I'm going to come right out and say it - I do not like what I see in this, the first trailer for Batman Live. "But what about Poison Ivy and Harley," you say?

I see them at cons. Hell, I see them at Forbidden Planet on Free Comic Book Day and on my Facebook and Flickr feeds daily - and the quality is a lot better than this. Is it possible that, as a victim audience member of the pre-reboot Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, I've been soured on the idea of the superhero stage show?

It's possible. But the truth is, I'm opposed to garish displays of low culture in all their forms, and I'm opposed to the dumbing down of art in order to make short-term financial gains. And I think that this is a cynical attempt at making some cash that will negatively impact the long-term health of not only comics, but of the multimedia comics-based licensing machine that Marvel and DC are clearly hoping to evolve over the next decade.

Maybe it's the Schumacher Robin mask, bringing up way too many bad memories of the '90s, a decade that began with comics set to take over the world, and ended with the industry on the brink of extinction. Or maybe the mask is a symptom of an industry-wide failure to learn from the past.

In any event, Batman Live is set to make its debut at the Manchester Evening News Arena on July 19, and we'll see what the reviewers have to say.