My dear friend, Alexander is selling his Alan Moore signed copy of his 1st print, Batman: The Killing Joke on Ebay.

Plugging that is an excuse to talk about Batman!

Ever since Hans said that Batman (particularly in the Nolan films) is the myth that the 1% will save us I have not been able to shake his words from my brain. I was talking about that this weekend with Janaki and Carly. I immediately thought of this E-Z reader. E-Z readers are made to bridge the reading game between picture books and chapter books. Time Warner and Disney realize that this is an age where young folks bond with an intellectual property.

In this particular book, Killer Croc wants medicine. He wants his antidote and is rampaging through a hospital to get it. Batman tells him that there are good doctors in prison.

No shit.

At one point, Robin takes Croc’s pills and spills them in the sewer.

“No!” Croc screams.

It is Batman beating up a desperate uninsured person who is suffering from mental illness. He’s kidnapped a doctor but man that detail feels tacked on. The kidnapping is done off-screen and the doctor is never interacted with in any meaningful way. The doctor is never named. We see the doc tied to a chair, being untied in the background by Robin and with a blanket on his shoulders when EMT’s take him away.

As Carly and Janaki said in their best Bruce Wayne voices, “I don’t understand people like Croc. Why didn’t he just have his Alfred get his drugs for him or purchase a hospital?”