The Black Casebook

@blackcasebook.bsky.social

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Podcast exploring history, politics, philosophy and more through Batman’s greatest stories. https://open.spotify.com/show/0g0eISbWRkv01Xig3bmw5X

My podcast episode on Tom King and his Batman story "Cold Days"
An ad for season two of Shogun
My five star review of Lost Highway is a quote from Terry Eagleton: “Hell is about finality, not perpetuity—the inability to break out of the lethal circuit of Law and desire and scramble back to life. Pace Sartre, it is precisely not other people. It is the condition of those whose terrible destiny is to be stuck with themselves for all eternity, like some bar-room bore. It has the absurdity of utter solitude, since nothing which could happen to me alone could make any sense. The damned cannot relinquish their anguish because it is bound up with their delight, cannot escape the cruel sadism of the Law because this is just what they desire. This is why they are in despair. They are under the power of death already, but since this yields them gratification they can always fool themselves that they are vibrantly alive. And the fact that they find pleasure in their self-destruction is what keeps them just this side of death.”
Sam Neill laughing in the movie theater at the end of In the Mouth of Madness.
Computer display readout: “KILL ‘EM ALL”
Don S. Davis sits in a chair ominously
“I shall say only at this point that I, the builder of churches, am no Puritan nor Cavalier, nor Reformed, nor Catholic, nor Jew, but of that older faith which sets them dancing in Black Step Lane. And this is the creed which Mirabilis schooled in me: He who made the world is also author of death, nor can we but by doing evil avoid the rage of evil spirits. Out of the imperfections of this Creator are procreated diverse evils: as darkness from his fear, shadows from his ignorance, and out of his tears come forth the waters of this world. Adam after his fall was never restored to mercy, and all men are damned. Sin is a substance and not a quality, and it is communicated from parents to children: men’s souls are corporeal and have their being by propagation or traduction, and life itself is an inveterate mortal contagion. We baptize in the name of the Father unknown, for he is truly an unknown god; Christ was the serpent who deceived Eve, and in the form of a serpent entered the Virgin’s womb; he feigned to die and rise again, but it was the Devil who truly was crucified."
My dog, recuperating from surgery
The scary anthropomorphic jackass TV host from HOKUM
The purple and green monster truck known as Grave Digger
The survivors meet Tarman in Return of the Living Dead
Commissioner Gordon informs a government spook that Gotham City "has its own way of dealing with menaces and monsters," referring to Arkham Asylum, a place famous for its airtight security. From Swamp Thing by Alan Moore and John Totleben.
My 3.5 star review of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
My Letterboxd list of Tales from the Crypt movies: morality tales whose cruel, ghoulish sense of humor overrides any actual moralizing.
My four-star review of Obsession, a feature length-episode of Tales from the Crypt
The Great Darkness lashes out against John Constantine’s magic circle of interlopers. Sargon the Sorcerer begins to catch fire.
The Great Darkness approacheth. From Swamp Thing 49 by Alan Moore, Steve Woch, Alfredo Alcala, and John Totleben.
Nathan Fielder laughing unconvincingly
Batman has an awkward encounter with John Constantine and a vaguely familiar acquaintance during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. From Swamp Thing #46.
The demon Etrigan punts Anton Arcane’s disembodied head into the sky. From Swamp Thing by Alan Moore and Steve Bissette.
A female figure thrusts her arms high into the rainy night. From V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.
Jemima Kirke what the hell, sure. meme
The iconic cover of Uncanny X-Men #251 where Wolverine is crucified on a big X
“The young futurists ardently threw themselves into what they called ‘war, the world’s only hygiene,’ in 1914. Within two years, their two most creative spirits…would be killed by the machines they loved. The rest survived to become cultural hacks in Mussolini’s mills, pulverized by the dead hand of the future.”
A photo of a pastor dressed in a military uniform before his congregation. A sword hangs on the front of his pulpit; the cross, a bit of an afterthought, sits in the background.
Christchurch Spitalfields, as depicted by Eddie Campbell in From Hell.
My dog Clyde, who is a beautiful angel
Will Eisner sketches out the sounds of the city: a scream in the night, the cry of a baby, the hissing of a radiator, etc.
My four-star review of Send Help
Goethe reflecting on Homer in a 1787 journal entry: "A word about Homer. The scales have fallen from my eyes. His descriptions, his similes, etc., which to us seem merely poetic, are in fact utterly natural though drawn, of course, with an inner comprehension which takes one's breath away. Even when the events he narrates are fabulous and fictitious, they have a naturalness about them which I have never felt so strongly as in the presence of the settings he describes. Let me say briefly what I think about the ancient writers and us moderns. *They* represented things and persons as they are in themselves, *we* usually represent only their subjective effect; *they* depicted the horror, *we* depict horribly; *they* depicted the pleasing, *we* pleasantly, and so on. Hence all the exaggeration, the mannerisms, the false elegance and the bombast of our age. Since, if one aims at producing effects and only effects, one thinks that one cannot make them violent enough. If what I say is not new, I have had vivid occasion to feel its truth."