16: When Batman Wasn’t Needed

00:00:07:25 - 00:00:10:17
Alex
Welcome to Bat Lessons, the Batman History podcast. I'm Alex.

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Brian
And I'm Brian.

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Alex
And today we're covering one of my favorite Batman stories, probably my favorite single issue of Batman. And then we're going to talk a little bit about the history of how it came to be. How's that sound?

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Brian
It sounds amazing. I'm so stoked, especially because you said your favorite. Is this the one that you had me read?

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Alex
Yeah.

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Brian
It's legit.

00:00:34:04 - 00:00:39:25
Alex
I'm glad you agree. It's not my favorite Batman story ever. My favorite Batman single issue ever.

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Brian
Yeah, I know. I really dig it. It's. Yeah, there's a lot to say, but. Yeah, well, we'll get into it.

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Alex
Yeah, for sure. Just a little bit of different type of episode. We're not doing the Golden Age history on this one is this is something that I had prepared for. We were going to be guest hosts for the first time on a show. I was really excited, so I prepared some stuff to talk about that fell through for various reasons, not super important, but I got all the stuff prepared and I thought, Why not?

00:01:05:12 - 00:01:30:18
Alex
Let's give it a shot on the main show. Thank you. So in that preamble, what is what is the story? It comes from Detective Comics, number 567, which is the October 1986 issue. And it's called The Night of Thanks, but No Thanks. It's written by Harlan Ellison, penciled by Gene Cullen, inked by Bob Smith. Adrian Roy did the colors and John Costanza did the letters, and the editor was Len Wien.

00:01:30:22 - 00:01:48:24
Alex
We'll talk a little bit more specifically about Harlan and Lin and the story of how this came to be after after we read the issue. I think it's just an excellent use of the comics medium. It's a little bit different than some of the other things we've recapped on the show before because it's more modern. There's a lot more showing instead of telling.

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Alex
So yeah, we'll summarize it a little bit differently than normal. But do you want to tell people about the cover?

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Brian
Yeah, sure. So firstly, this this were released in October of 1986.

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Alex
That's right.

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Brian
And it's actually a it's a pretty striking cover. It's I could totally see this hanging on a wall as well.

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Alex
It's bought this single issue because I love.

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Brian
It so much. Yeah. Yeah. I think the art style throughout the book, but also on the cover here is for me is very reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes when he's in his dream sequences or his daydream sequences. It's a very strongly reminiscent of that, that comic style. It's it's Detective Comics presents the Batman and you've got like a city.

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Brian
It's not really a silhouette, but it's it's like a low fi, a cityscape view.

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Alex
Skyline kind.

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Brian
Of. Yeah. There's a skyscraper in the middle and there's obviously Batman standing on top of this skyscraper, kind of looking awesome, just like standing there with his, like, fists on his hips, you know? And you can see that, like, the cape is blowing off to the side. And then on that skyscraper is like a massive, massive bat Batman logo.

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Brian
Mm hmm.

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Alex
I read that as the bat signal.

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Brian
Yeah. I wondered if it was the best signal, but it was. It was strange that it was like hitting a building, but, yeah, it is Essentially, it is the bat signal. And so, yeah, that's the cover.

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Alex
Did you catch what the skyline makes?

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Brian
Oh, that's a good call. Yeah. Not until you set it, but yeah. And that's the skyline behind this big skyscraper is, is there's these two tall buildings, kind of a hill of buildings. And then there's these two bright spots on either side of Batman and the and it basically makes the Batman cowl. So it's the ears, the white eyes of the head.

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Alex
Not just that, but on the far left side, there's a skyscraper. And on the far right.

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Brian
Side, there's the wings swinging the wings. So it is the bat that has the fall bat logo. Yes, that's good.

00:03:49:04 - 00:04:09:25
Alex
It is really good. I have grown to appreciate this cover more and more as time has gone on. So we open the book and we see Batman on top of a roof. It's says 12:03 a.m. and the first caption box says as much. And I'm thinking ritual as breathing the nightly patrol times sorry as much, and I'm thinking ritual as breathing the nightly patrol times.

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Alex
Beyond counting, he has been as he is tonight watching. Yeah. So? So Batman's perched on top of a rooftop. He's looking across an empty street, and a man runs from his car into a bodega with his gun drawn. And Batman, does this swan dive off the roof, flipping towards and bouncing off an awning, landing in a run towards the shop doesn't miss a beat.

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Alex
Batman's going towards the shop and when Batman arrives, the shopkeeper has his gun trained at the burglar who has his hands above his head and he says, Good to see you. Mind calling 911 while I keep four brains here busy and we cut to 12:05 a.m. and there's a dejected Batman. He's going to the phone. He's going, Geez, I couldn't have been more than a minute getting there.

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Alex
Like he's disappointed that he didn't get to the the robber before the shopkeeper did.

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Brian
Yeah. It's and it's also like, is that a timeliness thing, I should say, Like it's showing its age a bit because he goes to like a police phone, like it's not regular on the street. It's like, yeah, it's like a red phone and a callback. That's just for calling the police. Yeah.

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Alex
Then on the next page, we cut to an entirely different scene. 12:47 a.m. in an alleyway, a man's passing by a woman and he suddenly turns and strikes at her. And Batman turns the corner into the alleyway and spots them. And he thinks to himself, That's right, you slug, pick on a 60 year old woman with a limp, and he starts walking towards them.

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Alex
And as as he does it, this elderly woman punches back at the mugger and a red box truck kind of zooms by in front of Batman and comes in between them. So he can't see the the mugger and the woman anymore. And Batman's like coughing on the exhaust. And he thinks to himself, Oh, man, should have beat him across.

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Alex
I should have beat the truck across and the truck passes and he thinks himself while Albie and we get to see the fight again. And the old woman is like, wailing on this mugger.

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Brian
Mm hmm.

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Alex
She goes, You want food stamps? Greaseball. I'll give you food stamps. She then looks at Batman and calls over to him. He says, Hey, you. Yeah, you, mister big time crusher, make yourself useful. Go call a cop. So it's interesting, Batman kind of does this marching walk, you know, down to the police call box. It's taken from a telephone pole and he's he's cursing, but they've made up the curse words.

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Brian
Oh, yes, that's right.

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Alex
He's going to wrestle flaccid and peck a lower sagging mug and grizzled grating.

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Brian
Yeah, it's, uh. It's Joe Pesci in Home Alone.

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Alex
Yeah. I don't know if this is, like, a generational thing. Like, if people actually did that.

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Brian
Oh, no, it's not a thing.

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Alex
Okay?

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Brian
No, it's certainly not a thing. That's, in fact, like, the Joe Pesci thing is kind of funny. It's not Batman related, but when I guess he cusses or cuss so much in his, like, gangster movies and stuff that when he went to do Home Alone, he like, had trouble not throwing F-bombs like in between, like every other word.

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Brian
So he had to come up with this, like, false cussing to, like, help fill in those gaps for his own like, cadence and the way his mind works with the lines and stuff and it turn it into something really funny. But like, that was like a totally made up thing for a dude who like cusses way too much.

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Brian
Sure. So then in this, in this bottom right corner where he's like calling the police, he's at the police box and stuff like the way he's kind of looking over kind of annoyed and like I've there's I usually the police come after me. I'm not I'm not usually the one calling the police. They call me, you know, like he's got this whole demeanor about him and it's like this type of of cell, I guess.

00:07:44:00 - 00:07:55:13
Brian
Yeah. Reminds me a ton of that Calvin Hobbs style. Hmm. It's just so expressive, and it's kind of looser in the animation style, and.

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Alex
It's a little cartoonish.

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Brian
And stuff. Yeah.

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Alex
He's a little sheepish. He's a little disappointed. He's kind of hunched over, you know, making himself small. He says, Yeah, it's me again. Want to make something of it? Talking to the cops. Next page we cut to a different scene. It's 1:21 a.m. now we're down low. It's looking up a skyscraper, and there's a man standing on a ledge about halfway up, and Batman looks down.

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Alex
He's on a perch from a rooftop next to, you know, in a building next door. And he thinks to himself, he says, Oh, God, a jumper. And then he's he's still thinking to himself as he swings his battering and rope onto a flagpole nearby. And he's bringing down he says he's thinking, think about it. Another 10 seconds, kid.

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Alex
Think about it.

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Brian
He's trying to get the kid to delay so that he can get there in time. He's like, Come on, come on. Wait, wait.

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Alex
Yeah, yeah. But he's not saying it. He's thinking it.

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Brian
Yeah, yeah, he's thinking it.

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Alex
And then the jumper kind of turns around. We see him, you know, from the side. He says, wha and he sees Batman. He notices Batman swinging towards him. Then he says, the jumper says they don't want me, they never wanted me. And he starts like jumping, like falling off. I don't know if it's on purpose or not, but they he's kind of a fall jump thing now.

00:09:02:03 - 00:09:04:23
Brian
He says no goodbyes on his way down.

00:09:04:25 - 00:09:23:18
Alex
Yeah, I guess he's jumping This jumper. Makes me feel like it's kind of his. His feet are still touching the platform. He's kind of, like, tilting forward, you know what I'm saying? But just at that moment, a police officer breaks through the glass behind him and grabs the man around the waist with both hands and like starts pulling him back in the window.

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Alex
And he goes, he sees Batman and he goes, Oh, hiya, Batman. Don't fret. I've got him. And then we cut to 1:42 a.m. and Batman singing to himself. Nobody knows when you're down and out, which is a blue standard. I didn't know it.

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Brian
Yeah, I did know it, actually. It's. It's. It's one of the songs that Eric Clapton does on his very, very famous Unplugged album. Side Side Note Eric Clapton's Unplugged recording is one of the reasons that the whole MTV Unplugged thing was successful and kicked off at all. He was really early in it, and it's one of like the best selling albums of all time.

00:10:04:15 - 00:10:08:07
Alex
I had no idea. Was that would that have been before this? This is 1986, right?

00:10:08:10 - 00:10:12:06
Brian
I can look it up. Unplugged was 92.

00:10:12:09 - 00:10:35:00
Alex
Okay. So that's out of this. So we jump then to another scene. It's 1:50 a.m. Batmans running across rooftops, jumping from building to building. It's very dynamic. You know he's I had describe it looks like it's moving a lot a lot of speed from above. He spots a drug deal on the street down below and one man is handing a baggie to another and the other guy's handing a lot of bills back.

00:10:35:00 - 00:10:37:14
Alex
So, like, we're watching like a drug deal. We think maybe.

00:10:37:14 - 00:10:38:01
Brian
Mm.

00:10:38:03 - 00:10:45:15
Alex
Mm hmm. Batman's thinking to himself. He goes, Cat's in the bag, Bag's in the river. I've never heard that before. But Batman swoops in on the rope from above.

00:10:45:18 - 00:10:47:19
Brian
No, I've never heard that either.

00:10:47:21 - 00:11:04:07
Alex
Yeah. Cats in the bag, bodies in the river. I don't know if that's your phrase or if that's just a Harlan Ellison ism, but burying lines on the street after swinging down to them makes a loud noise. And he's accidentally gotten the attention of the two men across the street. Like we see. I don't know how to scribe it like a sound.

00:11:04:07 - 00:11:06:00
Alex
We see the sound emanating from his foot.

00:11:06:00 - 00:11:07:16
Brian
Oh, yeah? Yeah. Mm hmm.

00:11:07:18 - 00:11:28:05
Alex
And he thinks to himself, Oh, that was stupid. Frustration makes me crank dumb, just dumb. And he starts running towards them. And the man who bought the drugs then slaps, cuffs on the dealer, and he goes, Just terrific, Batman. Really keen old boy. Switch hair out of Narco. Can I congratulate you on career in the best undercover? I've had in ten lousy years on the street?

00:11:28:07 - 00:11:46:17
Alex
So what if a connection gets away and his connections connection gets away, and the cutter and the mules and the supplier and the guy downtown gets away and only make me about ten years to get it up again. And so Batman just turns away. It doesn't say a word. He turns around and starts walking away and the cop yells after him.

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Alex
He says, Go on home. Your mother's calling. Yeah.

00:11:49:16 - 00:12:17:02
Brian
Wow, that's so rough, too. I mean, so far, this. This this comic book has been like a series of, like, incomplete sneezes or something, right? It's like it starts out like. Like quintessential Batman, like these beautiful shots of these aerial acrobatics and stuff. And then it ends with, like him calling the police or in this case, so far, everyone else has just been like, Oh, Batman's here or whatever.

00:12:17:04 - 00:12:29:17
Brian
This case, they're like, angry that Batman was there, that they yeah, they blew his undercover operation had been working on for a long time, was like, Oh, jeez, this guy is super upset about it. And like, it's pretty funny.

00:12:29:20 - 00:12:47:01
Alex
Yeah, No, it's. It's like definitionally comedy, right? It is. Yeah. They do the setup, the wind up for the joke, right? And then the punch lines. Not what you would expect. Right, Right. So yeah, we're eight pages in. I think it's like a 14 page story. You get the gist, right? Yeah. It's going to be more of this.

00:12:47:03 - 00:13:10:12
Brian
But it's also like there's a point where you're reading through it. We're like, how many different ways can you misread a situation? You know, it's like, I know as I read through is like I figured at some point he was going to solve a crime or like, stop a crime. Well, that's what you write. Every single situation is like, okay, this time, this time it'll be real, you know?

00:13:10:19 - 00:13:12:05
Brian
You know, get the payoff.

00:13:12:08 - 00:13:34:21
Alex
Well, let's see. 2:16 a.m.. Batman sitting on a park bench and he's thinking to himself, Nice night. Quiet night, Parks. Quiet, rivers. Quiet, quiet night. Which I think is just a really fun monologue to himself and that he hears something and he turns around suddenly. So there's people behind him, behind the park bench, and there's a lone young woman who's walking hurriedly through the park.

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Alex
And three young men are kind of chasing after her. And Batman looks really concerned and he thinks himself. Here's a lesson you won't forget little Rat Packers. And he starts chasing after them, right? Because these guys are up to no good. They're going to jump this girl. Right?

00:13:48:14 - 00:14:01:03
Brian
Well, he also he also thinks to himself at the beginning of this, he goes, okay, this one I can't figure wrong like this. This one I can't miss miss this one. This is definitely what's going on here.

00:14:01:06 - 00:14:15:04
Alex
Right. Can't not act. This is important, right? Yeah. I'm not going to sit this one up. Then the boys catch up to the girl, and one of the boys says, Sharlene, I apologize. I didn't mean to get you saw, but you shouldn't be in the park alone. Come on, We'll walk you to the subway we got to get home to.

00:14:15:07 - 00:14:30:17
Alex
And she says, I didn't mean to yell at you, Rick, but it wasn't a great concert. So we get the vibe that these are all friends. Yeah. And they just want to make sure that she's not walking through the park alone. And Batman kind of stops, and he's, like, hiding behind the tree and watching them walk away again.

00:14:30:17 - 00:14:48:08
Alex
There's this really disappointed, like, frustrated look on his face. Like he's like, like, Wow, what am I doing wrong here? Then we can see a different scene. It's 2:38 a.m. and Batman spots a man with a crowbar trying to Jimmy open the door of a car. Like he's, like, shoving it down. Have you ever seen people do this before?

00:14:48:08 - 00:14:50:14
Alex
I don't think I've ever seen two with a crowbar before.

00:14:50:16 - 00:15:11:04
Brian
But I've never seen him with a crowbar. I've seen it with, like, coat hangers or. I think there are other things that you can slip down. You're trying to catch the lock for the door. That's. That's inside the door. That that's usually, like, right below where the window rolls up and down. So slipping down, finding that spot, yanking up on it and opens the door.

00:15:11:06 - 00:15:22:10
Alex
So Batman walks up behind the guy and says, This is too much car for you, fella. I think a paddy wagon is more your speed. And just then, as he says this, we see a woman with a wire hanger from the other side of the car and she goes.

00:15:22:10 - 00:15:30:23
Brian
Bernie, honey, it worked on this side. And this is the last time I let you lock the doors in the car. Oh, good evening, Batman.

00:15:30:26 - 00:15:39:08
Alex
And so Batman just walks away from the car. He throws up his head in there and he goes, Justice, don't talk to me about justice. There's no justice in the universe.

00:15:39:10 - 00:15:52:10
Brian
It's super funny, too, because. Because like, the way the text, like, gets smaller and smaller is like his voice trailing off, like justice. Don't talk to me. Just there's no justice lending. It's like.

00:15:52:13 - 00:16:10:07
Alex
And up until now, he's like, mostly been internal monologue. Like he's thinking to himself all these things. This time he's saying it's like snapping at this lady. You just got doro. Guard. 3:19 a.m.. Batman spots someone with a ladder just outside of a jewelry store. They're at the top of the ladder. They're making noises, working on something on the side of the building.

00:16:10:13 - 00:16:28:09
Alex
And Batman runs up behind assuming they're disabling the arms alarm system. And he goes a little late for jewelry shopping, isn't it? And we see it's a woman wearing a security system company jumpsuit, like she's who works for the company. She goes, Oh, thank goodness. I'm glad you shut up, Batman. I can use the extra pair of hands.

00:16:28:12 - 00:16:45:26
Alex
She hands him a flashlight. Oh, well, see where Batman has, like, the most awkward look on his face. He's got, like, a forced smile. He goes, I could tell you had an emergency here, lady.

00:16:45:28 - 00:17:04:02
Brian
And it also is like, really pushing him down the pegs. I mean, he has a child with his dad telling him to, like, point it here. But Casey literally does say in this, like in the bottom corner here, she's like, you're not holding that right. Hold the light steady. So, I mean, just like every dad does to their kid.

00:17:04:05 - 00:17:12:14
Alex
Yeah. You definitely get the sense that he is he's he feels it's an indignity that he's been, you know, downgraded from fighting crime to like, helping random people on the street.

00:17:12:17 - 00:17:13:09
Brian
Yeah.

00:17:13:11 - 00:17:35:11
Alex
3:54 a.m.. We cut to a different scene. We see a big mean look at bald guy, like stereotypical, you know, evil guy. He's got, like a mean smile on his face. We're looking up at him from a below and he's we think maybe he's smoking a cigar. They make it out to be that. But it turns out in a subsequent panel that he's eating a candy bar.

00:17:35:13 - 00:17:44:24
Brian
And then Batman thinks, My God, it's a Gollum with a candy bar. What a brute. Got to be a night stocking strangler.

00:17:44:27 - 00:17:53:25
Alex
And the guy throws the candy wrapper over a shoulder and then Batman goes, There's an ordinance against littering. Littering tiny.

00:17:53:28 - 00:18:03:05
Brian
Which. Which is like a pretty normal, like, setup for the bad guy to, like, turn and throw some other quip, and then they start fighting or something suspicious.

00:18:03:05 - 00:18:07:10
Alex
Sure. It's also like very Batman 66 of like, you know.

00:18:07:13 - 00:18:07:29
Brian
I guess. Yeah.

00:18:08:04 - 00:18:11:15
Alex
You haven't watched much of that or any of that question Mark.

00:18:11:18 - 00:18:11:29
Brian
No, none.

00:18:12:00 - 00:18:18:28
Alex
Anyway, there's a lot of like him explaining to Robin why, like they need to look both ways before they cross the street and use crosswalks and like.

00:18:19:00 - 00:18:21:22
Brian
You know, so it's like teaching children how to be safe and stuff.

00:18:21:23 - 00:18:41:01
Alex
Yeah, it's very Boy Scouts like. Yeah. And so like there's a city ordinance against littering, you know, Batman's been reduced to calling people out for throwing the trash and that the guy's kind of sheepish. He's like, litter, huh? Oh, man, you're absolutely right. I should be ashamed of myself. I'm always complaining about how people turn our streets into garbage pits.

00:18:41:08 - 00:18:55:27
Alex
Good citizens ever need reinforcing. Thank goodness you're always with us, Batman. Good night, sir. And have a quiet evening. And he goes. He picks up the trash and he puts it in the you know, puts it in the bed and he waves it. He's smiling and walking away.

00:18:56:00 - 00:19:03:07
Brian
It's also like a super funny response to be like, oh, litter. Oh, oh, you're absolutely right. I'm in the wrong. It's like, yeah.

00:19:03:07 - 00:19:03:18
Alex
What was I.

00:19:03:18 - 00:19:19:26
Brian
Thinking? Getting pulled over and being like, You're right, officer. I was speeding. Thank you for following me over. Right. And then also, like a slap in the face for after the night that he's had for him to say. I hope you have a quiet evening. It's like a quiet evening.

00:19:19:29 - 00:19:40:26
Alex
Yeah. Batman's in the foreground. He's just got his arms crossed. Doesn't say a word. Right. And then finally, 4:16 a.m. where we got to Wayne Manor. And Alfred comes into the study with a kettle of tea, and he says, Oh, Master Bruce, I didn't realize you returned from your patrol. And it really was it trying evening. Was it a trying evening filled with the usual danger?

00:19:40:28 - 00:19:49:09
Brian
And he says, Worst night of my life, Alfred? Absolutely. Without a doubt. The most miserable night of my life.

00:19:49:11 - 00:20:28:29
Alex
And that's the end. I will say one thing that I didn't include in my summary is that there periodically throughout this book, there are quotations and caption boxes that are not really about the story. They're just kind of adding color from Confucius and Sansa and some other authors. I've not heard of Eric Hoffer, Leslie, Tom Turner And it's very it wouldn't translate if I tried to include in the summary, but it totally adds color to the way that Batman's feeling, the sort of like the themes that are being played with like, for example, one of the quotes is if a man seeks to know thoroughly the past, the present and the future, he should understand

00:20:28:29 - 00:20:48:08
Alex
that the realm of existence is about a creation of the mind. And it's like, what does that have to do? The story? Not much, but this is absolutely one that you can read over and over and over again and appreciate other different things, small little things, different ways to view the situation for something that is such a simple, simple story.

00:20:48:09 - 00:20:55:29
Alex
Fundamentally, there's there's a lot of depth that I think is lost probably in our summarization. So I encourage you to go find this and read it.

00:20:56:06 - 00:20:57:21
Brian
Yes, I agree.

00:20:57:23 - 00:20:59:28
Alex
Yeah. Do you have any thoughts about the about it.

00:21:00:00 - 00:21:33:19
Brian
About the comic overall? Yeah, it's great. I mean, super funny. I like the comedy aspect of this kind of stuff, especially like you're saying it's like, like bait and switch over and over again and. Oh, man, I don't know if this will translate well, but there's this. Kristen Shaw. I think it's who it is. Does this thing where she basically bounces around like a horse and on the stage and this guy is singing like Kristen Schaal as a horse.

00:21:33:19 - 00:21:56:12
Brian
Kristen Schaal as a horse. Look at her. Run. Look at her. Go look at her on the horse, you know, And just as that over and over and over again, but like for like 15 minutes. Sure. It's one of these things where, like, it's you expect it to finish at some point, you expect it to end. But like, the longer it goes, like it goes into like this awkward phase and it comes back into this hilarious phase, like they're still going.

00:21:56:19 - 00:22:22:05
Brian
And it just keeps that part of the humor is that it actually never really resolves. And that is the humor that I catch in this that like Queen never, ever got the sneeze in, right? He just built up. Built up. And like, he just strike after strike after strike. He missed out and went home. And that's like I think that's super funny to to from my perspective.

00:22:22:05 - 00:22:24:15
Brian
It's very, very funny to me.

00:22:24:18 - 00:22:34:12
Alex
Yeah. I think there's something to be said about repetition. Like there's there's the song that never ends, Right. Which they used to do on on the LAMB Chop show on PBS.

00:22:34:13 - 00:22:35:03
Brian
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

00:22:35:09 - 00:22:59:01
Alex
Where it's just annoying and it's not adding to anything, and it doesn't change. And like, yeah, maybe it's funny because it doesn't end right, But in music, there's this concept called an ostinato, which is a rhythm that's repeated over and over and over and over again, or a phrase that's repeated over and over and over again, usually as sort of the background for something else, like maybe you would have a tuba that's doing an ostinato and then like there's a melody over the top of it or whatever.

00:22:59:03 - 00:23:24:12
Alex
But sometimes I've played in bands and orchestras and things where the the entire group is sort of doing the ostinato. And even though it's the same thing, it goes places, there's there's changes in volume and dynamic, there's changes in speed, there's changes. And and it feels like you're able to convey emotion without even changing anything. And I think this does that right to an extent of like, yeah, it's the same.

00:23:24:12 - 00:23:48:23
Alex
It's just scene after scene after scene of, you know, Batman is not needed or, you know, Batman's expectations of how this is going to happen are subverted. And I think it's funny, you're right. But it also challenges the concept of Batman. I think so many of the deconstructions that are most famous of superheroes, like The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, right.

00:23:48:26 - 00:24:20:28
Alex
Try to sort of think about heroes in a real world sense of like, Oh, well, they'd have to be crazy, right? Or they'd have to be, you know, like, like all forms of power co-opted by the government, or they'd have to, you know, there'd be some sort of, like, fundamental flaw that would be, you know, broadened scope. And I think this kind of does it deconstruction in a very clever way where they're not really changing, you know, some sort of fundamental process or behavior of of Batman.

00:24:21:01 - 00:24:50:06
Alex
They're just saying like, well, you know what? If he doesn't need it, right? What if what if you actually took all of the sort of crimes and things that happened or, you know, goings ons in a city that doesn't sleep, you know, in a given night and, you know, there were people who helped themselves or there were people who may appear to be in distress but are not or, you know, places like the man who's who's jumping off the roof where, you know, the police infrastructure does work the way it's supposed to you.

00:24:50:07 - 00:24:53:16
Alex
Right. Right. How does Batman live in a world that that's like that?

00:24:53:19 - 00:24:54:11
Brian
Mm hmm.

00:24:54:13 - 00:24:56:14
Alex
And that's super interesting.

00:24:56:16 - 00:25:21:22
Brian
Yeah. Well, I mean, The Dark Knight, he talks about that. He says that repeatedly. That's what he's shooting for. He wants to live in a world where Gotham does not need Batman. And and that's what The Dark Knight was kind of queuing up for was the white knight of the justice system actually working through the day. And I have thought about this several times with kind of all superheroes.

00:25:21:22 - 00:25:45:10
Brian
But do they actually fake fight crime 365 days out of the year? Or do they have like a few really notable moments that are like comic book worthy or like story worthy? And there's like a lot of nights where it's like, not nothing's happened and just kind of swinging from my webs or flying around and in my, my cape, like just kind of burning calories looking for something and, and nothing happens.

00:25:45:12 - 00:26:03:28
Alex
Yeah, if you want. Just like copious amounts of like second hand cringe, just Google, go to YouTube and search like real superhero and I forget the name of the guy, but there's there's a dude that, like essentially ran a gang in Seattle where they would, like, dress up in suits and they would look for trouble. It's a little embarrassing and awful.

00:26:04:06 - 00:26:05:17
Alex
I wish I knew about.

00:26:05:20 - 00:26:09:14
Brian
This is not what I thought you were going to reference. So this is crazy.

00:26:09:17 - 00:26:29:02
Alex
But it's about what you think, right? Like they go out looking for fights and there aren't any. Right. I think. I think it actually and I shouldn't make light of it because it's a real person and it's actually, you know, there are it's delicate and I'm realizing that I don't have the correct I haven't prepared for this. But it's tragic in a way.

00:26:29:02 - 00:26:38:24
Alex
Right. Because they're having, you know, personal issues that that caused them to want to do this thing right. And I think it ends there ends up being that there's like substance abuse and other things like that. But.

00:26:38:24 - 00:26:39:21
Brian
Oh, no.

00:26:39:23 - 00:27:03:00
Alex
Yeah, but taking it back for a second, like, I think this is a really unique look at Batman. I don't think we've ever really seen anything like this before. I don't know if we've ever really seen anything like it since. I'm sure there's been imitations, but it stands out to me as as one of my favorites, not just because it's well written, because it is well-written, the process is great and the art is great, and the way they go together is great.

00:27:03:08 - 00:27:13:12
Alex
But also because it's just it's such a, you know, a unique take. Yeah. So if you'll indulge me, I'd like to give you a little history lesson on how this book came to be.

00:27:13:15 - 00:27:17:24
Brian
Yeah, please do. There. There is a little bit of a hint on the cover.

00:27:18:01 - 00:27:18:20
Alex
Yeah.

00:27:18:22 - 00:27:33:24
Brian
Where it says special and offbeat bat tale by award winning author Harlan Ellison. So I'm something something there is going on. And then at the very end, it also says something I don't know what page that's on now.

00:27:33:27 - 00:27:37:06
Alex
The Yeah, the final caption box in the lower right hand corner says something.

00:27:37:07 - 00:27:50:20
Brian
Yeah, A promise Finally kept by Harlan Ellison, writer Gene Cullen and Bob Smith. And it's just got the artists and and stuff like that. But the promise finally kept, so I don't know what that's about. Yes, I'm guessing. So tell me.

00:27:50:22 - 00:28:10:14
Alex
You. I you've told me up so well I love it. I we did practice this. I promise There's two aspects some way that's the that that make this interesting. One is Harlan Ellison who that person is and why he's interesting. And then the second is, under what circumstances did he come to write this Batman story? And so we can we will do it in that order.

00:28:10:15 - 00:28:28:02
Alex
So I'm so glad that you called it out that way. I think the preface that I'll give, because Harlan is a very complicated persons can take me a while, have a few pages worth of notes for you to paint the picture of who he is. But, but to sort of set the table setting, there's a quote from Neil Gaiman, Do you know who Neil Gaiman is?

00:28:28:05 - 00:28:37:09
Brian
Yeah, he's. He's a writer. He's. He's written a whole bunch of stuff I think he might have been involved with, like The Sandman TV show that's been really big recently.

00:28:37:14 - 00:28:39:09
Alex
Yeah. Yeah.

00:28:39:12 - 00:28:40:24
Brian
But it's based on a book.

00:28:40:26 - 00:28:42:12
Alex
It's a DC comic.

00:28:42:15 - 00:28:44:14
Brian
Oh, it's a comic. Okay. Yeah.

00:28:44:16 - 00:28:46:20
Alex
And then issue number one and then.

00:28:46:21 - 00:28:47:19
Brian
Oh, no kidding.

00:28:47:21 - 00:28:50:01
Alex
Yeah. And then.

00:28:50:03 - 00:29:11:13
Brian
What else? He also helped write Good Omen, Which Batman. My wife. Good loves. Yeah, yeah, whatever. It's. But I know my wife really loves it. And then they they also did an Amazon show based on that as well. Right. But so it's Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman who did good good or Bad Omens Good Omens, whatever it is.

00:29:11:15 - 00:29:16:03
Brian
And I think I think Neil Gaiman still alive and I think Terry Pratchett might not be.

00:29:16:06 - 00:29:16:26
Alex
That's right.

00:29:16:28 - 00:29:17:22
Brian
Okay.

00:29:17:24 - 00:29:41:15
Alex
Yeah. So suffice to say, Neil Gaiman, big time author, done lots of lots of famous novels, comic books still alive to this day. And this is what he has to say about Harlan Ellison. He says, You have to accept that you have somebody who is partly one of the greatest writers of the 21st century and partly an alternately impish and furious 11 year old boy, possibly nine year old boy, possibly five year old boy.

00:29:41:17 - 00:29:48:03
Alex
So, you know, he's talking about someone who's brilliant, but also perhaps not the most mature.

00:29:48:06 - 00:30:08:05
Brian
Yeah, it's a very funny way to describe it, too. Like, yeah, because Neil Gaiman is like a funny writer. He's like one of the things I read he had on, I think it was a I'm thinking it was a real Neil Gaiman tweet from a while ago. Or he said, like Churchy, Beatty doesn't give you answers. It gives you sentences that look like answers.

00:30:08:07 - 00:30:26:26
Brian
Yes. Which is like totally accurate. But it's also a very funny way to to describe it. And and so this also like the the devolution I guess to say like he is imagery somewhat of an 11 year old boy, maybe a nine year old, maybe a five year old, like it's getting worse and worse each time. Yes.

00:30:26:29 - 00:30:46:22
Alex
So Harlan Ellison, he was born on May of 1934 in Cleveland, Ohio, Ohio. He's no longer with us. He passed away in 2018. So relatively recently. His mother was a dentist and his father was a jeweler. So he they were doing fairly well financially. He was Jewish. He was really scrawny as an adult. He even only grew to be five foot five.

00:30:46:22 - 00:31:13:09
Alex
And the way he tells it, he was bullied relentlessly as a child, often getting into fights. There's a documentary that I watched called Dreams with Sharp Teeth. He was free on to be one of the the the freemium streaming services. I recommend you watch it if you are interested after everything we tell you here, because it's fascinating. But in the documentary, there's a picture of him at school standing with his class, and indeed, he's the smallest in the line up, shortest one there.

00:31:13:12 - 00:31:28:26
Alex
And in the picture, he and another boy both have like bandages on their face. And he claims that it was from a fight that they had before the photo was taken. Later in life, Harlan would often use the names of his childhood bullies as villains in his stories. Oh, man. Yeah.

00:31:28:29 - 00:31:29:18
Brian
Kids.

00:31:29:21 - 00:31:54:03
Alex
So defining. If you think that's just weight defining characteristic of some of this fiction. When his father was 14, his father died suddenly and Harlan was in the room. The way he tells it, there's conflicting accounts of exactly why his father died. The documentary says something else. But the I actually my sister helped me look up through Ancestry to find the the obit in the Painesville telegraph.

00:31:54:03 - 00:31:57:06
Alex
And it says it was a heart attack. So really traumatic.

00:31:57:06 - 00:32:00:18
Brian
You really do your research, by the way. That's amazing.

00:32:00:20 - 00:32:29:23
Alex
Well, so I get really something that happens aside, when you're doing research on people who are famous but are not not the subject of lots of historical scholarship, is that they often are their own. NARRATOR So when we're talking about Jay Robinson, the significant majority of what we know about him is what he said about himself. When we talk about Bob came, the significant majority of what we know about him is what he said about himself.

00:32:29:25 - 00:32:41:11
Alex
And I loved the Harlan Ellison documentary, but a significant portion of what he says in it is what he said about himself. And there are people who are really, really good self-promoters. And so I start to.

00:32:41:11 - 00:32:51:05
Brian
Oh, yeah, I mean, we've talked about this on the podcast before, about changes like light, a lot about how good he was, right. Like so unreliable narrators. Absolutely.

00:32:51:08 - 00:33:12:03
Alex
Yeah. So when it comes to something like that, so defining that sounds fantastic. I tend to want to look for corroboration. And so I really tried to dig on on this story. I don't know why, but I did. I couldn't find any real detail other than what the the obit said in the newspaper. Anyway, he because of this trauma, he would run away frequently as a teenager.

00:33:12:05 - 00:33:27:03
Alex
The way he tells the story, he would end up several states away doing a fishing job, doing logging right, and then somehow ends up coming back home and continuing to go to school. Right. So he would go away for a few months, have a job, be it adults while he's like 15 or whatever. And then go back to school.

00:33:27:05 - 00:33:34:25
Alex
After high school, he got into Ohio State University. So in 1951, he started going to Ohio State University. But in 1953 he was expelled.

00:33:34:28 - 00:33:37:02
Brian
MM Yeah. For fighting.

00:33:37:05 - 00:33:57:27
Alex
Well, so the way that he tells the story in the documentary, an English, English professor told him that he had no talent and that he should go find a job, that he was wasting his time at school. And so Harlan punched the professor and got expelled. Yeah, that's the way he tells the story. Other people say that it was just a verbal altercation, but whatever the case, right.

00:33:57:29 - 00:34:17:14
Alex
He ended up fighting with a professor who told him he couldn't. He couldn't write, man. And for a great many years afterwards, Harlan would supposedly send this professor every single story or publish work that he had written in the mail. So he would get an article published. He'd send it to the professor. You get a book published, you tell the professor short story.

00:34:17:16 - 00:34:32:08
Brian
So, you know, he holds grudges, obviously, like he names his villains after his past bullies. And he just continue only like berates, almost terrorizes this old English professor with Yes, with all of this mail.

00:34:32:11 - 00:34:51:09
Alex
And he's got like flowery language where he describes like he he hopes that this professor every day comes home to his house and like pouring out of every nook and cranny and bookcase. And then under every floorboard, there's another piece of Harlan Ellison's writing so he can't escape it, right? He takes great joy in The Revenge in 1955.

00:34:51:10 - 00:35:00:28
Brian
I kind of feel sad for him to have, like, so much pent up anger and aggression and energy pointed in this direction. I think.

00:35:01:00 - 00:35:02:23
Alex
We're just finishing page one.

00:35:02:25 - 00:35:09:28
Brian
And started. I see where this he's he's just was expelled from college. He hasn't even gotten into his like professional life yet.

00:35:10:00 - 00:35:35:02
Alex
Yeah we're getting there. In 1955, after getting expelled, he moved to New York City to pursue writing freelance here. He experienced pretty significant success. And between 1955 and 1957, he has over 100 works published short stories, articles that appear in pulps or magazines, even a couple of comic book script scripts. And he doesn't sort of reach the the higher level of notoriety where he becomes a fixture just yet.

00:35:35:02 - 00:35:55:22
Alex
But he's he's some sound works and getting published in 1957 he gets drafted into the army which that was drafted still active at that time. This was after the Korean War, during the Vietnam War, but before America has officially entered the Vietnam War. We don't have boots on the ground so we don't we're not actively participating in anything.

00:35:55:26 - 00:36:12:29
Alex
So he was never deployed, but he trained at Fort Bragg, Fort Benning in Georgia, and supposedly he brought his typewriter with him to basic training and he would hide away in a bathroom. He'd go all the way to the end of the hall in the bathroom to the last stall. He'd put a border crossing lap and put you know, the typewriter on top.

00:36:12:29 - 00:36:32:06
Alex
And he'd be working on writing his first novel, which was called Love of the City. And apparently the way he got by not being, you know, to not get bullied and to, you know, fit in and to, like, reduce his workload and things like that is that he would write love letters for the other guys to send back to their girlfriends.

00:36:32:06 - 00:36:42:19
Alex
Right. And he'd do that in trade for like getting out of a duty or like, you know, maybe they have some sort of supplies or things like that that he would want. Again, this is a story that he tells. But I felt that that was kind of interesting.

00:36:42:20 - 00:37:03:07
Brian
He was kind of crazy to like because his like his he's in the army during the in one of the like rare peace times in the U.S. So he doesn't actually have fear for his life. And not just that like at Fort Benning, like you said. And I thought that that was like a very like rigorous and tiring experience.

00:37:03:09 - 00:37:13:20
Brian
But apparently he has endless energy. Such said, he yeah. Hides in the bathroom and like tapes for people. Like, that's kind of insane.

00:37:13:23 - 00:37:22:19
Alex
Yeah. After after a long day of, like, basic training, everyone's going they're just dropping, you know, dead, going to sleep. And he's like, writing all night long.

00:37:22:22 - 00:37:32:15
Brian
Yeah, my day's getting started. I mean, that's how I feel about Alfred. Also. Like, that was something I thought when at like 4 a.m. in the comic, when he's back.

00:37:32:18 - 00:37:32:29
Alex
Yeah.

00:37:33:00 - 00:37:39:29
Brian
And Alfred's up and it's like, when does this guy sleep? Because he. Well, he works the house during the day when Bruce Wayne sleeps.

00:37:40:01 - 00:37:40:19
Alex
Sure.

00:37:40:22 - 00:37:42:08
Brian
Yeah. Anyway.

00:37:42:10 - 00:37:59:03
Alex
Yeah. So? So after his time at Fort Benning during basic training, he spent a little bit of time working at Fort Knox, which I thought was kind of a cool factoid. And in 1959, so after just a few years, he leaves in what they called mutual consent in the documentary. I don't know what that means. I think that means he wasn't kicked out.

00:37:59:09 - 00:38:15:07
Alex
I couldn't find, you know, any sort of record or anything about what how exactly he left the army there. No one talked about like him getting into a fight or getting, you know, anything like that. But people did say that he didn't like it, that he didn't they didn't agree with him. After his time in the Army, Allison moved to L.A. instead of New York.

00:38:15:13 - 00:38:42:03
Alex
He would live there for the rest of his life. He loved Los Angeles and talked about it often. And this is the period of time where Harlan really started to become a character and a fixture in the science fiction community. We started to become famous. He would often arrange to go to local bookshops and set up his typewriter and work in the window so he would be writing while people were walking by and they could watch him, you know, do his work and this was also the period of time where he got into script writing.

00:38:42:05 - 00:39:02:19
Alex
He co-wrote the script for a 1966 movie called The Oscar That flopped, didn't do well at the box office, but did see success in writing many episodes of television shows. The Outer Limits, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The man from Uncle Logan's Run. Many, many, many years later, he wrote several episodes of Babylon five and was a story consultant with Jay because.

00:39:02:21 - 00:39:03:19
Brian
They're pretty big on that.

00:39:03:19 - 00:39:28:09
Alex
Show. Yeah, perhaps most famous. The most famous episode of television he ever wrote was the scripts for Star Trek. The episode was called The City On the Edge of Forever, and this is a really quintessential episode of Star Trek. The original series. It's really good. Steve Schiff's who we had as a guest on a previous episode of the show, does an excellent video on the script, so I'm going to give you like the two minute CliffsNotes version.

00:39:28:09 - 00:39:32:27
Alex
He goes in depth for like 20 minutes. If you're interested, you should go watch this video. I'll leave a link to the show notes.

00:39:32:28 - 00:39:33:16
Brian
Yeah, I will.

00:39:33:18 - 00:40:00:04
Alex
Suffice to say that this is this is considered by many the best single episode of the original Star Trek series. And Steve includes it and his list, his short list of best first episodes to watch for anyone getting into Star Trek broadly like they don't if they want to watch The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine or, you know, he says, This is one of the episodes you got to watch to see if you're gonna be into Star Trek or not, even as it's so widely acclaimed as being one of the best episodes of Star Trek, Ellison hates it.

00:40:00:07 - 00:40:17:28
Alex
He's on the record as despising this episode, the television show. And the reason is that they ended up making significant changes to his script after it was delivered. Oh wow. Yeah. At first they were asking him to make changes and he was on board. He was like modifying the script, right? Eventually it deviated too far and he just left the project altogether.

00:40:18:00 - 00:40:39:12
Alex
Even going so far as like, not wanting his name on the show, but they, they put it on it anyway. Some of the changes, if you're trying to like be an impartial external observer, are just because Gene Roddenberry didn't like certain things. For example, in Harlan's draft of the script, a crew member at the beginning of episode is like dealing drugs and someone ends up taking it and has a bad reaction right in the final treatment.

00:40:39:12 - 00:41:00:05
Alex
What they shot, it's it's like medicine. Like someone accidentally injects themself from something from, you know, the doctor. But most of the changes can probably be chalked up to budget. Like Gene Roddenberry is on record of saying like, you know, we had like $50,000 to shoot the show. And the way Harlan wrote it, it was like going to cost us $350,000 or whatever.

00:41:00:07 - 00:41:09:06
Alex
It was just like lots of special effects, lots of, you know, it's very expensive to shoot in Harlan. If you can guess. I don't know if you've got the vibe on him.

00:41:09:09 - 00:41:10:09
Brian
Oh, I think so.

00:41:10:09 - 00:41:16:15
Alex
But he holds a huge grudge about this for years.

00:41:16:17 - 00:41:21:17
Brian
Probably until he died. It seems like a guy who, like, holds on to stuff for his whole life.

00:41:21:24 - 00:41:39:03
Alex
Yeah He blames Gene Roddenberry, and he gets angry at him over all kinds of public statements that were made about the episodes. And he would go on to publish his unaltered script in a book multiple times, like there were editions of this script that include like, it's a script for a television show, but it's this thick. I don't know if you can see that, but it's like it's.

00:41:39:03 - 00:41:40:14
Brian
Like an inch thick.

00:41:40:14 - 00:41:41:11
Alex
Yeah, yeah.

00:41:41:15 - 00:41:49:14
Brian
Which is like very long. Very, very long. Especially for, like, a television script. Yes. It's not a it's not a movie. It's a TV show. Yeah.

00:41:49:16 - 00:42:23:01
Alex
Well, the first like 60 pages are just an essay. No way. Yeah. So I'll read you the first the first paragraph. Speak no ill of the dead. Oh, really? Then let's forget about writing a true introductory essay to this book. Let's give a pass to setting the record straight. Let's just shrug and say what the hell? It's been more than 30 years, and the bullshit has been slathered on with the trial for so damn long and so many greedy little pig snouts have made so much money off those lies and so many in and inimical for forces continue to dip their pig snouts in the Star Trek trough of bullshit that no one wants to

00:42:23:01 - 00:42:40:13
Alex
hear your miserable bleats of unfair unfair that it ain't worth the price of admission. NELSON So shine on it, shine it on and let the keepers of the Holy Flame of Star Trek. Sorry, The Keepers of the Holy Flame of Star Trek and the preservers of the bullshit myth of Roddenberry have the field to themselves. The field and the exec choir.

00:42:40:13 - 00:42:49:15
Alex
I don't know what that is. So it's like he's just saying, like, this is probably in bad taste because Gene Roddenberry is dead. But I don't care. I'm mad. Salty.

00:42:49:15 - 00:43:09:27
Brian
Yeah, that's. That's also really crazy. And like, the entertainment industry, because I do, like, follow the dance. I think that like, the whole game within the game, the dance of being in the entertainment industry is really fascinating how like, they never say bad things about people. They just, like, choose not to say things or they'll be like, Oh yeah, this, this guy is the best.

00:43:09:27 - 00:43:27:12
Brian
It's my very favorite movie. Or like, Yeah, he's one of the nicest guy. Like, it's all this stuff because like, as long as you're pat in the back, you're going to get new roles and stuff. Yeah. And if you are kind of outed as, as someone who's kind of a sore person, they just don't want to work with you.

00:43:27:12 - 00:43:39:22
Brian
So, like, this guy is like, potentially ruining his career because he's just so angry and he's so bitter and he's so, like, self-absorbed, I guess You're self-righteous.

00:43:39:25 - 00:43:41:17
Alex
Yeah, self-righteous is a better way to say it.

00:43:41:17 - 00:43:55:24
Brian
Explaining the truth is much more important than, like, my own personal future. Yeah, And I'm going to air out the laundry even though this guy is dead and won't actually get to hear what I have to say about him. Yeah, that's. It's intense.

00:43:55:26 - 00:44:23:17
Alex
This guy is petty, for sure. He's. He's not a he's not above sinking. Sinking to lows. In 2015, ICW Comics did an adaptation of the original Scream script for that Star Trek episode, the way that Harlan Ellison wrote it. What's it you ICW IWC, The publisher, Comic book publisher. Okay. They they are currently the license holder for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and they're doing a run on that.

00:44:23:17 - 00:44:41:03
Alex
That's really good. They used to do Transformers comics. They, they hold the, the license Star Trek. So they do all Star Trek comics and it's a really good book. Like the art is fantastic. It adapts the story the way Harlan Ellison would have done it. They have the likeness rights to, you know, all of the original actors. So you've got like William Shatner and.

00:44:41:05 - 00:44:44:13
Brian
The likeness rights. Dang Yeah, they've got it all.

00:44:44:15 - 00:45:04:15
Alex
Yeah. So they shelled out the big bucks and like, we should move on from this because we've been talking about Star Trek for a long time. But suffice to say that, like it is agreed by many people that Harlan's actually got the goods. Like it is better the way that he wanted this to be done. So like, he's he's kind of got the Muhammad Ali going on, right?

00:45:04:15 - 00:45:09:24
Alex
Like where he's he's stunting. He's bragging, He's being kind of self-absorbed. And also.

00:45:09:24 - 00:45:13:13
Brian
Can they get back it up? Yeah. Yes.

00:45:13:15 - 00:45:32:10
Alex
So but you're saying he's willing to burn it all down, right? He's kind of a firebrand. I can't I can't talk about Harlan without talking about his controversies. So we should just run down some of the things that he has he did that people aren't so fond of. There's a lot. So we'll try to get through it fast.

00:45:32:12 - 00:45:39:18
Brian
I'm looking at this list. I'm wondering if there are any of these that we should say allegedly for or if they're all like, proven.

00:45:39:20 - 00:45:44:02
Alex
Well, he's dead now. So I don't unless his estate is going to come after us, I don't know.

00:45:44:04 - 00:45:44:18
Brian
Fair enough.

00:45:44:22 - 00:45:54:17
Alex
He was married five times, which I think is just an interesting, you know, note. That's a an accomplishment for for for many people.

00:45:54:19 - 00:45:59:22
Brian
Outlive them all. That's it. Yeah. Right.

00:45:59:24 - 00:46:23:04
Alex
He was incredibly litigious. He was known for suing, suing other creators, other companies, for example, he sued ABC because of a TV show called Future Cop that he said it was based on his short story called Brillo. He won that case in court and ABC ended up paying him lots of money. He sued James Cameron because the Terminator, he said, was based on a short story that he wrote called Soldier.

00:46:23:11 - 00:46:25:10
Alex
He settled with James Cameron out of court.

00:46:25:13 - 00:46:27:01
Brian
So that means he.

00:46:27:04 - 00:46:28:28
Alex
That James Cameron paid him money. Yes.

00:46:28:28 - 00:46:31:13
Brian
Yes.

00:46:31:16 - 00:46:34:27
Alex
A judge jury did not adjudicate that.

00:46:34:27 - 00:46:47:15
Brian
So, yeah, but but whenever it settled, money changed hands because that was cheaper than actually doing the fight, which probably means in most cases that's kind of taken to mean he's got a good case claim.

00:46:47:17 - 00:46:51:01
Alex
Yes. And they're saving face. Yes.

00:46:51:03 - 00:46:51:21
Brian
Yeah.

00:46:51:23 - 00:47:08:07
Alex
He sued AOL in the year 2000, over one of his short stories being published on a Usenet newsgroup that AOL did not run, but they did indexed it so you could search something on AOL, find it on you, read one of the stories for free. He settled.

00:47:08:10 - 00:47:16:03
Brian
So now. Yes. So AOL settled because they provided access to something.

00:47:16:06 - 00:47:27:12
Alex
Which no way post DMCA is insane. Like the internet does not work that way. There's all kinds of safe harbor position provisions, stuff like that. But this is the Wild West. Like this is I don't know.

00:47:27:15 - 00:47:29:19
Brian
I mean, this is when precedent is being set.

00:47:29:21 - 00:47:30:20
Alex
Yes.

00:47:30:22 - 00:47:31:01
Brian
Yeah.

00:47:31:04 - 00:47:54:27
Alex
Wow. He sued Paramount and CBS over merchandise that are derivative of the city of forever his his his story. They settled. So they ended up him paying him for things, stories and merchandise and things that were derivative. Right. He sued Justin Timberlake in 2011 over a movie that he was in. I don't know if you remember when JT was trying to become an actor.

00:47:54:29 - 00:47:56:16
Brian
I do, yeah.

00:47:56:19 - 00:48:17:26
Alex
There was a movie called In Time. He said it was based on one of the short stories. That one ended up getting dropped. He dropped the lawsuit, didn't settle, and that one didn't go to court. He sued. This one's wild. He sued a book publisher called Fantagraphics for defamation over. I kid you, not them. Using quotations he provided for that book, right?

00:48:17:29 - 00:48:29:02
Alex
It was comic history book. He provided quotes for the book. They used his exact quotes in the book. He sued them for defamation and they settled. Yeah.

00:48:29:04 - 00:48:48:17
Brian
I'm bewildered by that. I was so curious how they could use his own quotations that he provided for the book to defame himself. To say they are defaming. Yes, really interesting. I would for another time, but I'd love to drill into that one now. It sounds really interesting.

00:48:48:19 - 00:48:55:25
Alex
To be fair, I didn't research that one very deeply. So, you know, cover, cover my ass here. I don't know. Possible that that's a mischaracterization of what happened, but.

00:48:55:27 - 00:49:05:25
Brian
I'm just reading the words here that he said things that they took and he sued them because those things defamed himself. Yes. Right.

00:49:05:29 - 00:49:30:00
Alex
That's what I'm understanding. Yes. So, yeah, lawsuits, marriages, those those are the sort of lighter ones it gets. It gets heavier. There's various assaults and altercations that that he was in there, stories about him, you know, punching TV executives and stuff like that. In one case, there was a another author that was nominated for an award and there was a lot of controversy.

00:49:30:00 - 00:49:55:10
Alex
And he ended up writing an essay that was being a vocal defender that that person was accused of sexual assault of a minor. And he was like defending that person. Yeah. There's another sort of probably the most famous case was that he was given an award like a banquet setting. He came up on stage and the presenter like he had an interaction with that presenter and he ended up groping her on stage, like in front of all these people.

00:49:55:13 - 00:50:15:05
Alex
Yeah, and it's on video so you can, you can see this online. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It's not great. I highly recommend a YouTube video. I'll put it a link in the show notes. It's called Harlan Ellison The Bad Boy of Science Fiction. Should he Be canceled? It's done by Daisy Mokoena, who is a drag queen, who does book reviews.

00:50:15:05 - 00:50:39:12
Alex
And they are fantastic. Really good balanced looks at Harlan from a moral and ethical perspective. You know, I'm always more comfortable talking about these sorts of things when someone is dead because I don't feel like I'm sending out their way if they're, you know, complicated people. And needless to say, people are complicated. In addition to all these controversies, there were lots of things that I view as quite good.

00:50:39:16 - 00:50:50:25
Alex
He was vocal in being against the Vietnam War. He was vocally supportive of the Equal Rights Amendment. He was he marched in the second and third. Selma marches with Martin Luther King Jr. Yeah, in.

00:50:50:25 - 00:50:51:25
Brian
Alabama.

00:50:51:27 - 00:51:17:03
Alex
Yeah, it's pretty cool. He's vocally pro-labor and he served for an extended period of time on the board of the Writers Writers Guild of America. So like, very socially progressive on the right side of history on a lot of things. Also a troubled dude, right? So take that as you will. I think it's very much possible to appreciate someone's place in history and their fiction while still understanding sort of the the caveats that come along with that, Right?

00:51:17:05 - 00:51:38:24
Brian
Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of if you read a lot of biographies, you'll discover that a lot of the great people in the world were kind of like terrible at the micro level, right? Like they have they have they have issues with their families, their spouses or whatever, but are on the right side of history for for focusing on like humanity at large.

00:51:38:26 - 00:51:47:14
Brian
Right. So this sounds kind of in that vein where he it's kind of like the forest for the trees a little bit much more focus on the forest.

00:51:47:16 - 00:51:58:02
Alex
Yeah. So that's who Harlan Ellison is. That's, that's all of the notes I have on that. I hope I've given you a bit of a picture. Do you think do you feel like you get an idea of the type of guy this, this person?

00:51:58:03 - 00:52:05:06
Brian
Yeah. Really smart, great storyteller, very petty and immature and holds tons of grudges.

00:52:05:09 - 00:52:23:09
Alex
Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about how he ended up writing a Batman story, because that is also very interesting. This has been retold many times, but my favorite telling of this story comes from a man named Mark Evanier. He wrote about it on his blog. His boss called News for Me. I'll drop Link for it in the show notes.

00:52:23:15 - 00:52:46:04
Alex
But but basically, the way that Mark tells the story, you know, Mark had a great many famous friends, other authors, celebrities for example, in the documentary that I watched prominently features both Neil Gaiman and Robin Williams. Apparently, Robin Williams was really great friends with Harlan. He's on camera talking about him and stuff like that. Once of one such friendship was with a man named Julie Schwartz.

00:52:46:06 - 00:53:10:27
Alex
Julius Schwartz, to be precise. I won't go too deep on Julie, since we're definitely going to talk about him again in the future. But he probably knew Harlan because Julie started a science fiction fan magazine at the beginning of his career in the thirties and ran it for a long time in the late forties. He So he's continuing to write this sci fi fan magazine he probably knows about, you know, books or short stories.

00:53:11:00 - 00:53:34:25
Alex
Harlan primarily wrote short stories that Harlan is writing. But in the 1940s, he joins as an editor at all-American Comics, which is a line of comics at DC that's doing the Flash and Green Lantern and eventually continues working for DC, takes over editing the Batman line of books. So he edits Batman from 1964 to 1979. Really important figure to Batman because of his presence in the sci fi community.

00:53:34:27 - 00:53:49:04
Alex
Friends with Harlan, they were very close for many years. Julie would call Harlan every single Wednesday morning and they chat on the phone for a couple of hours. And, you know, people describe it as like a like a mentorship relationship where the mentor would change, like who was.

00:53:49:04 - 00:53:50:05
Brian
The person who was.

00:53:50:05 - 00:54:16:24
Alex
The sun figure. You know, they were always talking about their careers and giving each other advice and things like that. And sometime around 1971, Julie floated the idea of writing a Batman script of Harlan writing a Batman script for Julie, and Harlan agreed, though he would only do it if he didn't have to commit to a deadline. And an aside, for all the praise that Harlan gets about being an excellent, excellent writer, he also gets an equal share of critique about not tending to his career.

00:54:16:24 - 00:54:35:21
Alex
For example, there are many, many people who bemoan the fact are upset about the fact that, like Harlan, never really wrote a great novel. They feel, you know, like he had this potential. He wrote he did write three novels, but none of them were critically acclaimed or sold very well. And I think it's because he didn't, you know, have that sort of like drive.

00:54:35:24 - 00:54:36:19
Brian
Interesting.

00:54:36:21 - 00:54:52:03
Alex
Yeah. Instead, he wrote lots and lots and lots of short stories. Another way that he's delinquent in that responsibility to his career, he's notorious for not meeting deadlines. One of his most famous short stories is titled Repent. Harlequin said the tick Tuckman. It's a really, really good book.

00:54:52:06 - 00:54:53:27
Brian
The title says a lot, though.

00:54:54:00 - 00:55:10:12
Alex
Yes, I recommend it. You can find it online if you just search the title. It takes about 20, 30 minutes to read and it takes place in a dystopian future where everyone in society is strictly regimented on an exact schedule and every deviation from that schedule is deducted from the end of your life.

00:55:10:15 - 00:55:11:16
Brian
Oh, jeez.

00:55:11:19 - 00:55:31:26
Alex
Yeah. So they have this technology where they know how long you're going to live and a ledger that keeps track of like when you were late, you know, when you caused other people to be late when you, like, you know, messed up the schedule, like those sort of like gears of society. And, you know, if you were at the, you know, at the end of your life and you had made everyone 2 hours late, you'd be they'd kill you 2 hours earlier.

00:55:31:27 - 00:55:37:23
Alex
Right. I recommend this story. But it's basically a veiled diatribe about deadlines and people.

00:55:37:23 - 00:55:45:03
Brian
Oh, yeah. Oh, the title is his name. Repent my name. No, no, no, no. Tick tock, man.

00:55:45:06 - 00:55:46:16
Alex
Repent. Harlequin.

00:55:46:18 - 00:55:47:24
Brian
What's his name?

00:55:47:27 - 00:56:06:03
Alex
Harlan Yeah, I guess so. Definitely worth a read, but 1981 rolls around. So remember Julius ask him to write the story in 1971. 1981 rolls around ten years after. Yeah.

00:56:06:05 - 00:56:13:16
Brian
He rolled out 14 page comic book. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, maybe I'm too early.

00:56:13:24 - 00:56:20:15
Alex
You skipped ahead. Ten years later, Julie's up for an award. It's called an Impact Award. The impact?

00:56:20:15 - 00:56:26:13
Brian
Oh, that's right. Because the the issue came out 1986, so. Yeah, 15 years ago.

00:56:26:15 - 00:56:28:00
Alex
Just wait. Jesse, wait. We're not.

00:56:28:00 - 00:56:30:03
Brian
There.

00:56:30:06 - 00:56:50:21
Alex
The impact Awards are still around today. They're basically just an industry award given out at San Diego Comic-Con. Writers, artists, editors, anyone participating in comics, sci fi, that sort of thing. The efforts are not as prestigious today as they were back in the eighties because now there's a set of awards called the Eisner Awards, named after Will Eisner, who did the Spirit.

00:56:50:23 - 00:57:13:19
Alex
They're considered to be like the Oscars of comic books. But at the time in were the deal cool? Yeah. So Harlin knows that Julius is going to get the part award so he in secret, plans to come to San Diego Comic-Con to surprise Julie. And the ceremony is going on, and it's actually Ray Bradbury, who is a famous science fiction author, did Fahrenheit 451 You probably read that in school.

00:57:13:20 - 00:57:31:27
Alex
Yeah. Something Wicked This Way comes also Ray Bradbury, right? Very famous author. He's the one giving the award, right? So like, he's giving the speech about, like, how awesome Julie is. He announces that Julie is the winner and Julie goes up to give a speech. Julie's giving his acceptance speech and being an editor, he's kind of thanking everyone, all the writers who work for him.

00:57:31:28 - 00:57:51:23
Alex
He says that they help them, you know, to receive this word award by getting their work in on time. And then he says, Well, except for one person. But I won't say their name. And somebody yells from the audience, mention his name. And depending on who's retelling the story, that audience member is Harlem. But maybe it was, maybe it wasn't different.

00:57:51:23 - 00:58:08:09
Alex
People say it's for people, someone you know. Harlan apparently at one point said it was Mark, the person who's writing this blog post, but Mark says it wasn't him. So, you know, whoever. And so Julie up on stage with the microphone says, well, it was it was Harlan Ellison. You know, he promised me a script ten years ago, and I'll probably never see it.

00:58:08:12 - 00:58:14:19
Alex
And if I do, I'll probably reject it. And the whole audience is laughing, you know, they're loving it. He's working the crowd.

00:58:14:21 - 00:58:19:21
Brian
That's so inflammatory, though, to Harlan, who holds grudges.

00:58:19:21 - 00:58:25:15
Alex
But he's got a wrap, right? Everyone knows that he's this firebrand. They know that he doesn't, you know.

00:58:25:17 - 00:58:48:25
Brian
Sure. But I also thinking, like, what's Harlan going to do? Because, like, he seems to be a person who doesn't. I mean, he's he seems to have a like a lot of inner demons. And she sure is concerned about reputation, even though he knows and everyone knows he kind of has a bad reputation. So I'm imagining this is not something he loved.

00:58:48:27 - 00:59:04:13
Alex
Well, thankfully, he takes it in good candor. Harlan jumps up. And remember, Julie doesn't know that he's here, right? And he starts walking up to the stage and he's got a manila envelope in his hand. He's holding it above his head. He's waving it back and forth as he's running up on the stage. And the crowd's laughing and applauding because they know who he is.

00:59:04:13 - 00:59:24:14
Alex
Right? Yeah. Julie just called them out. They're going nuts. It's quite the scene. Harlan gets up on the stage, he's working the crowd. He's telling, you know, saying how great, you know, Julie is, takes the microphone giving the speech, and then he tells the story about how ten years ago he promised Julie a Batman script. And he says that the manila envelope contains the Batman script.

00:59:24:17 - 00:59:30:17
Brian
And gives it okay. That's why he took it so well. I'm sure it's because he had he had it. Okay.

00:59:30:24 - 00:59:54:18
Alex
And then, yeah, the night goes on, he gets the award, everything's great. Later that night, Julie opens the envelope, takes it out, and turns out it contains the first page of a script and 14 blank pages. And supposedly later that night, Harlan and Julie had a conversation. He says, I promise I'll get you the rest of the script next week.

00:59:54:20 - 00:59:57:12
Brian
Oh, my gosh. This guy.

00:59:57:15 - 01:00:09:02
Alex
I think that's hilarious that he shows up like he has this idea of this, like, grand gesture of like he's going to deliver the script while he's getting the ink pot. You know, he works the crowd. He hands on the envelope.

01:00:09:05 - 01:00:12:10
Brian
It's empty. Basically.

01:00:12:13 - 01:00:27:04
Alex
He kills Heartland, did eventually finish the script. He delivered the final script in 1980, 1986. This was many years after Julie has retired, and this is why Lynn, we know, is ultimately the Batman editor at the time who publishes the work.

01:00:27:07 - 01:00:32:01
Brian
Oh, my gosh. So he promised it the next week and it was five more years.

01:00:32:01 - 01:00:34:18
Alex
Yes.

01:00:34:21 - 01:00:37:00
Brian
So that's crazy.

01:00:37:03 - 01:00:37:18
Alex
Yeah.

01:00:37:21 - 01:00:41:24
Brian
And so that's why at the end it says the story that was promised.

01:00:41:27 - 01:00:46:18
Alex
Yes. In fact, if you go back to the second page, I don't know if you still have it pulled up.

01:00:46:21 - 01:00:47:22
Brian
I do.

01:00:47:24 - 01:00:55:15
Alex
On the second page of the comic, it says the night of thanks, but no thanks. It's the title card. And then and then below it it says With Love after 15 years for Julie Schwartz.

01:00:55:20 - 01:01:01:00
Brian
Oh, I get it. Yeah, With love after 15 years. Yeah.

01:01:01:03 - 01:01:09:17
Alex
Crazy So I think it's a really great Batman story with a really great story behind it, and that's why it's one of my favorites.

01:01:09:19 - 01:01:17:16
Brian
Oh, it's a great story. I So yeah, A Promise Finally Kept by Harlan Ellison, writer. That's what it says at the end.

01:01:17:19 - 01:01:18:08
Alex
Yeah.

01:01:18:10 - 01:01:37:08
Brian
Yeah, That's a great story. It's so interesting. Also, like, Harlan Ellison is a piece of work. Yeah. Like, Oh my gosh, I need to go watch this. Which you call it The something sharp teeth. Dream, dream dreams with sharp teeth. Yeah, Yeah. And you go check that out.

01:01:37:15 - 01:02:03:27
Alex
It's really good. And I have been getting into fiction. Harlan, Harlan Ellison, short stories. He, you know, I read Harlequin and said the tick tock man this morning, you know, I picked up copies of Dangerous Visions, which is a compilation is probably it's interesting, one of his most famous works that he didn't write anything in it. What he did was he contacted a bunch of his friends and other famous science fiction writers and asked them to write a short story.

01:02:03:29 - 01:02:14:10
Alex
So it's a compilation of other people, short stories that he edits. And he did that and it sold very well. And there was a sequel called Again Dangerous Visions, very, very Seventies.

01:02:14:12 - 01:02:24:21
Brian
And what the listener doesn't see is that Alex is holding up these books as he's reading them off to me. He's, he's purchased them and presumably has read them.

01:02:24:23 - 01:02:34:22
Alex
I'm working on like 40 short stories a piece, like I'm sampling things, so I'm falling down that rabbit hole and that's why we're talking about it on the show, because I don't know. I was interested.

01:02:34:24 - 01:02:50:00
Brian
That's great. I will say, like, I genuinely do not understand how you have time to read all this stuff. I, I truly I don't I cannot conceive of a schedule that would allow me to read as as aggressively as you do. It's really very impressive.

01:02:50:03 - 01:03:00:00
Alex
It it helped that I was on vacation when I, when I fell down the Harlan Ellison rabbit hole. But, you know, you just invent time. You borrow it from places. It shouldn't be borrowed.

01:03:00:06 - 01:03:04:16
Brian
I just borrow from sleep.

01:03:04:18 - 01:03:25:20
Alex
One last thing before we leave. I should mention that there is one small story that involves Batman and Harlan Ellison that we didn't talk about. They're probably listeners who know it and are like yelling at the Aliens podcast, but I want to keep this episode length in check, and I think that story works really well with a subject that I'm sure we're going to cover in depth in the future.

01:03:25:23 - 01:03:47:00
Alex
It's not a critically important part of the Harlan Ellison story or the Batman story, but they do intersect a little bit we'll talk about in the future. We'll call back. So, yeah, go, go review us on Apple Podcasts. Tell your friends down with us. Hopefully we're still doing episodes. When we get there, we'll talk more about how Harlan Ellison a couple of years ahead.

01:03:47:03 - 01:04:03:03
Alex
Hey, that family were thrown off the bat signal. If you made it this far, we hope you like the show. If you put a like on the video and help us find more caped crusaders. And if you subscribe, you'll never miss a future episode. Drop a comment down below telling us what we got wrong or you can head on over to bat lessons dot com and write us an email or send us a voice memo.

01:04:03:05 - 01:04:10:15
Alex
We'll talk about your feedback on a future episode of the show. That's also where you can find show notes and transcripts for every episode and links to all of our social media. Thanks for listening.