Based on the Hush storyline that ran in Batman #608–619 — written by Jeph Loeb, penciled by Jim Lee, inked by Scott Williams and colored by Alex Sinclair — this starts with Batman (Jason O’Mara) battling the man who broke his back, Bane (Adam Gifford). After assisting Lady Shiva (Sachie Alessio) from securing a Lazarus Pit — the life saving devices that have kept his enemy Ra’s al Ghul alive forever — Batman’s grappling hook is shot down, leading him to crack his skull on the pavement and nearly be killed by common hoods before he’s saved by Catwoman (Jennifer Morrison), who is soon chased off by Batgirl (Peyton R. List).

Alfred (James Garrett) and Nightwing (Sean Maher) cover for Batman as he heals from brain surgery from his childhood best friend Thomas Elliot (Maury Sterling).  At the same time, a mummy-masked man has been pulling the strings from behind the scenes, controlling Catwoman and using Poison Ivy (Peyton List) to take Superman (Jerry O’Connell) off the table.

Hush uses the Joker (Jason Spisak) and Harley Quinn (Hynden Walch) to kill Elliot, while Scarecrow (Chris Cox) takes out Nightwing and kidnaps Catwoman, to whom Batman has revealed his identity of Bruce Wayne. And he starts to figure out that Hush knows the secret, too, as he puts everyone he loves in teh crosshairs, including his son Damian (Stuart Allan).

The truth? Hush is The Riddler (Geoffrey Arend), who used the Lazarus Pit to heal a brain tumor and has figure out from the memories inside it of others who have been healed that Batman and Bruce are the same. He’s kidnapped the Catwoman, who has no problem shoving him to his death, a fact that keeps her and Batman from going off to be in love.

Directed by Justin Copeland and written by Ernie Altbacker, this is a lot cleaner at the ending than the comic, which goes on to show that Hush really is Thomas Elliot.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Based on “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?” from Action Comics #775, this cartoon was written by Joe Kelly, who also wrote the original comic, which was pencilled by Doug Mahnke and Lee Bermejo, and inked by Tom Nguyen, Dexter Vines, Jim Royal, Jose Marzan, Wade Von Grawbadger and Wayne Faucher.

When the Atomic Skull (Dee Bradley Baker) destroys much of Metropolis and kills several people, Superman (George Newbern) is asked why he doesn’t kill his enemies to protect humanity. A new group of heroes, The Elite — British psychic Manchester Black (Robin Atkin Downes), electricity controlling Coldcast (Catero Colbert), the demonic Menagerie (Melissa Disney) and the magician The Hat (Andrew Kishino) — responds by killing the Atomic Skull and winning over people, saying that they are willing to do what Superman won’t.

Kelly said, “The story tackles themes that go way beyond a typical superhero story…politics, the price of power and America’s place as a force in the world are all viewed through the lens of the DC Universe. Even if fans aren’t paying close attention to these issues, they’re all over the media. You can’t escape them. So with the state of affairs being what it is, I can’t think of a better time to see Superman confront these themes…I’m a big fan of taking real world issues and working them out through our “superhero” stories—but this one goes beyond strict allegory. Like the original comic story, the film is thought provoking without being preachy and really delivers a punch.”

By the end of this, Superman proves while he is still needed, even if he has to trick The Elite into believing. that he’s as ruthless as them.

The Elite are the same as The Authority, superheroes that became popular for their debauchery and willingness to end problems with violence and murder. They would show up again with new members, including cyborg Vera Black, a second Menagerie and Bunny. This team would eventually form the Justice League Elite, led by Black as Sister Superior and team members Coldcast, Menagerie II, Manitou Raven, his wife Dawn, Green Arrow, Flash, Kasumi (Batgirl in disguise), Major Disaster and Naif al-Sheikh.

In the fourth season of Supergirl, The Elite appeared with members Manchester Black, Menagerie, the Hat and a Morae responding to Agent Liberty and the Children of Liberty’s bigotry toward aliens, as well as the Department of Extranormal Operations’ ineffectiveness against people who kill aliens.

You can watch this on Tubi.

As a kid in the 1970s media desert that had just four channels to watch, Mad Magazine delivered the culture and R-rated movies I wouldn’t see for year, filtered through its creators, “The Usual Gang of Idiots” who created the black and white magazine. The last survivor of EC Comics, Mad was the introduction for so many people my age to cynicism and questioning everything, while also teaching us to fold the back covers of every issue, ruining their resale value.

For people younger than me, they would know that MADtv and Cartoon Network’s Mad show — as well as a never-faired Hanna-Barbera attempt — took the magazine to the cable airwaves. While the Fox TV show did have its moments, it always felt like a sub-In Living Color versus the strange, well, madness of the magazine. But in 1973, ABC was ready to pay for The Mad Magazine TV Special but there ended up a problem: no advertisers would be part of it.

That was never a problem for the magazine, which unlike National Lampoon never had advertising, but broadcast TV is another tale.

The animation style is closer to an animatic, the way an ad agency would add minor moves to still drawings for pitches. To those who are blessed not to work in the field, think the 60s Marvel comic book cartoons.

Starting with a Jack Davis-drawn takedown of the auto industry — in case you wondered why advertisers weren’t part of this — this is dominated by an adaption of The Oddfather, which was written by Larry Siegel and drawn by Mort Drucker, originally appearing in Mad #155. The joy of these parodies was that it would take you forever to read them, as they were so dense with jokes both in words and buried in the visuals. Having them come to life makes it feel like you’re flying past these jokes at a few hundred miles an hour, yet just seeing Drucker’s work move is a joy.

There’s also “A Mad Peek Behind the Scenes at a Hospital,” which came from Mad #131 by Siegel and artist Al Jaffe, as well as Spy vs. Spy. But at a scant twenty-some minutes, it feels scant compared to the hours I’d spend with each issue.

Directed by animation vets Gordon Bellamy, Chris K. Ishii (who worked on the animation in Annie Hall) and Jimmy T. Murakami (who would go on to direct “Soft Landing” in Heavy Metal, Battle Beyond the Stars and When the Wind Blows, as well as animating the titles for What’s Up, Tiger Lily?), this is the kind of lost media that obsesses me.

Mad had issues when it tried to escape the printed page. Just look at Up the Academy, a movie that they promoted in every issue until it came out, bombed and then they destroyed themselves within the pages of the magazine.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Directed and written by Alain Jessua, The Killing Game is a story about fantasy, the world of comic books, intersecting with our boring reality. Pierre (Jean-Pierre Cassel) and his wife Jacqueline (Claudine Auger) are collaborators on a series of popular comic books — they are drawn by a team of artists led by Guy Peellaert, who painted the cover for Bowie’s Diamond Dogs and whose painting, Frank Sinatra, which featured the headline “Frankie Goes Hollywood” which inspired the band’s name — and have been hired by a wealthy patron named Bob Neuman (Michel Duchaussoy). He wants them to transform him into a Diabolik type gentleman thief, which is quite different from his real life, where he’s controlled by his mother Genevieve (Eleonare Hirt).

Yet when we first meet Pierra and Jacqueline, they’re destitute, unable to make their bills and superfan Bob comes along at the right time, giving them an escape from the poorhouse. Bob is able to tell some wild stories about his life, yet he seems like a manchild who has barely left the house. He flies the couple to his Swiss estate and they go about recreating him in comic book form as The Killer of Neuchatel.

Auger is best known for playing Domino in Thunderball, but in my head, she’s a giallo queen of sorts, appearing in Bava’s nascent slasher A Bay of Blood and in one of the meanest of the yellow films, Black Belly of the Tarantula. Jacqueline is a woman trapped in her marriage, her writer husband believing he has control of her, whether its through his concepts and words or by just being a traditional male role as the husband. Yet her artwork is what makes his ideas so appealing and she’s a gorgeous and intelligent woman who begins to expand her agency through flirtation with Bob, despite how potentially dangerous he is.

I loved the look and feel of this movie, arriving as a Euroart film with hints of the aforementioned giallo and some Eurospy as well. While it didn’t intend to, it reminds me of the constant battle of who created things when it comes to the Marvel method, where Stan Lee has claimed creation of everything while artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were given at the most a sentence to go by and returned with fully formed stories and pictures that Lee would put the words to. It’s difficult to say who was the voice of making the damn thing, though my visual side has always been with the artists.

This hasn’t been released in the U.S., surprisingly, and is a great find for cinephiles.

Directed by Junpei Mizusaki and with character designs by Takashi Okazaki, Batman Ninja starts with the Bat Family and all of the rogues being taken by Gorilla Grodd’s (Fred Tatasciore) Quake Engine and placed into the past, somewhere in a Japan where modern technology still exists. Batman (Roger Craig Smith) may have the Eian (Matthew Yang King) of the Bat Clan of Hida on his side, but everyone else has become a feudal lord in the two years that have passed since he was lost in time.

This places Catwoman (Grey Griffin), Nightwing (Adam Croasdell), Red Hood (Yuri Lowenthal), Robin (Yuri Lowenthal), Red Robin (Will Friedle) and Alfred (Adam Croasdell) on the side of good, along with Batman, against the Joker (Tony Hale), Harley Quinn (Tara Strong), Bane (Kenta Miyake), Two-Face (Eric Bauze), Deathstroke (Fred Tatasciore), Poison Ivy (Tara Strong) and the Penguin (Tom Kenney).

American writers Leo Chu and Eric Garcia rewrote the film from the original Japanese script that was written by Kazuki Nakashima, ultimately making two very different versions of the same film with different voice casts.

The animation is pretty crazy, giant robots and monkeys battle and this gets pretty far from the world of Gotham City, but I enjoyed it. It definitely takes chances.

This will have a sequel next year, Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and written by Zac Locke, this starts with Nikki (Kaya Coleman) almost falling asleep when Santa comes down the chimney and nearly murders her. She’s in a coma for almost a year and all of her friends believe that she’s actually tried to kill herself. Now, as the seasons come close to the holidays, everything upsets her, every image of Santa, every carol, every day of Christmas.

Nikki has some horrible friends, a bad boyfriend in Nathan (Trey Anderson) and a worry that when she was drinking and taking sleeping pills that someone was trying to kill her that is close to her. This doesn’t stop her from going to a cabin with Jess (Scarlett Sperduto) and MJ (Cissy Ly), a place that Santa finds quite easily.

Nothing unexpected happens. Of course her boyfriend is having sex with one of her friends. Certainly, the kills start happening. But I wanted to like this because the premise was so good, giving so much to it and not really getting much back. It’s not the worst holiday horror I’ve seen but that speaks more to how bad these movies can be.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Tim Burton didn’t want to make a sequel, but he agreed to return in exchange for creative control, which meant he got to change up the script by Sam Hamm and Daniel Waters, with Wesley Strick rewriting things to establish what the Penguin’s plan was. While this was a big success, it wasn’t at the level of Batman and that may be because of how dark, sexual and violent is became, which is one of the reasons why I like it so much.

It’s also totally a Christmas movie.

Unlike Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton), whose rich parents loved him, the Penguin is born to Tucker (Paul Reubens) and Esther Cobblepot (Diane Salinger), who despite giving him the name Oliver (Danny DeVito) treat him like more an animal than a child. They dump him into the sewer, where he is raised by penguins. Yes, this really happens.

His Red Triangle gang kidnap rich man Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) and force him to work alongside his plan to take over Gotham City. It starts by kidnapping the mayor’s son and rescuing him, making the Penguin a hero. As for Schreck, he’s been planning to steal all of Gotham’s electricity, a plan that his secretary Selena Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer) learns about and is shoved out a window to her death. Well, it would have been her death, but she’s brought back from the dead by alley cats. Yes, again, really.

Bruce Wayne, being Batman, ends up fighting Penguin, Catwoman and Schreck, all while as Bruce he falls for Selena. This all sounds too ordinary for what the movie has happen, because this has so many wild ideas and actors in it, like the Red Triangle gang being made up of Organ Grinder (Vincent Schiavelli), the Poodle Lady (Anna Katarina), the Tattooed Strongman (Rick Zumwalt, Bull Hurley!), the Sword Swallower (John Strong), the Fat Clown (Travis Mckenna), the Thin Clown (Doug Jones), the Knifethrower Dame (Erika Andersch), the Acrobatic Thug (Gregory Scott Cummins) and the Terrifying Clown (Branscombe Richmond). There were even plans for a black Robin, to be played by Marlon Wayans, to the point that even toys were designed.

Everyone in this is a shadow of Bruce Wayne: Selena may be “the same, split right down the center” but she wants vengeance instead of justice; Penguin was born rich as a freak but Bruce became one; Schreck is the rich villain that Bruce could have been. Catwoman embraces her sexuality by covering herself in leather and embracing a BDSM-coded whip; even at the end, she chooses solitude instead of love with Bruce, as he’d be just another man dominating her. She’s content to see his Batsignal in the night and know that he’s close.

This is also a Christmas movie that hates the holiday; a cash-in sequel that hates that fact as well as merchandising, despite having a toyline out in stores in time for its release. It feels like a movie that took chances, back when superhero movies had no rules or template. Compared to the next few Batman movies after, it felt so right, so perfect and still feels that way today.