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Let's leave the good stuff DC TV is doing as far as possible away from the DCCU shitshow

Nail Yakupov has asked Edmonton for a trade, apparently, and the team has given him permission to shop himself to other teams. Listen, it hasn't worked out, there's no defense of that. But he's a really great young man and I sincerely hope he gets his career back together anywhere but Vancouver or Calgary. Basically my dream is to see Nail Yakupov score 30 goals for the Las Vegas Butts, slide on his knees to center ice screaming, while the PA plays Dead Kennedys - Viva Las Vegas with an arena display of lasers and showgirls. This is what I want. This is the future I would craft if I was God.

Is Barrett giving away all his shit before he quits?

http://deathvalleydriver.com/2016/03/27/dvdvr177/ DEAN~! touches himself to EDDIE GUERRERO~! RIPPA~! touches himself to MARK HENRY~! YOU~! touch yourself to CHELSEA~! SEIYA SANADA~! MR. LEO~! HIROSHI YAMATO~! JOE COFFEY~! NAOMICHI MARUFUJI~! And, of course, TERRY FUNK~! Let’s all go to the MALL~!

It's not specific GOTCHA examples that matter so much as the spirit behind things, what it represents, and what it could represent. To go against any of that has a huge cost and the benefit better damn well be worth it. Some sensationalist deconstruction that represents how fucked up our country is in 2016 doesn't seem to cut it to me. It seems like it's the time when we need what Batman represents the most.

I got a big-ass tax return.

Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom check out the WWE (It is Regal vs. Jericho so clearly wizards are smart enough to not boo Regal)

Because we're speaking directly about this iteration and you're bringing up Daredevil! If Johnny steals something from a store and gets away with it and then I steal and get caught, saying, "well Johnny did it too!" doesn't make it any better. I think there's plenty to talk about, but you make it difficult to do so when you keep deflecting and avoiding addressing the issue by pointing the finger to something else instead. It's stupid. Maybe people are talking about Batman in this way and not Iron Man or Daredevil or whatever else because they really fucking like Batman, or Superman, and they care more about them, their history, who they are at a fundamental level, and this means more to them at this point in time, or any point in time, than any other character.

And also, just because I'm sure I'll get criticized as being a hater, but I fucking loved Man of Steel. You can go back to when that movie came out and see how much I gushed over it and how much I defended that movie. I've given up on arguing over the perceived kill count from the battle in Metropolis because there's no point, but I've pointed out more than once how there likely weren't that many people killed by Superman when the fight with Zod happened. By then, most of those buildings should have been evacuated from when the alien ship blew up and Superman was nowhere near the city. People argued differently enough to make that a huge point worth building the shoddy story around. It is what it is. In any event, to me, Man of Steel was a story about hope, redemption and finding your way. I thought that FOR SURE it would lead to a more confident Superman, one who would save cats from trees or stop a plane from crashing, and one who would represent truth, justice and the American way. Instead, Superman lacked even more confidence to the point where his mom tells him he doesn't owe anyone anything. Just the direction things went in was such a monumental let down for me because they went in the direction of what everyone's complaints for Man of Steel were for. I just wish someone would have taken a moment to say that Man of Steel was only the first act and people can have their complaints, but we can change their minds as we continue to build this story. There was an opportunity to make people look at that first movie differently, and instead, it justified what everyone complained about and it made that Superman representative of all of the complaints. So in the end, the Superman we have is the one people said, "this isn't Superman" and my hope was that he would become who they think Superman is. Batman is also fundamentally different to where he seemingly has no conscious. Alfred IS his conscious, one Bruce ignores. Someone mentioned Injustice and I think that's right. I don't know if I like that. BvS was also not 100% terrible, but the bad far outweighs the good. I LOVED the fight between Batman and Superman. It was well done, until the end of it, and about what I expected. Wonder Woman stole the show for me, as did her theme. I also really liked seeing an alternative point of view for the battle of Metropolis that was shown at the beginning. That was cool. Amy Adams was great. So was Jeremy Irons, and damn, can we finally get Jeremy Irons some better work now, please? The rest of that movie though, man...I hope Justice League is better.

The majority of Batman's writers and the majority of Batman's fans agree that the character is best used when he's not killing people. If he IS willing to kill people, then what's special about him? We've already got a Punisher. We don't need another one. And seriously, why should "this superhero never kills people" be such an incredibly difficult rule to follow? And especially when the killing is done so callously, with Bats just slaughtering henchmen like their lives don't matter. That's unacceptable, it completely goes against everything in the character's motivations. Everything that drives Batman is "never let people die". When that's changed, when he becomes so much more blase about human life, he's much less interesting. If he MUST kill someone, the story should DEAL with that. Ya know the one time I'm completely fine with Bats whacking someone? Two-Face in The Dark Knight. Batman was exhausted, badly wounded, completely spent. He had nothing left, no bright ideas, and he was stuck facing his worst nightmare: the white-meat babyface Harvey Dent turned into a psychotic heel. All the work Batman did to keep Harvey safe (including sacrificing the woman he loved, even if it was unintentional) had gone to shit. So, to save the life of an innocent child, Batman makes a blind leap of pure instinct, having no plan and no idea how it's going to turn out. And it winds up doing the ONE thing he's spent the entire movie trying to prevent; killing Harvey Dent. And does he shrug it off? Does he just go "eh... shit happens" and continue the fight? Hell NO, it utterly DESTROYS him. Even though he wasn't actively trying to break his One Rule, even though he didn't have any better choices in that circumstance, he makes no excuses whatsoever: it was wrong. He takes full responsibility, lets the cops blame him for Harvey's murder, and stops being Batman for years afterwards. THAT'S how Batman should react to taking a life. Similarly, I never had that big a problem with Superman snapping Zod's neck, because they'd so thoroughly foreshadowed the entire thing. Superman spends the whole movie trying to deal with Zod in any way other than killing him. He had it drilled into his head by Pa Kent that he's not God, that he has no right to decide the fate of anyone else. And it's made all the more poignant by the fact that Zod is the only other Kryptonian left on Earth; Supes is forced to destroy the last remnant of his blood kin, in order to save his adopted community. Their final moments together are Clark begging Zod to stop, and Zod flatly saying "Never!". And then... well, they didn't follow through with it the enormity of such a choice afterwards, but at least Henry Cavill had the decency to act really bummed out. That's okay. It effects the character in an important way. It matters to the story. But Bruce just going "meh!" and dropping bullets and bombs on a bunch of mooks is the exact opposite. It's the exact kind of callous disregard for human life which goes directly against everything about Batman which is important to the consensus of people who care about the most about his portrayal.

Marvel's done four things exceptionally well. 1. They struck a fun tone with Iron Man, modernizing it while keeping enough details to make it work. 2. And this is most important, I think: they got Captain America right. That's the iconic character right there and they proved that he could work even in a post-modern world. Superman could too. 3. They hit the marks on Avengers, not all of them, but enough. 4. They managed to launch a few smaller properties successfully, leaning on some specific house style elements that people enjoy while differentiating them with separate genres. Dr. Strange is next, which is magic horror, and thus unlike anything they've been doing. It all feels different. It all feels the same. Building on what Brian said, has Superman killed? Yes. But it led to Exile. It was shown as a massively horrible mistake and had huge, huge costs. It was also not the story that they led the post-crisis Superman with, and it existed within a broader spectrum than that. If you're only going to do one story every 3 years, or whatever, there are different things you can and can't get away with relative to if you're putting out four comics a month. If you do one Spider-Man movie every three years, you probably shouldn't do the one where Doc Ock takes over his brain. That's an interesting twist on the formula to see what something different would look like, but they're still trying to establish the movie baseline, and they went far afield because that's what excited Snyder and that's what WB thought that America would lap up because it loves seeing its heroes fall and shown to be even more horrible than we are. Look at the popcorn eating and hand-wringing in something like the Cosby note. It's a spectator sport, our national pastime.

IIRC, it was in late 1940, just over a year after Batman's first appearance, that the no killing and no guns rule went into effect. There have been exceptions here and there since in the comics (Son of the Demon and All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder he definitely kills people, TDKR and The Killing Joke there's debatable killings, and probably a few others I'm forgetting as far as killing. Batman with a gun happened at least a couple times early in the Silver Age by a new creative team that wasn't aware of the rule, and it's been a go-to "shit just got so serious Batman is breaking his rule!" moment for decades.) but it's mostly been a hard and fast rule since then. Miller's work is influential as hell, but I'd point out that his only major Batman story that was actually considered in continuity is Year One.

I disliked the Burton's with time, But yeah, in Batman 89, Bats blew the shit out of Ace Chemicals with a bomb from the Batmobile, that dropped right in front of the mooks shooting at it. So the kill count in 89 was pretty high since there seemed to be a bunch of mooks in that Chemical plant alone.

F Snyder and F burton and F Nolan are not mutually exclusive.

Fuck Snyder.

The pdf version http://deathvalleydriver.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/DVDVR177.pdf

In my opinion Neville/Finn was better than any of the Zayn/Joe matches and I'm one of the biggest Joe marks around here. You really didn't dig that one?

After seeing some of what's been going on in this thread this week, a few of you clearly need to watch this and chill out:

As someone that didn't love the first season, I actually liked the second season better than the first. I think the second season was structured and paced better than the first season. That said the first half of this season was definitely better than the second half. The first half was well paced and organized, the second half seemed a bit unfocused and felt a little like they didn't know how they wanted to get the characters to where they wanted to leave them at. Plus the off and on commitment to the mysticism of The Hand made for clunky storytelling. Matt ends up coming off like Scully in the later seasons of The X-Files where the viewer starts to become frustrated with the character's refusal to believe. I have to get around to watching Jessica Jones but Luke Cage should be fun.

Well that's no ordinary 18 year old.

I seriously hope Rey stays in Lucha Underground. It was practically made for him and in all earnestly, WWE never appreciated him enough for being someone who literally got over without any kind of push or backing. AAA needs to get their heads out their asses and pay the man. I rewatched Aztec Warfare and man, that was so fun. There was so much happening. You had Rey Mysterio's return, Jack Evan's, Drago's and PJ Black's war on the outside which evened up when Aerostar came in, you had the Mack getting his comeuppance with Marty the Moth and then coming after Cage, Cage had his thing with Mundo and Taya, Prince Puma tying up with all comers, Dragon Azteca showing why he used to be El Hijo del Mysterio, Famous B trying to solicit his sleeziness to the side, a midget, and a sleezy pornstar cop cowardly handcuffing himself to the fence to prevent being pinned. To top it all off, Mil Muertes gets fucked over by Pentagon stoking a feud between Catrina and Nil and Pentagon and Maestro Vampiro while the backset of Mantanza and Cuerto and his rivalry between Mysterio and Azteca in a shoddy Aztec temple in downtown Los Angeles where Cuerto might be trying to recreate an Aztec blood ritual and using Aztec cursed gold to draw fighters in. Holy shit this show is amazing. Oh and does Black Lotus/Angela Fong ever do anything in the ring?

Adrian street! Wendell Cooley! Adrian Street and RIP FUCKIN' ROGERS! James

Good article on the Knightmare sequence: http://nonsensicalramblings.com/think-pieces-unlinked-2/2016/3/25/batman-v-superman-the-theory-of-a-waking-knightmare I watched Flashpoint Paradox last night, thought it was interesting how if it wasn't for the letter, the entire alternate universe could be seen as a dream, like Bruce in the movie.

Oh, of course he does.

Saint should be in the HOF. Maybe he will go in, if WrestleMania is ever in London. Might be the only way any British guys do get in. My class for the HOF that year: British Bulldogs William Regal Lord Alfred Hayes Johnny Saint Mark Rollerball Rocco Big Daddy Giant Haystacks Kendo Nagasaki Kent Walton Chris Adams Mick McManus Jackie Mr TV Pallo Fit Finlay Ceremony to be held at the Royal Albert Hall.

I appreciate this tournament for the introduction to Dragon Lee. He's awesome.

My first robot has this odd limp, and he looks pitiful. I keep expecting him to come up to me and say "kill me. Put me out of my misery. I beg of you." Tweaks are needed.

THEY'RE GOING TO WIN THE EUROS EE-AYE-ADIO THEY'RE GOING TO WIN THE EUROS

Dope old school Simpsons reference on this episode too.

It's at least a 50/50 chance The New Day show up wearing various outfits from the Freebird Road video, right?

.........I had the same dream.........

It's depressing to think about how even with the injuries, how much better this Wrestlemania could have been with better booking. After the Rollins injury, turn Roman heel, have him become the new Corporate Champ, screwing Ambrose in the finals of the tournament for the vacant title at last year's Survivor Series. This leads to Ambrose winning the Rumble and getting this rematch against his former friend. Instead of running Taker vs. Lesnar III at last year's Hell in a Cell, save it for Mania. Have Shane face Triple H for control of the company, the guy that actually took his spot as heir to the throne. Make the giant mess of a ladder match the US Title match, and give Owens and Sami a one-on-one match for the IC Title.

Goyer is a credited writer for BVS, but I've read conflicting things about this movie. I've read that Chris Terrio was the main writer, but I've also read that Terrio came in late to BVS. I've also read that Goyer only wrote a first draft, so I dunno. I think what needs to happen is a deck shuffle. Get rid of Zack Snyder. Get rid of Ezra Miller for that matter. Barry Allen should not have a face I want to punch.

If we're saying Batman killed people, then we also assume that most goons in every comic book film are dying from the various energy blasts and punches from meta humans and mutants they are eating. Also, it's pretty blatant that Batman was driven over the edge and Superman brought him back to who he is. That's why he doesn't brand Luthor. There were a lot of issues in the movie but I didn't think any of them were Batman.

Cheap plug, if I may -- I run WCWworldwide.com and have been scanning and posting a lot of items this week in regards of the 15th Anniversary of the WCW Buyout. 15 years! I bet you all feel like senior citizens now after reading that! Anyways, I just transcribed an entire WOW Magazine interview with Eric Bischoff that took place in between the timeframe where Fusient Media announced their purchase of WCW but before the actual deal fell through. It's a great read considering it's Bischoff laying out the future of a company that didn't really have one, it's a real "What-If?" deal. I scanned in and transcribed a "Vader, Bloody Vader" article from RAW Magazine a couple of days ago. Monsoon_Classic from YouTube has joined the site and is always giving updates on the crap-ton of videos he uploads every week. My next major scan will probably be getting this gem onto the Internet: Just a quick "hey" to anyone here who'd be interested or lives on here through their phone never seeing my huge-ass signature block promoting all my hot garbage.

My brother still keeps an old Zenith at his house for Drunken Duck Hunt Fridays with his friends.

Best two words to hear: NOT GUILTY. I just got my client the first NG in that court since October, broke a streak of 17 straight convictions for that judge and those prosecutors. Judge was visibly upset. Prosecutor left for the bathroom after the verdict and threw up. I love my job.

Heelish Finn has so much more personality. Can't wait for the cruiser weight tourney, hoping Swann is in it. Bliss' achilles heel is her nose; this was what-- the third time she's had it cracked? Grave's is right, Emma and Asuka have had a great spin-off story of their own. While everyone ran away from it, Emma faced the tiger, purposely provoked it and became stronger in the process. Emma elevated herself by losing to Asuka. Also, Emma and Danna are great together, Danna is incredibly supportive of Emma especially when they lose. They're like the opposite of the BFF, it really is a positive inspirational relationship (if you ignore their heel tactics).

This is like FSW after Punk beat Ryback...

Because why wouldn't you wanna see Eddie Gilbert and Lanny Poffo wrestle in ICW? James

The back story on Lesnar's absence is that he refused to get off his iPhone, watching the Mil Muertes/ him bracket.

I'd pay to see No Ma'am take on League of Nations at Mania.

Also the Christen circling Edge saying 'please retire, please retire' and Edge saying 'I already did...didn't you too' and Christen looking sad saying 'I can't talk about that' before walking off with his head down. got an lol from me

In my head I always pronounce "Chi Chi Cruz" like Les Nessman pronounced "Chi Chi Rodriguez." Yes, I'm weird.

+1 for your unintentional(?) pun to close.