Comic Books

[Choconado]

Comic nerd that I am, I know exactly every detail you're vaguely talking about regarding batman. Also, Karlo is still bumming around as the original Clayface. The Clayface family is...complicated.

[Billy A. Anderson]

Choco, thanks for the quick reply. yes, the first Claface story with Karlo was one recently read. The one just finished reading was Detective 44, think, the firstime think I've seen the word, alien used in a Batman and Robin story, in this case, the aliens were from the 'fourth dimension' which Batman and Robin got into by the efforts of an eccentric, but probably not actually evil scientist, and, as I expected, it had the all a dream (of Robin) ending. By this time, the Giant Props had already made their debut, and in this case, in the "Dream" Batman and Robin were wondering if the menacing aliens were really giants, or whether they had been shrunken, a question which didn't seem to be answered.

[Count Zero]

I'm not surprised Batman fans in the '60s were complaining about sci-fi elements, mostly because the majority of the Batman stuff I like best seems to be the stuff everybody else wants to pretend never happened. I've always found Batman most interesting when he was dealing with weird stuff - a rich white guy with no powers fighting street crime is a concept that does literally nothing for me, but a rich white guy with no powers fighting werewolves, vampires, aliens, bat monsters, and dudes made out of clay is something to which I'll at least say, "Okay - let's check this out."

[Billy A. Anderson]

Thanks for the post Count Zero, and I pretty much agree with your viewpoint.

As far as I have gotten, Detective 44, Bruce Wayne is still smoking his pipe, although I can't recall his smoking in the 1960s.

Since Bruch Wayne was a playboy and Hugh Heffner was a playboy, maybe smoking a pipe was considered a playbody trademark?

Both Forry and James Warren were admirers of Mr. Heffner, and on the front cover of the Spacemen Annual, final ish of that mag, the Playboy Spaceman surrounded by the sexy babes, reading a copy of Spacemen, was, of course, smoking a pipe, something Forry would never have allowed due to his rabid, puritanical opposition to tobacco,but as we all know Mr. Warren had the Final Word on what went into his magazines.

[Mayzshon]

Just finished Marvel Masterworks: Warlock, A.K.A. SPACE JESUS!
The High Evolutionary sends his only son, Adam Warlock, to save Earth from the corrupting influence of Man-Beast. The first several issues mildly flirt with subtlety, but then the story is concluded in three issues of the Hulk, and suddenly Warlock is just one beard and a pair of sandals shy of a Sunday School lesson. There's a Last Supper, Warlock is excuted before a crowd that calls for his death, and three days later comes back.
I will say it's entertaining, and far less obnoxious than a Kirk Cameron movie.

[Count Zero]

May 7, 2018 9:10:14 GMT -5 Mayzshon said:

Just finished Marvel Masterworks: Warlock, A.K.A. SPACE JESUS!
The High Evolutionary sends his only son, Adam Warlock, to save Earth from the corrupting influence of Man-Beast. The first several issues mildly flirt with subtlety, but then the story is concluded in three issues of the Hulk, and suddenly Warlock is just one beard and a pair of sandals shy of a Sunday School lesson. There's a Last Supper, Warlock is excuted before a crowd that calls for his death, and three days later comes back.
I will say it's entertaining, and far less obnoxious than a Kirk Cameron movie.

Yeah, apparently Roy Thomas took the character in that direction because he'd just gotten super into the Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack (seriously). Jim Starlin's stuff later on is supposed to be way more interesting.

[Mayzshon]

I'm starting Starlin's run next. From what I've read about it, it's pretty trippy.

[Choconado]

connected, I've been starting to read all of Thanos' appearances in the Marvel U in order. Pretty sure the two intersect pretty heavily by the late 70s. It's kinda fun that so much of the cosmic half of the Marvel U is Starlin's baby. His name is attached to quite a bit of it in the creative stuff.

In the very first appearance of Thanos (in which Iron Man randomly encounters him while fighting two of his lackeys) they weren't sure yet about the Titan race, and everyone looked purple like him.

[Mayzshon]

So I've been reading Starlin's run on Adam Warlock. He loses all the Space Jesus stuff, and replaces it with a great big helping of WTF? Adam Warlock goes up against his evil future self Adam Wafro!

[Choconado]

Whoa. As you saw on fb Mayz, I recently started way back in the early days of Warlock and I'm kinda going through side by side his and Thanos' stuff, so boy do I have something to look forward to now! As it stands, I'm chin deep in the Space Jesus stuff which is super on the nose.

[Count Zero]

I remember reading that the Space Jesus era of Warlock happened because Roy Thomas had been going through a phase of listening to the original Jesus Christ Superstar cast soundtrack. Which I think is hilarious.

Also, it makes me wonder what kind of Adam Warlock stuff we'd have gotten if he'd been listening to other musicals from around that era. What if Thomas had been listening to Hair? (Obviously, the answer is that 'fro the Magus has in Mayz's picture, but...)

[Billy A. Anderson]

I am temporarily stalled in putting my JPG files of the earliest Detective Comics Batman (and, later Batman & Robin) stories onto CD, issue 52 being the last, I think.

I probably siad on the entertqinment thread, that I ran into playback problems with trying to watch the 1940s Batman serials. I have reduced my ambitions on that project, and whenever I get back to it, will, hopefully, find a free webpage that I can get a decent playback of the first episode of the 1943 serial.

So far I have not run into Robin saying "holy" was it holy cow? although Robin from the beginning seemed very prone to making a lot of smart alec remarks.

I'm getting so mixed up I can't remember what Ive said on this thread, but those of us familiar with these earlier days are well aware that Batman in his earliest stories didn't mind killing criminals, throwing them off of buildings to their deaths, for example, altough other of this adversaries died in other ways.

I came across one episode where Robin apparently caused the death of a criminal, but didn't note the exact issue number. And, of course, the Giant Props are well established and routine by Detective 52, and with the Batman comic book also starting during this time, with 3 Batman and Robin stories per issue, there was a big dose of Batman and Robin for 1940s comic book readers and for us youngsters to still catch up on.

[Billy A. Anderson]

I forgot to metnion that 1965 was the year that "An Evening With Batman and Robin," with both the 1943 and 1949 serials shown in their entirety played in movie houses, and its success gave the go ahead to the Batman TV show.

I know the Evening With movie house presentation was associatd with a house ownd by Hugh Heffner of Playboy Magazine, but am not sure if that was the premiere of the Evening with show or not. From my readings, it seems that the evening with show did tour the USA, although probably hot on any saturation basis.

Possibly a limited, test marketing number of engagements and venues?

Oh well, my questions above show you how little I really know about all of this.

Was DC Comics behind any of this,in their campaign to revive the admitttedly stuck in a rut Batman of the comic books?

[Billy A. Anderson]

I've gotten things pretty well organized with the files on my desktopcomputer, putting them onto CD and have also gotten an extra USB, so I think the danger of overlaoding my desktop computer is lessened.

I just saved the Batman stories from Detective 53-56, which I'll read and put onto CD.

Have any of you other board members watched the 1943 and 1949 movie house Batman and Robin serials?

If so, what did you think of them.

Despite the problems I've mentioned in previous posts, where there is a will with a driven and determined person like myself, there is a way, and I'm sure I'll eventually get to see all chapters of both serials. In due time.

A lot of good things have come to me after waiting for them.

[Choconado]

I want to say I've seen them both, and iirc, they were both pretty slow even for serials of the time.

[Mayzshon]

Yeah, I agree with Choco. They're both pretty slow going.

[Billy A. Anderson]

Thanks for the posts, Choco and Mazy.

[Deeky]

The newest issue of Batman shows him with his cock flopping about. Someone call Dr. Wertham!

[Marlowe]

This is random, but I do a fair bit of a community theater, and I just got done with a production of Young Frankenstein where the woman playing Inga was married to Sean Murphy, the guy who wrote Batman: White Knight. (She also mentioned the "adult" DC comics thing; I guess at some point she was going to write some sort of BDSM thing for them? She's a romance novelist.)

[Lemmy Caution]

Sept 20, 2018 8:46:15 GMT -5 Deeky said:

The newest issue of Batman shows him with his cock flopping about. Someone call Dr. Wertham!

It's a Bat-a-Wang! Holy foreskins Batman! (Or maybe not, come to think...)