Well, it finally happened! Long time friend of the NOC, Yoshi Sudarso, has been cast as Nightwing in an upcoming live-action adaptation of Webtoon’s popular Batman: Wayne Family Adventures webcomic.
Continue reading “Yoshi Sudarso is Finally Nightwing in Live Action ‘Batman: Wayne Family Adventures’”
A few months back, I took some time to reflect on Mattel’s final wave of Batman-related action figures. After nearly two decades in the DC Comics licensing game, Mattel finally gave way to a new licensee. McFarlane Toys (and Spin Masters) were going to be the new holders of the DC legacy though little was known about what either toy company would offer. All we knew was that the figures would debut some time in 2020. Well, it’s a new year, and all that has changed!
Continue reading “McFarlane Toys Officially Picks up the DC Multiverse Baton”
When it was announced late last year that Mattel would be losing the master license to make DC Comics-related action figures, I wasn’t sure how to react. On the one hand, I had pretty much stopped buying Mattel’s offerings when they ended their DC Universe Classics line around 2012. On the other, I’ve been an avid collector of these figures ever since popular action figure sculptors the Four Horsemen gave us Zipline Batman in 2003. Of course, in the years since, I moved on — preferring more premium toymakers like SH Figuarts for my DC fix. But I couldn’t help coming back to Mattel one last time for an all-Batman wave to close out their 16-year run on the character.
Continue reading “Batman R.I.P.: Mattel’s Last Line of DC Multiverse Figures”
Last week, Warner Brothers announced the addition of a solo Nightwing film with LEGO Batman director Chris Mckay to their DC film slate. The news sent fans into an excited tizzy and resulted in a slew of potential fan-chosen actors who could play the title role.
It’s been almost 20 years since Dick Grayson last appeared on the big screen in Batman and Robin as portrayed by Chris O’Donnell. Previous actors who have played Dick Grayson — or the Robin character — have been Douglas Croft, Johnny Duncan, and Burt Ward. There have also been two television shows, The Graysons and Titans, that were meant to feature Dick Grayson as the central character. Both, unfortunately, were scraped by their respective networks.
So there’s been a lot of fan interest in a Nightwing/Dick Grayson-centric media property for a long while. Now with Warner Bros. making it official, fans are eagerly awaiting to see who will put on the black and blue suit as our hero. All the talk about who can, and should, play Dick Grayson on the big screen has also brought up the truth behind Dick’s heritage in comics canon.
That truth being Dick Grayson is part Rromani.
Continue reading “Erased and Ignored: Dick Grayson’s Rromani Identity Comes to Light”
By now the events of Peter David’s NYCC anti-Romani rant is all wrapped up, with David writing a series of personal blog posts including an apology to the Romani community. Whether the Romani community — and the Romani activist involved in the incident, along with fans who were both at the panel and have seen the video — forgive David is a separate issue. Rather than focus on the merits of an apology, the opportunity presents itself to instead focus on the actual issue of lack of Romani representation in our media.
To first understand why the lack of Romani representation is an important issue, we have to understand who the Romani people are. For many — including myself — because of this overall lack of representation, there comes an overall prevalence of ignorance regarding who the Romani people are, what their struggles are, and what their actual culture is.
Continue reading “Let’s Talk About Romani Characters in Comics”
With Batman being the most human of DC’s Trinity, there’s always the looming question of who takes over once Batman either retires or makes his final stand as the Caped Crusader. More than that, who could truly replace the Batman?
Gotham certainly doesn’t lack for champions. From Nightwing to the Robins to the Oracle and Batgirl, the Dark Knight has trained more than capable operatives to continue the good fight in his absence.
But are any of them as driven and intense as the original article?
Continue reading “Why Cassandra Cain is the True Successor to the Bat Mantle”
Last week, twitter was all, well, atwitter when artist Sean Murphy tweeted out a loose pencil sketch of Robin — Batman’s trusty sidekick — with an African American teen under the mask. Needless to say, the internet pretty much exploded when the initial tweet went out. Two hours later, though, Murphy and Scott Snyder deflated many a nerd’s bubble when they clarified that this “new” Robin wasn’t actually meant to be “in continuity.” Instead, the sketch Murphy sent out was only meant to be a brief glimpse into an alternate future in one of the anthology pieces in a special issue celebrating the 75th anniversary of Detective Comics #27 next year.
Still, all the swirl around “the first Black Robin” — and the fact that cross-racial casting of superheroes has been a popular topic on the blog recently — got me thinking about comics’ prototypical superhero sidekick. Few headlining superheroes are as indelibly iconic as the Boy Wonder. He’s also one of the few “legacy” heroes — that is, heroes whose mantles have passed down to different characters over the years — who has successfully navigated through several different and distinct identities without losing any of the iconography (while developing ardent fanbases for each version of the character). He’s also one of DC Comics’ most enduring multimedia stars as well, having been portrayed in several incarnations in very different media.
