You have to give Warner Bros. credit for taking marketing in new, apocalyptic directions with Batman Begins. First, the studio sold its leading lady to Tom Cruise (or did Katie Holmes maybe, just maybe, sell herself?). And on Sunday, NASCAR featured the Batman Begins 400, the first race to ever award naming rights to a movie.

Besides wondering when and where studio marketers souls will combust, one has to ask how a nation so disenchanted with Gotham is actually going to react to the city taking over a day at the races. Either way, we should have seen this coming last year, when Warners pimped its animated Justice League franchise on the sides of stock cars at several races and in a commercial that made the rounds at the nation's speedways.

That's Greg Biffle. With a "B," asshole (Photo: Autostock)

But come on, comics geeks--tell me you would not take up auto racing for a chance to win a trophy like that.