Well, the big news today is that we have our sec­ond issue of The Gotham Times (www​.the​gotham​times​.com) (thanks Austin), don’t worry — the first issue is archived.

This is another 4 page in-depth look at present day Gotham City.

Next up…

The Joker is back in town, he’s send­ing out this text:

Hey clown! Long time, no crime spree! Well, put on your floppy shoes and answer this ques­tion: are you ready to get to work? (ReplyY/N)

And a response to the reply (“Y”):

Glad to see you’re still alive and kick­ing. I’ll be in touch before Pois­son d’Avril. (aka April 1st)

Thanks Adam

We also have a slew of new Viral web­sites for you to gaze upon:

Maiden Avenue Report

www​.maid​e​nav​enuere​port​.com

Gotham Cable News

www​.gotham​ca​ble​news​.com, which comes with this press release

Dana Wor­thing­ton

This is the site of our sec­ond Gotham City DA Can­di­date. Con­tact­ing Dana through contact@​danaworthington.​com yields,

Thank you for your inter­est in my cam­paign. We are a small and inde­pen­dent oper­a­tion, and we can’t answer all emails per­son­ally, but your sup­port is impor­tant to me.

Your email will be read. Your vote will count.
Who will rep­re­sent you?
I will rep­re­sent you.

Dana Wor­thing­ton for Dis­trict Attorney

www​.dana​wor​thing​ton​.com

Cit­i­zens For Batman

“Arrest Bat­man, but not yet” says the new issue of The Gotham Times. As expected, the city is split on opin­ion about our caped cru­sader. This is a web­site for the vig­i­lante cause.

If you want to join them you can email them here: join@​citizensforbatman.​org, which leads to this response:

Dear Gotham Citizen,

Thanks for express­ing your inter­est in join­ing Cit­i­zens for Bat­man. The eas­i­est way you can join is by attend­ing a meet­ing. Check the web site for meet­ing times. If you can’t attend, you can always lobby City Hall to sup­port Bat­man and stop any talk of his being arrested.

Look­ing for­ward to see­ing you,
Brian Dou­glass
Founder and Pres­i­dent, Cit­i­zens for Batman

www​.cit​i​zens​for​bat​man​.org

I Believe in Har­vey Dent Revamped

The Har­vey Dent site, amongst this plethora of new viral web­sites, has been updated with a new design. The site also sports web­site ban­ners and some Har­vey Dent wall­pa­pers (in the 1024x vari­ety).
www​.ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com

The Har­vey Dent viral cam­paign is really crank­ing up now, the first two exter­nal viral sites have been uncov­ered — both relate to the elec­tion process in Gotham City:

Gotham Elec­tion Board: www​.gotham​elec​tion​board​.com

The Gotham Elec­tion Board will be imple­ment­ing online voter
reg­is­tra­tion later this year. Watch this site for details.

Gotham City Clerk: www​.gotham​c​i​ty​clerk​.com

Please excuse the incon­ve­nience, as we are cur­rently rebuild­ing our web­site and file sys­tem after server dam­age due to the recent Orange Line destruc­tion. We hope to be back online serv­ing Gotham City very soon.

•   Forms and appli­ca­tions for the fol­low­ing ser­vices are still avail­able at our N. 6th St. offices: Park­ing per­mits, busi­ness licenses, dog licenses, festival/block party/raffle/bazaar per­mits, night­club licenses, oath of office forms, oper­a­tor licenses, retail licenses, liquor licenses, street ven­dor licenses, med­ical reg­is­tra­tion forms, notice of claim forms, and garage sale permits.

•   The Gotham City Clerk announces approval for exten­sive absen­tee voter sup­port in the upcom­ing munic­i­pal elec­tion. Once the sys­tem is in place, we will post details and pro­ce­dures for both online and mail-in absen­tee balloting.

For those signed up to the Har­vey Dent email alerts, you’ve prob­a­bly seen this already, but for those that are new to this viral lark:

Cross-Country Tour of Cam­paign Bus Con­tin­ues As Thou­sands of Dent Sup­port­ers March, Rally For The One Man Who Can Save Gotham!

Check the updated sched­ule at http://​www​.ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com/​o​n​t​h​e​r​o​a​d​.​a​spx to see if a Dent­mo­bile is com­ing to your neigh­bor­hood. [Full list after the break]

Dent’s chal­lenge to Gotham to show their desire for change has been met with a city-wide explo­sion of activism, with thou­sands of sup­port­ers orga­niz­ing ral­lies, meet-ups, peti­tion dri­ves, and post­ing signs and plac­ards in every neigh­bor­hood. Check out some of the best pho­tos and videos at http://​www​.ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com/​y​o​u​i​n​a​c​t​i​o​n​.​a​spx.
Dent is expected to make his deci­sion whether to run for Gotham Dis­trict Attor­ney within weeks and your sup­port does make a difference!

**Spe­cial Alert**

For those of you who can get down to Rock­e­feller Cen­ter tomor­row morn­ing between 6 and 9 am, there’s a very good chance your friends might be able to see you on a cer­tain morn­ing tele­vi­sion show.

Spread the word. Make an impres­sion! Let’s get cre­ative in demon­strat­ing our support!

Take Back Gotham!

Hol­ly­wood Chicago and Vlkers54 have a nice lit­tle report of the events at 8am:

I was at the 8 a.m. stop. I got there at 7:30 a.m. and I sure am glad I did. At 8:03 a.m., the cops came and kicked us out! Only me and another guy showed up, but we did end up get­ting a lot of free stuff [includ­ing] bumper stick­ers, posters, but­tons and a T-shirt.

You should have seen the peo­ple as they were com­ing out of the train station:

“Who is Har­vey Dent?”, “What is this all about?”, “Is this for that movie?” (We responded: “What movie? ‘No Coun­try For Old Men?’ That’s a movie!”)

We kept “in char­ac­ter” and pro­moted Har­vey Dent for [dis­trict attor­ney] as if he were a real per­son. Con­fus­ing peo­ple was a lot of fun. Some peo­ple did catch on to what was going on. Even middle-aged men who knew who [Har­vey Dent] was were excited, [asked] for but­tons and filled out the peti­tion forms.

It was a lot of fun, but let’s hope the cops don’t ruin the 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. ses­sions. I can’t make the 11 a.m., but I will be at the 4 p.m. trail.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com, a long time offi­cial Dark Knight web­site — orig­i­nally host­ing a mere cam­paign poster has now gone online — pre­sent­ing us with a fully func­tional “vote Dent” viral web­site, com­plete with Dent mobile.

Fans shall now be enlisted to help out with Har­vey Dent’s polit­i­cal cam­paign to elect him as Gotham City’s Dis­trict Attor­ney. See what you need to do, then sub­mit your details to the web­site, with images and video (dead­line March 26th).

Rec­om­mended things to do: 

Get your friends together and spell out Har­vey Dent in human let­ters
Get a video of your school’s cheer­lead­ing team yelling out chants for Har­vey Dent
Try to cover every square inch of someone’s cubi­cle area with Har­vey Dent posters
Write and per­form a “Take Back Gotham” song
Make up a “Dent Dance” rou­tine
See if you can get up a Har­vey Dent sign in every sin­gle win­dow of your dorm build­ing
Turn your own car into a “Dent­mo­bile”
Arrange a Dent parade down Main Street
Make a human pyra­mid with other Har­vey Dent supporters

Down­load a ZIP of all the high res­o­lu­tion Har­vey Dent pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial (7 PDFs, 3.5mb)

The Dent-mobile shall also be touring:

The future of Gotham City is in our hands now, peo­ple! Let’s get out there and make some noise!

The offi­cial Har­vey Dent web­site, “ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com” has been updated to include a new mes­sage and some text entry boxes for your email and phone number,

“We have the power to change Gotham City, soon you’ll find out how”

On doing so you get a quick con­fir­ma­tion email reading:

Cit­i­zens of Gotham! The future of our city rests in your hands! Alone, we are help­less against the thugs and killers men­ac­ing our city. Together, we have the power to take back Gotham. In just a few days, you’ll find out how. Please click … to ver­ify your e-mail address. Keep an eye on http://​www​.ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com and get ready to join a move­ment that will trans­form our city!

It looks like the sec­ond major viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign shall be focus­ing around Har­vey Dent, rather than the Joker, which falls in line with the rumors we have heard con­cern­ing the third Dark Knight trailer.

Via Hol­ly­wood Chicago and with thanks to Austin

Com­ing­Soon have posted a sec­ond gallery of images from the Mat­tel toy show, this time reveal­ing The Joker action fig­ure and free­ing oth­ers from their restric­tive child-proof pack­ag­ing. Looks like their are two ver­sions of the Joker toy — a Heath Ledger looka­like and a stylised kids rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Also included are some close-ups of the Bat­mo­bile, Bruce Wayne’s Mur­cielago and Bat­pod auto-mobile toys.

Thanks to Ghell again for the very fast heads up!

We saw a glimpse of these a cou­ple of weeks ago, before the pic­tures were pulled from web­sites. Now Com­ing Soon are back with a full gallery of action fig­ures and play time auto-mobiles. Whilst there is one Joker hench­man fig­ure, there is a dis­tinct lack of Joker fig­ures, pos­si­bly to respect the mem­ory of Heath Ledger.

Mat­tel will be going whole hog with dozens of toys that start rolling out around May 1. There are maybe a dozen dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions of Bat­man in dif­fer­ent out­fits, includ­ing a “bat­tle cape,” “stealth wing” and “Fire­fly Bat­man” (pos­si­bly inspired by the comic book vil­lain). Notice­ably absent from the dis­play were any fig­ures for his new arch-nemesis the Joker, prob­a­bly out of respect for the fam­ily and friends of Heath Ledger, though we did get to see a few pic­tures. Mat­tel was even more secre­tive and care­ful about hav­ing any pic­tures of their fig­ure for Two-Face on dis­play, but one was listed in the mate­ri­als as part of the first wave of action fig­ures, as well as there being a new Scare­crow fig­ure, con­firm­ing his appear­ance in the sequel. Instead of any of these, they had a “Gotham City Thug,” one of the Joker’s clown-faced hench­men, on dis­play. Even more inter­est­ing were some of the vehi­cles on dis­play includ­ing a look at the Bat­copter and the Bat­pod, which is the new Bat­cy­cle, and some­thing called the “Treada­tor, Ulti­mate Pur­suit ATV” (that’s “all-terrain vehi­cle”), which we may have to wait and see if it’s actu­ally a vehi­cle from the movie. The new “Dark Knight” toys also include a Zipline Gun and a Disc Shoot­ing Jet, fairly typ­i­cal toys cus­tomized for the movie, but the most inter­est­ing new toy might be the “Inter­ac­tive Bat” which hope­fully, we’ll be able to see in action on Tuesday.

The read­ers over at /film have sent in some very cool Dark Knight pro­mo­tional items — a beau­ti­ful Joker card set donned with the phrase “Why So Seri­ous”, the Bat­man logo and the film’s release date and a white t-shirt with a hideous Joker grin sprawled across it.