Batman is a stinking coward.

One of the most iconic images of Batman and Robin involves the spotlight hitting the Dynamic Duo as they rear back in surprise. It's a weird image, they both very clearly look utterly worried, and I guess mostly they didn't expect anyone to be carrying around a spotlight. You know what stands out most for me, as far as goes this image? It's how ROBIN stands out most - Batman has ducked behind his cape, obscuring his outline, possibly protecting himself with a layer of bullet-proof material (depending on whether he's wearing one of the bullet-proof batsuits or not, I suppose, you'll need to ask Denny O'Neil for more specifics), and most importantly he's chosen to STAND BEHIND THE CHILD. "Shoot the boy, but leave me alone," his body language seems to be screaming, "Can't you see his exposed limbs and garishly colored costume? Get the boy target!"



You know, the thing is, he's done it more than once. The image was recycled throughout the early issues more than once, not the least of which happening only seven issues later and also on the cover - only this time we pan back to actually see someone training a gun on Batman and Robin. "Hey you! Yeah, you! Shoot the boy, SHOOT THE BOY!"




And then again in Batman #48, except this time he has the courtesy to at least duck off to his left, leaving a baffled Robin an easy target for the shooter, rather than hiding behind him. See, Batman learns!


I better start laying off the Batman comics before this becomes Batdickery.com.

And It Seems Longer, The More You Read It ...

I have, for the first time, just recently read The Long Halloween, and I will tell you the following:

• I honestly think Jeph Loeb may be the worst writer in comics today, full stop. His name on a comic serves much the same purpose as a little green sticker of a scrunched-up face with a stick-out tongue serves on a bottle of Liquid Plumbr, which is to say "Keep away from eyes."
• One of my artist pals calls Tim Sale "The Man Whose Pencils Clearly Don't Have Erasers," and I gotta agree, his stuff always looks to me like he got it wrong the first time, shrugged, and declared it good enough for government work.
• Batman is kind of an asshole.

AND YET! I actually enjoyed The Long Halloween - sure, there was a lot of utter ridiculousness in it - the Godfather swipes, the really senseless Catwoman/Batman and Selina/Bruce flirtation, Scarecrow being all nursery rhyme obsessed (since when?), the freakin' dialogue - But in the end, I thought it was a strong murder mystery which filled in an unacknowledged gap in the narrative of Gotham City.

Reading it in one sitting, however, underlined a particularly useless conceit in Loeb's dialogue, of which I began to keep count: How often does a pre-Two-Face Harvey Dent make ominously foreshadowed references to duality and the number two?

You know how I mean, when the letterer bolds up the important word, so it gets better impressed. How often do you imagine that happened in The Long Halloween...?










QUITE A FUCKING LOT IS HOW OFTEN.

Still Stuck For A Halloween Costume?

How about hiding behind the dead, unseeing eyes of Donald Duck?


Imagine being startled out of a deep sleep and seeing that thing staring back at you. Worse yet, imagine being gently awakened by caresses and finding that thing staring back at you. There's no scenario which makes it better.

From Captain Marvel Jr #100

Bat-MEME!

I have come up with a meme. Here's how it works:

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Select your language and choose the Random Article link.
3. Use the topic on the resulting page as the basis for a thematically-obsessed Batman villain.

You can use this image to introduce your new Bat-villain to the world at large. I've already done a few:

I dunno, I thought it was funny ...

(PS, I'm using Letter-O-Matic from Blambot fonts. Please don't use Comic Sans, it is awful)

Oh God, Superman, No Means No ...

I am a little surprised, yes.

It doesn't appear to be the colorist's day, either.

I've been meaning to post this one for a while now: from Countdown to Mystery, one of the thousand awful tie-ins to the even awfuller Countdown series, wherein we learn that Dawn Whatsername was selected for the mantle of Dove because she's awful flexible.