Hello! I cannot believe it’s been over a year since the last Artificial Ink Drops post. That was a delinquent amount of time. Not for a lack of things to share, but this newsletter often fell to the bottom of my to-do list in what was (another) strange year. I plan to catch up over the next few weeks as there is much to discuss!
But for now, as both a promise to return to form, and a soft relaunch of the newsletter, allow me to share a guest post that I recently contributed for the Dust on the VCR newsletter curated by Jeremy Burgess. He shares weekly essays about classic cinema on this Substack, and is a screenwriter in his own right. His film Don’t Die won the audience choice for Best Alabama Film at the 2023 Sidewalk Film Fest.
Check out my short essay on how “Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993), the Best Theatrical Batman, Was Made for Home Video”, embedded here below.
Jeremy and I met earlier this year after bonding over both being writers and graduates from Homewood High School. It was a rite of passage for some students to have the same teacher, Mrs. McGuffey, for AP English in both 9th and 12th grade. We were two of those students, though I think he was a senior while I was a freshman.
Anyway, I followed Dust on the VCR ever since, and was looking for a way to contribute. When I realized that my YouTube channel Watchtower Database wouldn’t have the bandwidth to cover Batman: Mask of the Phantasm for its 30th anniversary (on Christmas Day!), I knew that Dust on the VCR would be my outlet, and in keeping with the themes of the newsletter, I decided to explore how a Batman film that was meant for home video was reworked at the last minute for theaters.
Several members of the Batman: Mask of the Phantasm crew shared their insights with me during the writing of this piece, so I’d like to again extend my thanks to writer/producer Alan Burnett as well as storyboard designers Kevin Altieri, Brad Rader, and Dan Riba. Some of these folks shared the essay on their personal social media pages, and I think that’s pretty cool! It was actually pretty surreal.
But I will keep this post on the shorter end. Thanks for opening the email if you’re back after the year hiatus. Or if you found me from Dust on the VCR, I promise that Artificial Ink Drops is not dead, and new updates are on the horizon. 2023 saw several creative projects: narrative shorts, documentary production, and comic books, and I need to scream about them to the world! But we’ll do that next time.