According to this Variety story, the Turkish town of “Batman” is suing Warner Brothers and director Chris Nolan for the use of the name “Batman” in their film The Dark Knight.

Huseyin Kalkan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party mayor of Batman, has accused “The Dark Knight” producers of using the city’s name without permission.

“There is only one Batman in the world,” Kalkan said. “The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.”

The article goes on to say that this is most likely a ploy to get some money, and that the mayor is trying to find some documentation that the town existed before Batman’s creation in 1939. My thought on this is that if the mayor can’t find proof of when his town existed, then 1) the mayor is a moron, 2) the town is a backwoods loser town that doesn’t know when it was founded. But wait, there’s more from mayor Dogpatch!

The mayor is prepping a series of charges against Nolan and Warner Bros., which owns the right to the Batman character, including placing the blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film’s success has had on the city’s inhabitants.

Blaming a movie for unsolved murders and female suicides? Are they going to blame the movie for bewitching cattle to produce less milk and cursing the stableboy so he cannot speak without a lisp? Although I have no proof other than my fertile imagination, I suspect that the town is suing for some ridiculous sum of $550, which will make everyone rich beyond their wildest dreams. Either that or a few head of cattle. Or a few magic rubies from the crown of the skeleton king.

Thing is, this is the first they’re complaining about this, when the film stands to do 1 billion in profits. Not when the Batman TV show came out, not when the films Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, or Batman Begins were released, films that included the name “Batman” in the title, unlike The Dark Knight. Not even when Turkish filmmakers released their own bastardized version, Yarasa Adam: Betmen.

Sorry, Turkey, you guys have failed. I have often admired Turkey, owning an original poster for the Woody Allen film Sleeper in Turkish, with painted artwork unique to Turkey. And a good friend of mine, comic artist Nadir Balan is from Turkey and he turned out alright. But suing Warner Brothers? Enjoy walking back to the village with your asses burned off.

You see, Mark used to be a rapper. He released albums under the name “Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch”. He looked like this:

And went out in public looking as such. Now, you have to know that in the early 90’s there was an interesting phenomenon: anyone could rap. It’s true, pussy-ass white kids from the suburbs could go out and put a few tracks down and people would be ok with that. Nowadays you have to prove that you’re tough enough to rap, but in the 90’s anything went. And as Vanilla Ice showed us, you could make it big even when you sucked. And Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch sucked more than normal.

Marky Mark’s big hit was a rap over the classic Lou Reed gem “Walk on the Wild Side”, a song that most people would enjoy listening to. Sadly, Marky Mark’s rendition was abysmal, throwing out painful cliches, embarrassing rhymes, and a social conscience that is more or less laughable. I offer a little bit of commentary through Mark’s song. Imagine Lou Reed looping in the back, with the sax part repeated two or three times.

Ah yeah huh..America the Beautiful
Huh, yeah, let me introduce y’all..to the Wildside

Things go badly right from the start. This is the “call out” like many rap songs have, except Marky gets sarcastic about America and then introduces us to his much lamer alternative, “The Wildside”. The listener hopes that the Wildside offers an improvement over America, but that is not to be the case. In comparison, if America the Beautiful was a decent-sized car with a few problems, The Wildside is a cramped broken car that is filled to the windows with pee.

Annie was a high school cheerleader
Pom poms and bobby socks, no girl was sweeter
Come Prom time everybody was on the line
All the fellas swinging nickel and dime
Tales about love and lust and trust
But Annie took it all in stride
Cause deep inside Annie had aspirations
Wanted to be a chemical engineer
Making 50 to 55 thousand a year
Her first year of college was a success
But along came Billy possessed and obsessed
He took Annie on a fatal date
And showed her things that make heartbeats accelerate
Annie took a hit breathed two short breaths
One for life..the last for death
Now she’s gone, a former Valedictorian
Ended up becoming a topic for historians
Washed up dreams and shattered pride
All because Annie took a hit - on the Wildside

Chemical Engineer? This is what was decided on in the writing room? A mid-level chemical engineer is what Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch chose to make his song about. After an exhaustive internet search using the most up-to-date software available (google), there are officially NO songs out there that deal with the protagonist aspiring to be a chemical engineer. Wichita lineman, yes, chemical engineer, no.

This girl, so set on her job working in a lab and being middle class, refuses to go to prom, yet is coerced into taking drugs on a first date and dying. And what drug is she “taking hits” of? Well, it’s not marijuana, since that doesn’t kill you. And smoking coke and heroin are not usual activities for college freshmen. Nope, she was convinced to either smoking crack or angel dust. See how this doesn’t add up, Marky Mark? There’s a reason marijuana is called a gateway drug - BECAUSE PEOPLE DON’T START OUT SMOKING CRACK.

Oh, and rhyming “Valedictorian” with “historians” is a huge, huge offense to the English language.

Ron had enough of being broke everyday
Saying to himself, there’s gotta be a betta way
Cause 9 to 5 wasn’t worth the headaches
So Ron figured out a faster way to make - money
Before you know it, he’s a rich man
Gold on every finger of his hand
A brand new BMW, a condo, Ron ended up a John Doe
A body was found in the alley but never clained
Full of bullet holes but none to blame
Ron became another victim of homicide
Because he chose to walk - on the Wildside

A rich guy, Ron, dies violently after amassing a small fortune and purchasing much gold, fancy cars and (the horrors!) a condo. And the body was never claimed? Mark, even David Ruffin’s body was claimed and he was a mess when he died. If he was selling drugs, odds are someone noticed. Then again, this was the early 90’s and we didn’t have shows like Bones that could identify a corpse from something as small as a toenail. Maybe in the 90’s the police were too busy looking for Jon Benet Ramsey’s killer that they couldn’t connect an empty condo and an abandoned BMW with a John Doe. And yes, he does rhyme “homicide” with “Wildside,” and as we shall see, he also goes for the other easy one in the next verse.

Charles had everything going for him
A top paying job, a good life, a good wife
A baby boy on the way any day
A gentleman attitude is all he displayed
Carol was the wife he loved and adored
Her family and freinds treated him like an Ambassador
One night on the other side of town
A police dispatcher picked up a weird sound
Charles on the car phone asking for help
Claiming a burglar shot his wife and himself
His pregnant wife lay slumped over
Dreams corrupted and a young life over
Extensive searches throughout the projects
Put a lot of people through misery and wreck
Everyone a suspect til someone was found
Interrigated cause their skin was brown
Then there was Bennett, guilty until proven so
But soon as the case started moving slow
What do you know, sure as as sea gull gets webbed toed
Charles was the culprit
The whole plot was an insurance scam
Charles and his brother came up with a plan
Kill Carol, collect a big check
Blame it on a black man, what the heck?
And just before the story was known
Charles had a feeling that his cover was blown
So he jumped offa bridge
Committed suicide
This is how it is - on the Wildside

This reads like a goddam Canterbury Tale. I am of the opinion that Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch went a little overboard on this verse, since it comprises more lines than the Lord’s Prayer. Granted, only about half the lines are NOT ridiculously bad, but we’re talking all-inclusive here. Some of the greatest hits:

“Carol was the wife he loved and adored
Her family and freinds treated him like an Ambassador”

Huh? What? They graciously accepted him to dinners and listened to him bitch about the way trade was going?

“Extensive searches throughout the projects
Put a lot of people through misery and wreck”

Nice rhyme there, Marky Mark. It has about the same complexity as a 9-year-old’s poem about the first Thanksgiving.

“But soon as the case started moving slow
What do you know, sure as as sea gull gets webbed toed”

This is why Marky Mark never got any street cred. Never, ever, ever. When he dies I want to visit his grave and drop this lyric on his grave and pour out a 40 of Juicy Juice, because this line is hella fruity.

And finally,
Little Tiffany, only thirteen
Came to the city, place of big dreams
Visiting family and friends for the summertime
Sittin’ on a mailbox, watchin’ the boys climb trees
And the girls play hopscotch
So far, her vacation was top notch
Then out of the blue, a Mercedes at top speed
Gang bangers chasin’ the robbers on the stampede
Quick as a blink shots rang out loud
And a hail of bullets zipped through the crowd
One hit Tiffany, and instantly she died
Innocently - on the Wildside

Her vacation sounds dull. Watching other people have fun is not a fun vacation. And where the hell are there trees to climb in NYC that are close to roads? The horse paths in Central Park? Maybe the boys were climbing one of the few trees that are stuck in the concrete and surrounded by dangerous spikes to keep dogs away? I don’t know what trees Marky Mark is talking about.

GI Joe may be returning big time.

“But Ethan!” you cry, “GI Joe’s been around for a long time and they keep making hit toys and comics and there’s this movie and everything! And we really like whining!” And you’re right on all counts. But now IDW publishing is doing something that I think has been overdue for a while: they’re restarting the GI Joe franchise.

GI Joe #0 came out yesterday and costs only $1, so you don’t have much of an excuse to not buying it (unless you live somewhere where literacy is outlawed - I’M LOOKING AT YOU, KANSAS). It’s three short tales to set up the three new Joe series, GI Joe proper, GI Joe: Origins, and GI Joe: COBRA, each done by the artists and writers of their respective series. The goal is to reboot the franchise, starting at the early days when the Joes and COBRA were still unaware of each other, leading into how the Joes were recruited, and possibly the same with COBRA (the short COBRA story in #0 has Chuckles infiltrating the organization).

And normally, I don’t give a rat’s ass about GI Joe. I adored the show as a kid but lost track of it right before the animated movie. Now there’s been so many changes to the teams and the storylines and whatnot that I couldn’t be bother with it. Especially when everything from the 1980’s until now was all considered part of the same story. And because they released figures that looked like this:

But this new start looks very, very promising. All three stories had great writing and amazing art and after each teaser I found myself saying, “I want to read more of this! This will make me happy!” I haven’t kept up with any Joe continuity, but at this point I don’t have to! It’s all new! It’s perfect for me, despite breaking some of my major rules:

1) I don’t like war comics/movies/stories/shadowplays/flipbooks, etc.
2) I don’t like series that start out with an enormous cast of characters
3) I don’t like jumping onto a series that has an extremely rabid fanbase stretching back two decades
4) I generally stay away from books based on toy lines (see also “Centurions”. Dear God, why do I even have that issue bagged and boarded? I got it in a sampler pack.)

But for the first time since little 7-year old Ethan purchased his first GI Joe figure, I’m excited about picking up more GI Joe stuff. The issue #0 was that good. And I recommend it highly to anyone who’s intrigued by GI Joe but has been on the fence about learning more at you local library.

Now don’t drop the ball on this one, IDW. I’m trusting you.