Bat "Mark Anthony" Masterson
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batmasterson.batfu.ink
Bat "Mark Anthony" Masterson
@batmasterson.batfu.ink
200 followers 300 following 3.5K posts
Masterson by name, Bat by nature. Made in Canada. Queer. Grandson of a War Bride. Fountain pen-stained Moby-Dick-vocate. Comics veteran. Tarot maven. Spoons at the hop of a drat.

-Et Zen Arcadia Ego-
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batmasterson.batfu.ink
images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(123/≆800)
Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin, the only comics weblog that has to register its wit as a lethal weapon, brings us a two-panel sequence from Daredevil #120. Mike provides no context, but rather than look up this storyline, I invite you to find him here on Bluesky and explain to you, like you're a child, a small child reading about his TV fave Daredevil: the Lawyer with Ears, explain why Isabella, Brown, and Colletta created this sequence of 1975 proportions? Panel 1 - Daredevil and Black Widow are in a room with a dresser and a mirror. DD, in reality New Yorker MM, wears his skintight red hero outfit. BW, in reality Russian NR, wears her skintight black identity-struggling outfit. He's swinging a super-sensitive hand at her bottom. Daredevil: SO WHY DON'T YOU SLIP INTO SOMETHING BARELY LEGAL? I WANT MY DATE TO BE THE MOST GORGEOUS THING AT THE PARTY! Black Widow: YOU MALE CHAUVINIST -- OW! SFX(butt impact): SLAP! DD: I SAID MOVE IT, DARLING. Panel 2 - Daredevil(now dressed in a tuxedo with ruffles because he wants to be Roger Moore), Black Widow (now dressed in a banana peel and a muppet pelt), and Ivan (also wearing a 70s tuxedo, but with a Siberian mustache) exit an elevator. DD (thought bubble): I THINK OUR HORSEPLAY BEFORE HAS LIFTED TASHA'S SPIRITS. AND IVAN IS CONTINUING THE PROCESS. Ivan: BLASTED MONKEY SUIT! WHY DID I HAVE TO COME? COULDN'T I WAIT OUTSIDE IN THE R0LLS?
November 30, 2025 at 9:08 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
Hastily pixelmatored image showing how nice and muppety a wreath can be.
November 29, 2025 at 11:19 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(122/≆800)
Here's one you can use around the festive halls: it looks like an entry from the DC Superhero Dictionary, but the lettering is so odd and the word so common, I half-wonder if someone's just repurposed the art. Then again, Robin's Adric-like furtive scampering in the midground seems to sell the premise. In any case, we're looking at the Batcave. You can tell because it's a cave with an orange floor and there's a Batmobile there. Batman is in the foreground, holding his hand to his gloved hand to the side of his helmeted face like he's a bad spy or a newscaster receiving an urgent bollocking from a producer. Batman says, "Ow! I usually say that when something hurts me. But this time, I said "Ow" because I heard a stupid joke."
November 29, 2025 at 4:59 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
Fear ye not. Lady Figaro has mounted the watchtower.
Black and white masked cat, high in the padded tree by the window by the door. Last night was her first overnight alone - no humans, no other cat, since she was a kitten in a library parking lot some years ago. There's been a neighborhood cat coming onto our porch for a while; she'll thunder out of the bedroom and bang at the door, but never cries out in her defense of the home. Tonight she's back in the tower (she hasn't gone up there since Mort got sick and we moved a bookcase into the hall), I think to show us she's got this and is a brave little cat.
November 29, 2025 at 6:40 AM
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"Seems awfully late for the southbound lanes to be so jammed," I said as we got close to home. "I know it's the mall and everything, but what deals are still going on?"

Jeez Louise.
https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/2-injured-in-san-jose-black-friday-mall-shooting-police/ “The moment I see people running, the three of us just started sprinting,” one mall visitor named Daniel Chen told KRON4 News. “There were crowds and swarms of people. I was terrified. We were freaking out. Everyone was just screaming. It was complete chaos — it was crazy. I was making sure that the three of us were together and that we weren’t leaving each other behind, and we were making sure that we’re not going where the shooter was. We were making sure we were following the crowd and making sure we could find an exit and get out.”
November 29, 2025 at 5:59 AM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
This camera roll image of the thing what killed me, is it the sixth from the top, or sixth from the bottom? I've got a lot of genres out there, hungry.
Marker placed by order of Santa Clara City Council by Historical and Landmark Commission (1970) concerning Point of Historical Interest No. 5: MORSE MANSION A photo that somehow thinks its date should be December 1969, but is actually from somewhen between the fall of the Empire and the reunion tour of the First Order. By my face, you can tell I don't think the little round robot can handle the situation.
November 27, 2025 at 12:31 AM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(121/≆800)
WE3 cover by Frank "Vins Da Hand" Quitely. A cybernetically-augmented and mecha-piloting trio of animals (dog, cat, and rabbit) stand atop the hill of grace under a blue sky in the best comic I'm probably never going to be able to read again. Christ, it's good. Christ, it made me weep.
November 26, 2025 at 6:14 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(120/≆800)
Ten minutes of shaking down the usual suspects and I still don't know where I got this from in 2005. To the casual viewer, this panel from a 1960s DC comic might seem like Superman's lost Alice B. Toklas film or something far saucier (Lois is holding a camera, after all), but upon realizing that the scattered clothes and torsos indicate some sort of mercantile situation rather than a party, one lets out a sigh of relief. It's just outfit hijinks! Wonder Woman in moddish civilian clothes runs her hands over the flowered fabric of Superman's blouse. Lois Lane in a green cheongsam snaps photos of the occasion. Superman is in a hep wig, an occult charm on a beaded chain, and the aforementioned pink blouse. Caption: BUT WONDER WOMAN IS NOT DETERRED. Wonder Woman: NOW DON'T TELL ME THIS BEAUTIFUL SOUL SHIRT AND NECKLACE DON'T PUT YOU IN ORBIT, SUPERMAN! LOIS-- WHAT DO YOU THINK? Lois Lane: THEY PUT HIM IN OUTER SPACE, ALL RIGHT! Superman: BUT THEY JUST AREN'T MY THING! I'LL STICK TO MY REGULAR COSTUME! MAYBE I'M JUST OLD-FASHIONED! The Donovan song came out in July, 1966. I don't know.
November 25, 2025 at 6:27 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
I had a vague notion, so I thought I'd look it up: Daniel Day-Lewis has only 30 acting credits on IMDB. I was pretty sure I'd never seen any of them all the way through.

I was wrong! He's in THE BOUNTY, which I watched because they filmed bits in Moorea. Don't remember him, though.
This is where I got my second tattoo. Copyright: © Philippe Bacchet - Tahiti, Polynésie française - tel (689) 40480170 - mail : bacchetphil@gmail.com
November 25, 2025 at 7:27 AM
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images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(119/≆800)
November 24, 2025 at 7:21 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
Actual footage.
My other gag for this picture of Harpo coming out a wall in Night in Casablanca is that it's the original concept design for ALIEN.
November 24, 2025 at 6:22 AM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
I like my neighborhood.
MORSE MANSION— VICTORIAN STYLE HOUSE, BUILT IN 1892 FOR CHARLES COPELAND MORSE, A HOUSE PANTER AND CO-FOUNDER OF FERRY-MORSE SEED COMPANY, WHO OCCUPIED IT A SHORT TIME BEFORE MOVING TO SAN JUAN BAUTISTA— NOT SANE, STOOD BY ITSELF AGAINST THE FLIGHT PATHS OF SAN JOSE AIRPORT, HOLDING SORORITIES IN. Same time of night, a few blocks over and down, but that's what modern camera settings will do, a rainbow crosswalk leads you to the barbers, the bars, the vape shop, the liquor store, the Euro/Asian restaurants, and the tattoo parlor that used to be Illusive Comics & Games.
November 24, 2025 at 4:21 AM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(118/≆800)
Again with the DC Superhero Dictionary. This time it's the entry for "World" (stylized "world"). Supergirl floats in purple space observing a blue flat circle with North and South America hastily blocked off in green. "I love this world," she thinks. "I love the Earth. Does the world know that? Do all the people on Earth know that?" She is very, very high.
November 23, 2025 at 9:26 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
I mean, come on.
Zoltar from Battle of the Planets. I would have picked an actual Gatchaman, or more likely the heroes of Star Blazers with that hair, that nose, that arrow design, but you want to talk about formative? Bat-eared, cloaked, red-lipped, non-binary Berg Katse was quite the draw.
November 22, 2025 at 7:46 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(114-117/≆800)
Frank Miller using the medium. Black and white Sin City drawing of Marv climbing a wall, being hit by a spotlight, but the shadow thrown in the infinite blank void is the bricks of the wall itself. It's poetry in ink. Marv says "WHUFF". Marv in the snow. Or maybe it's Hartigan. I think it's Hartigan. Maybe the other one was, too. No, it's Marv. Anyway, there's definitely a lot of ink being splashed around here. Miller does motion so well. Wait, there's a cross necklace that guy's wearing. Is this Marv? The black and white Thermopylae Alley panel from Sin City where all our trouble began. Miller could've avoided this. Spared us all worlds of hurt. But he didn't. He decided to put Dwight there stark shadow and Chuck Taylors and an unexamined sense of history. Narration sez: I'M OUTNUMBERED. OUTGUNNED. BUT THE ALLEY IS CROOKED. DARK. AND VERY VERY NARROW. FUNNELED INTO IT, THEY GET IN EACH OTHER'S WAY. THEY CAN'T SURROUND ME. THEIR NUMBERS DON'T COUNT FOR SO MUCH. SOMETIMES YOU CAN BEAT THE ODDS--WITH A CAREFUL CHOICE OF WHERE TO FIGHT. Frank Miller Sin City sketch with pink lines on red paper. For some reason Miller likes to put nipples on his gestural female figures, even though everything's just getting blocked out here. Part of the genius process, no doubt. I think it's Sin City, anyway. There's a male figure in a big coat kissing and grabbing a female figure in a really contorted way. Could be Daredevil and Elektra, really. Would fit the color scheme. Oh wait, the female has removed the male's eyeglasses? Was this the cop in Dame to Kill For? The narration text says "I'M YOURS. NOW. TONIGHT." Just straight Frank Tankin'.
November 22, 2025 at 6:39 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
A reflection, Harvey. A reflection.
ROBERT CULP as The Man With Two Faces in COLUMBO: THE ICE STALKER
November 22, 2025 at 6:59 AM
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This guy is cited on page 3 of the Liu "Knight-Errant" book and it's become clear that we're one-to-one talking about pulp (and super) heroes, starting in the 4th century BCE. 蜘蛛侠 is a menace!
"THE YU HSIA AND THE SOCIAL ORDER IN THE HAN PERIOD By TATSUO MASUBUCHI Assistant Professor of Economic History I. Introduction Ssū-ma Ch'ien, as well known, included a chapter Yu-hsia lieh-chuan or "the memoirs of the Yu-hsia," in Shih chi, specially for the purpose of displaying the merits of the yu-hsia. The yu-hsia were described as plebeian heroes, who, being endowed with physical and moral courage, protected the people from dangers at the risk of their lives. Ssū-ma Ch'ien highly admired the chivalrous temperament—the jên-hsia spirit—of the yu-hsia as a valuable factor in maintaining the social order based on the people's sentiment. In their deeds, however, the yu-hsia did not hesitate to infringe the State law, —sheltered criminals and refugees, and killed many in avenging relatives and friends. For this reason, historians upholding State authority as Pan Ku, Hsün Yüeh, criticized the yu-hsia unfavorably as disturbers of State law, and regarded them as outlaws. Shon since the Chan-kuo period the legalist such as Han Fei-tzū, who had emphasized the strengthening and centralizing of the State power, had denounced the yu-hsia as noxious worms which destroy the State." -The Annals of the Hitotsubashi Academy Vol. 3, No. 1 (October 1952), pp. 84-101
November 22, 2025 at 6:37 AM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
Oh yes. Time to put the whoosh in wuxia.
My recently rearranged desk (excerpt) with K2 keyboard in the foreground and lighting provided by a honking big monitor I've shackled to the Air. Newly arrived book from SFPL interlibrary loan: the out of print 1967 tome "The Chinese Knight-Errant" by James J.Y. Liu. I'm told it's an account of the genre that gave rise to the kind of stories that Tony Leung's character writes in 2046 and all that.
November 22, 2025 at 2:08 AM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
I can't believe you're making me be the one to bring up everyone's favorite biracial rock star with orientation-shifting erotic energy.
Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) and a Hong Kong Cavalier.
November 21, 2025 at 7:33 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(113/≆800)
Frank Miller Sin City sketch and final page from the "Family Values" story. The sketch is all motion and fire, a nude woman with gestural weapons, her eventual clothing lined out in red. The result is as though he drew white deathlights on a flat black background. The woman is now improbably strapped with both satin and Uzis. Her hair is lopsided extensions, her breasts absurdly defined. They say her name is Daisy.
November 21, 2025 at 6:55 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(112/≆800)
This is just. This is just to show. This is just to show you. This is just to show you my red sneaker. Photo of a page in An Illustrated Adventure From STARBLAZE GRAPHICS "Mage™ THE HERO DISCOVERED V-three" by Matt Wagner. It's from the Interlude story that was a backup in the Grendel series for a time. Matt's completely changed his style for this French diversion, and I love it. I also love this look for Kevin Matchstick - the long coat, the canvas trousers, the Hawaiian shirt worn over his signature lightning T, and especially, especially, his red Converse Chuck Taylors. I wore red Chucks before I ever read this, but man. Tarantino bought a coat to be like Mark from a Better Tomorrow? Ha. My heroes dress like me.
November 20, 2025 at 6:25 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
Accidentally scribbled a Pertwee, so I thought I'd add a dickey bow and some ruffle.
The third Doctor is not known for his bow ties, but dadgummit, they was there.
November 20, 2025 at 12:46 AM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(111/≆800)
Color four panel Swamp Thing sequence by Totleben, Bissette, and Moore. Abby died last issue, but don't worry: it's comics. You can always go to hell. Panel One - A lotus? Some swamp flower, pink and growing out of the muck. Narration: THERE ARE PEOPLE. THERE ARE STORIES. THE PEOPLE THINK THEY SHAPE THE STORIES, BUT THE REVERSE IS OFTEN CLOSER TO THE TRUTH. Panel Two - Swamp Thing's vegetated paw draws the flower from the muck. Narration: STORIES SHAPE THE WORLD. THEY EXIST INDEPENDENTLY OF PEOPLE, AND IN PLACES QUITE DEVOID OF MAN, THERE MAY YET BE MYTHOLOGIES. THE GLACIERS HAVE THEIR LEGENDS. THE OCEAN BED ENTERTAINS ITS OWN ROMANCES. Panel Three.1 - Side view of Swamp Thing holding the flower, contemplating it like a baby Yorick's skull. Narration: EVEN HERE. Panel Three.2 - Blue wash background to make room for more Moore. Narration: EVEN HERE, WITHIN THESE CHILL AND PERISHED THICKETS THAT KNOW NO WITNESS SAVE THE SLEEPING TOADS, EACH CURLED LIKE A GORGEOUS ALIEN FETUS BENEATH ITS STONE. THERE ARE STORIES EVEN HERE. Panel 4 - Pull back to a wider shot and we see Swamp Thing in the swamp, now looking over to his left (our right) to the legs of the Lady Abigail Arcane's corpse, draped in yellow, rest on green earth. Narration: STORIES THAT GROW, AS BLIGHTED TREES, INTO A TORMENTED PUZZLE. FRICTIONS THAT BECOME OVER-RIPE AND FESTER ON THE VINE. Narration: THE STORIES HERE HAVE BLOSSOMED INTO DEFORMITIES, NURTURED BY A CURIOUS SOIL.
November 19, 2025 at 7:02 PM
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images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(110/≆800)
November 18, 2025 at 6:18 PM
batmasterson.batfu.ink
images from a folder labeled "comics" gathered 1999-2025
(109/≆800)
Fake motivational poster featuring Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot. Slogan: ADVENTURE - Life's Too Short. Eat Pie. And see, this doesn't really work for me. Not as humor, a commentary on empty calls for carefree living, nor a good use of Flaming Carrot. For one thing, the whole bit depends on the irony between the platitude and the image (except in the case of the Rorschach one, where they lean into the text until it breaks). If this was a picture of Mr. Creosote exploding, that would work. As it is the Carrot, you must let the Carrot speak with his own fire tongue. Slogan: YABA-DAH - A Spider
November 17, 2025 at 6:45 PM