Hippies Can Suck Aqualad

A discussion of hippies, from TEEN TITANS #15, May-June 1968:

AQUALAD: "I like to swing, but these cats are too much! Strictly weirdos!"

ROBIN: "You betray your middle-class junior super-hero background! What's more weird and way-out than a kid who breathes water, or a speed demon in a crazy yellow suit, or a chick who flies -- ??"

KID FLASH: "You mean... us, BOY WONDER -- THE TITANS?"

WONDER GIRL: "He doesn't mean THE ROLLING STONES, mopehead! I think these hippie guys are groovy!"

This story and more like it are available in Showcase Presents: Teen Titans, Vol. 1.

You Must Be Choking

Throttling is a super-important new site that presents comic book panels of characters with their hands, paws, tentacles and grippers wrapped around throats!

Face Rear!

Here's the first bunch of chapters for 'Submission Agenda', an adolescent power fantasy featuring the characters of Marvel Comics, non-consensual and consensual sex, oral, anal, mind control, some bondage, elements of transformation and an amount of incest too.

Ghaaah. [Via a six-year old thread on Something Awful.]

Gorilla Surgery

In memory of Arnold Drake, Matt Fraction presents two galleries of amusingly context-free Doom Patrol panels, here and here.

Arnold Drake, 1924-2007

Arnold Drake, one of the best writers ever to work in comics, died yesterday at the age of 83. I'll always remember him for the sublime Doom Patrol, and for this exchange from the first Deadman story:



For more on Mr. Drake and further links, click over to Heidi MacDonald's blog. She also posted, in a separate entry, DC Comics' obituary.

Here the covers to a just few of the many comics--and kinds of comics--he wrote:












Covers: The Grand Comic Book Database

Another Close Call For Cheney

The Vice President was only 204 miles away, in Washington DC, when a sniper assassinated Captain America.

Murphy The Money Mick Was Supposed To Tell The Story, But He Got Drunk

Read it here [eBay link]. Next issue: Sandy The Saving Scot teams up with Isaac The Investing Israeli!

Thanks to Bubba G. Russo.

I Hope That's His Arm

They used the most disgusting interior image for the cover of the highly recommended, perfectly awful The Brave and the Bold - The Batman Team-Ups, Vol. 1. Don't expect too many similarly queasy thrills inside, but it does have my favorite Batman thought balloon ever:

Say, I forgot--it IS my birthday! Just hope nobody notices it's also Bruce Wayne's--!

I think that means someone once asked Batman his birthday and he answered, "February ninetee--SHIT!! God damn it!!" And he never stopped worrying about it.

Work In Progress: A Depressing Alternative Comic Made Of Old Batman Panels

Think What You Will

From Detective Comics #155 and El Blog de Jotace:

Holy Grim & Gritty!

'Critics have accused this story of giving birth to the era of "grim and gritty" comic books'
-- The Dark Knight Returns entry at Wikipedia.

'Tim Burton later adapted the comic's bleak sensibility for his first "Batman" movie, and since then, countless comics creators have aped the "grim and gritty" milieu.'
-- San Francisco Chronicle

'Overall, a very cool image that suggests Batman Begins will return the franchise to its grim and gritty pre-Schumacher days.
-- FilmForce

'If the original Dark Knight seems almost normal today, it’s because... it set the tone for the wave of “grim and gritty” superhero comics that’s still going on.'
-- Portland Phoenix

'Comic book writers wrestle with his dark, grim and gritty traits while trying to make him a mainstream hero to whom readers can relate.'
--Detroit News

____________
So, to recap the conventional wisdom: Batman sucked until 1986, when people began to describe him with the grown-up sounding "grim and gritty."

Well, I found the earliest known citation of the term as it relates to Batman, and it will shock you. I am not kidding. It's true, I swear. And you'd better be sitting down:

NARRATOR: When last we saw our beleagured battlers, they were slowly sinking in a bitter batter of Riddler quicksand! A grim and gritty end awaits them unless something awfully good happens awfully fast!
-- Batman, A Riddling Controversy, first broadcast February 9, 1967

____________
So, to all of you people who take the Dark Knight oh-so seriously: your very mantra comes from the ADAM WEST TV SHOW! When he was trapped in a GIANT CAKE! HAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry. It's just... HAAAAHAHA! Oh, God!

[Hard evidence here.]

BATSPOTTING

Click a year from 1941 to 2005 and see its Batmobile. Above: art from 1997's Batman: Manbat by this John Bolton, not that John Bolton (shudder).

Many Faces Of Batman has pickup bat-art by Carmine Infantino (above), Rags Morales, P. Craig Russell, and many others. Fab internet time-waster.

BAD IDEA

...For most of us, anyway. Someone is selling Super-Hero Unitards.

Aside to Batman: Alfred made the blue trunks for a reason. For God's sake, wear them.

[Via]