Caped-crusader Batman a no show in Aurora's dark night

No bat sign in Denver sky July 19, 2012

Ten miles from downtown Denver, city officials in Aurora, Colo. didn't shine the bat symbol into the sky early Friday morning when a real life Joker entered a movie theater to act out his macabre tale of terror. I woke with the television I had left on all night blaring the news that 12 people were dead, shot down in cold blood by someone who had planned evil since May. Perhaps the character with a schizophrenic sense of humor wanted to see if a hero would step in and save the day. No one did.

No one could have imagined that 20 minutes into a blockbuster, much heralded movie someone would unleash real tear gas, rounds of bullets, and fear in such a place. This horrible shooting seemed like an advanced level of some zombie video game, too awful to contemplate and separate reality from surrealism.

I was happy to hear that my husband, on a five day business trip to Denver, had not ventured out to the suburbs to catch a glimpse of the Dark Knight's unfolding. Perhaps the only thing that saved him was the knowledge that he would have to get up early in the morning after watching a movie at 12:01 a.m. and would find it difficult to be alert at work. He was already suffering from altitude sickness... God works in mysterious ways.

I wonder will the movie goers who came out alive get a refund or a raincheck.

Quiet, downtown Denver on July 19, 2012

©2012 Photos by Kurk Johnson. Article by Tomi Johnson. All rights reserved.