It's BATMAN LEADS AN INTERESTING LIFE Tuesday

"Gentlemen, let's welcome to the stage BAT-MAN aaaaaaaaaand Cinnamon!"

Enjoy Hilarious "Monkey-Shines" With These Amazing, Racist, Horrifying Masks!

Boy. Would I have fun with that monkey face.

From Batman #57, and the heart of darkness.

Hostess Heroes Versus Fa-a-a-a-a-a-at Bitches

Wonder Woman and Cup Cakes "The Maltese Cup Cakes"
This is the first time, as far as I'm aware, that Hostess Cup Cakes had ever gotten a double billing with the lead superhero, unless "cup cakes" is some sort of JLA Satellite locker-room slang that Firestorm and Zan of the Wonder Twins used to fling back and forth just to pretend they weren't irredeemably fey. "You see ol' Wonder Woman and Cup Cakes in the briefing this morning?" Oh yeah, ol' Cup Cakes.

Anyway, I guess what was always missing from both the Hostess snack ads and Wonder Woman in general was a gender-bent reimagining of The Maltese Falcon, featuring a Petula Lorry, a Mr.Astor, and a Cindy Bluestreet a.k.a. The Fat Lady, a.k.a. Big Bad Muumuu Mama, a.k.a. Seat-Buster.

You're also looking at what is arguably the most text-heavy Hostess as in history, this thing reads like a Pynchon novel, which is appropriate because Harold Bloom calls it one of the fleeting examples of Twentieth Century American Sublime. And Cup Cakes.


Daredevil's Longest Fight!
Man, speaking of fa-a-a-a-a-a-at bitches, check out this fa-a-a-a-a-a-at bitch Daredevil's fighting here. That is one fa-a-a-a-a-a-at bitch. He's even got bitch tits, way to go Daredevil, your Hostess ads were generally uninspired, but at least you fought the fa-a-a-a-a-a-attest bitch of all. If I don't count The Penguin.

Evidently, this is one of the rare occasions when Daredevil confronts someone with a handicap as profound and life-affecting as his own. Daredevil was, of course, blinded as a teen by a street-hopping can of radioactive waste, which not only permanently removed his sight but also gifted upon him extra-sensory powers in the form of his radar sense and enhanced other-sensory perceptions.

Baby Face Johnny, relatedly, is a fucking moron.

What i like about this ad is that we join it with the bulk of the conflict already played out, and that it ends with Daredevil basically being really sarcastic. Daredevil's a great comic book if you like sarcastic superheroes, and also superheroes who constantly have nervous breakdowns and you think might just snap and kill a cop. Which you probably won't see in a Hostess ad, but who can say?

Spider-Man in The Trap
So, it turns out - and you won't know this til you get to the end of the strip - that the villainess' name in this particular outing is "Larcenous Lil." For some reason, it was necessary to maintain some level of tension and suspense about this character's nom de crime (I love that phrase, and I gotta remember to ask Bob Rozakis who came up with it so I can give them a mint edition copy of Ragman #3 - thirty cents). This is exactly like a M.Night Shmamapopadopoulos-or-whatever movie. "Her name's Larcenous Lil," you might tell your friends, and then they go, "Oh, hey, SPOILERS, okay? Thank you!"

Anyway, evidently the way that you defeat Spider-Man is that you throw a sad-looking net on his wall-crawling ass. Let's look back on literally more than two thousand individual issues of Amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up, Web of Spider-Man and some coupla dozen others and point out that no one ever really thought of doing that before, except Kraven I guess. Anyway, I don't know, you think the Hostess ad writers maybe didn't really care about the threats they invented? I do.

Dumbest Enemies of the Jusitce League #4: Chicks With Dicks

#4 – The Justice League Task Force versus Chicks With Dicks That Put Yours and Mine to Shame.

There are certain topics which - no matter the tone or the approach - give me a headache when I see that they’re being handled in a super-hero comic. There’s something about a 22-page four-color morality play with a mandatory fight scene in the middle of it which seems an ill-suited arena in which to really flesh out the complexities and deep layers around issues like child abuse, spousal abuse, drug addiction, racial conflict, sexual politics, gender issues and – more specifically – transgender issues.

Sure, there have been some pretty decent stories written over the last seventy years on some – though not all – of these topics, but very few handled in a single issue. It’s just not something you’ll see in an otherwise well-meaning but misguided medium which has suggested that everything from world hunger to Juarez has been caused by some evil dude in spandex with a magical ray-weapon and possibly also a spaceship.

So, that being said – this one time? The Justice League (Task Force) fought some chicks with dicks.

Pictured: Chicks. Not pictured: Dicks.

Issues #7 and #8 of Justice League Task Force have already earned some level of notoriety, so you’ve probably heard this one before. The précis is that J’onn J’onnz, the Martian Manhunter, for the period of two issues, disguised himself as a woman (dubbed J’oan J’onnz, and which possibly caused a flub I remember from an old EGM article about the Justice League: Heroes game in which he was called “Marcia Manhunter”) for a specific mission into a hidden society of female warriors.

Now, many very facile writers have had J’onn in female disguises before; he is, after all, an alien and – more than that – an alien shapeshifter from a race of telepaths whose concepts of gender are understandably vastly different from human conceits. Grant Morrison, as a for instance, instituted into canon the idea that J’onn maintains, at any given time, dozens of human identities of any gender, ethnicity, nationality and employment. J.M.DeMatteis, he who otherwise burdens everything he writes with story-braking spiritual elements as light and trifling as lead bricks, established that J’onn was fairly removed from human prejudices and was a tourist among our divisions of race and gender.

But Peter David, author of this two issue arc, was in it for the yoks, so what we got was jokes about J’onn J’onnz getting Midol for period cramps.

I like to pretend that, in addition to being really sexist, that this comic is also really racist,
and that J'onn stopped speaking halfway through his reason for bringing Vixen along.
"Vixen, since a jungle is involved ... then ... you know ... you can do what you people do
... what? What's with that look?"

(Speaking of yoks and as an aside: For me, there is one cardinal sin in the post-Giffen Justice League stories, and that’s the gratuitous use of the “Bwa-Ha-Ha” – with which this story breaks out twice, after a few introductory pages. Removed from its original context, the Blue Beetle and Booster Gold-inspired guffaw becomes something like when obnoxious nerds quote incessantly from Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Austin Powers – the reader is meant to be amused, or thrilled, or intrigued or even comforted by its presence because it’s something which, in their memory, was funny the first time around.

Besides being a cheap literary shortcut, the guffaw was also outdated by the time Breakdowns wrapped up – it had been so funny and endearing the first time around because it was a completely new thing. Superheroes didn’t explode with corny gut-yoks, they laughed manly. They issued forth hearty “hahaha”s, and even then, never over practical jokes or pratfalls, and certainly never at the expense of their teammates. For a few years after Giffen’s run was up, the “Bwa-Ha-Ha”s kept making their way back into the book, with such persistence that you had to wonder if an editorial edict to do so was in place – and it was as corny and outdated and archaic by then as the books Giffen’s Justice League had turned on their ears.

Of course, the guffaw, in this instance, is just one of a number of call-backs populating the story: There are cute references to H.Rider Haggard and Pellucidar getting us off the ground, little winks and nods at the readers who know their Jeff Rovin, even if they don’t know their pulps)

So, anyway, the story in this issue was that a plane crash strands a courier named Henry R.Haggard (uh-huh) and his parcel of a totally deadly biological weapon in a strange, underground world “out of Edgar Rice Burroughs” (uh-huh) where he is set upon by the all-female warriors who serve “She Who Must Be Obeyed” (uh-huh, got it, thanks). The Justice League Task Force – one of the many short-lived spinoffs of the post-Legends Justice League which wore out the goodwill engendered for the team even as it was intended to revive the franchise – assembles an all female team consisting of Wonder Woman, Dolphin, Vixen, Gypsy and Maxima to negotiate for the return of the courier and the super-bug.

I went through all the trouble to name every female character who was sent on this mission, but it’s pointless, because every one of them was basically a cipher. The focus of the story was J’onn J’onnz who, in order to lead his team, is forced to become a female. He doesn’t want to do it, mind you, because he’s apparently got some kind of macho self-image going on, even though it’s something he’s never shown before and has no reason to have at any point in his history. But hey, he thinks tits make him look silly, so that’s a laff.

Seriously, he’s worried that his team won’t take him seriously if he’s a woman, which is big talk coming from a guy wearing a red bandolier, blue cowl, two giant golden disco medallions and blue shorts with bare legs and patriot boots. If he was worried about credibility, he’d have been having that discussion with himself long before now.

Oddly, this outfit is less revealing than what he usually wears.
A blow well struck, Justice League Task Force.

Arriving in the subterranean amazon empire, J’onn is suddenly and inexplicably engaged to the warrior race’s queen, for no damn apparent reason, and then proceeds to pull a bunch of amusing “why me” expressions as he’s bathed and perfumed and put into dresses for the benefit of a sham marriage he’s going through with in order to find out where they’re hiding the weapon. It's really too bad that he isn't telepathic or something.

To skip to the chase, the climax of the story comes after J’onn/J’oan’s wedding to the warrior queen, who reveals – seconds before they consummate the wedding – that she’s a hermaphrodite. She’s got a dick. J’onn’s response to this is to revert to his male form and start kicking up a huge fuss about “hell no” and “no way” and “Martians suck pussy, not dick!” and basically being sort of comically macho which, once again, where the hell did that come from?

These two issues are bogus for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that David – not a bad writer, by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly not a bad writer of female characters (at their worst, at least they’re never worse than his worst male characters) – obviously threw this story together in an afternoon or so. Whatever else you may feel about Peter David – his tendency to conflate pop culture references with wit, his sitcom approach to characterization, his jarring thematic shifts uncontaminated by context – at the very least he is a dependable hack, a hack in the laudable sense of the word, someone who crafts solid stories with all the parts where they’re supposed to be, showing up when they’re supposed to show up, and everything in the right order.

Hell , usually he’s known for being able to give each of his characters a distinct, if not unique, voice. He fails to do so in this story, where Vixen may as well be Dolphin, where Maxima may as well be Gypsy. Worse than that, the story appears on the surface to be a story about how capable women truly are, and how foolish men can be in their machismo, but all the while J’onn is reacted to as though he had become a talking chimp and the women are utterly uncharacterized. Additionally, if I had to rate which was the more gross part of the conclusion – J’onn being confronted by a chick with a dick or J’onn going through with a sham marriage to a sincerely emotionally involved individual who was never portrayed as deserving to have her heart broken or her most important moment in life turned into a farce, I kinda know which way I’m leaning.

At the end of the story, J’onn sort of sadly and fondly turns towards the entrance to the underground kingdom, admitting that his betrayed bride had told him that he could return whenever he wanted (providing he remained a woman, implicitly) and J’onn – in the “See, he learned something about himself” moment of the story – forlornly confesses that he might like to do just that. Aw, see, he learned the value of being a woman, which is something something something I guess and that one chick had a dick. In fact, I think we ALL learned a lesson here.

Hostess Heroes Versus Fi-i-i-i-i-i-ine Bitches Part 2

The Flash in "The Stony-Eyed Medusa"
If this were truly the Flash in The Stony-Eyed Medusa, then this would be a who-o-o-o-ole different kind of comic. Anyway, that reminds me, Stony-Eyed Medusa ... whatever happened to Tone Loc?

So, in this one, the Flash goes up against a goth chick, or possibly it's Stacey London from "What Not To Wear" (she's everywhere these days, including inexplicably in a commercial for hair care products. They appear to have not noticed that her hair maintains the apparent texture of a horse tail, unless perhaps they do know that and it's the big look for next season or something. Anyway). Personally, were I the Flash, I wouldn't be too concerned about this villainess for a pair of reasons; the first being that the caption chooses to sarcastically air-quote its description of her powers. "Oh, she 'turns people to stone' with her 'stare', oooh, how scary!"

The other reason is that her henchmen are scared of streaks of light. "Fucking shit," one of them yells while soiling himself, "There appears to be some light heading in our direction! For fuck's sake, take your cyanide pills, men! Oh Jesus save me!"

Naturally, The Flash distracts the Stony-Eyed Medusa with a Hostess Fruit Pie, but also doesn't basically seem to give two damns about her in the long run because he just leaves her tied up and then runs the fuck outta town. The Flash! Busy man! Got no time to tie up the hands of or blindfold a woman who can turn you to stone with a glance! Places to be!


Batman in Hearts of Darkness
Take a look at that title and tell me that it doesn't represent what would clearly be the greatest Elseworlds of all time. Marlowe Grayson is hired to ferry ivory down the Gotham Congo, and in doing so retrieves the grandiose but enigmatic Kurtz Wayne from his isolation in the deepest part of the Arkham jungle. Um. And also there's a bat and The Joker somehow. C'mon DC, sign me up, it's no dumber than Superman/Tarzan!

Batman and Robin, this time around, face a quartet of lady thieves who call themselves "The Midnight Ladies" (ooooh, sexy) and make a criminal career out of stealing, as says one Gotham City Cop, "anything dark and valuable." Will Smith better watch his ass, oooooooh.

So, the Midnight Ladies start their career but one-upping that weak Sable Lady from Monday, stealing a batch of furs and leaving behind an oversized Valentine as a calling card. They may have it all over Sable Lady in execution, but they don't seem to be much better at theming their escapades.

Naturally, Batman captures them with Hostess Cupcakes, which is indeed dark and certainly valuable, I guess, in the sense that, like, in the economy or pre-World War II Germany, the cost of a single Hostess cupcake would have been something like eight thousand deutschmarks. Batman goes on to say that good taste sometimes proves to be a fatal flaw, which I guess rules out anyone who dresses like a blue-and-gray rubber ferret. He'll live forever!


Batgirl in A Matter of Good Taste
And speaking of good taste, Batgirl tangles with an extravagant jewel thief named Jet-Set Jessie, who basically looks like Mrs.Roper bedazzled Elvis Presley's pajamas.

Much in the vein of Spider-Man trying to occupy June Jitsui's hands so he could deal with her feet, Jet Set Jessie argues that she can get her hands on Batgirl's feet before she gets it on the chin. This all sounds like a very complexly organized Greco-Roman Wrestling bout. I'd like to see the rulebook, but I suspect it's written in Bat-speak and smeared with Hostess Fruit Pie smudges.

In the end, Batgirl triumphs the way all good triumphs in this world - by throwing cake at someone - and dashes off with Jessie tied to the back of her batcycle. A strange, confessional kind of air overcomes the duo, as Batgirl begins to lament her childhood poverty. "I had no jewels or silver to distract you with," she says, wiping away a tear, "I shared a bat-bed with my five bat-sisters, we were so bat-poor when I was growing up. I wore a hand-me-down bat-dress to my first day of school, and it was so old and damaged that it was more bat-patches than the original bat-fabric." Sad stories of bat-poverty, here.


The Human Torch in Blown About
Honestly, it sounds more like Johnny's secret sex video was finally released.

Hell, I'm almost not even kidding, because at the end of this bizarre caper - a villainess wielding a super-sized blowdryer threatens a garden party of rich fat people, and the Human Torch saves the day by throwing the rich people's supply of Hostess Cup Cakes at her - Johnny Storm ends up hitting on her! He's all making moves on her as he hauls her away to ... jail? I guess? It's not really clear.

Also, we never actually learn this villainess' name (which is a departure from how it usually works. Typically, the heroes jump in and start talking about the criminal like they've been at odds for years). Then again, I bet Johnny didn't get her name either, if you believe how Mark Millar writes him ...

It's BATMAN LEADS ROBIN A COMPLICATED LIFE TUESDAY!

First, an unwarranted spanking! Then some cake! Then a trip down a long dark corridor! Then a plane of your very own! Then what is bound to be an unfortunate first flight! Batman sure makes Robin's life a wretched series of constant ups and downs with nary a plateau in sight...

Cock-Blocked by the Shocker's Rockin' Dockers!

Long-time Spider-Man fans are plenty familiar with The Shocker, one of comicdom's most insulated villains. Mind you, The Shocker doesn't necessarily actually shock you, except the bumper-car sense of the word - "shock" usually implies getting suddenly surprised, or receiving a blast of electricity, while the Shocker's power is vibration-based. He hits you with "shock-waves", you see, thus the name.

Still, you know, there was a long period in the Marvel Universe where Stan Lee was involved in naming every character. Writers would come to Stan and say "We've got this guy, he's this guy who's lost his mind and he goes after jaywalkers and litterers with a high-powered rifle. See, he's out there to punish criminals..." and Stan will interrupt and go "Call him .. The Punisher!" And the writers probably simultaneously winced and dropped their jaws in awe, because make fun as you will, the insight it takes to "call 'em as you see 'em" is pretty refined. We could have been spared every godawful, deliberately mispelled (or so I assume), picked-from-a-random-page-in-the-dictionary character name in the 90s, had Stan still been at the helm.

I assume the editorial meeting for this guy must have been pretty great. "So, Johnny," says Stan, "What have we got here, who's this jazzy personage in the padded pajamas?"
"Well, Stan, we don't have a name for him yet. Uh, he has these power gloves that, uh, they vibrate? They shoot vibrations at you?"
"Easy-peasy, Johnny-boy, we call him ... The Vibrator!"
(Roy laughs, continues making coffee)
"Uh, well, Stan, you see, there's a ... there's a sexual connotation to 'Vibrator' that we don't want to use, you know, you don't really want to associate a Marvel villain with something as vulgar as that ..."
"Okay, Johnny, let me hit you with this: The SHOCKER!"
(Roy laughs, continues polishing shoes)
"Uh..."
"It's got verve, it's got punch! Now get out there and make it happen, you crazy kids!"
"Stan, the thing is ... the Shocker? It's also a kind of ..."
"I have spoken, Excelsior!"
"Stan..."
"Nuff said!"

What was great about The Shocker was that whenever he did appear in the comic, he'd get that rhyming or alliterative descriptor. And, sure, most Marvel villains got this treatment - "Rumbled by The Rhino!" or "The Vulture - Victorious!" ... but The Shocker always got ones that sounded like totally shredding rock songs.

Oh yeah! Rocked by the Shocker! Woooooo!

Fuck yeah! Shattered by the Shocker! Wooooo!

Woo, yeah, shock follows shock when Spidey ... confronts ... the ... You know what? This one actually sucks pretty bad.

I'm shocked.

Hostess Heroes Versus Fi-i-i-i-i-i-ine Bitches Part 1

One of the many things which makes little or no sense about the world of superheroes is that so many of them are so goddamn good-looking. If you think about it, most superheroes are driven to their individual crusades by horrible injustices delivered upon them, and most super-villains are driven by a lust to possess the kind of power, respect and authority which have been denied them for every day of their lives.

And yet, they all look like Hollywood superstars, all chiseled bodies and fine, proud features, long luxurious hair, ginormous tits, taut asses. Research - and all social interaction everywhere since the beginning of time - have shown that handsome and pretty people get any number of advantages in life. For one thing, they pull tail like mad. For another, they actually do better in business and academia. And for another thing, fuck handsome and pretty people is what.

Anyway, in a world where the posterboy for schmuckdom, Peter Parker, pulls the Black Cat, Mary Jane Watson, Gwen Stacy, Kitty Pryde and heaven knows who else, it's a world where the hot ones clearly like-a the spandex. So, with that in mind, let's check in with the fi-i-i-i-i-i-ine bitches making trouble for superheroes in the world of Hostess Fruit Pies and Cupcake Snacks ...

Batgirl in "Fruit Pies for Magpies"
There's probably also one called "Cupcakes for Hoop Snakes", and possibly another one called "Ding-Dongs for King Kong", although oddly, nothing for "Chocodiles." Nothing rhymes, I guess.

Anyway, Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon - Gotham Gal and fi-i-i-i-i-i-ine bitch her-own-self - tackles the tricky problem of eating disorders and the social pressures on young women to remain thin and attractive in an increasingly commercialized world. Here, much as Liv Tyler had to do for the Lord of the Rings movies, three female pickpockets "starve themselves for days" to resemble singing and dancing sensations "The Magpies", all as part of a convoluted pickpocketing scheme. Exactly what kind of dancing these ladies are doing wherein the clientele aren't particularly shocked to find them snaking their felonious fingers into their pants pockets and money belts is up for interpretation, but my suggestion is "jazz fusion". Also, there's a side-point in this paragraph, which is that I believe Liv Tyler might be a pickpocket.

Not resolved in the course of this one-page predicament is what exactly happened to the original Magpies. Brutally murdered, every one of them. I can say that with confidence because this is DC Comics, and that's what happens to third-string villains and women alike in DC Comics. Also, I think I saw them cover the case in Law and Order: Hostess Fruit Pies.

Spider-Man Meets June Jitsui
No part of me knows in any capacity what "Jitsui" means, although I'll assume it's Japanese for "longs for fluffy creamed filling."

And speaking of longing for fluffy creamed filling, our antagonist June ambushes Spider-Man on his way home from the Delicatessan (Protip, Spidey - Why don't you just go down to the deli dressed as Peter Parker? Also, if you're going to go as Spider-Man, don't walk home). So, Spidey lives in New York city, and the only thing he uses the deli for is to grab Twinkies? Sucker. That's what the bodega is for.

Anyway, Spider-Man finds himself in a punching predicament and a kicking catastrophe, forgetting that he is super-strong, nimble, and has webs that he can totally fire at people from very far away so he doesn't actually have to fight someone if he doesn't want to. Not that advertising is special in this regard, but a lot of super-hero adventures seem predicated on them being a bit thick.

Still, Spidey gives voice to an age-old dilemma: "If I could keep her hands busy, I could take care of her feet ... before they take care of me." Oh, if I had a delicious golden sponge cake for every time I found myself in that situation. Still, Spidey has one heck of an innovative solution: Tie her up and make her eat junk food. Someone google that for me, it's gotta be a saleable fetish somewhere.

BatMan and Sable Lady
Whups, sorry Robin, you've been cast aside.

You know how Catwoman and Cheetah have that really irritating verbal fetish where they keep saying cat things? Like, "What a purrr-fect caper" or "I'm a furrrrr-vent admirer" or "Finally, I've got Batman by the hairrrrr-balls" and so on? Well, this adventure's villain - The Mink Marauder, a.k.a. Sable Lady, a.k.a. Fanny Fur-Snatcher - is apparently fur coat themed, and she can't think of a single goddamn fur-related pun. This is why she never made the big leagues, all she does is stretch out the "v" in "love" everytime she says it, and frankly she's just saying that she loves furs for her own benefit at this point.

Robin totally gets two off on her before she even thinks to admit that she's been "outfoxed". Also, it turns out that she's much more into Hostess Cupcakes than she is furs anyway, so frankly what we have here is a fi-i-i-i-i-i-ine bitch of a supervillainess who was a little too hasty in picking her modus operandi.

Spider-Man and Madam Web
You may remember that Spider-Man's comics had another Madam(e) Web in them, a blind old lady in a skin-tight red vinyl evening gown. Because Spider-Man was a horror comic back then, I guess.

Your humble editor is ending on this note because this Madam Web is probably the fi-i-i-i-i-i-inest of the fi-i-i-i-i-i-ine bitches harassing our Hostess Heroes this installment. This is kind of what I don't get about Spider-Man ... I mean, if Peter Parker is such a loser and a schmuck, why does he get hot pieces of orange slice like Madam Web thrown his way? And Black Cat? And Mary Jane Watson, and Gwen Stacy? You know how sometimes people say that Spider-Man's persistence and popularity is owing to how relatable he is? I'm having a hard time relating to that.

So anyway hey, Madam Web has been besmirching Spider-Man's relatively good name by somehow covering the entire harbor in Spider-Man-like webbing (What's it anchored to, beneath the waterline, anyway?) in retaliation for Spider-Man spurning her advances. Becalmed by the promise of Hostess Twinkies, Madam Web frees the harbor from her insidious webs, and is promptly denied her Twinkies and arrested. I think Spidey set himself up, there, next time around she's going to cook up some terrible revenge scheme to destroy the good names of Spider-Man AND Twinkie the Kid!

Atrocities of the Amazing Heroes Swimsuit Special 1992

Remember when I said there'd be tits? Oh, there will be tits, indeed. Prepare to avert your eyes if you're squeamish, or if you're sane. Oh, and get prepared to get really, really angry at this one guy a little further on ...

Just to start you off on something relatively harmless, we'll start with a fairly innocuous Tiny Toons "Babes of the Beach" illustration. Considering what would come later by way of the internet in regards to these poor animated sonsabitches, I can live with a little feeble cheesecake, never minding how disturbing it is to me personally to see cartoon animals covering their tits. Slightly worse than that? The guy in every internert forum who always has to make the point "How come the cartoon animal ladies don't have six tits, huh? Why, that'd be edgy" or "a turn-on" or "more realistic" or some goddamn thing that would you people shut up, it's a kids cartoon ...

Lest you think that the Amazing Heroes' Swimsuit issue was inevitably some mass of nothing but uncomfortable cheesecake, here's some awkward beefcake to put your mind at ease. Thanks to Paty Cockrum, I now have a decent idea of what it looks like if Magneto rubs his bare chest while kneeling solemnly in the surf. I like to think there's a tag cloud in my mind, and it's got words in it like "rubs self," "buck naked", "bare chest", "Magneto", "surf", "emo", and also I'm slightly proud that there's only a single result for those specific assembled results. Same goes for "Sandman", "buck naked", "sitting in front of spaceship porthole", "looking really perturbed that someone tore up his favorite black towel", "emo" and "surf".


Not quite to the tits, yet, but there sure is something overtly pornographic about this arguably non-pornographic picture of the singing dishware and title characters from Disney's "Beauty and the Beast". What is it about this Randy H.Crawford (get ready to hate this man, coming up) piece that screams "porn picture"? Is it Belle's kneeling posture, knees akimbo, in front of Beast's heavily-weighted crotch-bulge? Is it that fucked-up looking teapot drooling all over itself and spurting undefined liquids through its clearly dick-shaped nozzle up at Belle? Is it the goopy shit running off her right hand? Is it the look of discomfort and self-loathing painted across her face? Is it all these things and more? Oh, way to go, Randy H.Crawford.

By the way, wasn't the teapot a lady? Wasn't the teapot Angela Lansbury? Why is the teapot getting all goggle-eyed and gape-mouthed over Belle? There was clearly subtext in this movie I must have missed, and also I never did see this movie so I kind of missed the whole thing, it could've been a big cartoon gang-bang for all I know.

Well, here's a cheesecake pinup of Chic Young's Blondie which raises a lot more questions than it answers. As a for instance, that "half a baby gherkin" crack makes me believe that Blondie is kind of a castrating bitch. I never saw it in the comic strip, but hey, I'm more of a Hi and Lois man. Also, it turns out that Blondie hallucinates the fuck out of everything all the time.

Anyway, before we start getting our hate on for Randy H.Crawford, let's get to those much promised tits.

Well, here's a fuckin' "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh godamnit whaaaaat no way I mean come on no way jesus christ come on what the fuck jesus mary and joseph make it stop I taste blood" kind of moment if there ever was one. Not cool, guys, not cool.

Okay, ready to get your hate on? Good, because Randy H.Crawford's next piece will be a sort of appetizers to get your mouth watering to really really hate on a dude. Crawford is an hors d'ourve (literal translation: Whore Dove) leading up to a thematically-linked bit of loathsomeness. Like, ready? Okay. Question - what's pretty much the last thing you'd ever want to see and also a thing that is totally unecessary and also you kind of hate the guy who's find such a thing funny and/or sexy? If your answer is "softcore porn featuring the mom from Calvin and Hobbes", then not only are you right, but your answer is ...


Drink it in. Calvin and Hobbes dressed in lingerie and bondage panties. Calvin's mom's lingerie and bondage panties. Hey guys? That is the whole joke.

But wait! The speculative sex life of Calvin's parents is one thing, what about ... the explicit sex life of Calvin's parents?


Although I honestly think the Beauty and the Beast one is still grodier, I can confidently say about this image: Fu-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-uck you.

It's that old bugaboo, BATMAN LEADS AN INTERESTING LIFE TUESDAY

You know what? Batman's sarcastic.

Atrocities of the Amazing Heroes Swimsuit Issue 1991: Part 2

A few more pin-ups from the 1991 Amazing Heroes Pin-Up Special. Despite what was promised/threatened, there's no tits - but come the 1992 Special? Oh, there will be tits.



Much in the same vein as never having had the undeniable urge to see the cast of TaleSpin in their beach gear, I likewise never much wanted to see the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation in theirs. More specifically, I had no inclination towards ever wanting to see the befurred body of Jonathan Frakes in a banana hammock and a Nagel beater. Sleeves all ripped off and everything. Do you have any idea how this image has burned itself into my brain, and how difficult it makes it to watch any television special about UFO abductions or mysterious disappearances that might have to do with teleportation? That's right, I just burned Riker's post-Trek career, and he deserved it if for no other reason than walking around the finale to Enterprise and spoilering us on Trip's death before the commercial break. DAMMIT I AIN'T FORGOT, RIKER, I AIN'T. Now put on some pants.






Oh goddamn it, the ladies with the animal heads thing. Far be it for me to suggest that the whole thing about getting turned on by a sexy lady but she has a gopher head is endemic of an aversion to equanimous human social interaction, flat-out full-bore gynophobia and more than that a kind of a sad power and control fantasy, but on the other hand yeah I am suggesting that pretty much. Above and beyond all that, I still don't get the fantasy of making love to a beautiful woman and then she brushes her hair out of her face and she gazes meaningfully into your eyes and she's actually your neighbor's dog, but still, you seen her tits? Patches has some great tits.





...And lastly for 1991, a gangbusters gonzo batshit insane TMNT submission. I have NO idea what all these pieces are meant to represent, but now I've seen both William Riker AND H.Ross Perot in banana hammocks, and I'm pretty much done with the beach forever anyway I guess, thanks.

Batman Leads an Interesting Life Tuesdays

Hey, you know what Batman hates? Batman hates guns. A gun took his parents away from him, and a gun is at the root of every act of violence he prevents. But you know what Batman hates more than guns? Stinkin' yella Japs.

Atrocities of the Amazing Heroes Swimsuit Issue 1991: Part 1

Back in the days before Wizard magazine co-branded the cotton stuffing out of the fanzine and trade magazine market, the heavyweight chapeen in terms of mainstream comics coverage was Amazing Heroes. While its sister title, The Comics Journal, did and still does spend its focus on analysis, interpretation and interview, Amazing Heroes was centered around the shameless fan, and was his perfect fodder.

Already a content-packed newsprint volume, Amazing Heroes - inspired with tongue firmly planted in cheek by the incredibly popular Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, which if you recall had become a phenomenon in the late 1980s and 1990s - began releasing their own swimsuit specials.

Calling on artists from all over the industry, the Swimsuit Specials were largely light-hearted and managed to collect between two covers an eclectic mix of cartoonists whose work wouldn't otherwise be sharing a page; Jamie Hernandez and Guy Davis were po-facedly presented next to Tom Palmer and Michael Bair, a page-turn away from fanzine vet Fred Hembeck or funny-animal artist Scott Shaw. Cartoonists Ty Templeton, Tom McWeeney and Scott Saavedra could always be counted on to deliver wry, articulate and beautifully drawn gag pieces, while the books also included rare full-page industry work by fellows like Mitch O'Connell or John Workman - all in all, terrifically worthwhile volumes produced at an exciting time in the comics industry.

BUT! These are swimsuit comics, and between the wry and well-rendered there were folks who just took their pinups into ... wrong, wrong places.

Oh, and here's your last fair warning: There's no nudity in these pic-ups, but next time? Oh, next time ...



I was less amazed that 'sexy' Tale Spin art existed well before the internet than I was that sexy Tale Spin art drawn before the internet could still inspire an otherwise unprompted "OH GODDAMNIT" from me. My college roomie and I used to love Tale Spin (and Darkwing Duck) but then again, we worked full time and went to school full time and also I drank and he smoked weed and so maybe some type of mental fatigue could be blamed, but all of that aside we watched Tale Spin all the time and yet we NEVER WANTED TO SEE REBECCA IN A GODDAMN BIKINI. What was wrong with us, right folks? Rrrowr .... *cough*




Fan-sphere luminary Fred Hembeck is largely beyond reproach, but the weird, claustrophobic and awkward attitude of this piece deserves a bit of a hover. I gather he's suggesting that Little Lulu's parents and Peter Parker's aunt and uncle were old pals, and then suggesting that the young tykes themselves are falling in love, which is ... out of nowhere. And unsettling. There's something about their expressions which seem to imply nausea and reefer menia more than schoolkid crushes.

Mostly what confuses me about this piece is the strange bolding of key phrases, which makes this read like a logic puzzle. I've given it a goodly once over now and again, and as near as I can tell, Fred Hembeck is being held prisoner in the basement of a hop house in Chinatown, and it's up to you - and the brave men, women, cyborgs and intelligent gorillas of Action Force X - to free him. God be with you.





You'll note that this Wolverine piece - with volleyball cameo by Bosko - is dedicated to Jack "King" Kirby. I ... wonder why? You don't suppose they're under the impression that Kirby created Wolverine? Or Bosco? Or beach volleyball?

For all this piece has to do with Kirby, these guys may as well have driven a Cadillac and dedicated it to Kirby. "We dedicate vacuuming the guest room because we have company this weekend to Jack 'King' Kirby." "I take thee to be my bride, in the name of Jack 'King' Kirby..."

You know, I started off making fun, but now I think that sounds pretty awesome. Let's dedicate everything we do to Jack Kirby. For instance, I will dedicate the oncoming swearing-in-absolute-revulsion to the legacy of the greatest comics cartoonist ever, Jack 'King' Kirby:



AW FUCKING GODDAMNIT COME ON WHAT THE FUCK STOP IT. FUCK.