Batman Ninja

poster◊

This looks interesting. A bit weird it's called ninja but everyone is dressed up like a samurai.

edited 2nd Dec '17 12:55:23 AM by zsmg

Did you though Batman ninja will go around in black spandex and throw shurikens? That's not how actual ninjas are, they are sneaky masters of disguise who blend anywhere without provoking speck of suspicion. Thus Batman disguise as samurai is flawless.

They went all out with the talent for this one. Personally I think it’s gonna be worth it for Shogun Gorilla Grodd alone.

Harley looks wonderful along with Catwoman.

Indeed. This could be really awesome...or a massive disappointment. We'll know soon enough.

...Why is Grodd even there? He's got nothing to do with Batman.

They couldn't resist the whole "gorilla shogun" concept? It's Japanese, there had to be at least ONE insane thing on it.

Ok then.

Given that the whole thing seems to be the Batman characters replacing various figures from Sengoku Jidai (Joker is Nobunaga, so I'm guessing the others will be too) I'm not surprised by it.

Well, Hideyoshi Toyotomi was known as The Monkey, so maybe this is their way of kind of poking at that - with an ape Shogun to reference that time a guy called "The Monkey" became Shogun.

It's a relatively obscure Batman villain, Gorilla Boss. His human name was George Dyke, before he escaped the death penalty by having his brain transplanted into the body of a gorilla.

Wait, it’s not Grodd?

The cast list* doesn't specify, but I'd like to believe that someone on the writing staff did a deep dive into Batman lore.

• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt7451284/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm

...damn.

DC has a lot of Gorillas.

Or we go Occam's Razor and presume they went with the character more people are likely to know.

Ultra-Humanite's gonna sue.

Ultra-Humanite did it a couple of decades later. But he was the first DC supervillain to have his brain transplanted into a woman's body.

It could also be Jackanapes that premiered in Batman #666 in 2007 written by Grant Morrison.

About gorillas, you can thank for that Julius Schwartz. He at some point noticed that comic sold better if it had on the cover a) crying, b) purple or c) a gorilla. He even created a gorilla-per-month policy, which actually worked more as restriction then enforcement.

And that's how we got Gorilla Boss, Titano, Grodd, Karmak, Monsieur Mallah, Super-Ape, Priscilla, King Krypton, Gorilla Wonders, Mikora, Bruna, Gorilla King, Sam Simeon, Solovar, Congorilla...

edited 3rd Dec '17 12:36:03 PM by Sunchet

Er, that's not a ninja. That's a samurai.

Funny thing is BTAS had two episodes about that (Kyodai Ken, one of the better original BTAS villains, unlike say...Red Claw or Baby Doll).

There's no real difference. Some samurai specialised in unconventional warfare. Elements of these skills can still be found in some old samurai schools.

edited 13th Jan '18 8:01:30 AM by TerminusEst

Hell, Ninja are supposed to dress as anything to do their job, so it's entirely possible for a ninja to look like a samurai as well.

Ninjutsu is a samurai skillset. A highly specialised one.

The ninja manuals we have left were all written by either samurai or former samurai and belong to samurai schools. Commoners could be used as raiding parties, informants and spies, but they wouldn't have access to the extensive training and education required to become proper operatives, merely what the samurai taught them.

To what degree there's invention and myth regarding their activities is debated though.

In this case, Batman being a samurai who also has a specialty in covert activities is quite appropriate.

edited 13th Jan '18 9:58:08 AM by TerminusEst

I hate the gorilla villains in DC. They always have dumb backstories and just end up being overly silly or corny.

Yeah Grodd the super mass-murderer is silly.

Gorilla's are definitely the silliest characters in comic-books alongside the guy with eyes in his fingers & the mind-controlling worm that plagues Captain Marvel.