Each and every week “Heel Heat!” MK2Fac3 and “Babyface Pop!” Henchman21 read a lot of comics. Seriously you guys, a lot of comics. Maybe too many comics. I mean, it is possible”¦ theoretically. They look forward to some more than others, I mean, who doesn’t? So, let’s take a look into the depths of their pull lists, grab some comics, and we’ll let YOU know what the top books to look forward to are for the week of July 25, 2012. Single issues and trades, they’re all here.

I’ve intentionally taken about a week off from writing for the site, with good reason. The shooting in Aurora, CO, has affected me in a way that I have a very hard time expressing. The simple fact is that a completely insane and terrible person decided that he would murder a bunch of people for no reason. In my opinion, this person doesn’t have a name. He shouldn’t be given a chance to be known by anyone and his name shouldn’t be present on the lips of anyone. The majority of us who write for this site and plenty of those of us who read this site were present at midnight screenings across the country. This could have happened to any one of us, but it didn’t. It happened to a group of people who are very similar to us, and they should be remembered. They should be honored, and I’ve been trying to get an idea to honor these people, but nothing I could think of would be enough. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to list their names so that we don’t forget. They’re the people who we should remember, and they’re the people we should be talking about, so to Jessica Ghawi, Matt McQuinn, Micayla Medek, John Larimer, Alex Sullivan, Alex Teves, Jonathan Blunk, Jesse Childress, AJ Boik, Rebecca Ann Wingo, Gordon W. Cowden, and Veronica Moser-Sullivan, we know who you are, we care about who you are, and we won’t forget you.

Now back to your regularly scheduled The GoD List….

The scariest thing for any nerd/geek/fanatic for anything relating to entertainment is the looming darkness of what we call, “SPOILERS.” Spoilers are a terrifying thing that can take away all of the excitement in a simple phrase – “No, I am your father,” “Bruce Willis was dead THE ENTIRE TIME!” “Superman is Clark Kent,” all of these phrases have struck terror into our hearts, because after we searched our hearts, we knew them to be true.

This article, however, consists of nothing that is true. This is a list of fake spoilers. So, are you ready for Top 20 Fake Spoilers For The Dark Knight Rises!? Woo boy!

On Friday, The Dark Knight Rises, the latest and last Batman film in Christopher Nolan’s epic trilogy, will finally be upon us. So, it’s natural for loads of sites to provide you with “5 Batman Comics To Get You Pumped For The Dark Knight Rises!” But where we differ is, we’re taking a more scholarly approach to these Batman comics. We’ve already talked about The Evolution Of Batman In Popular Culture and given you Batman 101: A Beginner’s Guide To The Dark Knight, which gave you several great places to start reading Batman comics that aren’t heavily drenched in continuity and are some of the more simple stories that The Dark Knight has to offer.

With Batman 202: Intermediate Reading For The Caped Crusader, however, we’re taking a look at some more books that offer a little bit more than just a basic starting point. These books are all great, but they’re also a little more complicated than I would suggest just starting off. This list is here to provide you with the next step into becoming a Batman scholar, and requires a little more of the reader.

Each and every week “Going Solor” MK2Fac3 and “Henchman Isn’t Here Anymore Mrs. Torrence” Henchman21 read a lot of comics. Seriously you guys, a lot of comics. Maybe too many comics. I mean, it is possible”¦ theoretically. They look forward to some more than others, I mean, who doesn’t? So, let’s take a look into the depths of their pull lists, grab some comics, and we’ll let YOU know what the top books to look forward to are for the week of July 18, 2012. Single issues and trades, they’re all here.

Look guys, we all know that comic books are totally awesome. That’s the whole reason why we put out this here GoD List every single week. There’s always a lot of stuff to look forward to, and sometimes we can’t get it all together. This week, though, my mind is completely on The Dark Knight Rises, and I’m sure you feel the same. However, we want you to read comics, so it’s time to put TDKR on the back burner for just a moment, and then we’ll move on to more Batman talk later in the day. You ready to do this? I’m ready to do this. Henchman isn’t here this week, so let’s get to it!

Batman has become one of, if not the most well known characters in the history of American pop culture. He’s been dark, he’s been bright, and he’s even been an agent of propaganda, but one thing that has remained consistent is that people know who Batman is. With The Evolution of Batman in Popular Culture, my attempt is to take an extensive look at all the ways that Batman can be interpreted, why he’s remained a consistent force in popular culture, and how he becomes a reflection of society making him the most iconic superhero.

When Batman (Bat-Man) was created by Bill Finger and Robert Kane, he was initially created as an answer to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s iconic superhero of the lower class. And while Superman was given super powers and a fighting stance against corruption, Batman was a little darker. The creation of Batman came mainly from pulp novels, Zorro, and the 1926 horror film The Bat. Batman was a weird creature of the night that, initially, wasn’t afraid to kill and would do so if the criminal “deserved” it. In his creation, Batman is already a reflection of an era that is commonly described as being hopeful, yet disillusioned in the face of World War II, a time when almost everyone was on board with the Allied Powers in their war against the Evil Axis Powers. Society was cut and dry, good and bad, so a four-color look at a wealthy vigilante lent itself perfectly to the culture of the time.

Furthermore, this interpretation of The Batman was moved into the popular propaganda films shown during war times where Batman and Robin teamed up to fight on the home front while all the soldiers were defending America’s freedom. Sure, if you try to watch The Batman and the Batman and Robin serials, you’re going to lose your mind if you’re brain’s not stuck in a World War II mindset in which you’re pretty much sure that Japanese people are completely evil and should be punished for all their evil deeds. Yes, it’s completely ridiculous and completely wrong, but it is 100% an accurate portrayal of the United States’ attitude toward the world at the time. Another aspect of this that’s worth mentioning is that in most superhero stories, this was the interpretation. In fact, this was the interpretation of most movie serials during the time period, but for the sake of argument, even as an overweight “on-a-budget” looking Batman, the interpretation is valid and represents the time.

The next major incarnation of The Caped Crusader came with “The New Look” that accompanied the heralding in of The Silver Age of comics. Oddly enough, with sales of superhero comics tanking, the introduction of the Batman TV show came to our Earth and showed a completely different side of Batman. This Batman was campy, this Batman was fun, this Batman was kid friendly, and above all else, this Batman was psychedelic. If one thing is tied to the 1960s, whether accurately or not, it’s the free love, acid freak hippie nature of society at the time. This youth culture was high on life and many other things which made straight-laced stiffs, like Adam West’s portrayal of the Batman character, completely hilarious. While kids were loving the cartoony action of Batman, the elaborate death traps created by brilliantly acted villains like The Riddler, The Joker, King Tut, and Egg Head, adults saw the humor that laced every other moment outside of the square Adam West. The cast was in on the joke, the adults were in on the joke, the only ones that were left out were the kids. And quite honestly, as a kid who watched this show growing up, it was absolutely perfect. All of the elements that are over done and goofy to me as an adult, which I still adore, were exactly what my child-like mind thought a superhero TV show about Batman should be like. The goofy, post-Wertham nature of The Silver Age in comics, alongside the ironic attitude of the country allowed Batman to be one of the biggest pop culture icons of the pre-Vietnam 1960s. Most today would refuse to admit the importance of this era of Batman, but when you take a grander look at his history, Batman reflects society, and that exactly what happened with Batman ’66.

Following the escapades of Adam West’s Batman, the titular character was relegated mostly to cartoon shows with interactions between other Warner properties like Scooby-Doo. Sure there was the live-action special Legends of The Superheroes which showed a handful of DC heroes fighting DC villains, but for the most part, while Batman was being redefined in the comics throughout the 70s, Batman for better or worse became a cartoon character. He stayed in the minds of children and parents until the 1980s when Frank Miller got a hold of him. In Miller’s The Dark Knight, he redefined what a superhero comic book could do, and alongside Alan Moore’s Watchmen, he changed comic books forever. Miller, as a writer, creates stories with hardboiled toughs in an incredibly dark setting, and after this version of Batman was brought to the attention of the masses again for the first time since the 1940s/1950s, Batman was once again The Dark Knight. This next step in Batman’s evolution led to filmmaker Tim Burton‘s 1989 Batman.

Batman was the next big superhero movie after the Superman franchise took off and then ultimately fell off due to poor writing/directing/producing/lack of public interest. After the boom and economic hopefulness of the 1980s, we were met with the grunge era. The grunge era, as I’m calling it, accompanied musical acts like Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, The Pixies, and The Melvins, and was a sign of America’s youth caught up in a wave of disillusionment. Gone was the chrome horizon of the 1980s. What we were welcomed with, and on a path towards, was a somewhat dark era in which many felt ostracized and hopeless. It’s my opinion that 1989’s Batman helped usher in that time period, but either way, it’s hard to deny that Tim Burton’s cartoony gothic hero was not in part a reflection of that mood. When Batman hit theaters, fans saw a new Batman dressed all in black whose motivation once again became vengeance on the part of his parents’ murder. The gothic hero was an orphan on a grand scale, and considering the attitude of America’s teens at the time, people flocked to this interpretation. In fact, Batman stayed on track with Burton for quite some time, which included the debut of Batman: The Animated Series, which many young kids used as their first exposure to The Dark Knight and in the future, this series would become incredibly important, but we’ll get back to that in just a little bit when we discuss the modern era. This truly was a renaissance for The Batman.