Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting

I've talked before about how much I love Street Fighter II and beat 'em up games in general, and when I was a young wan playing my cousin's SNES, I'd always play as the girl character. Mortal Kombat? I'm Kitana or Mileena (Sonya just seemed kinda boring in comparison). Killer Instinct? I'm Orchid. Street Fighter? I'm obviously Chun Li.


She's a character I've wanted to dress up as for a long time, but it always just sort of seemed like it would be a bit too hard. I mean, the dress! The spiky bracelets! All that kicking! However, after taking a look on Adverts.ie, I found a short blue cheongsam being sold not too far from where I live, and by a weird stroke of luck, it turned out that I knew the seller, who very generously offered to give it to me, so I swapped with her for a bottle of wine. It needed a little bit of altering, but thankfully my mam is handy with a sewing machine, which was just as well as I can hardly sew a button without stabbing my finger with a needle.

The spiky bracelets needed to be huge and cartoony. I didn't want to use the small studded leather type ones that I wore back when I was a nineteen year old metaller in a homemade Slayer t-shirt, so I was going to have to make them. Which I did! Out of foam, duct tape and party hats, of all things.


I'm not going to lie, I was pretty excited with how they turned out.


The pigtail covers were white circles of fabric with a bit of elastic to keep them over my hair and I stuck some gold star stickers to the ribbons, which isn't strictly canon but I figured if anyone deserves some gold stars, it's Chun Li. Plus they matched the gold thread in the dress, so why the hell not.


I wanted orangey-red coloured tights for the old school Chun Li look and found a pair that were just the right colour. Unfortunately they were from American Apparel, a shop I dislike quite a bit because their ad campaigns look like they've been shot by a sex offender. However, there was 20% off on the day I went in, so that was some consolation. The runners were from New Look and reduced to €6, in fact they were the only pair left and just happened to be in my size. I have to say, this costume mostly came together through blind luck and duct tape.

Anyway! Off we went to Rocky Horror in the Sugar Club for their Halloween show, we had a blast, there was a lot of pretend fighting and I managed not to fall over, which is most unlike me. Speaking of pretend fighting, here I am squaring up to my friend Fi, aka Harley Quinn on the night.


If that was a real video game I'd totally play it.

Good Queen Jess

Warning: Contains lots of excitable caps lock action.

Last weekend, I skittered off to London to see Blithe Spirit on the West End. It's a very funny Noel Coward play, which happened to be starring a lady you may have heard of before and who I may have mentioned every so often in adoring tweets and whatnot, i.e. ANGELA AMAZO LANSBURY.

Luckily, my supercool friend Brenda lives in London and is a fellow Jessica Fletcher fan, so it stood to reason that we'd go to see her onstage together. Ridiculous premium seats were bought, because fuck it, IT'S JESSICA FLETCHER AND I WANT TO SEE HER EYEBALLS.


The day finally came, wonky excitable selfies were taken outside the theatre, a dinner of Fruit Pastilles, peanuts and delirious joy was had in Row H, because we weren't organised enough to have dinner before the show at 7.30. Incredulous whispers of "It's actually happening" and "We're in the same building as her RIGHT NOW" were shared.

The curtain rose. The show began. There were around fifteen minutes of sparkling dialogue, witty retorts and mentions of the soon-to-arrive Madame Arcati, who travels everywhere on her bicycle, apparently, which prompted me to happily hiss "OF COURSE SHE DOES!" at Brenda.


The doorbell rang on stage. She walked out.

SHE WAS FINALLY HERE. The place exploded in applause. Myself and Brenda almost gave her a standing ovation then and there, before she'd even said a word.

The show was absolutely brilliant, which was a pleasant bonus seeing as I would have been happy even if it was just her knitting a scarf for two and half hours. The whole cast were great but you couldn't take your eyes off Angela, who also delivered some knockout physical comedy BECAUSE SHE'S THE MOST SPECIAL LADY IN THE WORLD.


After the show (when we finally got to stand up and whoop and cheer our admiration) a beeline was made for the stage door, where a crowd had already gathered and barriers were in place. There were to be no autographs, warned the security man, (which was fair enough, seeing as she's an 88 year old lady after all and she'd be there all evening if that was the case) when she came out she was going wave to everyone and make her way to her car and that would be that.

She finally emerged from the door and the crowd went nuts. I took around twenty shockingly bad blurry photos, partly because I was so excited and also because I suddenly realised I was looking at her through my phone when she was RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME IN REAL LIFE, so I wasn't even looking at the screen for a lot of it. But I got one! And that's all I needed!


OH HAI JESSICA

Best. Night. Ever.

Ready? Fight! In An Organised Fashion!

While MarioKart on the SNES was the first video game I ever played, Street Fighter II wasn't far behind. I love Street Fighter II and because of it, beat 'em ups were my absolute favourite type of game to play when I was growing up. Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Dead or Alive, Soul Blade, love, love, love, LOVE.

So when the Bear got me a collection of early 90s Street Fighter II pins as a present, I was obviously delighted. (However, stuff from the 90s being listed as "vintage" on eBay most certainly does not delight me.) And look! How cool! Right in the nostalgia!


But what to do with such a deadly set of little badass motherfuckers? It was only a few days ago that I finally realised how I could use them, in a way that was both practical AND showed them off.

I had been thinking that our kitchen needed a memo board, because I kept finding expired Tesco and Boots vouchers that would get lost in the piles of crap that kept accumulating all over the flat. So during a rather epic clear-up over the weekend, I had an idea. A stroke of goddamn genius, if I may say so myself.

STREET FIGHTER MEMO BOARD.

One trip to Ikea later and BLAMMO! 


I'm so pleased with myself, it's actually ridiculous.


Organisation has never been so kickass.

Glamour and Glitter, Fashion and Fame! And A Bunch of Dudes In Charge

As surely everyone is aware by now - or at least everyone who'd be interested in such a thing - a live-action Jem and the Holograms film is in the works. (Also, thanks everyone who sent me links to the news, I kinda love that people associate me with Jem, Sweet Valley High and zombies. Three of the Best Things Ever.)

Anway, Jem! She of the truly outrageous pastel pink hair and blingy Eighties fashion and damn catchy songs and secret double life!

Me, on hearing the news.

I've written about the wonder that is Jem here before and have been hooring my way through episodes of it on Netflix, often while tweeting my appreciation of things like ALL OF THIS AMAZING ZEBRA PRINT.

Oh, The Misfits. Never change. And your songs ARE better.

However, the more I've heard about the film, the more cautious my excitement has become. In fact, you might say that I'm downright skeptical of the whole thing. One of the reasons for this is the bro trifecta that appear to be in charge of the endeavour.

Namely, Scooter Braun (Justin Bieber's manager), Jon M. Chu (director of two Bieber documentaries, Step Up 2: The Streets, GI Joe: Retaliation and other mediocre-at-best films with colons in their titles) and Jason Blum (producer of the Paranormal Activity franchise). HMMM.

Maybe it makes a kind of commercial, tweeny-pop sense for such Bieber-associated involvement, if that's the demographic they're hoping to snag with the film, but I can't help scrunching up my face at the very notion, seeing as Bieber is essentially the Joffrey Baratheon of this decade. Even Sansa Stark said so.

And considering that the majority of the show's existing fans are women around my age who think Bieber is an entitled little shithead who would benefit hugely from a root up the hole, I know I'm not alone in my unease about the whole thing.

Secondly, the original Jem creator and writer, Christy Marx has been left out of the whole process, which is some Grade A bullshit. So not only are a bunch of dudes taking over telling the story of Jem, Hasbro have shut out the WOMAN WHO CREATED IT.

I know, Donna. I know.

Considering how female-centric Jem and the Holograms is - an all-female band with a lead singer who's also a record executive and den mother to a home full of orphaned girls, not to mention the legit awesome all-girl rival band of punky bitches - why the hell aren't there any women involved in developing the movie?

I feel you, Kimber. Jem would have to hold me back too.

Also, they're "crowd sourcing creativity" for the film, with an open call for ideas for costumes, casting, songs and even audition tapes, as confirmed in their dumb announcement video, where one of them keeps randomly firing some kind of Nerf gun for no goddamn reason. Can you tell I'm not overly fond of them?



The "if you have a cool mom, she'll definitely know what it is" bit really rankled me for some reason. I think I told the video to fuck off at that point.

Anyway, I really want to be excited about a Jem film and maybe they'll get a whole bunch of female writers on board and it won't suck and it might turn out to be a really fun film, in which case I'll gladly stand corrected. But right now I'm apprehensive as hell.


I'll leave you with a Misfits classic. Good luck getting it out of your head for the next four days.

Then A Hero Comes Along...And It's a Guy. Again.

The Incredible Hulk film was on the other night (the good one, with Edward Norton) and as I was watching it, I started to get a bit annoyed. Not because of the film itself really, but because I started thinking about other superhero reboots and how it seemed like the guys get unlimited tries at a franchise, but if a female superhero film isn't any good or doesn't make money, well, too bad, I guess people just don't like lady superheroes.

I also tried to think of films that actually did feature a female superhero, and got as far as Catwoman and Supergirl before drawing a blank. And of course, we already know that Marvel just think girls want to bone superheroes rather than be one. So, I got to wondering...


I looked up the Wikipedia page for American superhero films and did a little bit of counting on the list of live-action ones. I then sprained my ankle like a fucking genius and had a few days trapped on my couch, so I decided to make an infographic of sorts out of the counting I did, in between episodes of Murder She Wrote and 30 Rock. I didn't count any of the superhero films coming out this year, because none of them have been released yet.

So here we go!

Now, I know that the list I'm working off isn't the most exhaustive one, as it's only American films and only live-action, but it's not a bad barometer for the superhero film genre in general.

Also, there are a lot of terrible movies on the list and a lot direct-to-video stuff (The Crow: Wicked Prayer, anyone? Yeah, didn't think so), but they all still count. And the superhero films coming out this year are all about dudes, apart from X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is only mostly about dudes. Brilliant.


(I know that Wonder Woman is going to be in the Man of Steel sequel in 2016, but let's face it, that film is going to be all about Superman and Batman - oh, hello Batman...AGAIN. If they make her into a love interest I'm going to throw my shoes at the goddamn cinema screen.)

Apparently I Need a Hero

So, in case it hasn't been totally clear before now, I kinda fucking love theme parks. The thing is, I usually end up being so busy trying to get on every rollercoaster as often as possible and generally being overexcited and breaking into a run without quite meaning to, that I invariably don't get around to having a proper look in the park shops until it's half an hour before everything closes.

The day we went to Islands of Adventure while in Florida was no different (apart from the almost passing out from the heat and being wheeled to the backstage medical area bit) and this time there were Harry Potter and superhero shops to be frantic in.

While scuttling around the Marvel shop, intent on getting myself a t-shirt, I realised that getting one with, say, the Captain America shield logo or Thor or Storm on it was looking less and less likely. Because the only lady sized t-shirts were these ones:

The fuck, guys? I mean, yes, Wolverine is a big massive ride and all and The Avengers was basically Arm Fest 2012, but surely it wouldn't kill you to throw in a few options that AREN'T about boning superheroes and basically the cotton equivalent of twirling your fucking hair and giggling like a twat.

Oh wait, they did.

LADIES NIGHT? Are you serious? Invisible Woman, Hellcat, Storm and Spiderwoman are already pretty fucking cool and don't actually need a lame caption that makes them sound like a drunk hen party. The worst part is, I was actually half tempted to get it, as it was the only ladies top in the whole place that wouldn't make the wearer sound like a simpering groupie.


It was doubly annoying because the men's t-shirts were really cool but in my case a man's t-shirt + a big rack is not particularly conducive to not looking like a sack of potatoes. Now, I know there's plenty of decent superhero themed ladies tops online and in other places, but I don't think it was unreasonable of me to expect that I'd be able to get something with Jean Grey or literally any other female hero on it, when the outside of the shop looks like this:


Come on! There's a giant, fuck-off, kickass Rogue cutout on the stupid place and they can't even stick her on a t-shirt? BOO. What's worse, when I was looking for pictures for this post of the tops I saw that evening, I ended up on Marvel's official online merchandise shop, to find that they have all of FOUR different t-shirts for women and uh oh, what's that, little girls who like superheros? Oh, I'm sorry, according to MarvelStore.com YOU DON'T EXIST.


Whatever. I got a Gryffindor top and gloves instead.

Orlando Boom

After a gloriously fun holiday in sunny, stickily humid Florida, I have now returned to grey, also fairly stickily humid Dublin. Yay. However, I've returned to find that I've been nominated in the Pop Culture and Humour categories in the Irish Blog Awards, so genuine thanks and awkward hugs to the kind people who saw fit to throw my blog into the ring. You're sound.

Anyway, the holiday. I'm not even sure where to start. It involved four theme parks, one alligator sighting, two evenings of pirate-themed crazy golf, eight hours of wandering around the Kennedy Space Centre, two dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts and me almost passing out from the intense heat while queuing in Hogsmeade. Of all places. I ask you.

So here are a few of the things I learned in the city of Orlando:


My family and I are kinda brilliant at theme parks.
Florida in August = enormo-queues. But we didn't stand in line for more than half an hour or so for anything, bar two rides that broke down while we were mid-queue (shakes fist at E.T. and Ariel), however that's just down to sucky timing and couldn't be helped. Fastpass tickets (the free Disney ones, not the Universal Studios ones that they charge you for. NEVER those ones), single rider queues and just waiting until later in the evening are all handy queue avoidance techniques.


Also, there is a FANTASTIC rollercoaster in Universal Studios that allows you to choose a song to listen to while you're being flung upside-down at a frankly alarming height. The Bear and I both ended up picking Sabotage by the Beastie Boys. I had a sore throat the next day.

I will judge people based on their bumper stickers.
For example, when I saw one that said "Obama is what happens when you allow idiots, illegals and welfare recipients to vote", I came to the conclusion that the guy driving that jeep was a racist, backwards and deeply unpleasant dickhead.

Florida laughs in the face of subtlety.


LAUGHS. HYSTERICALLY.

There's nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-car monorail!
You need to take either a ferryboat or a monorail to Disney World from the car park. We took the monorail (because, obviously) and were then trapped on it for a very sweaty extra ten minutes when the monorail ahead of us broke down (because....obviously).


We got the boat back when we were leaving.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is AH-MAY-ZING.
Universal's Islands of Adventure theme park is already eleven kinds of deadly, but throw in Hogwarts and the village of Hogsmeade and you've got yourself one overexcited me.


Admittedly, our day there didn't start off too spectacularly, seeing as I got walloped with heatstroke while queuing for the first ride of the day, a Hippogriff rollercoaster. It was completely unexpected, as I've never had a weird reaction to heat before. I was drinking water and lemonade since we arrived at the park and we were standing in the shade when it happened, but out of nowhere I got really lightheaded and dizzy and just felt sick. My hands seized up and my fingers, feet and face went all tingly, so I was left with useless numb crab claw hands that had to be prised open by the Bear so I could hold a bottle of water. Disaster!

My first proper look at Hogsmeade was from a wheelchair, while being bumpily escorted over the cobbles to the first aid area by a big burly paramedic dude. It wasn't exactly ideal. However, after around twenty minutes and a lie down in an air conditioned room, I was fine again. Anyway, it actually all worked out in the end, because thanks to my little episode we got to skip the queues for the Harry Potter rides for the rest of the day. TOTALLY WORTH IT.

NASA is super cool.
We expected to spend around half a day at the Kennedy Space Centre, and yet found ourselves traipsing around the Atlantis shuttle exhibit at seven o'clock that evening.


Shortly after we arrived home, Armageddon was on telly and showed Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler dry-humping in one of the blasters on the base of the rocket in the photo above. "Get out of Apollo 8, you jerks!" I said. They didn't listen.

America is terrible at chocolate (Ok, I already knew this). 


BUT DEAR GOD THEY RULE AT ALL OTHER KINDS OF JUNK FOOD.

There is a Disney-built town called Celebration.
As we were driving to and from the theme parks, I kept noticing road signs for a place called Celebration and remembered a documentary I'd seen years ago about this creepy town built by Disney where everything was perfect and the people living there were Disney obsessives.


So, naturally we went there for breakfast one morning. It's actually kinda deadly. There's ACTUAL white picket fences all over the place, the houses and buildings are all painted in ice-cream shades of pastel and the signage has a decidedly art deco twang to it. It's like Disney meets Stepford Wives. I liked it.

Their wall sockets look like worried little faces.

"Oh nooo!" They all said.

Also, we saw Jesse Metcalfe while we were killing time waiting for our flight home in the airport in Chicago. The Bear was the one who noticed him, because he was being an aggressive dick to the woman who was with him, who we later reckoned must have been his PA or something. Dad refused to believe that he's a douchebag, because he loves him on Dallas. He was a douchebag though.

CELEBRITY GOSSIP. BOOM. You're welcome.

Hate The Freys, Not The Game

Since the emotional goddamn ROLLERCOASTER that was the latter half of series three of Game of Thrones, also known as the time George R.R. Martin trampled all over our feelings and punched us in the kidneys on his way out, I've been frantically horsing my way through A Storm of Swords, A Feast For Crows and now A Dance With Dragons in order to find out what the HELL happens next and it's all just so GODDAMN EXCITING.


As such, I've been wanting to write a post about it all, but there's no real point I want to make, so these are really just a bunch of my thoughts on the books, TV show and characters. Mostly because I just wanted the opportunity to call Joffrey a malevolent little fucker.

(Just so you know, I'm not going to give anything away past the point where the TV show finished up, so there'll be no book spoilers from me. Book spoiler people are the worst and I REFUSE TO BE THOSE PEOPLE.)

The Books

I have to say, I am absolutely loving the books so far. At first I thought I might end up being slightly bored or impatient with them when I knew what would happen next up to a point, having been so familiar with the TV series at that stage, but I found myself eating up all the extra details and back stories and characters that there just wasn't room for in the telly version.

I also learned that tourneys are sort of like the Westerosi version of a festival, as they mostly consist of lots of brightly coloured tents and people getting hammered in a field. Like Electric Picnic, but more murdery. The Oxegen of Westeros.


Before I started reading the series, I had heard a few people mention how overly descriptive the books are, how there's endless paragraphs about food and what everyone's wearing (boiled leather, mostly), and yeah, there is quite a bit of that but I'm actually really into it, especially the food stuff.

It's weird, because cookery shows bore the living fuck out of me, but for some reason I love knowing exactly what everyone's eating, whether there's grease dripping down their fingers or not and what EXACTLY the wild boar or lark or trout was roasted with. It's like one big medieval Marks & Spencer food porn ad.


And anyway, it's not nearly as bad as The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which could spend anything up to two solid pages at a time listing furniture that Lisbeth Salander bought in Ikea. Now THAT shit was boring.

The TV Show

Here's the thing about the TV show. If you've only watched it once and haven't read the books, go back and watch it again RIGHT NOW. It gets even better the second (and third!) time you watch it, as this time around you're not wondering who the hell this person is and why these people don't seem to get along and just what the flip a maester is when he's at home. This time you can actually just enjoy it and end up noticing a heap of things that passed you by the first time.

It took a second viewing for me to realise that I didn't have a fucking clue what was going on the first time I watched it. I was so busy getting my head around the eleventy million houses of Westeros that I didn't even register Theon Greyjoy and what his deal was until the second series, when he dropped the hand on his sister. I was genuinely surprised to see that he'd been knocking around Winterfell all through the first series while re-watching.

Also, you're a dick.

The fact that there's so many Irish actors in it and so much of it is filmed in Belfast means that spotting certain characters out and about in Dublin can happen surprisingly often. You just don't get that with Mad Men or Breaking Bad or True Blood. So far I've seen Joffrey, Ser Jorah and Bronn out and about in the city.

It's a weird feeling seeing Joffrey in real life. I know that Jack Gleeson is meant to be a totally lovely guy in real life and I'm sure he is (I mean, look at him messing with this pug puppy for God's sake! A pug puppy!) but Joffrey is just such an unrelentingly malevolent little fucker (yay!) in the show, that when he's walking past you minding his own non-sociopathic business the urge to kick him in the shins or at least glower at him is disconcertingly strong. The poor guy. I'm suddenly beginning to understand those old ladies you hear about who accost soap opera villains in the street, shouting at them for being such terrible people.

I actually saw Jorah and Bronn within minutes of each other while a few of us were standing outside The Stag's Head last year, which led to excited speculation about the potential of a secret cast party happening somewhere in the city centre and a brief temptation to follow them. Gotta catch 'em all. (We didn't follow them. That would be creepy.)

The Excellent Female Characters

As well as making for addictive viewing and reading, Game of Thrones features some brilliant female characters and unlike certain other shows *cough*THEWALKINGDEAD*cough*, there's loads of room for more than one strong woman at a time. (I'm still raging with that show for making Andrea into a headwrecking gowlbag as soon as Michonne came on the scene. Dicks.)

Dammit George, get over here so I can give you a big feminist hug.

Anyway, in the Seven Kingdoms and across the Narrow Sea we've got:

Daenerys Targaryen - Stormborn, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons and GODDAMN KHALEESI OF THE GREAT GRASS SEA.

Asha Greyjoy (or Yara Greyjoy on telly) - fearsome pirate queen and badass maritime motherfucker.

Cersei Lannister - okay she's riding her brother and an AWFUL wagon but you have to admit that she's one bad bitch who gets shit done. Nobody can wield a backhanded compliment like the Lioness of Casterly Rock.

Brienne of Tarth - kickass knight, excellent with a sword and won the fuck out of a tourney melee against a bunch of dudes. (Who, by the way, is an utter knockout in real life.)

Arya Stark - ferocious she-wolf hellbent on revenge, destined for utter greatness and takes absolutely no shit.


That's before we even get near Catelyn Stark's steely resolve, Shae's wily resourcefulness or Margaery eye-fucking and power-dressing her way to queendom. Not to mention the awesomely acid-tongued Lady Olenna aka the Dowager Countess of Highgarden and Sansa Stark, who (to drag out the Downton Abbey comparison) is sort of the Lady Edith of the show - the ginger girl you don't really like all that much to begin with, but before you know it you're 100% rooting for her and digging her quiet strength. Oh AND wildling Ygritte not giving a single fuck, being handy with with a spear and the absolutely magical way she says Jon Snow.


The Ridebags

So, yes, the characters in the series, both male and female, are great and complex and flawed and in some cases just trying to get along as best they can in the fucked up realm of Westeros. But allow me to lower the tone somewhat by saying DAMN there are some total foxes in this series. And in fairness, the show is pretty much an equal opportunites deal in terms of whose ass you get to see, which makes a nice change from the usual naked lady/fully dressed dude trope, like the skeezy Blurred Lines video or the People of the Year series of GQ covers from last year.


As well as typically gorgeous people, (i.e. Jaime Lannister and the big Disney prince head on him and Daenerys being ridiculously beautiful) it also provides an array of weird and slightly guilty crushes, like Sandor Clegane and Roose Bolton, and those are always fun. I'd also just like to point out what a difference a few years and change of hair colour makes in the case of Iain Glen. Villain in Tomb Raider? Move along, unappealing oily-haired man. Ser Jorah? BACK THAT FINE ASS UP, MORMONT. No friendzone for you. A touch of face cragginess did him the world of good.

So what I'm really wondering now is what the hell I'm going to do when I run out of books to read. Oh, who am I kiddding, it'll probably be a fourth go at series one and onwards.

Back To School

I can't remember what I was looking for online when I came upon these images. Whatever it was, it ended up being quickly sidelined, as all my attention had now shifted to this shiny new distraction. The distraction in question being the concept art for Gotham High, an abandoned idea for a Batman cartoon set in high school. Artists Jeff and Celeste published the images on their blog last year, explaining that they were asked to develop the idea, which was based on a drawing they had previously sent to DC Comics. The project never got off the ground, but they came up with some rather deadly images for it.


I love me some Harley Quinn (when she's done properly, that is), so I got quite excited when I saw the kick ass poster above, which was the original drawing and starting point for the idea. The rest of the Gotham High artwork shows a teenage Bruce Wayne and Barbara Gordon surrounded by the usual array of Gotham rogues very nicely rendered as high school students.

Click to enlarge. Do it!

The online reaction to the idea was mostly that of Batfans getting all cross and shouting about what a terrible idea it was and how glad they were that it'll never get made. Which seemed a bit harsh. Their biggest problem with it was that it ignores the history of so many of the characters, but seeing as comic universe back stories are always evolving and being rewritten to suit different demands, I think we should all just calm the fuck down and put our pants back on. The show isn't going to be made, so these just offer a fun new spin on established characters in the Batman canon.


Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) is the cute, bespectacled girl next door, Bruce is all handsome and mysterious, Scarecrow is an indie hipster type and Selina Kyle (Catwoman - yay!) is the femme fatale troublemaker. OBVIOUSLY. 


I quite like the look that was given to Catwoman. I'm always in favour of purple hair though - as if I needed another reason to love her - and the leopard print skirt is a nice touch to her bad girl outfit.


The Joker appears pretty much the same as he does in the poster, but Harley is toned down a notch, with no facepaint or side-torso to be seen. She still looks great though, her expression is equal parts endearing and mental. Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy) is a hot green-skinned goth chick, Bane is a wrestler jock and Mr. Freeze is a baldy cool guy.


I wouldn't have thought that being a cheerleader would quite fit with the goth girl role that Poison Ivy was cast in, but I do love this picture of her and Harley Quinn as black-clad cheer squad members. Catwoman is obviously too cool to be a cheerleader. She's probably around the back of those tiered bleachers smoking a fag. I do actually think this could have been a great cartoon, like X Men: Evolution, but more fun. There are more images over on the Jeff and Celeste site and I suggest you have a look at them, because they're brilliant.