Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

And that certainly applies to this episode. Andy and Mike hop into the wayback machine and head to 2011 and talk about three books that were part of a line that was part "getting the band back together" and part "maybe we should try and get some of the readers that have dropped off over the past few years and get them to buy our books again". The Retroactive line saw creators from the seventies, eighties, and nineties to tell new stories set during those time periods. The guys talk about the new stories from all three of the Batman installments and do brief overviews of the reprints that made up the back half of these specials. They go into the writing styles of Len Wein, Mike W. Barr, and Alan Grant and the artwork of Tom Mandrake, Jerry Bingham, and Norm Breyfogle. There are some brief tangents along the way, but the bulk of the episode is about how much fun these specials were with a touch of sadness that many of these creators are no longer with us.

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’ the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

The opening and closing theme for the show is Superhero Intro by Stringer Bell and taken from the royalty free site Pixma Bay.

Next Time: Nothing is set in stone, but plans are, as ever, in motion.

Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

Which is actually the case this time out.

One of the more...dare we say it...overlooked parts of Batman Forever is the novelization. Novelizations, as Andy and Mike bang on about during the episode, have largely gone away but at one point they were part and parcel to a blockbuster movie marketing. Sometimes you'd get extra scenes that were cut out of the film because the author was working from an earlier draft. Sometimes you get a reworking of the film because the people behind the scenes played with things during the editing process. Sometimes you got wholly originally scenes because the author made the whole thing a proper novel rather than simply doing the movie but in prose form.

In the case of Batman Forever, you got all of that and more.

The novelization of Batman Forever was written by the late Peter David. Andy and Mike don't talk about the recent passing of Peter because at the time of recording he was still with us. What they do talk about is how he took the script for Batman Forever and gave us a version of the story that rode the line between being an adaptation and something that stands on its own. The guys talk about the bits that were original to the book (such as the introductory chapters) and the differences between what was on the screen and what was on the page. They also talk about comic book films in general and Mike gives a wholly incomplete run down of some of the other merchandise that was released to tie into Batman Forever.

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’ the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

The opening and closing theme for the show is Superhero Intro by Stringer Bell and taken from the royalty free site Pixma Bay.

Next Time: Nothing is set in stone, but plans are in motion.

Welcome back to The Overlooked Dark Knight, the podcast that shines a light on Batman stories hardly anyone talks about!

Which is an outright lie this time out.

Again.

30 years ago, this week, Batman Forever was released to theaters. It was kind of a big deal and in the three decades since it came out the film has become either beloved, the source of much mockery, or a mix of the two. Andy and Mike take an almost two-hour look at the film and, as usual, they do so from stem to stern. Val Kilmer as Batman. Chris O'Donnell as Robin. Jim Carey as The Riddler. Tommy Lee Jones as someone called Harvey Two Face. Nicole Kidman as Chase Meridian. Michael Gough as Alfred. Everyone gets a spotlight, as does the story, the set design, the score, and more. They also have a short conversation about the songs that were on the soundtrack but weren't, in some cases, in the movie.

It was a lot of fun.

This episode was recorded before the untimely death of Val Kilmer. Mike address it at the beginning of the episode but just in case you missed him talking about it, that's why Andy and Mike don't talk about during the course of their conversation.

Andy and Mike want your feedback on this episode so they can read it on an upcoming show! You even have options in how you leave your feedback. The most direct way is to leave a comment right here on the site. You can also send all questions, concerns, fears and trepidations to overlookeddarkknight@gmail.com. Then there’ the Facebook page, where you can also leave a Batman related question for Andy and Mike to answer at the beginning of the show. If you talk about this show on the social medias please include a #overlookeddk so the guys know where to find it.

Next Time: Andy and Mike talk about the novelization for Batman Forever. Plus, the toys and some of the other merch from the film.