* Watchmen, Watchmen everywhere: Here’s that San Diego footage you ordered. (Via Tor.)

But even though the relevant image is in the above promo and several other trailers we’ve seen already, it wasn’t until I took a look at this reshuffled trailer (via AICN) that I realized something…

You know that shot of the police and reporters around the body of Dollar Bill, with his cape stuck in the revolving door so he got shot to death? It occurred to me that that’s the first time a lot of superhero-movie viewers are going to see anything even remotely like that. For the most part, superheroes in these movies don’t die, and when the villains die they bite it in the most dramatic fashion possible. I imagine seeing a costumed superhero lying unglamorously, unheroically dead on the ground Law & Order-style will be pretty striking for some people.

* Speaking of Tor (we were a few paragraphs ago), Douglas Cohen has posted a pair of Robert E. Howard 101 articles–one for Conan and one for Kull. Come the New Year, I think I’ll be reading fewer comics and more prose, and for the past several weeks the hunger for pulp has been growing in me, so these were welcome guides.

* Strange Ink’s Sean B. reviews [REC]. Ultimately I think he’s more into it than I ended up being. I did like that ending, definitely, but it’s not something I’ve found myself haunted by since watching it.

* Speaking of Sean B., he spotted Nick Cave in our T-Shirt of the Week:

* Whoa, dig Dustin Harbin’s Godfather comic.

* Finally, compare and contrast:

DD: Here’s the conundrum on this one. And this is reflective of the world that we live in now – the world of collected editions. The R.I.P. story was always meant to play through to the end of Final Crisis – always. The thing is, we had to come up with a very complete story in “Batman R.I.P.” as it existed in its title. The reality is that the “Batman R.I.P.” story does not conclude until Final Crisis #6. There are also issues #682 and #683 of Batman that feed directly into Final Crisis #6, and we’ll have a big finale to the Batman storyline. That’s how it plays out.

But as I said, because we live in the world of collected editions, we needed a conclusion in the Batman series, so that we could collect it properly within Batman, without having to bring in segments of Final Crisis to complete the story.

NRAMA: So – fundamentally, “Batman R.I.P” did not end in Batman #681?

DD: Correct. We have the two parts that we’re in the middle of now, and they lead us into Final Crisis #6 which gives us a definite conclusion to the Batman story. That’s how Grant designed the story from the start, and that’s how the story plays out. So, the people who are looking for the big finale, the stuff that Grant was talking about – he knows how big an ending he has, because he wrote it in Final Crisis #6. That story has been so planned out that it reflects events from the pages of Final Crisis #1 in order to pull it all together.

So the Batman story has been hinted at in Final Crisis #1 – we couldn’t allude to it, because we didn’t want to play our hand too early with that. The fascinating thing about what Grant has done is that he’s telling a major story in the life of Batman while he’s telling a major event across the DC Universe with Final Crisis. And the two are linked.

NRAMA: So Final Crisis #6 is like when you’re driving on, say, I-40 and it merges with another for a while, and you get the road signs telling you that you’re on two highways at the same time…and you follow another highway out other than the one you went in on.

DD: Exactly. And Batman #682 and #683 are reflective of things that took place earlier in Final Crisis as well.

—Dan DiDio,

HUMPHREY: All right, settle down. Settle down. Now, before I begin the lesson, will those of you who are playing in the match this afternoon move your clothes down onto the lower peg immediately after lunch, before you write your letter home, if you’re not getting your hair cut, unless you’ve got a younger brother who is going out this weekend as the guest of another boy, in which case, collect his note before lunch, put it in your letter after you’ve had your hair cut, and make sure he moves your clothes down onto the lower peg for you. Now,–

WYMER: Sir?

HUMPHREY: Yes, Wymer?

WYMER: My younger brother’s going out with Dibble this weekend, sir, but I’m not having my hair cut today, sir.

PUPILS: [chuckling]

WYMER: So, do I move my clothes down, or–

HUMPHREY: I do wish you’d listen, Wymer. It’s perfectly simple. If you’re not getting your hair cut, you don’t have to move your brother’s clothes down to the lower peg. You simply collect his note before lunch, after you’ve done your scripture prep, when you’ve written your letter home, before rest, move your own clothes onto the lower peg, greet the visitors, and report to Mr. Viney that you’ve had your chit signed.

—Monty Python’s Meaning of Life

Hahaha, I kid, I kid. I’m actually enjoying Batman and Final Crisis as much as any superhero comics I can remember so this is no skin off my ass whatsoever, but I’d imagine these kinds of things are frustrating for a lot of readers–my pay Rob Bricken, for example.

Then again, perhaps it’s just an expectations game. Nobody throws their box set of Lost Season Four across the room in anger because it doesn’t wrap up the story–it’s part of an ongoing series. The degree to which the final issue of Batman: R.I.P. was billed as a landmark event probably hurt DC on that score, but with superhero comics in general and Grant Morrison DC superhero comics in particular, the train keeps a-rollin’ all night long, you know? Of course, maybe a better example is if the season finale of Lost Season Four felt more like just another episode. I dunno. I like these comics, I’m not complaining!

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