Eiko Chan

I'm loving Eiko Chan's work and I just had to share it with you - all of it. If you ever meet her, tell her I love her, won't you? And if you ever run into DC comics tell them that if they ever hired Eiko Chan to do Batman, I'd buy those comics for any large sum of money they decide to charge me.
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My Name's Not Actually Bruce - clever, no?

In my last post I told you about the book Disguise Techniques. Today I summarize it for you.

The rest of the first chapter (after the not so good stuff I mentioned in my last post) is a good discussion of how people’s stereotypes can be useful to disguise artists. Absolutely in separable from this is the idea of context. The concept of context forms an important part of this book: “If your disguise fits a common stereotype that is substantially different from the image you normally project, you are not likely to be recognized later in your ‘real-life’ role,” the book says. It’s a good point.

The second chapter is about preparation and has as much to do with seeing others and seeing yourself as it does with not letting others see your true self. After second (this one is the last) fake sounding story about ninja practices, the book talks about getting over your own stereotypes and seeing people and remember very specific details. The exercises he suggests throughout this chapter sound very valuable to someone trying to emulate the world’s greatest detective and throughout the next month I am determined to practice some of them. I’ll introduce as they come up in later posts. After practising to see others, the book then says you should apply this to yourself. Identify your own stereotype. Only once you know what kind of person you project to others can you make alterations to that projection.

Next he talks about disguises. The perfect disguise has 4 properties:
1)It covers up your individual features making you generic
2)The disguise itself is also generic and made of common stuff
3)It’s easy to put on and take off
4)It’s easy to dispose of.

Beyond those points the main points of this third chapter can be summarized pretty clearly:
The most important things to disguise are your head and face BUT not to obscure your face. People are distrustful of masks and if you do not have a face (remember faces do so much of our unverbal communication) you will draw attention to yourself causing people to actively search your person for other identifiers (which is something you don’t want if you are trying to be disguised). He does have a couple of neat exceptions to this rule. Keeping in mind Batman read this paragraph:
“The second point is that the fear reaction to a cover-up disguise may at times be used to the disguise artist’s advantage. Medieval Japanese samurai armor often included headgear with terrifying iron masks, complete with exaggerated scowls, teeth, and long mustaches. Even when viewed in the calm of a museum, samurai armor is somewhat unsettling. Worn on the battlefield by sword-wielding, screaming horsemen, it threw opposing troops into confusion and disarray. The same principle operates with the simpler cover-ups. Observers typically feel frightened and confused when they perceive themselves threatened by a masked stranger, and this reaction can but the disguise artist some time in which to conclude his operation and get out of the vicinity.”
Now if that doesn’t sound like Bruce Wayne donning a cape and cowl, I don’t know what does.
The author finishes the chapter with a couple quick ideas about temporarily disguising cars and rooms.

The next chapter is basically about acting. There’s a couple of important points here. Firstly, don’t try to pass yourself off as a member of any group that you are trying to infiltrate. There are just too many details and subtleties to trip you up. Instead be as different as possible and rely on their stereotypes to help your disguise. Secondly, learn to be quiet. It is an amateur mistake to give lots of made-up background. Don’t babble. Shut up. Be confident in your disguise. People don’t generally care about you and if they are asking it is probably just polite and they won’t expect concrete responses so don’t give them concrete response. The book quotes President Coolidge as saying, “If you don’t say anything, you won’t be called upon to repeat it,” and also, “I never got in trouble for anything I didn’t say.” But this has to be done with tact because if you only ask questions and never reveal anything about yourself (i.e. the character you are disguised as) then people will feel like you are interrogating them and grow distrustful. The solution: learn to flimflam. Small talk is super easy, and so is saying words without any meaning. All it takes is a little practice.

The penultimate chapter deals with makeup. Now I think that it is more than a little dated but you have to remember that the book is written by a man presumably talking to other men about makeup in the early 80s so you’ll have to excuse the fact that he is explicit about everything. To me the important things were 1) NEVER use stage makeup which is a definite common mistake amongst amateur men 2) blemish cover works fairly well to downplay beard shadow 3) with A LOT of work even ridiculous disguises can be pulled off with makeup and good acting. The book does have a section on using makeup to change the shape of your face but I have to reread it.

So that’s the book in a nutshell (it turned into a lengthy synopsis, oh well). Over the next little while, I’ll implement a practice routine for some of the exercises the book recommended and tell you how they go.

Disguise Technigues by Edmond MacInaugh

Where’ve I been?!?!?!

It seems like forever ago that I last posted. What have I been doing for a week?

Reading up on disguise techniques, that’s what. Since my last post I’ve read through a short book called “Disguise Techniques-Fool All of the People Some of the Time” by Ed MacInaugh. It’s actually a great book and I would recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in disguises. I was really worried for awhile that I wouldn’t find useful information on the topic but this book was a great introduction and I’d like to recap it for you.

The book is made up of 5 chapters and a conclusion. The first chapter talks about the psychology needed to become invisible, the second chapter (definitely my favorite chapter) preps you for taking up a disguise, the third talks about disguises, the fourth about acting and the fifth about makeup. Please I beg you, if you ever pickup this book, make it through the terrible Introduction and the start of the first chapter. The Introduction centers around a useless cartoon picture about stereotypes and the first chapter starts off with a bunch of hokey sounding stuff like “Not-being is a state of mind. It could be described as the antithesis of ‘be here now.’ You have probably practiced not being…” But it does get better (after the terribly painful paragraph about Ninja training and an intuitive sense of scrutiny).

Tomorrow I'll post a synopsis of the chapters.

How Batman is like canadian cross-dressing civil war spies with malaria and other interesting things

I don't know how to practice the art of disguise. Surprisingly, enough the Wiki StealThisWiki (purporting to be an collaborative continuation of Steal This Book [online version]) has some not so terrible (although pretty trite mostly) advise. Other that that the internet seems unexpectedly bare. I really hope that this is because webpages on disguise are hidden well and not because they're not there at all. I have found a couple of books that I am currently reading and will summarize for you later.

In the mean time, let me introduce you to another person who is famous for being masters of disguise:

Emma Edmonds - Edmonds was born 150 years ago in 1841. When her father tried to force her to marry against her will, she left home. Worrying that her Canadian father would find her, she fled to the United States. And what does a woman in 1841 do in the United States? She enlists to fight in the Civil War as Mr. Franklin Flint Thompson. Apparently, physical examinations weren't common and so she was able to disguise herself as a man. Apparently, she is one of approximately 400 women to sucessfully enlist in the army during the Civil War.

Not only was Emma able to pretend to be Frank for several years in the army, Frank eventually became a spy for the Union. For her first mission to the Confederate front she disguised her white-self as a a black man whom she named Cuff. Shaving her head and donning a wig and coloring her skin by using silver nitrate. In this disguise (which was apparently good enough to fool her superior, she was able to spend two days on the Confederate side, long enough to gain important information about the Confederates.

About two months later, Emma disguised as Frank disguised as a fat Irish peddler woman crossed the enemy line again to sell apples and soap and steal secrets. Apparently, she had some sort of adventure getting back to the Union army since she had to steal a horse and was wounded in her escape.

Emma continued to use Cuff as her disguise but also developed a black mammy laundress. Once while cleaning an officer's coat, she found a bundle of official documents in one of the pockets full of important information. She was also involved in setting up a spy network in Louisville disguised as southerner Charles Mayberry.

She was able to continue with her amazing disguises until she caught malaria. As long as she wanted to keep her secret identy, she could not admit her alias Frank to the hospital. So she left camp and her alias behind and checked herself into a private hospital. Unfortunately, this made her a deserter. Her life as a professional spy was done.

She wrote memoirs and eventually admitted that Emma Edmonds and Frank Thompson were one and the same. She fought for (and eventually won) an honorable discharge (as Emma) and got her veteran's pension through a special act of Congress. What a crazy life. Amazing. Most of this information is from Wikipedia or civilwarhome.com

Masked Avenger

Before the film premiered, I devoured the complete collection of Sherlock Holmes stories written by Doyle for the magazine, The Strand. Pulp like that makes me really happy (as is probably self evident by the fact that I have a blog dedicated to exploring Batman). Now, I'm no English major but I've been told that Sherlock Holmes stories aren't technically included in the mystery genre since the reader has no chance of solving the crime before Holmes does. Rather the stories should be included in Detective fiction. While I read them, I didn't really have much of a problem suspending my disbelief when it came to his intelligence and his inconcievable leaps in deductive reasoning (now refered to as Holmesian deduction). But one thing did catch me everytime: I was continually doubtful about the success of his disguises. The stories have him dressing up for days on end with not even Watson able to see past his act.


Batman (as one of the direct literary descendants of Sherlock Holmes) is often presented as a master of disguise. His aliase Matches Malone is often used but he is often portrayed as able to disguise himself as anyone.

But it seems ridiculous that the most famous man in Gotham can become completely unrecognizible by putting on some makeup and faking a limp.

So I started thinking, “Can this really be done?” I'm not talking about someone changing their look (like Evan Ratliff did for his Wired article). I mean someone taking on a bunch of secret identies to move secretly in and out of a small community of people (criminals in Batman's case) who would most likely recognize him in a heart beat.

I found the most pristine example of this working! I couldn't believe it. Ruth Reichl was once the Restaurant Critic for The New York Times. As such, she was determined not to receive special treatment while reviewing. But she soon realized just how important her reviews were to restaurant owners. She learned that kitchens had pictures of her and owners offered huge rewards to employees who recognized her.

Her solution? Secret identies.

You really have to listen to this interview I found. She starts talking about her disguises after the first half. It is really quite amazing.

I've spent quite a bit of time trying to find more examples of real-life masters of disguise but have only found a few (who I'll present to you in my next post) and only a couple of resources on learning how to properly disguise oneself.

What's the Point?

Every once in awhile I like to take a post and restate my purpose with this blog. Although I will post about Batman comics or Batman TV shows from time to time, this isn't really supposed to be a general blog about Batman. I am trying to introduce myself to as many of Batman's skills and abilities as I can. Notice it is not my intent to master any of these skills but just to try them out.

So far I've got my yellow belt in Jui Jutsu, learned to make homemade smoke bombs, tried my hand at archery, read a book on forensic science, learned to make very good, very quick estimates from very little information (These are called Fermi Problems. We estimated fun comic-book things like how much energy Mr. Freeze gets from diamonds, how much food and how much oxygen the Flash needs, how strong Spider-man must be to stop an out-of-control train, how much stronger Superman must be to catch it if it came off the tracks, how heavy is Dark Claw with his adamantium skeleton, how much Kryptonite is on Earth, what was the mass of Krypton, how many buses are in Gotham City), I started bouldering and wall climbing when ever I get the chance, I tried my hand at picking locks, I did personal experiments with sleep deprivation and caffination, I now know a variety of knots and I bought and started throwing boomerangs (so cool).

This mission takes a lot of time. It can also prove expensive from time to time so I don't post often but I try my best. I'm always looking for suggestions on what I should learn next. I put off starting martial arts training until reads convinced me that it was absolutely essential. So feel free to leave suggestions at any time.

You should also try reading some of the blogs linked-to in the right hand column. I recommend them all (that's why they are there).

Batman's the Best Martial Artist Ever

I fought in my first Martial Arts Tournament yesterday.

I don't know if you've ever been to one of these but they're interesting. That being said I'm not sure how useful they are. I spent alot of the day sitting around and very little of it actually competing. This one was multidisciplinary. I entered in grappling, self-defence and point-fighting.

• I was easily beaten in grappling. I definately need to work on this.

• I scored well in self-defence and placed high in my tier.

• I like point fighting but their wasn't enough low level belts registered in my category and so all the color belts were mixed together. I fought an orange belt from a karate school whom I'm certain considered me an easy victory.
  

For it being my first tournament I was fairly pleased but like I said, I'm interested in learning not competing and this particular tournament didn't present many opertunities to learn.

Smoke Bomb

Results:
1) The simple saltpeter/sugar recipe worked well. A significant amount of smoke was produced along with a surprisingly large flame. These smoke bombs are definitely not for indoor use. Batman would have to find another type of smoke bomb if he didn't want to ruin peoples' floors. My only complaint is that the homemade fuse sucks. When making a homemade smoke bomb, buy a fuse: don't attempt to make one. I'd suggest maybe a birthday cake sparkler. That probably would have worked quite well.

2) The recipe which added a touch of honey (or cornstarch) to the recipe was far easier to prepare. When it was lit, it behaved very similar to the first recipe (perhaps this smoke bomb burns slightly quicker).

3) The recipe that mixed the saltpeter and sugar into melted paraffin (wax) was a complete dud. I couldn't get it to light at all. Nothing. I suspect that I added far too much wax. If I were to try this again, I would follow one of the other two recipes and then just at a touch of paraffin, just so that it burned slightly slower.

So all in all, these worked surprisingly well. I would suspect that the remains of such a smoke bomb would leave virtually no clues about the user and so I suspect that Batman might actually prefer such simple homemade smoke bombs to more complex (and therefore more easily traceable) smoke grenades.

Batman Builds a Bomb

I'll be doing three different methods: 1 will be what seems to be pretty standard and the other two are variations on it. I have purchased 125g of saltpeter (potassium itnrate - KNO₃) and the rest of the stuff can be found around the house. Saltpeter is not actually hard to find. It is used in recipes to salt meats, I guess. But that doesn't mean you will find it at a grocery store. I found some at a pharmacy. Just go up to the counter and ask the pharmist (not the store employee, the pharmist). I probably payed too much ($8) for my 125g but it should be fairly cheap.

Method 1:
So I gather everything that I need for this first method:
125g KNO₃
sugar
old pan
tin foil
paper towel
matches

I poured my self a glass of wine and begin. I don't have a scale because I'm not a drug dealer so I equally divide the saltpeter by volume. I also am doing this indoors because it's winter despite people's warnings.

I pour the 125g into a measuring cup and find it to be 100ml. Therefore the density is about 1.25g/cm³ according to me and that's much different than the value 2.109 g/cm³ given by Wikipedia which probably indicates that it's not very pure potassium nitrate. I don't know what else would be in it but it's worth noting. I split the 100ml into 3 containers.

Next mix in the sugar. There's really a discrepency on the internet. Mostly I read that it's 6 parts saltpeter to 4 parts sugar. But "parts" I always take to mean volume however everyonce and a while I run into people saying things like 60g of saltpeter to 40g of sugar. Now if Wikipedia is wrong and saltpeter isn't 2.109 g/cm³ but is closer to my 1.25g/cm³ and sugar has a density of about 0.7g/cm³ then they are about the same and it doesn't make a difference so I'm going to go with volume.

So that means I need approximately 60ml of sugar (just over 1/4 cup). (People online say not to do more than about 100g per batch since it gets harder and harder to heat evenly.)

So I mix the two together.

As a side note, I'm making the poor man's fuse. So I take some of the saltpeter/sugar mixture and add a touch of warm water, stirring until it's a smooth slurry. Then I throw a bit of paper towel in, take it out and wrap a match in it. Set it aside and let it dry. Tada, the worst fuse ever.

Now I can heat up the saltpeter/sugar mixture. I don't have an old frying pan. I just have 1 frying pan. So I turn the stove on to a very low temperature and put a disposable tin-pie-plate on top of my frying pan which I realize is going to give me less homogeneous heat but I like my frying pan. So that's just the way it's going to be. This is a worry because the sugar is going to carmalize and create a thick mixture which would harden and ruin my one and only frying pan.

So I set the stove on the very lowest temperature and continuously stirred but oh my goodness! When people on the internet tell you this has to be on the very lowest temperature, they mean low like they are talking to 10 year boys who are making smoke bombs (which they probably are) but it isn't really a low temperature. I had to turn it up a bunch of times. For any reasonable person with any experience cooking, this is just a regular low, a low medium.

After about a half hour some yellow started to show. Perhaps the problem was that I was stirring too much. None of the websites said to actually stir it but they said it needed to be evenly heated so I thought it would be a good idea. Only when I didn't stir would parts of the mixture start to brown. Stir perhaps but don't stir continuously.

It really does turn into carmelized mixture. You should be able to get a pretty smooth mixture. Mine didn't start to smoke but it was just beginning to give off fumes.

I took my mixture and split them into 2 smoke bombs by pouring the mixture onto a piece of tinfoil, sticking my homemade fuse into it and then using the tinfoil to wrap it up into a ball. And now they are cooling.

Method 2:
125g KNO₃
sugar
old pan
tin foil
paper towel
matches
honey

For the second mixture, all the steps are the same but I added a little honey as a liquid fuel. You could alternatively use cornstarch, apparently.
Everything else is the same. Except it seemed to go much faster. Whether that was because it was already at a higher heat or if the honey speeds the process, I don't know.

Method 3:
125g KNO₃
sugar
old pan
tin foil
paper towel
matches
wax

This method was only found at one place and the guy said it was his own creation so we'll see. For this method, I take two tea lights and I melt them down in the tinplate(actually I melted one and thought it wasn't enough so I melted half of another - so 1 and 1/2 tea lights). Once they were melted, I slowly pour in the saltpeter/sugar mixture and stir it till it's smooth. Pour into tinfoil and add fuse. Done. No carmalizing. I'm worried about these holding together. They're a little bit flakey and not as hard as the others.

And that's our science experiment for the day. Join me tomorrow when I light them and grade the recipes.

Building Batman Builds Smoke Bombs

You're in for a treat.

Tonight the fine people who bring you Building Batman will be attempting to produce homemade smoke bombs. I have the materials, the will and the know-how. What could possibly go wrong?

Now That's Television

Am I the only one watching this or what‽ The last four episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold have been prodigious. Plastic Man for an entire episode, the Challengers of the Unknown getting nailed by a bunch of Starros, a war against the Green Lanterns, Aquaman on vacation with his family AND NOW Detective Chimp and a super entertaining episode with the JSA. And before those we even had a great portrayal of Captain Marvel. This has got to be the best thing on television right now.

And that's right. I did just used an interrobang, baby.

He has a sidekick named after Robin Hood, of course Batman is an archer

A family member of mine had the chance to teach me to shoot a bow and arrow the other day. Once upon a time, he must have been really quite good at it. It was really cool to learn from him.

Would Batman learn archery? I realize that there might be two potential camps on the question. One group would say that modern bows are leathal weapons that the Batman would never utilize in his war on crime and therefore since they are not potential tools would not bother to master. The other group would say that Batman strives to be an expert in all matters that might arise and archery (and firearms for that matter) are no exception. He would train in their use so that he would never be caught without the proper skills needed to solve a problem.

For this blog, I tend to side with the latter opinion.

We started with Robin Hood style tension bows (called a recurve bow). They were made of fibre glass or something but otherwise were exactly like what a merry archer would have used 600 years ago. We then moved on to compound bows. These are modern weapons engineered to be as light as possible and yet give the most kinetic energy possible to the arrow. Deadly weapons.

The obvious:
When you shoot an arrow you stand with your feet perpendicular to the direction you are aiming. If you are right handed, you hold the bow in your left hand and you keep your arm perfectly straight (your arm and your shoulders should form one staight line). You pull on the string with your index finger and your middle finger. Because the string should be hard to draw (pull back), you point the bow up at a 45 degree angle and as you pull the string back you lower bow till you are aiming at the target. Fire. See this link for a crazily in depth description.

Some important details:
Your index finger and middle finger should only just hook onto the draw string. You don't want to grab the draw string with a fist or else when you release the string to fire, your fingers are bound to get in the way. Just hook your fingers onto the string by the top most inside of your knuckle.

If the arrow keeps falling off as you draw the bow, you can hold it in place by your left index finger., just like someone who is just learning pool does to a pool cue. Once the bow is drawn, move your finger out of the way.

Don't grab the bow. Just like how you don't want to grab the string, don't tightly grasp the handle of the bow either. Just let it sit lightly in your hand. The point is that the archer will get in the way of a good shot by not being relaxed. Be relaxed and only have the most minimal contact with the bow.

When you draw the arrow back, you shouldn't pull back as far as you can. It is ideal that the string pass right in front of the corner of your lip.

Arrows have three feathers on the back end to stabilize the flight. Two of the feathers are the same color and the third is a different could. The odd color faces towards you, so that as the arrow leaves the bow, the feather isn't ripped off along the way.

Shoot on an out breath. I hear snipers do this too.

I don't actually know what else to say. Of all the things I have been introduced to for this blog, I don't think anything was more hands-on than archery. It's not particularily difficult to do but requires infinite amounts of practice to master.

Diagrams stolen from Aliran Tempur Ikhtiar.