I bought these Batman Begins trading cards at a dollar store a few years ago. I marveled how low budget they were; the cards featured pictures of action figures, haha. And what's with the Arnie on the front of the pack? He wasn't even in Batman Begins.

Anyway... I had no idea what a gem this was until a couple years later when i read the back of the pack. Enjoy...

"When being a child, Bruce Wayne had witnessed with his eyes the fact his parents of millionaire were killed cruelly, so affected his strong desire of revenging his parents. However, god had never given him a chance to fulfill his will. Following the advice of Raj's Al-Ghul, the chief of ninja group, Bruce come to Gete, which was a corrupted city filled with with various crime groups. Bruce found a basement under his villa, in which the equipments turned him into another person: Spiderman. With his mask, Spiderman stroke all criminal activates and criminals everywhere, such as Tougon, the cheif of mafia, Doctor Jackstraw, The Abnormal Drug Trafficker, even a mysterious opponent quite familiar with him --------"

Batman is Spiderman. And he strokes criminals with his mask. This changes everything.

I'm going to miss The Stem.

It was cheap and unpretentious. On a cold day, you warm up at the bar, soaking heat from the open kitchen stove top. I loved watching the cook make five dishes at once relying on perfect muscle memory - cracking eggs and flipping flap jacks blind while opening a can baked beans and taking the next round of orders by ear. It was a portal to Queen Street's old world earnestness.

This is a zinc plate etching from an edition of 25. I printed this about twelve years ago in Ed Bartram's Introduction to Intaglio class. The headlines on the newspaper are: Gretzky's Hat Trick Burns leafs and Kosovo Air Strikes Begin. You can see people smoking in the background. I don't miss that.

In the letter, it is written: "Dear Melanie, what is new with youin France? Things are going very well here in Toronto. Lindsay and I are recovering from a crazy night of drinking and dancing. We went to a place called Fat City."

Note: I think the short-lived club Fat City is now Hero Burger at Queen and Palmerston.

High res scan here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12779108@N05/3176266013/sizes/o/