3/12 STARRY EYES FOREVER
PIC - Dan Mora 2025 © DC Comics/Marvel Comics
Starry Eyes - Cigarettes After Sex
THAT GUM YOU LIKE
Welcome to the mysteries of the Xanaduum Red Lounge. The singer’s a ghost, and the dancing here’s all done backwards, so don’t mind the angels gossiping in the drapes, or the way the feelings come and go. The light’s meant to be weird like that…
The young leads are very likeable in IT Welcome to Derry and I hope they don’t all come to bad ends but perhaps I’ve come to the wrong place if I’m looking for a happy ending. It has the whole scorecard – kids with bikes, nearby military bases engaged in secret research, legends of blah blah, fallen from space, blah blah in the woods, blah blah blah …
I went through a horror phase which included finishing the Luvkraft vs. Kutulu story serialized here and also writing a couple of comics stories coming out next year but I’m over it again. Horror seemed like a reasonable response to the state of the world in recent years but I think I’ve moved on, bored by the repetitive, grotesque, demonic transformations offered up by AI, where human heads split open to vomit a tide of hairy foetuses. A relentless fear of restlessly transforming, perpetually hungry things seems to be all that’s on offer, with the same kind of runaway disease and deformity we see in IT, Stranger Things, and countless video games, where a ravenous cosmic hunger is expressed by huge maws that open to reveal impractical masses of fang and gum, jaw within jaw, and rings of teeth going all the way down throats like thorny wet subway tunnels… the muscular dripping tongues…
What are these things we’re so scared of these days?
Disappointingly, comet 3/I Atlas is now on its way out of our solar system without turning out to be a Culture ship. Disappointing, that is, if you’re the sort of wide-eyed Pollyanna who expects alien visitors to be benign. Otherwise, relief. Or perhaps it was here to release infiltrators and the planet is now crawling with aliens disguised as illegal immigrants.
Let’s wrap up those Batman/Deadpool annotations before it starts to feel like we’re annotating the highlights of World War 1. You remember that!
BATMAN/DEADPOOL ANNOTATIONS part 2
I decided to write this comic following formal screenwriting rules, and inspired by the construction of Steven Moffat’s Doctor Who scripts, so the villain is revealed at exactly the halfway point, and the various other reversals in this second half – Darkclaw, Robin, the Writer, then Deadbat, occur at roughly 2-page intervals to emphasise the pounding rhythm of the story’s conclusion.
I also set a few constraints, like having Batman and Deadpool on the same number of pages, or using the Mort Weisinger dialogue rule where no more than 210 words appear on the page.
Onwards…
PAGE 16
We’re plunged back into the mental landscape Cassandra has created for Deadpool and Batman. And we pick up continuity from pages 4/5. The flashback sequence is at an end and we’re back in real time.
No longer capable of sustaining the noble pieta pose from Pages 4/5, Deadpool is now struggling as he carries Batman’s body, eventually reduced to dragging the Dark Knight by one leg across the floor. Deadpool comments on how heavy Batman is, while yelling the title of the Hollies 1969 classic ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’. He expresses relief that it’s not the notoriously bulky Absolute version of Batman, whom Deadpool refers to as a Henry Moore sculpture – you can Google both and see why he’s thankful…
Lazarus Pits – introduced in 1971’s Batman #232 – were used regularly by masterfiend Ra’s Al Ghul (and others) to have himself resurrected in the event of his death. It was traditional for the dead thus revived to return naked and temporarily insane, so Deadpool’s concerns are not entirely misplaced.
On the walls are portraits of various personifications of Death from the DC and Marvel universes. We see:
THE BLACK FLASH
ANGEL OF DEATH
LADY DEATH
DEATH OF THE ENDLESS
THE BLACK RACER
HELA
PAGE 17
Then REBIRTH! Only it’s not Batman as we know him! It’s DARKCLAW RETURNS! Ideally, this reveal would have been on an even numbered turnover page but sometimes when there are space restrictions you can’t have everything you want! In your own stories, always try to have impactful moments happen on the turn, and always use a big panel to introduce significant new characters.
Darkclaw was the Amalgam Comics mash-up of Batman and Wolverine from the 1996/97 events where various DC and Marvel characters were merged to create composite ‘Amalgam’ characters – Doctor Fate and Doctor Strange became Doctor Strangefate, Iron Man and Green Lantern became Iron Lantern and so on. Darkclaw was thus the result of a Wolverine/Batman fusion.
This was pure fan service. I wanted this book to hit every Marvel/DC crossover note available and I couldn’t let the opportunity go by without bringing Darkclaw into the story even for just a few pages – I wanted to include a no-holds barred savage fight scene reminiscent of the fights in Deadpool vs. Wolverine, so given Batman’s aversion to maiming and killing, Darkclaw made a perfect addition to the mix, and because the whole scene takes place in a psychic landscape, Batman and Deadpool can get as violent as they like!
The Joker-like face on the jack-in-the-box, (originally I wanted the jack-in-the-box to have the distinctive armoured tunic of the character Access – the only character jointly owned by Marvel and DC – who was created to facilitate events in the original Amalgam crossover but there was some pushback on Access and I was asked not to include any reference to that character), is the ‘Steeplechase Face’ or ‘Funny Face’ from Coney Island, that was thought to have influenced the original Jerry Robinson design for the Joker.
The blocks, like the flags on the golf course on pages 4/5 spell out 7642 – the designation of the parallel Earth this story mostly takes place on.
PAGE 18
Since at least Batman issue #52, released in 1949, Batman stories often featured giant typewriters as props. We couldn’t miss out on the opportunity to stage our climactic Batman vs. Deadpool moment on a classic outsize model based directly on the one from the story The Man with the Automatic Brain.
The typewriter of course is the prototype form of the Cosmic Keyboard, as Cassandra gets closer to the image of the Cosmic Keyboard Batman is still hiding in his mind.
PAGE 19
More Tom and Jerry cartoon mayhem ensues. The chapter title ‘2 Guys, 1 Keyboard’ is a reference to the infamous porn reel ‘Two Girls, One Cup’ which I have not seen but which I believe follows the adventures of a couple of likely lasses who find a magical flying teacup that once belonged to Baba Yaga’s niece…
PAGE 20
Delivering the payoff for ‘who was Batman talking to on Page 3?’ Damian Wayne makes a dramatic appearance as Robin, filling our ‘guest star’ slot. Here comes that partner who never does what he’s told, to batter Cassandra about the brains with his escrima sticks!
Damian helpfully explains exactly who he is for readers who may be familiar with Robin but not necessarily this incarnation. In a story with a surreal tone that could easily become confusing, it’s important to keep readers informed and on board, hence the regular explanations and updates on where we are.
We’ve now settled into a manic, accelerated pace to the action as the two heroes bust loose from their airless mind prison into the real world of rain and forest and move towards the final act. Another reason to keep things clear.
PAGE 21
Deadpool takes some time to talk about the sad lives and hopeless dreams of ‘beastiamorph’ henchmen. Someone had to.
That’s a lovely Batman drawing by Dan in Panel 2!
That’s the Batman of Earth-7642 lying unconscious on the stairs. He’s not dead, as some readers assumed. That could mess up future crossovers!
We’re close to the dénouement now and time to bring in the Phantom Stenographer. A Stenographer who writes the transcript before the words have been spoken…
We took great pleasure in recreating the cheap ‘80s look of the Writer’s keyboard weapon, which Deadpool refers to as the Cosmic Keytar (the keytar was often used in the creation of what became known as ‘yacht rock’ videos and added its distinctive tones to the work of keytar maestro Jan Hammer on the Miami Vice soundtrack).
The new arrival streamlines the plot for us once again. With so much going on, it’s important to remind readers that there’s a simple throughline that makes sense!
PAGE 22
Contrary to speculation, The Writer character here is not me, any more than the corpse of The Writer on Page 3 is me. Consider this character a multiversal variant of that skeletal remnant of the Suicide Squad Writer.
(I read one or two complaints that this farrago was just so typical of ‘Grant Morrison’ - too meta - he always has to put himself in every story! For the record, I’ve only ever written myself into Animal Man and in a more abstract way Seven Soldiers. That’s at best twice in 40 years!)
The Writer on this and subsequent pages is the one who appeared in HBO Max’s Titans, at the end of Season 4, episode 9 – Dude, Where’s My Gar! – as written by Geoff Johns. The one who sees Gar Logan. According to TV versions of the DC multiverse cosmology, this could be regarded as The Writer of Earth-9.
The Writer can be thought of as a shadowy ‘Man of Mystery’ type, a dodgy ‘80s Brit Invasion update on a Phantom Stranger-like individual who narrates stories of the Multiverse they’ve written on their Cosmic Keyboard (a more advanced version of this technology was referred to as a Quantum Keyboard and used by the Master, a member of the Ultramarines, as shown in JLA Classified issue #1-3 from 2005, written by me and drawn by Ed McGuinness). This is the character’s comic book debut!
There’s probably a whole Writer Corps out there, like the Green Lanterns but with strap on laptops!
PAGE 23
With four pages remaining until the conclusion – it could all be over, but this is no time to stop ramping up the jeopardy and delivering sharp narrative shocks.
As the Writer explains, this is the point in the story where we can expect to find a last minute twist or reversal – as provided by Cassandra Nova’s reappearance. She thrusts her fingers through the Writer’s head and suddenly has access to his reality-altering keyboard skills! This is the ‘no hope’ moment that usually signals the end of Act 2 and the beginning of Act 3’s rallying round to beat the villain.
And so it goes. Just as the worst appears set to happen - Batman and Deadpool written as ‘cannibal flesh addicts’ and turned loose on their loved ones and the world, the Writer pulls rank – and reminds Cassandra that she too was created on a ‘Cosmic Keyboard’ by someone a bit like him…
PAGE 24
If I was offended at all by the death of the Writer in Suicide Squad #58, what irked me most was the fact that he died because he had a sudden case of ’writer’s block’! Beastiamorphs, I could buy – people like Circe probably did exist not so long ago in ancient Greece – but ‘writer’s block’ was an affront to my sensibilities!
As I’ve often said, ‘writer’s block’ is an indulgence a working pulp writer on monthly deadlines cannot even consider! We can’t afford writer’s block, which is really just another name for the tendency towards prevarication familiar to most creative people when they have both time and money to spare.
Cassandra Nova realises she’s out of her depth and pulls her burned hand out of the Writer’s cranium. Then she ages back to her regular self. She’s met her Maker and she’s beat.
The two universes reach their senses-shattering kozmik klimax, and as they come, the caption reads ‘It goes…’
The NANANAs are from the theme tune of the 1966 Batman TV series.
DEADBAT is born! As a magnificent act of creative desperation that scrapes the bottom of the barrel. Showing that even writer’s block can be turned into the sensational new character find of 2025.
PAGE 25
I have a few absolutely obsessional elements to my stories that show up in everything – even when I’ve become aware of my peculiar fascination with these fundamental elements, it hasn’t stopped me using them again and again and again, like weird comfort blankets, or perhaps it’s some special sauce I throw in if the taste is too bland.
I have suicide in just about everything I write. Attempted suicide, successful suicide. It’s in everything.
I have hanging and hangmen all over the place, and return again and again to disembodied heads, many of them in jars, often usually still capable of speech or regeneration. I don’t know what it’s all about. Maybe I was beheaded or hung myself in a ‘previous life’! Here then, for fans of severed heads in my work, comes yet another!
Cassandra is repeating and expanding the little mnemonic from her rehabilitation in New X-Men #126 ‘A is for atom. B is for Bomb. C for the Children. D the new Dawn. E is for Extinction…’ and so on.
The Writer’s joke about the President rebuilding the 4th Wall was the very first line I came up with!
Damian says ‘Father?’ – both Batman and the Writer respond! Damian is doing the classic palm-to-the-fist gesture made famous by Burt Ward as Robin in the 1966 Batman TV show, and also by Damian in his first Batman and Robin appearances as Robin.
PAGE 26
Time to wrap up the Eternity/Kismet strand – there’s some degree of indifference on Kismet’s part while Eternity is more concerned about how he comes across to her followers!
Eternity is indeed ‘Supreme Time Being’ of his universe.
The blue and red helmets on the bedside cabinets belong to the blue and red titan ‘Brothers’ who were representative of the DC and Marvel universes respectively in the ‘96/’97 Amalgam crossover. Perhaps it was always these two under the armour as the Brothers, and they always looked like Eternity and Kismet off duty on weekends…or perhaps E and K took the places of the cantankerous Brothers and kept the heads of their predecessors as nightlights. The armoured chestplate of the blue Brother can be seen next to the bed on Kismet’s side.
Eternity doesn’t want Kismet to rate him before the story ends on a satisfying note and a final twist. He has one last chance to send his hook-up home with a smile…
PAGE 27
And so we use our final page to wrap up the Victor Gover plot thread. Here’s Victor still proactively drinking himself to death – or at least drinking himself drunk enough to put that gun to his head - when he hears a sound at the door.
The dialogue here is used as percussion to emphasise the final beats with a cascade of ‘h’ sounds that recall the kind of fast breathing that provided a secret soundtrack to this whole issue – ‘Huh.’ ‘Honey?’ ‘How?’ then Batman’s final ‘Happy Holidays’ to Gover, his fiancée and all the comic’s readers!
We end on an upbeat note – with the fireworks providing visual continuity with the opening.
When I wrote this script back in Spring, I was still messing around with AI. I provided ChatGPT with the bulk of the script and I asked the AI, that threat to all our creative jobs apparently, to finish the story, suggesting an ending in my style – below is a sample of the work that emerged!
I love ‘their laughter echoes’…
PAGE 24
Frame 1 BATMAN and DEADPOOL stand before a door glowing with otherworldly light.
DEADPOOL: I hope this keyboard has a good sense of humor!
BATMAN: Stay focused. We can’t afford any mistakes.
Frame 2 They enter the room, a vast expanse filled with floating keys and fragments of shattered realities.
BATMAN: There! The Cosmic Keyboard. We need to reach it.
DEADPOOL: Piece of cake. Just watch your step.
Frame 3 They move forward, avoiding traps and illusions designed to deter them.
Frame 4 Each step brings them closer to the keyboard, the air thick with anticipation.
DEADPOOL: I gotta hand it to you, Bats. You’re not bad at this cosmic stuff.
BATMAN: Focus, Wade. One wrong move and it’s over.
PAGE 25
Frame 1 They finally reach the Cosmic Keyboard, its keys shimmering with the power of creation.
BATMAN: Let’s rewrite this nightmare.
DEADPOOL: How about we make it a happy ending?
BATMAN: No, we need stability. A reality where justice prevails.
Frame 3 They begin typing, the keyboard responding to their commands.
Frame 4 The maze around them starts to morph, shifting into a coherent and balanced world.
PAGE 26
Frame 1 A new reality emerges, one where heroes are celebrated and chaos is contained.
Frame 2 BATMAN: We did it.
Frame 3 DEADPOOL: And now, for a little vacation.
Frame 4 Their surroundings transform into a serene landscape, a testament to their victory.
PAGE 27
Frame 1 BATMAN and DEADPOOL stand tall, the Cosmic Keyboard now just an ordinary object.
BATMAN: Always remember, Wade. Reality is what we make of it.
DEADPOOL: Yeah, but next time, let’s add more chimichangas.
Frame 2 Their laughter echoes as they walk away, leaving behind a world renewed.
AI ladies and gentlemen! Alert the Eisner committee! A star is born!..
WE HAPPY FEW
Liam – good to hear from you! It’s been a shitshow! Hope your cat enjoys his new life in the old country!
Patrick – That’s fascinating Superman stuff! Mark Millar wrote the Jor-El scene from Flash. We were always trying to slip pre-Crisis stuff back in!
B-Hem-Bro – I don’t know why it is people either ignore the stuff I’ve added to continuity or just make their own versions. Hard to know if they’re being overly reverent or completely dismissive.
Dorthy Spencer Gale – the Psammead, or ‘it’ in Five Children and It is an ugly but far more benign creature than Pennywise the space clown! It is an ancient lifeform with the power to grant wishes, which generally go amusingly awry, so It could probably kick evil It’s ass.
Bobby – the ‘click’! It’s what I call the precise feeling when I know a magic ritual has worked!
Mark – those covers are totally canon! That crossover with the villainous Bates is one of my all-time favourites!
John – something about that Luvkraft chapter got it Age Restricted on my computer! What will my legion of toddler readers do? Christ, wait until we get to the bloody and unpleasant finale next week!..
Jonathan – I have not seen Angel’s Egg. Is that the 1985 one? It sounds interesting…
Jwparrishiii – 1. Giffen didn’t really follow my plot at all. He went off on his own tangent, as he usually did. My story was intentionally more grounded and down-to-earth and was written so that it could actually have happened in our real world, to the readers of the comic, without us ever knowing the Authority had visited our planet and saved us from an entity that we had no idea was feeding off us. I approached the whole thing very differently. My plan with The Authority was to do three 4-part stories, each of which showed the Authority trying to solve the problems of a different parallel Earth as they try to find their way home.
2. The Bleed Reef was a region of Bleedspace – Bleed being the medium within which the many universes of the DC Multiverse vibrate together – out on its farthest reaches, where universes would go to spawn! This bit derived from an Authority graphic novel I pitched called ‘Hard’ back in the early Naughts - that had an updated version of the Authority who were ALL gay except for the new Midnighter (the Doctor was a super spin doctor, manipulating and controlling narratives…)! The Authority’s giant dimension-travelling shiftship, the Carrier, was powered by a baby universe, so I wondered what might happen if the baby universe grew up a little to become a horny teenage universe, and imagined a picaresque adventure where the Authority are forced to take their increasingly unruly engine to its spawning grounds in the Bleed Reef where it can frolic with its fellows and make new baby universes…
As for adult universes, as far as I remember, they were big powerful conceptual entities that you couldn’t just turn into the engine for your ship.
The Wildstorm stuff was really well worked out - 12 issues each of Authority and WILDCATS were plotted pretty tightly. I just had too much on my plate and couldn’t make the deadlines. Then the disappointing and disappointed reaction to the mundanity of the opening Authority story made it easier for me to walk away!
That’s all for this week’s edition!
Friday brings ‘Lhucraft vs Cthulove’ the penultimate chapter of ‘Luvkraft vs. Kutulu’ and next week on here, as if to hint at our versatility, something completely different!
Huh, I'd just taken as a given the heads of the Brothers were roleplay masks cast aside after the fun was over - shows me for engaging in such a prurient mindset compared to the chaste reality of double decapitation, though in a Batman or Deadpool story veiled kink is never the *worst* assumption, nevermind one with the both of them.
working nonstop, no breaks, but still keeping up the “dor dor”(via Iranian youth) vibes every time we set out on our otherwise aimless journey. we promise to read and write back on batman/deadpool by the end of the year- just need to get our bearings once more!
the full moon threw us a bone and we have some incredible leads on housing that actually brought me to tears when we realized just how possible it will be! knowing what adjustments need to be made so our aim is true! hope youre getting some well needed and deserved rest and recovery from the feline funerals.
star no star- jack off jill
kreacher - bridge city sinners
people are vomit - the used
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/man in black by johnny cash\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
lobster 2.0- RJ pasin + wesghost
dancing while the world burns - adore
dirty little secret- artemas
if youre up for still hearing it, its posted now, but the dreams mentioned in our earlier comment on the MCR Arlington trip has brought to light another predicament that i cant seem to quite place. not necessarily asking for you to give advice, youre already busy as it is! just the space to pass the energy between is all we’re ever thankful for.
n e wayz.
collusion between spirit and reality has been incredibly different since having my encounter on the Kachina mountains of Arizona last March. the unnerving feeling of displacement i felt in existence. ennui. anxiety and insecurity/uncertainty. all melted down into the mold of what “downloaded” into me for several hours.
ever since then, i have had an incredibly difficult time with my usual prophecy-esque dreams that had been plaguing my reality in a different way (yes, btw, every ghost log is a nonfictional experience i had experienced in a dream and the some bled into reality. the only difference between fiction and non-fiction is im telling you that it is fiction, in this case~)
specifically though, since the concert, ive only had dreams of being in physical danger. generally recently its been mastering surviving taking a bullet, which has been a longtime reoccurring instance that blows my spirit out of my body, frustrating it to no end. *i will admit the separation of body and spirit are still loud as ever, but they feel connected now, the same way that a clam exists in every part of its shell. no longer a hermit crab in my vessel but integrated.*
not sure what to think of all of this yet. but wherever the journey takes us, we’ll be enjoying every moment we can!
also on the horror genre note: thats *also* incredibly integrated into this experience i keep having. the horror of what i experienced in my most recent dream played out to my brain’s chemical levels like a fiddle, knowing exactly how to get my heart racing (even now as i remember it my body is somehow still there- in a dream!)
i used to be obsessed with the horror genre and its complexities as a child, and made it a habit of watching any and every horror movie i could get a hold of at the time and dissecting its portrayal of the human psyche.
i fell off of watching horror after we stopped watching it with our old roommate and best friend back in ohio. I recently saw Weapons with my mother, and the entire time watching felt like i was watching the horror comedy unfold into noticeable patterns. i was able to tell my mom when to brace for a reveal, when it was not going to be, it honestly started to feel like the pacing of the writing with the combination of acting and music started to feel like sex. the pacing was noticeably pulling you in and pushing you away, being able to laugh one moment a be fear stricken the next. good horror it seems, mimics the foreplay and lead up to an orgasm, or maybe a *really* good orchestral song if thats more the vibe. the components arent going to be impactful if you’re only focused on the monster or the gore itself, rather, what does the monster or gore represent? what does the conflict make you feel? what can we not escape from that will end up consuming us in the end?
when reality looks a lot like a bad, not good, not even for the humor of a b-horror film, perhaps its something within reality thats the most horrific of it all.
(this is probably why movies like hereditary, get out, us, parasite, etc. all have the large impacts they do. horror isnt a always a big scary unfathomable monster, sometimes its the very people around you.)