Stan says he has no idea about this one from the latest New Yorker:
Hey, don’t you like how the tabletop-speakerphone shape is echoed by the trees out the window?
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This comic has to be a comment about how Warner Brothers doesn’t seem to have any idea how to market and make good DC superhero movies, but keep coming back to the Batman well. (As a side note, “Batmanuel” was a spoof character in the Patrick Warburton-fronted version of “The Tick.”)
I think madmup has most of it @1, but I don’t think the criticism is specific to Warner/DC. Any one of those movie franchises that has been repeatedly overused despite obviously diminishing returns (and ratings) could have appeared in this panel, but “Batman — Again” has a nice ring to it, the “Again” emphasizes the repetiveness of the suggestion, and it plays off the previous (actual) title “Batman Begins“.
P.S. I had thought that this might be an older comic (timed closer to one of the releases, such as back in March of this year), but I was surprised to learn that Stan had submitted a comic that hasn’t even been officially published yet. The Conde Nast store lists “Sept 5th, 2022” as the date for “Hear Me Out“, and the graphic file was uploaded to the site just yesterday (August 30th).
And in the reality-is-stupider-than-fiction department, they actually did just that:
Huh, now that I reflect upon it, being as that movie has been out since April, this cartoon is probably going for the hyper absurd (and not just the fact that there have already been eleventeen batman movies starring 47 different actors as batman): knowing that they just released a Batman 4 to 5 months ago, let’s release another.
Hey, they did it for The Hulk…
And I realize that Kilby beat me to the pondering punch, sorry about that….
The Tick is one of the few DVDs I own . . . it was so absurd . . . and funny as h*ll, even tho I’ve never ever seen superhero movie/TV show.
P.S. Thanks to the Editor (probably Mitch) who corrected the italics tag that I messed up in my first comment.
“And then we can do Batman – Ad Nauseam, followed by Batman – Really?”
Thanks for the explanations. That makes sense. The discussion reminds me of one of my students in Grade 10 who was discussing the Spiderman movies and commenting on how many times the word ‘home’ appeared in their titles (Homecoming, Far from Home, No Way Home). She was certain the next one is going to be called: Spiderman – Homeless.
The speakerphone caused confusion for me. It seemed like they were talking to Batman on the phone and trying to get his buy in for something or another. The explanations here make more sense.
And then there’s the parody song from way back titled “Stallone Again, Naturally” with the line “Then Superman 11 meets Rocky 47”.
Hunh, I never thought to wonder if the speakerphone was in use; I took it all along as just a signal of the office setting. But is it odd that nobody in this meeting has any papers or electronic devices? I think maybe the leftmost figure has a cup of water in their right hand; but otherwise it would be a bare table, were it not for the speakerphone.
I think this is the first New Yorker comic I’ve ever gotten. Pity it’s not very funny.
Still, all your comments were very funny, so it all evens out.
@ Andréa – I thought you meant a movie, but I just discovered that “The Tick” was turned into three separate TV shows. Which one do you have?
TV show with Patrick Warburton. I know nuttin’ ’bout those others.
All three versions of The Tick were wonderful. The original adaptation was a Saturday Morning cartoon that hewed close to the original comic book material and was too clever for it’s kiddie time slot. The Patrick Warburton version has been described at “Seinfeld in Tights” with a lot of absurdist plots and conversations and most recently Amazon rebooted the series with Warburton as the executive producer.
Spoooonnn!
The original “Tick” cartoon show is (mostly) available as DVD sets, with 2 of the 3 seasons released, both with an episode missing. They got sued because the fictional character Mindy Moleford reminded somebody of a real person too much. Go figure. Even with the episodes missing, these DVD sets are worth the effort of tracking down, because “The Tick” cartoon show was AWESOME.
“Spoon!”, indeed. The cartoons have the original characters in them, the Warburton live-action version has watered down replacements. (Die Fliedermaus becomes Batmanuel, and American Maid becomes Captain Liberty. Mindy Moleford becomes non-existent.)
I was able to reserve Season 1 from the library, just to see how/if I like it. Thanks for the suggestion.
The Moth was The Tick’s sidekick . . . and this showed up today in my comics feed . . .
Comics I Don't Understand 
This comic has to be a comment about how Warner Brothers doesn’t seem to have any idea how to market and make good DC superhero movies, but keep coming back to the Batman well. (As a side note, “Batmanuel” was a spoof character in the Patrick Warburton-fronted version of “The Tick.”)
I think madmup has most of it @1, but I don’t think the criticism is specific to Warner/DC. Any one of those movie franchises that has been repeatedly overused despite obviously diminishing returns (and ratings) could have appeared in this panel, but “Batman — Again” has a nice ring to it, the “Again” emphasizes the repetiveness of the suggestion, and it plays off the previous (actual) title “Batman Begins“.
P.S. I had thought that this might be an older comic (timed closer to one of the releases, such as back in March of this year), but I was surprised to learn that Stan had submitted a comic that hasn’t even been officially published yet. The Conde Nast store lists “Sept 5th, 2022” as the date for “Hear Me Out“, and the graphic file was uploaded to the site just yesterday (August 30th).
And in the reality-is-stupider-than-fiction department, they actually did just that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Batman_%28film%29
Huh, now that I reflect upon it, being as that movie has been out since April, this cartoon is probably going for the hyper absurd (and not just the fact that there have already been eleventeen batman movies starring 47 different actors as batman): knowing that they just released a Batman 4 to 5 months ago, let’s release another.
Hey, they did it for The Hulk…
And I realize that Kilby beat me to the pondering punch, sorry about that….
The Tick is one of the few DVDs I own . . . it was so absurd . . . and funny as h*ll, even tho I’ve never ever seen superhero movie/TV show.
P.S. Thanks to the Editor (probably Mitch) who corrected the italics tag that I messed up in my first comment.
“And then we can do Batman – Ad Nauseam, followed by Batman – Really?”
Thanks for the explanations. That makes sense. The discussion reminds me of one of my students in Grade 10 who was discussing the Spiderman movies and commenting on how many times the word ‘home’ appeared in their titles (Homecoming, Far from Home, No Way Home). She was certain the next one is going to be called: Spiderman – Homeless.
The speakerphone caused confusion for me. It seemed like they were talking to Batman on the phone and trying to get his buy in for something or another. The explanations here make more sense.
And then there’s the parody song from way back titled “Stallone Again, Naturally” with the line “Then Superman 11 meets Rocky 47”.
Hunh, I never thought to wonder if the speakerphone was in use; I took it all along as just a signal of the office setting. But is it odd that nobody in this meeting has any papers or electronic devices? I think maybe the leftmost figure has a cup of water in their right hand; but otherwise it would be a bare table, were it not for the speakerphone.
I think this is the first New Yorker comic I’ve ever gotten. Pity it’s not very funny.
Still, all your comments were very funny, so it all evens out.
@ Andréa – I thought you meant a movie, but I just discovered that “The Tick” was turned into three separate TV shows. Which one do you have?
TV show with Patrick Warburton. I know nuttin’ ’bout those others.
All three versions of The Tick were wonderful. The original adaptation was a Saturday Morning cartoon that hewed close to the original comic book material and was too clever for it’s kiddie time slot. The Patrick Warburton version has been described at “Seinfeld in Tights” with a lot of absurdist plots and conversations and most recently Amazon rebooted the series with Warburton as the executive producer.
Spoooonnn!
The original “Tick” cartoon show is (mostly) available as DVD sets, with 2 of the 3 seasons released, both with an episode missing. They got sued because the fictional character Mindy Moleford reminded somebody of a real person too much. Go figure. Even with the episodes missing, these DVD sets are worth the effort of tracking down, because “The Tick” cartoon show was AWESOME.
“Spoon!”, indeed. The cartoons have the original characters in them, the Warburton live-action version has watered down replacements. (Die Fliedermaus becomes Batmanuel, and American Maid becomes Captain Liberty. Mindy Moleford becomes non-existent.)
I was able to reserve Season 1 from the library, just to see how/if I like it. Thanks for the suggestion.
The Moth was The Tick’s sidekick . . . and this showed up today in my comics feed . . .
