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It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?

We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.

Welcome to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film and how it shaped our thoughts on a recent release, or in this case, a recent TV show.

I'm Keith Phipps here with Scott Tobias, Tosha Robinson, and Genevieve Pasky.

This week, we're breaking format just a little bit for a kind of appendix to our last two

outings. In our previous two episodes, we discussed The Dark Night and Joker, two different

takes on the classic Batman villain, The Joker. Going back a bit further, it's hard to imagine

either film happening without the events

that changed the comic book world in 1986. That year saw the publication of Frank Miller's The Dark

Night Returns, a Batman story set much later than usual in the superhero's life. It also took him

to much grimmer, borderline apocalyptic places, as he faced a Gotham, overrun with a new breed

of criminal, and faced unsettled business with everyone from the Joker to Superman.

That same year, DC Comics published Watchman, written by Alan Moore with art by Dave Givens.

Watchman takes place in a world just off from the world we know, one in which costume vigilantes took to the streets in the 30s and 40s,

and advances in nuclear physics, accidentally gave rise to a kind of Superman.

But like the world we knew in the 80s, it was also one teetering on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

...