Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

This time out Andy and Mike are throwing a birthday party for Robin! 85 years ago Dick Grayson was introduced in the pages of Detective Comics #38 and over the years there have been a number of Robins and the guys celebrate most of them by choosing eight and a half stories to discuss/gush over. To be fair, they were supposed to just talk about Dick Grayson and Tim Drake (who is turning 35 this year) but Mike didn't stick with that, so there are some Jason Todd stories in the mix as well. Andy was most amused by this. There are stories from the Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, the Post Crisis era, and even the Post Infinite Crisis era. There is also a lot of Chuck Dixon stories on the list. It was a fun conversation and the guys had a ball talking about the first superhero sidekick.

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’s the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

The opening theme for the show is Superhero Intro by Stringer Bell and taken from the royalty free site Pixma Bay.

Next Time: Andy and Mike present the first part of a classic conversation about the Year One annuals from 1995.

Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

This time out Andy and Mike start an irregular series looking at the various Year One series that members of the extended Bat Family have received over the years. They start with Batgirl: Year One, a nine issue series that ran from December of 2002 to August of 2003. Written by Scott Beatty and Chuck Dixon with art from Marcos Martin and Álvaro López, this series told the Post-Crisis/Post Zero Hour version of how Barbara Gordon became Batgirl, which Andy and Mike were quite fond of. They talk about the writing, the art, the retcons, and their problem with how James Gordon was portrayed at various points during the series. This is after a quick conversation about the Icons Unearthed: Batman docuseries that the guys recently watched thanks to a listener recomendation.

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there's the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

The opening and closing theme for the show is Superhero Intro by Stringer Bell and taken from the royalty free site Pixma Bay.

Next Time: Andy and Mike celebrate the 85th birthday of Robin...or rather a bunch of Robins!

Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

And that certainly applies to this episode. Andy and Mike hop into the wayback machine and head to 2011 and talk about three books that were part of a line that was part "getting the band back together" and part "maybe we should try and get some of the readers that have dropped off over the past few years and get them to buy our books again". The Retroactive line saw creators from the seventies, eighties, and nineties to tell new stories set during those time periods. The guys talk about the new stories from all three of the Batman installments and do brief overviews of the reprints that made up the back half of these specials. They go into the writing styles of Len Wein, Mike W. Barr, and Alan Grant and the artwork of Tom Mandrake, Jerry Bingham, and Norm Breyfogle. There are some brief tangents along the way, but the bulk of the episode is about how much fun these specials were with a touch of sadness that many of these creators are no longer with us.

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’ the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

The opening and closing theme for the show is Superhero Intro by Stringer Bell and taken from the royalty free site Pixma Bay.

Next Time: Nothing is set in stone, but plans are, as ever, in motion.

Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

Which is actually the case this time out.

One of the more...dare we say it...overlooked parts of Batman Forever is the novelization. Novelizations, as Andy and Mike bang on about during the episode, have largely gone away but at one point they were part and parcel to a blockbuster movie marketing. Sometimes you'd get extra scenes that were cut out of the film because the author was working from an earlier draft. Sometimes you get a reworking of the film because the people behind the scenes played with things during the editing process. Sometimes you got wholly originally scenes because the author made the whole thing a proper novel rather than simply doing the movie but in prose form.

In the case of Batman Forever, you got all of that and more.

The novelization of Batman Forever was written by the late Peter David. Andy and Mike don't talk about the recent passing of Peter because at the time of recording he was still with us. What they do talk about is how he took the script for Batman Forever and gave us a version of the story that rode the line between being an adaptation and something that stands on its own. The guys talk about the bits that were original to the book (such as the introductory chapters) and the differences between what was on the screen and what was on the page. They also talk about comic book films in general and Mike gives a wholly incomplete run down of some of the other merchandise that was released to tie into Batman Forever.

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’ the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

The opening and closing theme for the show is Superhero Intro by Stringer Bell and taken from the royalty free site Pixma Bay.

Next Time: Nothing is set in stone, but plans are in motion.

Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

Which is an outright lie this time out.

Again.

30 years ago, this week, Batman Forever was released to theaters. It was kind of a big deal and in the three decades since it came out the film has become either beloved, the source of much mockery, or a mix of the two. Andy and Mike take an almost two-hour look at the film and, as usual, they do so from stem to stern. Val Kilmer as Batman. Chris O'Donnell as Robin. Jim Carey as The Riddler. Tommy Lee Jones as someone called Harvey Two Face. Nicole Kidman as Chase Meridian. Michael Gough as Alfred. Everyone gets a spotlight, as does the story, the set design, the score, and more. They also have a short conversation about the songs that were on the soundtrack but weren't, in some cases, in the movie.

It was a lot of fun.

This episode was recorded before the untimely death of Val Kilmer. Mike address it at the beginning of the episode but just in case you missed him talking about it, that's why Andy and Mike don't talk about during the course of their conversation.

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’ the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

Next Time: Andy and Mike talk about the novelization for Batman Forever. Plus, the toys and some of the other merch from the film.

Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

This time out your hosts, Andy and Mike, look at a pair of Batman stories that are set at and around Christmas! After a discussion about what this episode was originally going to cover, they get into Batman/Catwoman Special #1. Written by Tom King with art by the late John Paul Leon, this story details where Selina Kyle was on various Christmas days throughout her life. Then, after the Power Records Christmas Carol Caper (which, no fooling, contains Batman singing a jaunty tune as he and Robin walk down the street, they talk about Batman #247. This story, written by Denny O'Neil with art by Irv Novick and Dick Giordano, stretches across Christmas and New Year's and is...a lot.

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’ the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

Next Time: No clue. Andy and Mike will be back in the new year with more Batman talk!

Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

This time out Andy and Mike take a look at a pair of Batman Elseworlds stories! Elseworlds is back as an imprint and the guys thought it would be fun to look at two of those stories that have flown under the radar. First up is the 2001 Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips special called Batman: Gotham Noir.

Andy and Mike will now allow you, dear reader/listener, a moment to get over the shock that Andy chose an Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips comic book to talk about. It is a surprise and the guys realize you might need some time to process this information.

...

Are we good?

Batman: Gotham Noir is a period piece with Jim Gordon taking center stage as a hard boiled private investigator hired to protect someone and then having to figure out why his charge was murdered. This is a fairly non-spoilery discussion as Andy wants people to read this one shot, but there's still a lot to be said about the book.

Then they look at Mike's pick, which was Batman: Master of the Future. This special was the direct sequel to Batman: Gotham By Gaslight and has that version of Batman fighting against the Master of the Future and this one has it all. Bare knuckled fighting! Swashbuckling action! Political intrigue! Romance! Dirigibles! It was steampunk before steampunk became a thing in popular culture!

Plus...Andy talks about the then recent purchase of the novelization to Batman The Movie from 1966 leading to a short conversation on Batman in prose form.

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’ the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

The opening and closing theme for the show is Superhero Intro by Stringer Bell and taken from the royalty free site Pixma Bay.

Next Time: Andy and Mike begin a two-part series looking at Batman in prose form!

Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

This time out Andy and Mike cover two comics that have been released as facsimile editions over the past few years because the guys really love them. After a brief introduction where Andy and Mike blame each other for life decisions they dig into Batman #181, which was the first appearance of Poison Ivy. Then, after some podcast promos and vintage commercials and PSAs, they look at Batman #357, which was not only the first appearance of Killer Croc but also had a blink and you'll miss it first appearance of Jason Todd.

Seriously. He's in like one panel. It's barely an appearance.

Along the way the guys talk about why they love facsimile editions so much, Doctor Who, whether Robin is old enough to fancy a woman, the logistics of jumping out of a helicopter with a parachute, the brilliance of Don Newton and Alfredo Alcala's artwork, and much, much more!

Shows promoted in this episode include...

• The Bat-Pod, hosted by Bill Bere and J. David Weter
• Batman Family Reunion, hosted by Paul Klein and Shawn M. Meyers

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’ the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

The opening and closing theme for the show is Superhero Intro by Stringer Bell and taken from the royalty free site Pixma Bay.

Next Time: Something involving Batman!