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Thom Dunn is a Boston-based writer, musician, and utterly terrible dancer. He is the singer/guitarist for the indie rock/power-pop the Roland High Life, as well as a staff writer for the New York Times’ Wirecutter and a regular contributor at BoingBoing.net. Thom enjoys Oxford commas, metaphysics, and romantic clichés (especially when they involve whiskey), and he firmly believes that Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is the single greatest atrocity committed against mankind. He is a graduate of Clarion Writer's Workshop at UCSD ('13) & Emerson College ('08).

Batman and Robin Will Never Die!

Is there anyone alive who doesn't agree that Batman is totally awesome? No? That's what I thought.

It's also well documented by anyone who's ever met me that I have a serious fascination with comic book writer / chaos magician / Scotsman / rockstar / occasional fictional character Grant Morrison, who, by sheer coincidence, has been guiding the adventures of the Dark Knight for the past 7 years or so as the man behind the pen. The good folks at Tor.com were kind of enough to let me indulge my Morrison obsession and love for clever poetic puzzles, and I re-read his entire story (so far) to provide a critical analysis of what appears to be his deconstruction of the identity of Batman -- both as a symbol or piece of mythology, and as the man himself behind the mask, Bruce Wayne.

This undertaking proved to be much more epic than I had originally anticipated, but I'm still quite pleased with the end results. So check it out, even if you haven't read all of Morrison's Bat-epic (but really, you should probably do that).

"How Grant Morrison’s 7-Year Batman Epic is Becoming the Ultimate Definition of Batman" on Tor Dot Com

Purple and Green is the new Black and Blue

How come so many supervillains wear purple and green as their primary colors? I ask this both from a story standpoint (those are probably the two colors I wear the most, but I try not to wear them both at the same time in such excess), and also from a cultural standpoint. What was it that caused so many comic creators in the Sixties to serendipitously dress their villains using the same color palette? Some kind of morphic field, perhaps? That doesn't make sense. But think about it — The Joker, Lex Luthor, Mysterio, the Green Goblin, Kang the Conquerer, even the Vanisher in his first appearance (pre-X-Force brain tumor/evisceration). Why purple and green? What is the reason?! Dammit, supervillains! Give me answers! In all of your convoluted exposition, this is the one thing you never revealed! Aaargh!!! Okay. I'm good now. Where were we? Oh yeah! Five by Five Hundred. Because that was the topic of my post today. I know there was a reason....

"The New Black and Blue" on FiveByFiveHundred.com