Superman, Batman & Robin Playerz of 1948.

While as characters they have little in common, one being the fantasy embodiment of hope and optimism and the other being a quai psychopathic obsessive perfection / justice freak with a fetish for a Halloween image (seriously enough already with the bat symbol on everything, I bet he even pays the Charmin people big bucks so he can have toilet paper with it on the rolls in the john in the Bat-Cave even though only he, and perhaps Alfred, ever see it.)

They being the two most popular and iconic characters at DC Comics, and pretty much the only popular characters they have that originated at the formerly named National Periodical Publications, most of the others, from Wonder Woman to Captain Marvel, having been obtained from other companies, (DC sort of being the imperial Rome of comic companies) it stands to reason that they would want to figure out ways to put them together.

In recent years this was complicated by the two just not getting, along and while this in no way stopped DC from still publishing Superman/Batman, the relationship was at best strained.

Contrast this to the 32 years they spent in World’s Finest comics, starting in 1954, where they were best buds. How things will be depicted in DC’s new 52 era remains to be seen.

However there is another era in the relationship between Superman and Batman that even the most dedicated comic book fan is unaware of, taking place from 1947 to 1948, seven years before their official team-up, this took place not in stories, but only on the covers of World’s Finest Comics.

At the time the comic was twice as large as a regular comic and cost 15 cents, and was made up of separate stories featuring various DC characters such as the Wyoming Kid, Green Arrow, and others. However it’s main draw were stories with Superman and Batman in them.

To showcase this they were featured on the covers in images showed up nowhere on the inside, and such images they were, I give you.

Superman, Batman & Robin Playerz of 1948.

All of them showed the Dynamic Duo and the Man of Steel being very undynamic  and non-steel like, mostly just larking about at State Fairs, giving shoe-shine guys a hard time by their red, blue and green boots, and at swimmin' holes, many however show them apparently trying to impress or pick up girls.

Superman can fly faster than the speed of light and make it to moon before and back 523 times before you blink twice and Batman can thread a needle from 100 paces away in the dark using a batarang while doing two other things and yet they feel the need to form a human chain? They were just giving the boy a chance to cop a feel.

So there you have it, the first team-up of Batman and Superman was not them saving the world, but going out on a double dates… unless this was just a publicity campaign by DC to provide beards for them!

Oh my

My Superpower? Why Rollering Skating of Course!"

The idea of putting wheels on your shoes and rolling about on them is, if you really think about it, an odd, bordering on stupid, idea, but we as a people have been doing it for a long time.

No one knows who the first person was to come up with the idea, but it’s been around since the early 18^th century, and the first recorded person to try to improve the whole concept was one John Joseph Merlin in 1760.

And like the original Merlin roller skates have been turning up, if not regularly, at least often enough to get noticed in comic books.*

And despite the fact that comic books are often filled with representations of odd looking humans, in odd looking costumes, when roller skates show up it still looks… well… odd.

For examples see below from World’s Finest Comics in 1948, a one shot from the 80s Black & White mistake… err… explosion featuring a hero called “Skate-man,” Ironman using his always vaguely silly looking armor skates, Barbie on skates (perhaps the only one who pulls it off), a comic from 1957 featuring “the Secret of Roller Skating” (ssssh, don’t tell anyone but `it’s don’t fall down and even a dweeb like that guy can get girls to do stuff like that.’) and the always forgettable Dazzler and her high-heel roller skates, showing that her greatest mutant ability was being able pull off things like that and not regularly break both legs.

*   (You like that? I’ve been practicing my segues)

Who Does Batman Fear?

Being from 1968 I'm sure this scene from above found in World's Finest # 173 is thoroughly out of continuity, heck, stuff from six months ago it out of continuity much less almost 44 years ago!

But still, does it hold? Of his villains over the years whom would Batman be the most afraid of? In that issue it was stated as being Two-Face, would that still hold today? I'm guessing not, what with ones that have broken his back and killed side-kicks... for a while at least.

What do you think?

Who gives the Batman the jim jams?

Why all the Red-Headed Mermaids & Sea Goddesses in Pop Culture?

Ever notice how many redheaded mermaids and sea goddesses there are in pop culture?

I’m not just talking about the one from the `B I G  F I S H’ when talking about pop culture chops, i.e. Disney and the House of the Grand Mouse’s Arial, their take on the little mermaid, I’m talking before and beside that character, or which there are more than a few auburn haired queens of the briny deep.

There are all these bits of mermaid kitsch from the 20’s to the 50’s, also Aquaman’s sweetie and sometimes wife Mera, Queen of the Sea, from the film Ponto there’s cute little Ponyo and her Mum, and the “Woman in the Water” from a less successful film.  

I’m not saying they’re all redheads, there are plenty of depictions of blonde and brunette mermaids and sea goddess, take Dyesebel from the Philippines for instance. That character has been around since 1953 and has been had three or four films and a television series made about her and she’s a brunette.

Dyesebel

I’m just saying the percentage of ginger Ladies of the Sea seems higher than average to me, and I wonder why that is.

Perhaps they get it from their mom? If that is Aphrodite is their mother, she being born from sea foam and all. And I’m just taking her for a redhead based on one famous painting in which she is mistakenly called Venus.

It’s not much to go on, but it’s all I have at the moment.

Oh! And let’s not forget Amy Pond, who while not a mermaid is redheaded and her last name is Pond which are, in order to qualify for that noun made out of water…

I’ll stop speculating here.

Four-Color Sherlock Holmes

With a new Sherlock Holmes film out and about at the moment I’m reminded of the character’s appearances in another media, the comics.

Being so well known, so popular (and so in the public domain) has led to Holmes and Watson having a lot of different comic book interpretations, both close to Canon, and wildly off on their on tangents (I’m thinking of one near pornographic one where those responsible needed a good talking to, and maybe a punch in the face afterward), both color and black & white, serious and humorous takes and a number of different languages.  

With over 150 appearances in graphic media it stands to reason that there would, and should be some variation in those appearances.

Here are just 8 of them, including one of the first from Classic Illustrated, some very stylistic ones, Holmes going up against zombies and vampires (there were at least two different comic series devoted to him battling Dracula) and completely tossing logic out the window having him team up with Batman and in another battling the Joker! 

Need Help With the Bills Lois?

What’s this, Lois Lane muling for Tupperware? I guess plucky girl reporters in the 60s didn’t make as much as I thought they did.


The image above comes from a comic book called, as you can see on the cover, Tupperware Dating Party, which it seems features one Dorothy Dealer. (I can hardly wait for the Post Modern reboot on THAT character!)

A freebie produced something around 1968 that was given to woman thinking about joining the cult of… I mean becoming a Tupperware distributer.

It was published by Common Comics, which was a subsidy of American Comic Group, the comic company known mainly for a long string of mild “horror” comics and a fat little character known as Herbie, or sometimes the Fat Fury.

They got out of regular comics in the 60s, but still produced them for companies like Sears, Tupperware and others.

The art in this one was supplied by Kurt Schaffenberger, the artist who for over ten years was THE artist for Lois Lane, becoming so iconic that he was even brought in to draw her in comics being done by other artists so that she always looked the same.

It seems he also pulled her out for this item as well, despite being called “dealer” Ruby Robins and given a by the unknown colorist a somewhat different hair color, (not Lois’s natural blue from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane,) that’s Lois Lane, down to the little Jackie Kennedy hat she sported in her adventures at DC at the same time.

Perhaps she needed the extra income to make up for all the time she spent being shrunk, trapped in the Phantom Zone, tossed around in time, being abducted by aliens and going though one weird transformation after another.

Suicide is Easy... it's getting people to buy the title that's hard

Everybody knows DC had the Suicide Squad first in the 60s, as is so often the case with “what everybody knows” everybody is dead wrong. Seems it's been around longer than that, and been used by more than DC. 

First off I personally was a little disappointed to find out where the phrase came from, it seems that it first was used in football, the suicide squad being the squad used on kickoffs, that being more dangerous than other plays, or so they tell me. 

However a expression with umpf like that can't be expected to say on the gridiron. 

The first fictional Suicide Squad appeared from March 25, 1936 to April, 1943 in 22 stories in Ace G-Man Stories featuring 3 tough as nails FBI agents battling gangsters, Nazis, and even the occasional super-villain, a Mr. Zero to name pseudonyms, written by Emile C. Tepperman, the man who gave use Operator # 5, Secret Agent X and a number of the adventures of The Avenger (the one with the gray moldable face) the first Squad fought crime and / or evil in such stories as Mr. Zero and the Suicide Squad, Suicide Squad Reports for Death, The Suicide Squad's Murder Lottery & Blood, Sweat, and Bullets. Mostly forgotten they they have recently had a bit of a revival with the reprinting of all 22 of their adventures just last July.  

The next Suicide Squad was a comic printed in Australia by Frew starting in 1952. I have been unable to find out a single blessed thing about this crew.... however I'm willing to bet the guy with the pipe on the cover of # 1 is the boss. 

Then DC did the Squad, not once but twice, at least one of these teams you probably already know about. The latest version most likely, just like the first two the 60s version, also sometimes known as Task Force X, kind of quickly slipped from the collective mind as well... must have something to do with the name, it is, lets face it, a little bleak.