And a Happy 1970s to you, too, Spider-Man!

(via Ice Cream Motor)

It's BATMAN LEADS AN INTERESTING OH NO ROBIN LOOK OUT SCREEEEEEE Tuesday!

"Okay Robin, gently let up on the clutch and press down on the gas - GENTLY! I said gently! Okay, you're approaching second, so get ready to shift, depressthe clutch, now spin into that hail of gunfire ... okay, plant your foot, tear through this wall, and let's leap this sonofabitch over a ten-foot gap ... GENTLY, I said! Don't grind it!"

Can He Swing Through A Door? Yes He Can If It's An Atrium Door From Allied Distributor Inc WATCH OUT!

How Much Longer Will We Tolerate the Black Ops Myth of So-Called "Bed Wetting"? WAKE UP PEOPLE!

Judy of the Jungle

As far as goes the genus of The Batshit Superhero, the Golden Age probably offers up more pure delight than any other era in comics. Anything was a go and as long as you could produce eight pages of it, publishers would pay you top ha'penny for whatever insane hunk of unreadable shit you could crib from even less coherent comics produced in greater numbers.

You may recall that I had found what I believed to be my favorite golden age comic book hero of all time, The Red Blazer (who is, disappointingly enough, decked out in shorts and a tunic) whose origin involves getting drugged, probably molested and locked in a spaceship by a scientist tom whom he is introduced while burying a body in the middle of the desert. Well, Judy of the Jungle is running, at the very least, a close second and a very likely first. This is because I enjoy disturbing subtext.

We join Judy already living in the jungle with her widowed father and decked out in what appears to be a monkey-fur evening gown with the skirt torn off. I leave it to your imagination to reckon how it got that way, but I know we can suffice it to say that Judy and her dad already have a complicated relationship. I mean, it's either a torn gown or a one-piece swimsuit she refuses to ever take off, but whatever the case it's not the worst thing that's going to happen in this book, so forget I even mentioned it.

Judy's father is bemoaning his hermitage, having abandoned the civilization of men in order to pursue his work as a naturalist and apparently to satisfy some pissy grudge he has with all humanity. I'm going to guess "They outlaw our love" tops his list of complaints. Fretting in true passive-aggressive manner that he's denied his daughter a life among her own kind ("abuse survivors", I'd say), he receives from his own darling flesh-and-blood a warm, familial kiss which would - from the looks of it - spur an erection in any living man so rapidly that the resulting friction against one's zipper might create a focused beam of concentrated light capable of burning through reinforced steel. It's a little saucy, is what I'm saying.

Maybe it's just me, maybe a curvaceous redhead gliding her full lips across yours as she caresses your cheek and presses her firm, young body against your chest is just one of those things that I take the wrong way. Tell you what, someone arrange for me to get felt up by Christina Hendricks, I'll tell you if it seems chaste. I'll be the first to admit I'm wrong...



Receiving what he almost certainly deserves, dad gets offed by trigger-happy German killers-for-hire vacationing in what I guess is probably the same Southern California locale where Richard Donner shot all of the Danger Island shorts on the Banana Splits show. Finding his near-lifeless body, Judy tries to save the old man's life by gently but thoroughly groping him, whereupon he delivers what is possibly - in the great and varied history of dying fathers passing onto their heroic children the words of wisdom which spur them onward in their tireless pursuit of justice and right - the greatest such motivational speech fo'ever:



"A burly German named Kurt ... and a crew of cutthroats! LIVE FOR REVENGE, Judy ... and remember ... TRUST NO MAN!"

Judy, darling, I've seen the kind of upbringing you've had, I agree.

It's BATMAN LEADS A ROOTIN'-TOOTIN' BUMBERSHOOTIN' LIFE TUESDAY!

Batman can beat up Superman. You know he can, you've seen him do it - not once, but several times. In fact, chances are, if you're a Batman fan, your allegiance to the character owes no small debt to Batman's ability to cream such targets as the Man of Steel into street pudding.

You get the idea - particularly if you grew up on the Batman as he was portrayed in the Eighties and Nineties - that Batman can murder any living superhero or supervillain. Can Batman beat Green Lantern? Yes. Can he beat The Flash? Yes. Aquaman? Yes. Wonder Woman? Yes, but he doesn't have to, because she's a female comic book character in the DC Universe and mostly just wants to bat-jump his bat-bones because that's apparently all that girls are good for, according to comic books (PS - also to get murdered).

Weirdly, the selling point of Batman is that he's "a normal human being" (Addendum: ...who is the greatest martial artist, detective, gymnast, athlete, scientist, biologist, cyberneticist, computer programmer, auto mechanic, race car driver, inventor, vigilante billionaire industrualist IN THE WORLD) and yet he blithely caroms potentially career-ending batarangs off the noggins of every spandex-clad demigod from the Justice League's A-squad to the bottom fifteen ranking members of The Defenders. Meanwhile, put him up against another "normal human being" and he gets in THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE. His greatest enemy is a manic anorexic with deep tissue chemical poisoning. Making up the rest of the batting order are an obsessive-compulsive burn victim, an ecotmorphic academic in a burlap sack, a crazy cat lady, a guy who will die if he encounters a lukewarm draft, and, among a thousand other trauma ward near-fatalities, a chick dressed like a fern. My advice to Batman is, like, you know those times you beat up Superman? Do what you did there all the time, but with everyone.

So, anyway, in that spirit, I present to you a rarely-seen imbroglio from the Dark Knight Detective's hidden casefiles (by way of a General Mills cereal promotion) between Batman and one of his greatest and most persistent enemies; a fat myopic midget who hits you with umbrellas. What the fuck is this, Super Mario World?

Spoiler Warning: It's not really all that perilous.

For the delicate of spirit and the animal lovers among you, I feel I should warn you that the Penguin is about to stick an exploding umbrella up a cow's ass. That advance notice was also for 'exploding umbrella up a cow's bottom' fetishists, I guess. Also, it would be funnier if the Penguin would call those "BOMBershoots"...

I like how the placement of the caption in the last panel makes it look like Batman has just kicked the ass of a Best Buy employee named "Eno".

A Genuine Mexican Tee Nee Original - 2 Piece Gaily Painted!

It's BATMAN LEADS AN INTERESTING LIFE TUESDAY

Aw, Robin, you looked, now Batman's gotta slug you in the arm.

Here Is Immediate Comfort For You

You know, the Golden Age of Comics kind of makes it seem like the entire era was actually a terrifying shithole of endless pain and despair. Hey kids! Cardboard Submarines! Tootsie Rolls! Hernia trusses!

It's BATMAN LEADS AN INTERESTING FAN CLUB TUESDAY!

Wrrowww!

Holy Toes!

I'll be honest, I could use those step-by-step Batusi instructions ...

Never Before - Never Again - A Value Like This!