Broken Frontier

The last time we saw “I’m a Marvel and I’m a DC” – ItsJustSomeRandomGuy’s trademark YouTube series – the toy-based serial had wrapped up a funny, albeit convoluted, “Afterhours” series and was starting a second season several months later. Just before the super-hero movie season, we reviewed the start of the second season. I decided to see how the rest of the season fared after the end of the summer super-hero blockbusters, only to find RandomGuy and RandomGirl have taken another one-eighty – but this time it’s in an even better direction.

If you click on ItsJustSomeRandomGuy’s YouTube page, you’ll see a new smattering of clips going back to the basic “I’m a Marvel and I’m a DC” parody of “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” – but this time pairing Iron Man with Batman, respectively. As similar as Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne are, they end up bickering over the success of their respective franchises as well as the supposedly family friendly nature of Iron Man over The Dark Knight – though Batman has a thing or two to say about that point as well.

The pairing of Batman and Iron Man hands-down beats the previous duo of Superman and Spider-Man. Superman was essentially depicted the typical goody-two-shoes character of the Silver Age, while Spider-Man the resurging newer superhero always at Supes’s heels. By comparison, Batman and Iron Man are so similar yet so distinctly different in the personalities that one-liners, jokes and insults let rip in episode after episode. There’s also a brief pairing of Hellboy with Iron Man, Hulk and eventually Batman.

There are a few instances where the jokes are hit or miss (the time Iron Man dreams of The Dark Knight out-hyping existence grows particularly wearisome), but in general, the jokes are pretty much more hit than miss. Still, it is a bit of a diversion from the start of the second season of Afterhours, which had the Joker starting to enact some dastardly plot for our heroes (and villains) to stop. Where this story went and when it will be resolved – if ever – is something of a mystery.

The Batman/Iron Man format is a much better format than Afterhours, which has a harder time balancing jokes with an occasionally more serious format. Iron Man and The Dark Knight have both made a huge splash in box office pool, and their impact definitely won’t go unnoticed by RandomGuy and RandomGuy’s action figure antics.