The Black Casebook
@blackcasebook
Podcast exploring history, politics, philosophy and more through Batman’s greatest stories.
The X-Files is great pretty much immediately, but Season 2 is comprehensively evil and paranoid in a particularly compelling way. Plus, the lighting is just immaculate
Wow, sounds like a really fascinating guy! I wish there was an easy way for me to learn more about him and his super badass spy career!
“Beyond the Sea” has my favorite cold open in The X-Files. The specter of Scully’s dad is uncanny—and melancholy—in a way that only the best ghost stories can be. M.R. James by way of David Lynch.
Very intrigued by the Werwulf trailer, particularly Dafoe’s evil shaman-type guy, whose pessimism (“Thy world is cursed”) reminds me of Dr. Mirabilis, the leader of the Satanic cabal in Peter Ackroyd’s novel Hawksmoor:
Mr. Two Surgeries In As Many Months Because I Eat Stuff I’m Not Supposed To
Everywhere I look it's Backrooms this, Nikki Obsession that, but I haven't forgotten who the real enemy is. Don't get too comfortable, you son of a bitch.
Common sense solution: make it mandatory for every high-hood truck to be painted like Grave Digger
The #1 rule for life in Gotham City: never let being bad at your job stand in the way of aura farming.
Kelson has become of my favorite characters. There’s not a chance in hell Fiennes will get any awards recognition, but this is some of his best work in a stellar career.
It also convinced me in less than 10 panels that Zatara is one of the coolest guys ever. “For the honor of our profession, be silent and die like a sorcerer.”
Hard to think of a Comics Crisis (tm) that feels as epic as the Great Darkness showdown in Swamp Thing. I first got into comics reading Hellblazer, and this gave me totally unrealistic expectations for crossover events.
Out in the group chat having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. They're all just out of frame, laughing too.
It’s safe to say that Alan Moore and I have differing views on Batman, but even I have to respect his (and Steve Bissette’s and John Totleben’s) commitment to making him look like an absolute dipshit. That panel of him running away gets me every time.
Constantine’s debut might be the coolest he ever looked. We must Retvrn to Quadrophenia
“I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish…except one. An inch. It’s small and it’s fragile and it’s the only thing in the world that’s worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.”
31. Olandria. The lone bright spot in a brutal follow-up to maybe the best season of Love Island on record. An Alabama queen.
30. Batman: White Knight. Love Batman’s gay Dracula look in this. Shame about literally everything else.
28. The Smoke Monster. I wouldn’t say I dislike Lost, but I never did manage to get into it. The Smoke Monster was a major draw, though. (As was Mr. Eko—I kinda dropped out of the show when he did.)
26. Ian McKellen’s Magneto. The Fox X-Men movies are shoddily constructed, look cheap despite costing an insane amount of money, aren’t particularly good adaptations, and were directed by monsters. But I’ll be damned if McKellen doesn’t play Mags with all the cattiness and nobility he deserves.