise would not exist without the poet.  I’ve read a TON of boring poetry from academic types who write an entire collection containing only a couple of good poems.  I’m at fault, then, for not recognizing my disinterest and going out to find something that inspires me.  Unlike fiction, good poetry isn’t jumping off the shelves or sitting in the best seller pile at Barnes and Noble’s.  Poetry waits to be discovered by people who extend themselves beyond their limits and actually look for it.

Another issue is the way academics schedule long and boring poetry readings.  Everyone is encouraged to bring a poem they’ve written and then get up in front of the crowd to read it out loud.  People, i.e. more academics, are expected to come out and listen.  It’s a snooze, I’ve been there.  How about incorporating other forms of poetry into the mix, changing things up and getting people interested.  The poetry read at these events needs to inspire others to fall in love with poetry.  Unless you’re a professionally published poet, nobody is going to have any interest in the twelve different poems you’ve brought to read about your break-up with your boyfriend.  Read me Ginsberg, read me Neruda, read me Frost, and then read me the poem that you’ve written inspired by these works.

Every time we’ve had a reading I’ve always come with my guitar and stirred the pot because I don’t like putting my words out there without music.  My music is my poetry, and song lyrics are poetry, along with slam poetry and interpretive dance, which are forms that should be included in these poetry readings.  Poetry is so much more then what we make it because it requires a different kind of creativity than most of us are used to.  How we change the direction of poetry and breathe some life back into everything it has to offer is entirely up to us.  Who is us?  It’s you.

-Autumn Walck

A set criteria. Or not.

Tags

book awards, literary criticism, National Book Awards, reading

Following the recent announcement of the National Book Award nominees, literary critics and bloggers voiced their frustration and dissatisfaction with the nominees primarily in the fiction category. Most of the nominees were books that few have heard of, while other well-known and respectable books were left off the list. The question remains as to what kind of book this award is meant for. The criteria for choosing a winner is very vague. According to the National Book Foundation website (nationalbook.org), judges consider only books by American authors published in the United States. Their goal is to find the best book written within a particular year. According to the award rules, judges must choose nominees “using whatever criteria they deem appropriate, as long as they do not conflict with the official Award guidelines.” Clearly, the disapproval of literary critics is based on the fact that the criteria for the award changes yearly with the judges, and not all judges use the same criteria to determine the best book.

Though the problem of the National Book Award is large-scale, the question of criteria when judging a book is something that both the masses and literary critics encounter often. Think about where you go to look at book reviews. The New York Times? Your favorite blog site? Amazon? No matter where you go, or which reviewer you read, the question of criteria is a dominant one. As all humans are created with differing thoughts and opinions, it’s only natural that we judge books differently. As a reader recently turned reviewer, finding criteria to abide by is perhaps the hardest part of writing a review. I’ve come across and written reviews that describe plots and characters as relateable, but is that necessary for good books? I’ve read books that are extraordinarily imaginative and different than any other before them. Does that make for a good book?

With answers to these questions up in the air, I figured it was about time that someone make a standard set of criteria to judge all books by. I may not be the best person for the job, but I’m going to try.

Here it is:

1.

Ok, actually, I’m not even going to try; it would change just as quickly as I formed it, in the same way that the changing criteria of the changing judges of the National Book Awards change every few years. Popular culture dictates ingoing and outgoing trends and, furthermore, it sways the opinion of the general public that will read the new books yet to be published. Additionally, it will change the views of the people that will be judging the books that may one day be nominees for the National Book Award. With all of this being said, it’s obvious that we can’t establish a set criteria for what kinds of books will be considered the best by both the masses and literary critics.

As long as we’re a culture that has changing opinions and trends, popular opinion will change as quickly as it was decided upon and, in the end, we’ll all still be in disagreement.

-Jessica Clark

Reading about Ourselves

Tags

characters, literature, reading

Ask one of your friends about a good book they have read recently and most will talk about how they are either like one of the characters in some way or have found themselves in a similar situation. “I felt a special connection,” one will say, while another might comment, “I really understood how she felt.  I could relate,” or even, “It’s almost like he was writing about me.”

When I hear these phrases I have the urge to respond, “but you aren’t a teenage girl who moved across the country and fell in love with a protective, vegetarian vampire.  You aren’t a psychopathic murderer who also happens to be successful in investment banking.  And you aren’t Tina Fey!”  It’s natural for us to think that we are all in some way special and different, that we see the world for the way it really is.  The mere existence of the film, The Truman Show, tells me that at least someone else has wondered if there are actually little cameras watching our every move, people who are interested in the common day things that we do and say and think.  But books and movies seem to be the only places where we would be able to escape ourselves, and still, most of the time we choose not to.

For anyone who has ever cried while they read a book (it’s ok to admit, don’t worry) were you really dabbing at your eyes for a fictional character or for the actual Anne Frank?  At least in my experience, if I were to be truthful about it, I’m crying for me.  I’m crying because I can imagine myself being trapped, my brother being murdered, my house burning down.  I don’t love the characters.  What I love is how they make me feel and how much I would want to be them.  Sometimes it seems like the stories that can trick us into thinking they know how we feel and what we are afraid of are the ones we claim to be the “moving” and “powerful”.

But this self-absorption and urge to understand the self can also become possessive.  How many times have you read a book or a series that you think is marvelous but which becomes insubstantial once it becomes a best seller and everyone loves the characters?  It’s because you realize that these other readers don’t love you, but pieces of someone else.  The claim on the characters is democratic, free, and anyone can say they relate.

My roommate has recently fallen in love with the television show New Girl, where she thinks the character Jess, played by Zooey Deschanel, is her twin.  I have to admit, they both like to sing about what they are doing as they are doing it, and are full of unwarranted optimism, but then ultimately the character was written to appeal to all types of people who just want permission to be themselves.  When another friend of hers said, “Zooey’s character is me!” my roommate was offended.

“She can’t be Jess, I’m Jess!”

Although these types of characters can easily become the most popular, should we allow our naturally narcissistic tendencies to rule what makes a strong character?

-Abigail Hess

Bibliophilia

Tags

books, Kindle, literary obsessions, literary technology

bib·lio·phile: a lover of books especially for qualities of format; also : a book collector

I love books. And I’ve come to realize that it’s not just the stories inside or the way they make me feel. I just straight up love books- old or new, dusty, yellowing paperbacks, hardcovers right off the press, thick heavy tomes or slim volumes, I like the way books look, feel, and smell. During the summer months I stop by basement sales or library fundraisers and stock up on books for as cheap as fifty cents a pop. I frequent used book stores like DJ Ernst in Selinsgrove to add depth to my collection. I have a small bookshelf at school filled with the books I love most and a handful I’d like to get to in the near future. At home is another shelf filled with books waiting to be read.

Yet every year as the holiday season approaches I find myself debating a difficult question: should I make the switch to an ereader? Should I trade in the scavenging and sifting of piles in the hopes of maybe finding the title I’m seeking for the instant gratification of a wireless connection? The ereader market has exploded in the last few years, with Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle both claiming to offer the reading experience I’ve grown to love.

The Nook Color and the new Kindle Fire compete for the reader who is interested in a multimedia experience. Both allow you to read magazines or children’s books in full color, browse the web, and stream video from the internet. The Kindle Fire has the edge, in that you get Amazon’s integrated cloud system along with it, and easy access to purchasing music, movies, and television shows. But I’m not looking for some fancy tablet computer that also happens to have ebooks on it. I don’t want a backlit screen that will tire my eyes. For reading, I still prefer something more basic.

Nook and Kindle both also offer touch screen options. These are more standard e-readers, featuring the electronic ink technology that mimics the reading experience of a paper page. Here there is no backlight, only gray words on a less gray background. The Kindle also has a version where, instead of a touch screen, there’s a full keyboard. There’s a lot about these ereaders that I like. It would be amazing to have any book out of copyright in my hands for free. It would be convenient if any time a new book that I want is released I can have it in front of me immediately, without leaving my house.  I’d have storage space for over 1,000 books, which is a lot more than I can fit in my dorm room.

While there’s a definite convenience to ereaders, and I often claim in my classes that they are the future of literature, for now I think I’ll stick to the books I’ve got. There’s a stack of them next my bed propping up my reading lamp, and, well, an ereader just can’t do that.

-Laura Harshberger

I Love Me Some Batman, But This Is Getting Silly

Tags

Batman, Comics, DC, New 52

Just this past weekend, a friend of mine asked me to explain the essential differences between the Marvel and DC universes.  Before attempting to explain, I validated my knowledge by saying that I primarily read Batman comics, which means that I read most of what’s going on in the DC universe.  After saying this, I spent the next few days considering how DC has been handling Batman in the last four years.  After giving it considerable thought, and reading eleven issues from DC’s “New 52,” I’ve come to the saddening conclusion that the continuity of the DC universe is far too dependent on the caped crusader.

Almost simultaneous with the debut of The Dark Knight in theaters, Final Crisis was released in comics.  In what I assume was an attempt to ride out the hype of the movie, the release involved the death of Batman and a heart-wrenching panel showing Superman carrying the smoldering corpse of his partner out of the wreckage (Image Here).  What followed in the DC universe was a long shopping list of comics plot-lines dealing with the essential question of “What in the hell are we gonna do without Batman!?” My favorite of the plot-lines was the first post-crisis series Battle for the Cowl, in which all of Batman’s allies join forces to fight crime in Gotham City, and Dick Grayson (the original Robin who operated as Nightwing at the time) is faced with a heavy decision as to whether or not it is his duty to take up the mantle of the Bat.  The entire DC world seemed to be reflecting on how essential this mortal man was to the super-community.  They were so crushed without him that someone had to pretend to be him just to keep things functioning.

This was a great time to be a Batman fan, not just for the hype, but for the profoundness of the material that worshiped the aesthetic of the man.  The inevitable surfaced though, when a series called Bruce Wayne: The Road Home came into play.  Batman isn’t dead!  He’s lost in time!  We all knew this would happen, but what we couldn’t predict was what he did when he got his old life back.  Dick Grayson and his new Robin, Damian Wayne (Bruce Wayne’s ten-year-old son), were doing a wonderful job in Gotham, so Bruce told them not to stop.  That wasn’t enough though.  In a touching speech that he gives to the entire bat-family in the bat-cave, Bruce explains that he wants there to be a Batman in every country of the world.  Thus began the series Batman Incorporated.

This was the beginning of my frustration with DC, and my dislike of using the bat insignia as a crutch for the company.  First, we learned that one mortal man was irreplaceable.  Then, we are told that he should exist everywhere on Earth.  It was a short-lived series due to the recent reboot, but it involved Batmen sprouting in several countries, including France, Africa, Mexico, and Japan.  My theory was that the death and resurrection of Batman was an opportunity for DC to sell as many comics as they could and get the most out of the hype.  What I’m realizing at this point, however, is that there is no telling when this “opportunity” will be over.

“The New 52” released fifty-two titles.  Out of those titles, Batman is essential to at least thirteen.  I own eleven and he appears or is mentioned/discussed in all but one.  The clean slate that the “The New 52” provided shows no evidence of the Batman hype ending.  It’s even said in the series that although super-humans have only been public for five years, Batman has been operating for six.  As I said to my friend, reading Batman comics means reading DC comics.  He’s my favorite hero, but I feel DC is taking things a bit too far.  He’s an amazing man, but not even Superman or the Flash, who have mind-blowing super-speed, appear in that many places at once.  My question to DC comics is, “Are you that stuck for ideas?”

-Vic Frederick