Jersey Shore Fact of the Day 55: The Dark Knight Rose from the Jersey Shore

"Today, Asbury has done what every great comic book hero has done. Like The Batman, Superman, Captain America, Green Lantern, and the Flash, it has come back from the dead for some new glory days, with its famed boardwalk reviving classic pinball machines that once again scream to me and all my buddies, 'Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ!'"

This is a quote from Michael E. Uslan's upcoming memoir, The Boy Who Loved Batman. Uslan is responsible for bringing a darker Batman - The Batman of the comics vs. Batman of the TV show - to the big screen. He produced every Batman movie made in my lifetime.

And where's he from? The Jersey Shore, of course, which is where he got the idea as a kid that he would be the person to bring Batman back to movie life.

He bought his comic books at three different stores in Asbury Park, went to Ocean Township high school and, while working for DC comics one summer, drove a "Comicmobile" up and down the Jersey Shore, selling comic books and asking kids what THEY wanted to read.

I finished reading the book last night, and I'm interviewing Uslan this morning. I'm not a big comics person, but I respect he genre. It's the main focus of the book, of course, but it's also a love letter to New Jersey. Great read. Pick it up when it comes out in September.