Batmania - Bats-Man!

The sign in the 60's that a thing was indeed worthy of serious consideration was whether it made it into the black and white pages of MAD Magazine. If Alfred E. Neuman found it interesting, then I knew I should also. In fact most of what passed for popular culture in the 60's and early 70's was filtered to me through the "Usual Gang of Idiots". And so it was with Batman the TV show. It hit like a shooting star onto the streets of America and blazed out almost as quickly but not before MAD took a crack at it. It rates a spot-on cover by Norman Mingo. 

The story is called "Bats-Man" and it was written by Lou Silverstone and drawn magnificently by Mort Drucker. It makes a glancing blow at the premise of the show by sowing discord between "Bats-Man" and "Sparrow the Boy Wonderful". It seems all that crimefighting is crimping poor Sparrow's love life so he plots to end the partnership in some mighty ferocious ways. To read this blast from the past check out this handy Bat-Link to Crivens! Comics & Stuff   operated by Kid a longtime reader and responder of this here Dojo. 

I personally read this story this time in MAD About Super Heroes from a few decades back. It sports a delightful Alex Ross cover but inside are all the Batman parodies done to that point along with Superman and others as well. It features an introduction by Batman himself, the late great Adam West. 

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Where Were You In 1962!

American Graffiti is a movie that takes us ultimately into the future, but by way of revisiting the nostalgic past as seen through the eyes of writer and director George Lucas. This movie of a teens on the verge of passing into adulthood and at once eager and fearful of that transition picks up some of the themes evident in the earlier Lucas film THX 1138 in the sense that it's lead character is confronted with the dilemma of staying fixed in his reasonably comfortable but constricting life or trekking out to find something different, perhaps even something better.

Of course Lucas takes the naive position that if one has the courage to move into the new sphere they will necessarily find success and that doing otherwise is utter foolishness. A more nuanced understanding of life might have given this film a deeper meaning, but as it is it does direct our feelings to want to root for the life beyond the winding streets filled with endlessly meandering cars. Success might be beyond the horizon or it might not be and happiness can be found in the local, but for all symbolically at least the transition into the sometimes cold world of adulthood is unavoidable.

As a comic book and movie fan, nostalgia is an enormous part of what makes my life enjoyable, but being stranded on the rocks of the past is different than wanting to preserve and nurture warm memories of that time. But it's rather ironic to listen to George Lucas talks much about the necessity of moving on with life in the commentary to this film, to leave behind the things of the past. But a quick look reveals that pretty much his whole movie career after THX 1138 is memorializing a romanticized view of the past in movies such as the swashbuckling Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark which hearkens back to the serials of Buster Crabbe and adventures of Errol Flynn, and this movie which is a milestone marker for a time when "innocence" was possible in a dark dim world.

It seems that  Lucas is also a collector of Norman Rockwell paintings, works that themselves point backwards to a shining idealized past. While Lucas as been enormously successful as a director and even more so as a producer, his advice to go forth and conquer new realms tends to thud on the sharp stones of reality a bit.

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Presidential Strippers!

This is an amazing artifact! This 1986 jam poster features Ronald and Nancy Reagan (rendered by Mort Drucker) at the center of a gargantuan gaggle of comic strip and comic book characters rendered by the original artists who created and promoted them. For a cool $12,750 bucks this can be yours. For more details check out this link. The talent is amazing and the signatures alone are epic. There's Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Mort Drucker, Charles Shulz, Sergio Aragones, Will Elder, Al Jaffee, and many more.

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