The Dark Knight returns, and Batfan60 is unmasked at last!

I see it has been even longer since I last posted here than I thought, so here's an update: My life as a secret superhero (may as well reveal what you have surely already figured out: I am Batman, in case you forgot) has had its ups and downs over the years. For a while there, when Recon had its chat rooms operating, it was a golden age for fetishists, because suddenly men from all over the world who were into superheroes, lycra, cops, or gloves (to name only the top 4 of my personal favorites) to find each other and interact--which could take the form of either the expected cyberplay or just basic conversation about coming out as a fetish or anything else they wanted to talk about. When that closed up its doors, I lost touch with at least 80% of the men I had met there, and since then, pickins have been mighty slim. For various reasons, I largely quit engaging in solo batplay at home in my batsuit or any other uniform (and I have plenty, these days).

But just today I got inspired to give Twitter a try--set up an account (@Batfan60), posted a tweet with the hashtags #superherofetish and #copfetish, and immediately started recognizing men from the good old bad old days. If you are one of them, welcome! As noted, I haven't updated this blog in years, much as I loved keeping it, but there are still many years' worth of words and pictures to keep you busy for hours. Go ahead: Get lost in my fantasies, at least the ones you share--and if you do share them, we should talk, either here or on Twitter.

PS. The "Breaking News" reports on the right side of this page automatically refresh, so please visit again to see what's happening in the Batfan60 multiverse.

PPS. I also have a long-running Bat-related slash blog for you to, uh, enjoy. Haven't updated it in a while (a lonnnnnng while), but I still think about it, because I love where I left our hopeless hero and his helpless helpers.

PPPS. And then there's my now-ancient main website (on AngelFire--don't make fun), which also hasn't been updated in years (notice a pattern here?), but is chock-full of dirty stories, kinky links, and other fetishy fun. Again, I dream of completely overhauling it someday, but lately I've either been fighting villains or trapped in their nefarious clutches.

PPPPS. If YOU, dear reader, are a villain in search of a new masked and gloved opponent to toy with (online roleplay only--the Hub is still a major and wonderful part of my life), find me as Batfan60 on Recon. My utility belt is restocked, the batcomputer has had a complete upgrade, and I am ready once more for BATtle.

It's funny cuz it's hot

Surely it was the '66 Bat-series that instilled in me a lifelong love of things that work on at least two levels--ideally the kind that make me laugh and make me hard at the same time, or nearly the same time.

Latest examples:

•The Daily Batman, in which the mastermind behind the long-entertaining Beaucoup Kevin serves up a fresh dish of out-of-context bat-ephemera every day, including this tasty morsel of bound and unbelted Batman:



•From Cracked (which I remember as a second-rate Mad, though its online incarnation seems to work blue fairly often), a list of "The 20 Most Ridiculous Batman Comics Ever Released". It's a nice trip through the Caped Crusader's more embarrassing adventures (the kind Grant Morrison made such mind-blowing use of in killing off Bruce Wayne). Again, a beltless Bat:



•Finally, a link I've been saving for ages now (and I see it hasn't been updated in years): a YouTube channel devoted to Live Action Comic Book Superheroes. It's a grabbag of trailers and clips from Hollywood movies, fan films, TV commercials, vintage serials, and various odds and ends. There's some Bat-stuff, all of which I think I'd seen before, but what really caught my eye was the only fan film devoted to Hourman I have ever seen. The outfit is a bit cheesy, but there's plenty to recommend it to perverts like me 'n' you:

Out of the comics & onto the streets

Finally got around to reading "The Legend of Master Legend," Joshua Bearman's "epic tale" of self-created real-life superheroes from the Dec. 25, 2008 issue of Rolling Stone. As Bearman noted in BoingBoing back when the story first ran ,

[T]he narrative at Boing Boing (and in the wider world) about real life superheroes has mostly been bemusement at the weirdos in spandex. That was my perception of the world when I started reporting. But this is [a?] most serious look at what it actually means that people are doing this, and having found Master Legend and spent a lot of time with him, I realize that what he's doing is strange, yes, but also strangely sympathetic.

Sure enough, while there's a tongue-in-cheek quality to the story, you do get the sense that our narrator believes there is more to ML and colleagues like these and these than an easy punchline. Here's a bit from the end of the piece:

This may be the real reason Master Legend inhabits a never-ending comic book in his mind, assigning everyone a character in the grand narrative. ... [T]he reality of Master Legend, a guy who has no job and lives in a run-down house in a crummy neighborhood in Orlando, is transmuted via secret decoder ring into an everlasting tale of heroic outsiders, overcoming the odds and vanquishing enemies. To the outside world, this makes Master Legend seem like a lunatic. But to the people around him, he is the charismatic center of an inviting universe. ... Being a Real Life Superhero means that Master Legend can get in his Nissan pickup and call it the Battle Truck. He can tape together a potato gun and call it the Master Blaster. He can stand in the porch light of a disintegrating clapboard house, a beer in his hand, and behold a glorious clandestine citadel. And who are we to tell him otherwise?

Who, indeed?

BONUS! Actual comments from and flame wars between some of the heroes in Bearman's tale here and on page 1 of the online version of the story.
EXTRA BONUS! Deleted material from the original story here.

Who watches the Watchmen when they take their clothes off? I do! I do!

I admit I was one of those people with major reservations about the Watchmen movie. In fact, I was one of those people who didn't even want a movie to be made from the book(s).

Surprise, surprise: I liked it. A lot. Not without reservations, mind you, but given how low my expectations were going in, I left feeling pretty satisfied. It's been about 20 years or more since I read Alan Moore's original, so I was roughly halfway between a hardcore fan and a total newbie. I was joined by the Hub (who had never heard of the book, let alone read it), a friend of his who'd just finished reading the book 2 hours before the movie, and the friend's wife (who was in the same boat as the Hub)--and every one of them enjoyed it, too. Sure, it's damn violent, but the thing's about (among other subjects) how to deal with a violent world, so that didn't bother me too much. I also thought the movie did a great job at least raising the thorny moral dilemmas explored in much more detail in the book. And I appreciated the presence of a sense of humor that did not involve wisecracking heroes punctuating their gutpunches with punchlines.

But let's be honest. My favorite thing about the movie was the chance to see Patrick Wilson naked yet again (see also: Angels in America, Little Children, and this troubling spectacle). I had my doubts when I heard he would be playing Nite Owl, but I'll be damned if he didn't end up looking almost exactly like the comic book character (who is supposed to be a bit of a schlub, but I found him cute, too). Did I mention he was naked?



(Bummer! Just learned from IMDB that his 2003 New Year's Resolution was "To be in a movie or a play which doesn't require me to take off my clothes. Unless, of course, I don't get another job... In which case I'll be half-naked and whole-heartedly depressed for the rest of my career." Hey, that Plan B works for me.)

As icing on the (beef)cake, the updated outfit (shall we call it an "owlsuit"?) he wears when he finally suits up is mighty swell, too:



Not sure I bought how quickly the meek retired crimefighter transforms (back) into an asskicking, jailbreaking hero, but that scene struck me as the only one totally untrue to the spirit of the original. Not bad odds, all things considered.

Bonus for readers who actually value literary value over hunkitude: Here's a link to Beaucoup Kevin's list of graphic novels he recommends to folks who've been introduced to the medium via Alan Moore's opus.

Bonus for readers who are as shallow as me: Oh yes, there is also that gigantic blue penis in the movie.

Meanwhile, back in the real (?) world ...

I must admit, I'm disheartened by the recent murder of two policemen by the so-called "Real IRA" (brilliant name, btw, which has now inserted itself sans quotation marks into coverage of the story, thus lending legitimacy to a splinter group that doesn't appear to deserve any). It seemed for so long lately like Northern Ireland was a workable, inspirational example of actual change in a situation that had been deadlocked for decades, if not centuries--a case for diplomacy and compromise as an end to violence. (I thought it was a very smart move, a few years ago, when reps from Ireland tried to lend their experience to participants in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, not that it appears to have done much good.) This NPR interview with BBC correspondent Audrey Carville struck me, as an outsider, as a very good analysis of the situation--the economic context in which the incident took place, the ironies involved (like the image of a former IRA leader now working with the same British police whose murders he once plotted), and just what is at stake right now. I try very hard to keep an open mind to every side of a story, particularly those that unfold on the other side of the world from me, but this feels to me like a pretty clearcut case of a small minority doing everything it can to undo years of hard work for the sheer hell of it.

On a lighter note, we have "Eye-borg," the superhero-ish moniker of filmmaker Rob Spence, a self-described Six Million Dollar Man fan who is outfitting his empty eye socket with a camera. The first interview I heard with him (which I can't find at the moment) explicitly raised the possibility that he could use his new "superpower" for good or for evil. And at Spence's website, you'll find the following video intro; note the many references to Luke Skywalker, Neo, and other fictional precedents:


EYEBORG-- The Two Week Trial from eyeborg on Vimeo.

Maybe Eye-borg can lend his services to "the Troubles."

Stretching out

I've never heard of Kosmix (which is described as "Beta-ish" in its logo at the moment), but they've heard of me, and presumably you, too. That is to say, they've got a page devoted to Spandex Fetishism. Kind of handy, I guess, since it includes Wikipedia entries, Google searches, videos, and lots of other web resources of interest to underwear perverts the world over. Check it out!

Here's a sample: a portion of an amateur video that is so completely abstract you may even have trouble figuring out the gender of the star. Now that's what I call a fetish!



(Consider the above my gift to the various het and bi males and lesbians I've befriended via this blog and our mutual fondness for stretchy synthetic fibers, no matter who happens to be wearing them.)

As a bonus, the video above led me to two more you might enjoy, starting with this homemade montage of ... well, it's pretty clear right away:



And here's an appealing little tease from an Eye of the Cyclone DVD:



I'm happy to see that "eyeofthecyclone" has a YouTube channel, since the main website is now subscription-based. I'm all for helping a fellow pervert earn an honest buck in these tough times, but it seems like the lion's share of Cyclone stuff is wrestling-related, and while there's nothing wrong with that in my book, it doesn't exactly float my boat, either (if you'll permit me to mix metaphors).

No shit, Sherlock

Lots of recent odds and ends, connections between which I largely leave to you:

1. An episode of the public radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge devoted to Sherlock Holmes and other fictional detectives. For the record, I admit to a mild Holmes fetish, particularly when he is portrayed by Jeremy Brett or Basil Rathbone, and particularly in the WWII-era Rathbone films like SH and the Woman in Green and Dressed to Kill. The real reason I like that series--films in which Holmes is moved into the present day, surely to the horror of true A. C. Doyle fans--is that they are lower than the "real" stories on detective work and higher on, you guessed it, delightfully kinky deathtraps. In many of them (I think there are at least four made back-to-back in the mid-1940s) Moriarty gets to be a Joker-style archnemesis bent on our hero's demise, more overtly than in the canonical novels and tales.

2. Another public radio show, RadioLab, recently rebroadcast an episode devoted to the subject of morality. This summary lays out the terrain:

we’ll explore where our sense of right and wrong come from. We peer inside the brains of people contemplating moral dilemmas, watch chimps at a primate research center share blackberries, observe a playgroup of 3 year-olds fighting over toys, and tour the country’s first penitentiary, Eastern State Prison. Also: the story of land grabbing, indentured servitude and slum lording in the fourth grade.

3. And speaking of morality (see, these items are connected after all!), here's a nice piece on the demise of (and ethics of) the pirated-comic-panels extravaganza Scans Daily from Johnny Bacardi. I admit it--I visited often (though never daily) in search of images that floated my bat-boat. But apparently I didn't check it that often, or I would have known that SD was no more. Easy come, easy go, I guess.

4. Finally, a link that has nothing to do with morality, but if I don't post it now I'll forget about it: Bat-Blog tipped me off to a Flash animation of Batman's utility belt. Here's a direct link to the project, which was originally intended for tech geeks and vanilla-flavored comics fanboys, but I say, bring on the belt-fetishists, too!

I assure you, the animated version is more fun than this mere frame grab:

Holy priceless collection of Etruscan snoods!

ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950, an exhibition of rare artifacts and memorabilia on view through August 9 at the Skirball Cultural Center in LA, sounds pretty remarkable. (I first learned about it through the Bat-Blog, which also directed me to this slideshow of 20 images from the show on the LA Weekly site.) The show contains such treasures as the very first sketches of the Joker and Superman, as well as the writing desk where the latter character was born and a photo of the real-life model for Lois Lane. But here's the passage from LA Weekly's blog that made me envision Joker himself, Catwoman, or any of a legion of other villains from the '66 TV show scheming to break in:

The copy of Action Comics #1, the holy grail of comics, which contains the first appearance of Superman [, is one of] less than a hundred copies ... known to exist. The copy at the Skirball is on loan from an anonymous collector and is being shown under a plexiglass cover in the "Lights! Camera! Action!" sub-exhibit one room over from the main gallery.

Heavens to murgatroyd! Have the press and museum curators of the world learned nothing since that rash of burglaries at the Gotham Museum back in the day?! Why, they're exhibiting a chunk of kryptonite, all but asking for a skirmish between Superman and some archfiend!

The Skirball also promises "stations that allow children to dress up as Superheroes or transform themselves via a quick costume change in a telephone booth"--and I ask, yet again, why is it that kids get to have all the fun in this world? But there is a serious intent behind all the interactive bells and whistles, as discussed in the blog post quoted above:

We're kind of in need of superheroes lately. That need is one of the major overlaps between the "golden age" of comic books and the present time. Hence, the Skirball's argument goes, the current resurgence of comics. And because it's the Skirball, the other major point is the Jewish connection. Without having to Wikipedia it, did you know that Stan Lee (the genius behind Spider-Man and Marvel comics) was actually Stan Lieber? And that Superman was created by two 17-year-old Jewish boys? In fact, the entire superhero genre was created by young Jewish artists in the midst of the economic turmoil of the 1930s and 40s.

If you're unlikely to make it to the show in person, you might want to consider ordering the exhibition catalogue (pictured above) from the show's home base, the William Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum in Atlanta. In addition to photos, it includes essays from Jerry Robinson, Jules Feiffer, and Michael Chabon. I'm not sure of the page count, but at $18.50, it might just be a steal.

Nice and Terrific: the Justice League of Also-Rans

In my (so far fruitless) quest to identify a handsome supporting cast member in this 1967 Dick Van Dyke/Barbara Feldon vehicle that happened to be on tonight, I turned up one Stephen Strimpell, star of the superhero sitcom Mr. Terrific, from the same year.

The name kinda sorta rang a bell, as did Captain Nice, the other major-network Bat-ripoff from the same tv season, but I'm pretty sure I never watched either one during their brief runs (which, as TV fate would have it, started and ended on the same day). Enter our modern day Library of Babel, YouTube ...

First, an excerpt from a Mr. T episode that actually aired:



Note the set that looks almost exactly like Commissioner Gordon's office, and the cast consisting entirely of sitcom staples from the era. Now, a glimpse at the unaired pilot, with Alan "WILLLburrrrr" Young replacing Strimpell in the title role:

ct>

(Want to see the other 2 parts? You can find them by clicking on the clip itself.) Meanwhile, here's a learned-looking comparison of the Terrific Two.

Speaking of comparisons, behold this representative episode of competitor Capt. Nice, from the pen of Buck Henry:



In both cases, we've got laugh tracks, unpleasant costumes, and pained humor. On top of that, they're both struggling to spoof something that was already a spoof, which never works too well. Small wonder both have been consigned to the dustbin of history--which is still fun to revisit from time to time.

Men in tights, then and now

Two video treats for you:

1. From TowleRoad, a music video by tights-clad Brit pop singer Will Young:



2. From BatBlog, a very brief early-80s interview with Adam West. (Note that nice shot of an ungloved Batman at the beginning.)



And, oh, what the hell, I'm feeling generous tonight, so here's a bonus #3:

Master Wayne, would you like a manwich?

Thanks to BatBlog for the heads-up on this video that has been making the rounds:



I'm not a gamer, so I don't get most of the jokes, but that doesn't bother me. I'm mainly in it for the fratboy in the (slightly odd looking) batsuit. He may be the ultimate in batdickery, but I'd watch BATtlestar Galactica with him any day.

Hail and farewell

I learned, mere moments ago, of the death of Patrick "Secret Agent Man"/"Prisoner" MacGoohan from this obit by Johnny Bacardi.

And that one reminds me that I have not yet paid my last respects to two bat-villains who died in recent weeks, namely a certain Catwoman and the only Minstrel I know of. The latter I always found one of the hottest (if silliest) bad guys in the tv show's lineup, and this little bit of gossip suggests he may have batted for my team after all. This isn't the best photo of His Minstrelness (that would by necessity include Batman and Robin rotating and revolving on his fiendish barbecue spit), but it'll do in a pinch:

Bat Music for Bat People

Three cheers to LP Cover Lover for this delightfully dorky album cover:




which was just one of the finds I turned up tonight in this collection of superhero-themed artwork. The blog also turned me on to this guide to Bat-themed songs recorded during the run of the TV series. There are a few publicity shots of some of the acts, and they're all pretty much as embarrassing as the one above.

A new year, a new leaf

When my British counterpart/colleague noticed I'd been posting more updates here lately, he asked if I was making up for lost time. Could be--though I've also promised myself that in 2009 I'm going to devote a little time each day to at least one of the many blogs and sites I'm involved with (as Batfan and in my Bruce Wayne existence). Go ahead, call it a resolution if you must. Lord knows I'm way behind with this one and especially this one.

To that end, I made quite a few tweaks to the sidebar on the right tonight. In addition to plenty more links and even a few new categories of them, you can now find the latest updates from the blogs I check most often for H&V-related info, subscribe to this one, and even become a "follower" of H&V. (Yikes.)

While I'm at it, here's more of my ongoing attempt to finally share some items I've been steadily bookmarking for years. (Just call me the Axl Rose of batbloggery.) No overriding theme this time, just odds and ends:

•If, like me, you sometimes take pleasure in obscure comic book heroes and villains from long-forgotten publishers, check out this regularly updated collection of them, which also includes new characters evoking the moldy oldies. The entire Flashback Universe blog from which that list comes is fun, and I've added it to the links sidebar.

•Here's a funny Conan O'Brien/Jim Gaffigan superhero cartoon. (True confession: I wouldn't kick either of these two out of my bed, whether in costume or out. Not sure I'd want them shooting deathrays out of their nipples, though.)

•Despite the horrendous reviews the new Spirit movie has been getting, I will naturally be seeing it. And I will always have a not-so-soft spot in my, er, heart for Sam Jones in the equally ill-fated 1987 tv movie, paid tribute to here. I mean, would you feast your eyes on this man, for the love of God?



•Nice collection of boot-fetish videos on YouTube, which will also point you to plenty of related works. Here's an enjoyable example of Stand & Model attitude:



Minimal, yes, but face it: Had Warhol shot this, it would be playing in museums the world over.

*A reader sent me a link to his 26-chapter BDSM-themed serial, which took him more than two years to complete. I've only dipped in to random chapters thus far, which means I have plenty more to ... chew on.

•Speaking of fiction, here's a reservoir of comics-related fanfic I found somewhere long ago, including some Bat ones. The broader-based home page of the site is now in my links list, too. Oh, and here's a weird, potentially hilarious assignment for your own ill-conceived fanfic.

•Courtesy of another online buddy, here's a Universal Studios Spider-Man getting dressed and doing his duty for the girls and boys, and a few of us oldsters, too. Bonus points for UnderArmour usage beneath the spideysuit:



•I forget exactly why I bookmarked this in the first place--I think it was for a post I was going to write (two years ago) about (male) rape fantasies--but now that I look more closely, I see these are all (?) women victims, so I feel kind of creepy sharing it with you sans political comment. Anyway, here's a semi-famous list, updated here and here.

This looks like a good place to stop for now, but trust me, I've got plenty more where these came from, and this appears to be one of those periods when I'm feeling the impluse to blog again, so stay tuned.

Why So Serious, indeed

I guess I'm way out of the bat-loop, because when the Anonymous Donor and Gray Fox each alerted me within a day of each other that I should check out the premiere episode of the new animated series online, I didn't know what they were talking about. Both friends said the same thing about the show: that it was pretty good, pretty funny, and pretty hot.

Being more of an Old Media sort, I waited to see Batman: The Brave and the Bold on tv (took me a while to figure out that new episodes air every Friday night on the Cartoon Network), and the first episode I caught all the way through was the one guest-starring Plastic Man. Only later did I see the one they'd sent me the link for, which features Blue Beetle. (Each ep also features a surprise cameo, and I'll leave you to discover those for yourself.)

Turns out my pals are right on all counts. After the now-legendary Batman: The Animated Series kiddified itself in its final seasons, only to be followed by the somewhat less interesting Batman Beyond and the MUCH less interesting The Batman, I'd pretty much given up on animated versions of my favorite fictional character, but lo and behold, this one is something completely different. It's not nearly as serious as B:TAS, but neither is it as a child-centric as that show's successors. Gray Fox referred to it as "campy," but that's not quite the word I'd use--"smartass" is more like it. The tone is nothing like the '66 live-action series; it's closer to the recent Teen Titans show (not that I've watched that more than once, mind you) and almost as much a genre spoof as The Venture Brothers, which is why it's a perfect fit for Cartoon Network's patented postmodern blend of kid-friendly action/attitude and parent-friendly nostalgia/parody.

The primary joke in the two episodes I've seen thus far is that Batman's partners are neither brave nor bold, at least not until they learn the sorts of valuable lessons one picks up from an apprenticeship with the master. The Blue Beetle episode--the first of the series--is as self-reflexive as they come, opening (after a prologue and the catchy, stylized theme song) with two teenage Bat-fans watching their hero on tv and engaging in a round of the ever-popular "If Superman and Batman got in a fight, which one would win?" debate. As for that prologue, it's a deathtrap-fetishist's delight, featuring two beltless captives in the clutches of the latest incarnation of the Clock King. Both episodes I've seen so far cut right to the chase, or rather to the kind of cliffhanger scenario that my six-year-old self had to wait 25 minutes to see Adam West and Burt Ward encounter. No more! The pace here is fast, the jokes actually make me laugh out loud, and the artwork evokes the burly, husky Bat of the comics of the late 40s through the early 60s. (There's a higher degree of sci-fi content than I prefer in my bat-stories--lots of flying around in outer space and whatnot--but it works, it works.)

Given how somber the Christopher Nolan-era Batfilms are (and, for that matter, the last two James Bond flicks), I find it intriguing that the Powers That Be at Warner Bros would allow the folks behind the very latest incarnation of the Dark Knight to lighten up so much. I'm all for a balance in tone--I'm no fan of the spoofy/over-the-top approach of the Clooney/Schumacher movie (or Moonraker in Bond-land), but the ultra-seriousness of the Bale/Nolan movies (and even more so Quantum of Solace) doesn't do much more for me, either. What the '66 series did so very well was function on (at least) two levels simultaneously, and The Brave and the Bold shows promising signs of creating its own unique stance in that department. Can't wait to see more.

The horror! The horror!

I come late to the web phenom which is Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog--my first exposure came not through any viral campaign or bloggery but this "oral history" of the project in Entertainment Weekly and this interview with Dr. Horrible himself, Neil Patrick Harris, on Fresh Air. And yesterday I finally tracked the thing down and watched all 45 delightful minutes.

I've never gotten the whole Joss Whedon cult--I'm sure he's very clever, but the concepts behind Buffy and Firefly didn't do much for me. Now, you do a musical about a budding supervillain's quest for acceptance by his peers (one of whom is a horse, another a Thomas Jefferson impersonator) and I am there. (Is it possible I have never written about my affection for The Tick here?) No lycra, sadly (the low-rent outfits are fetish-free for me, aside from Captain Hammer's studly leather gauntlets), but the songs are catchy and the cast--particularly Harris--is a joy to watch.

I particularly enjoy Whedon's reversal of the good guy/bad guy dynamic; you totally root for Dr. Horrible, while ostensible hero Captain Hammer is an arrogant, self-obsessed bully. (I never got around to seeing Hancock, since the reviews were all so mediocre, but Hammer seems like a variation on the same basic concept.) Perhaps it's the musical-comedy aspect of the project that made the connection in my mind, but I couldn't help thinking of Broadway's Wicked, in which all the "good" folks in Oz are exposed as bubbleheads (or worse--far worse) and the "evildoers" are tragically misunderstood. (War on terror, anyone?) The fact that moral ambiguity can still do well at the box office bodes well in the era of you're-either-with-us-or-you're-with-the-terrorists.

PS. All the press suggests that your chance to watch for free is done and that you must now purchase the thing via iTunes (or wait for the promised DVD), but that's not true as of yesterday. Look, it's right here!

The ecstasy of Saint Adam

A quick tip o' the cowl to my new buddy Daredevil for tipping me off to Helpless Heroes, a Japanese site devoted to images of the Bat, Spider-Man, Ultraman, and miscellaneous other tights-clad crimefighters in various states of distress.

I don't know the language, but I get the basic idea, and I particularly appreciate this recent collection of stills of an open-mouthed Adam West, which for some reason takes me back to my grad school days and an essay by Jacques Lacan about the true nature of the, wink wink, nudge nudge, "ecstasy" of St. Theresa. Even if you're not particularly versed in French post-modern psychoanalysis, I have a feeling you'll get the idea from just two images:




Open wide and say, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh."

Comics on the radio

Time for one of my signature posts on a subject about which I have incredibly incomplete knowledge. (I realize now that if I only wrote about things I know well, I would post here even less than I already do. Guess it's better to think of these entries as reminders to myself to follow through on things sometime in the future.)

I caught only random tidbits of this episode of the public radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge last week devoted to "Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Regular Folks." I have a sneaking suspicion it's a rebroadcast, because I could swear I'd already heard the interview with Austin Grossman, author of the novel Soon I Will Be Invincible, told from the POV of an archetypal comic book villain. I've been wanting to read the book since I first heard about it, probably on some other NPR-ish program in the last year or so. And yet I have not, which further establishes my lack of knowledge!

Other interview subjects during the hour are Douglas Wolk, whose book Reading Comics sounds great, and artists/writers Ulli Lust, Roberta Gregory, and Terry Moore. I'd recommend the whole thing, except of course I haven't actually heard all of it myself. I do know I particularly enjoyed Wolk's remarks on the operatic/mythological dimensions of superhero comics, which helped me realize why, even though I am in my late 40s and therefore a grownup who should prefer grownup things like jazz, classical music, and "graphic novels" about the minutiae of everyday people's lives, I am still way more turned on by books about men in tights than about Average Joes. (Can I just say, for the record, that I have never in my life read a Harvey Pekar story I enjoyed as much, or learned as much from, as The Killing Joke, The Long Halloween, or some of the Batman: Black and White stories?)

Value added: In looking up the link to Wolk's excellent blog, I came across a recent entry on it that directed me to his Salon essay comparing the Batman of the Nolan films (and accompanying anime DVD) to the character in the comic books. Once again, he does a great job of explaining what's missing from the movie incarnation--the very thing (beyond the erotic appeal of a hunky man in a mask and tights) that drew me to the character when I was an intellectual, not-at-all athletic or gadget-crazed teenager in the 70s. He was a detective, dammit!

... And here's what I don't love about comics

I got about a third of the way through this explanation of (relatively) recent developments in the DC uni/multiverse before throwing my hands up in despair. I was referred to the entry by the Anonymous Donor when I said I didn't get the whole "Superboy Prime" business I've heard a wee bit about.

Hey, look, I just want hot guys in tight outfits to be tied up, like they were in my youth. Is that too much to ask?

Hours of fun

"The world does not need another site that makes fun of comic books; there are many, and they are much more complete and exhaustive than this one. Who cares? It’s the internet. There’s room for all!"

That's the raison d'etre of Funny Books: Dubious Moments in Comic History, which is loaded with classic covers like this:



and this:



Of course, for a spandex/deathtrap fetishist like moi, the images are a treat in themselves, but you won't want to miss webmaster James Lileks' high-larious captions/commentaries, like this and this. (Love the reference to Hal's "stupid-sexy-flanders-butt ... but that's inevitable when you're in good shape and wear underwear about in public.") Believe me, it's hard to pick just two examples from this "almost infinite amount of Superman-related crap, bad sci-fi, junky TV-show tie-ins, and the rest of the endless drecktitude."

Only downside: no easy way to navigate through the innards of the site; as far as I can tell, your only options are to start with the earliest or the latest post, which is a bit of a pain on repeat visits, or when you want to skip to a particular title or character. But hey: if you're visiting this particular corner of the blogosphere, you're probably not in any particular hurry to cure cancer or save the world.

Oh, and if you have the same soft spot for this stuff that I do, then you'll want to check out the other related mini-sites collected under one roof as "the Institute of Official Cheer."