In the investigation of a neurotic style of life, we must always note who suffers most because of the patient’s condition. Usually, this is a member of the family.
…To injure another person through atonement is one of the most subtle devices of the neurotic.
(Dr. Alfred Adler. Problems of Neurosis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd, 1929.)
Neurosis — keep it all in the family.
Barbara Gordon prepares to go from librarian to Batgirl. I’d be more interested in the opposite direction, but to each their own.
It’s a lot to think about. Also works really well with the picture right beneath it.
via.
Batman Confidential, No. 18. “The Bat and the Cat, Part 2 of 5: ‘Insanity Claws!'” by Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire (Aug 2008).
Finally finished up that comic I mentioned buying and starting around a month ago. Things have been hectic lately and I kept forgetting it was in the garage. Like I said, I jumped in mid-series, but I think I can provide a little backstory you will enjoy to explain this panel.
As this issue begins, Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) is hunting down Catwoman (Selina Kyle) because she suspects Catwoman stole her father Jim’s notebook, which doubtless has sensitive personal information, drawings of dalmatian puppies in sunflower fields, and confidential case notes and grocery lists in it — Gordon loves dalmations.
The intrepid Spunky McCheeseball manages to run the kitteh-lady to ground by following her to a scandalous private club meeting. It turns out to be the Gotham Hedonist Society, where everyone goes around nude but for masks and indulges in safe, supervised, kinky insane sex with multiple partners. (Are you surprised in a city known for disguised superheroes and villains that this would become a fetish?) They let Little Red keep her hood but make her lose the clothes. Rules are rules!
She gets the notebook away from her target, and, after some naked wrestling, escapes the club and sadly dresses again, thus ending the one interesting and unpredictable thing she has done for me so far. Luckily, good ol’ loveable Catwoman stalks the drippy gingersnatch to a junkyard and steals the notebook back.
A lively fight and footchase ensues, ending on a rooftop, where the always-misunderstood kitteh-lady reveals begrudgingly that she needs to decode the information in the notebook, which Pippi Purplestocking has discovered is encrypted (thanks a lot, Daddy!), in order to save someone’s life — then promptly gets shot off the roof by a sniper that Batgirl can’t see.
Now I’m looking for the next one in the series. I’ll keep you posted.
Giving the people what they want: in which I glance over my blog stats, spot the trends in what brings you party people of the internet sliding on down to my place, and accordingly and with mutual thanks throw you some bone(r?)s.
Farewell and adieu to you fair Irish ladies.
First, a shocker. With mixed emotions I must report that the rack of Miss Megan Mullally is no longer the sheriff of Googlesearchy Town.* The first two editions (1, 2) of “Giving the people what they want” were dominated by amused-but-puzzled nods to the bafflingly large number of searches for the diminuitive Will and Grace star’s cleavage which lead droves of folks to my door. Megan held her own, beating out for many months running distant contenders such as “Drew Barrymore naked,” and “lesbian kiss,” which I would have thought any such phrases would easily eclipse “Megan Mullally’s breasts,” her “boobs,” her “topless” and variations therein and they never did. Until now.
*(By Googlesearchy Town I mean the searches that people enter in google to land on this journal — wordpress keeps track and ranks the most popular for me)
Top searching honors now rest in the tiny but mighty vintage hands of busty, bespectacled aspiring astrologer, the lovely and talented Fran Gerard — Playboy’s Miss March 1967, the self-help loving little looker whose cups runneth over.
The lovely and etc Ms. Gerard. For Science.
With 5,909 searches since her relatively recent appearance on the journal in March, Ms. Gerard beats out Megan at 2,503 since her inaugural boob-airing last September. Well-played, Ms. Gerard!
Sweet, lovely and talented heiress to generations of hot Italian culinary genius, Amber Campisi.
Rising Star Awards must go to three special up and comers. First, the talented family gal Amber Campisi (Miss February 2005); next, beautiful and tragic playmate and poet Marlene Morrow, aka Persephone (Miss April 1974) — whose gripping story has justly been getting attention from a number of outside sites linking in, enough so that her sister Landi was able to find this blog and send us an optimistic update on Marlene’s present condition about which I’m thrilled, check that post’s comments to get the latest — annnnnnnnd Yvonne Craig, BATGIRL!; all of whom are beginning to trend up the stats list with great and deserved speed. I look forward to what the next edition of “Giving the people what they want” will bring!
The very special Marlene Morrow/Marlene Pinckard/Persephone. Please, please read the account of how Paul Zollo found her with notebooks of poetry and an envelope holding her centerfold photo, living on the streets in L.A., and consider following the non-profit links which follow the write-up?
Finally: Quick note to the person who has found this blog by searching google three times in the space of the last two weeks — with “only assholes” in quotes so’s as to make maximal use of boolean exceptors — for the exact phrase “‘only assholes’ fall for me“: In case you ever come back a third time, I’d like to hope you hit this entry.
Vintage hottie Yvonne Craig has suited up!
First, you probably keep landing here because I frequently tag what I consider to be interesting graffiti with the words “only assholes write on walls” a la cult classic Rocky Horror. So I am sorry for the “only assholes” mix-up. But, more importantly, I am genuinely really sorry that you feel like only assholes fall for you and I wish I could make it better. I’m sorry that you’ve felt that way strongly enough to search the phrase three different times recently. I hope the next person you date is not an asshole. I hope that he or she is really nice to you — no, not just nice, because that is mealy-mouthed and hollow. That is a bullshit expression of my actual sentiment and is weak tea compared to the depth of my empathy, here. Okay:
I hope that that next person you date is genuinely amazing to you, like I pray that their very existence makes you believe in a loving God and you see the echo of your love for them in all the shapes of nature, and you don’t just love him or her but admire and value them, and that you curl your toes when you think of him or her even while driving and that they fill you with so much passion and love that you would kill tigers for them without a blink and you stay together until you die in each other’s arms after fantastic geriatric sex.
Scroll to bottom for caption.*
I hope that the grace of his or her presence in your life is like a lightning strike that inspires you forever after always to strive to be a better person, to laugh with surprise at an unexpected joke they make when you are having an argument, to give new ideas a thorough-think-through and peek behind closed doors; I hope in short that he or she deserves every drop of the deep well of love you were created to share and renews your faith in all the anonymous fellow upper primates all over our world with whom we must trek in our stewardship of this nutty mudhole in order to improve our karma and with every go ’round perfect our souls.
ByTim Weber and Sue Noble via environmental graffiti.
Good luck to you.
*Long caption to second to last shot: The dish ran away with the spoon but what can you do? They have opened a comic book store in the City and on rare nights off they like to order dim sum and watch TVLand; the comic shop is honestly not doing so well, their apartment is super-tiny, the bride’s mom won’t take their calls, their used car’s a/c is on the fritz, and they have never been happier.
Publicity still: Adam West and Yvonne Craig read Detective Comics #359, “The Million Dollar Debut of Batgirl.”
With her role as Batgirl, Yvonne Craig’s own place in pop culture is secure. “There was no stigma to my having been Batgirl,” she notes. “No typecasting whatsoever. People really like the character. I was in a supermarket once, and a little girl came up to me and said, ‘I know who you really are!’ Then she said, ‘Barbara Gordon!'”
(Jankiewicz, Pat. “Recalling Batgirl.” October 2002. Starlog 303: 38-41.)
“Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.”
(John Updike, “Going Barefoot.” On the Vineyard.)
So I am a populist by day and a revolutionary by night. I’ll take it.
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
(Joseph Conrad.)
In many ways it is like the Slaughter of Innocents or Rape of the Shire. It is no kind of lesson to those experiencing it, not in the heat of the moment. Rather, it is a warning to those who read, and, as Scott McCloud justly points out, tacitly and with secret relish add their knives to the resultant “blood in the gutter.” Murdering the Object: it is still a Thing.
PSA: This arcade belongs to the fucking Batgirl!* And none of you cockmongering assmunchers best forget it. She will mess the shit of all you ne’er-do-well cuntnecks** the fuck up, but proper!!
Ohhh, DC. You and your “leaks” and “apologies” for/of cusswords. Your lust for sales will slay us all.
*Is that anything like “the goddamned Batman?” you wonder. Mmm. Not yet. But delicious, memey-riffic time will tell.
**What is a cunt neck? I don’t know, it just came to me as a good insult. Like it seems it is a comparison to the neck of someone plump and vital in youth but maybe now gone to seed that has become all wrinkly and fleshy and vag-y? It is an insult that I think invites understanding of repulsion and distinct un-sexiness. Not sure exactly. I just know I am being vulgar as all kinds of heck in this post and I am (clap-clap, criss-cross-gesture with hands) ALL DONE for the day! King-size cusses. So done. SeaQuest out!
“The man who has no imagination has no wings.”
— Muhammad Ali
“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”
(“Introduction,” Critical Articles. 1895.)
“Batgirl – Oracle” by iamww on the deviantart.
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
(Father Zossima, The Brothers Karamazov. 1880.)
“Batgirl” by Noirfeu on deviantart.
Today’s incarnation of the draw batgirl meme is done by violetice, aka becky, on the lj.
“Batgirl is love” by Vabalind.
Yvonne Craig (Batgirl) and Adam West (Batman) goofing around on a publicity shoot.
Batgirl appeared only in the final season of the Batman series, 1967-68, but Yvonne Craig stayed attached to the character. The Joker shot Barbara Gordon, paralyzing her from the waist down, then kidnapped and stripped her father, forcing him to view blown-up shots of his suffering daughter (also mainly undressed) in Alan Moore’s 1988 graphic novel The Killing Joke — over which people are often divided; I think it’s a masterwork — in order to prove to Jim Gordon and Batman that all it takes is “one bad day” for a man to be driven mad. After reading The Killing Joke for herself, Yvonne Craig complained to DC about what she viewed as the character’s egregiously cruel fate (the wiki).
Bonus Trek connection:
Yvonne played Marta, the Orion asylum inmate with green skin and sexy dance moves, in “Whom Gods Destroy,” Star Trek TOS, Season 3, Episode 15 (1968).
CBR’s Kelly Thompson has named Kate Kane, Batwoman, the #1 Female Comic Character of the Decade.
Art by J. H. Williams with color by Dave Stewart. Kind of a Kahlo-influenced Dia de los Muertos sugar skull vibe, somewhere between a prayer card and an xray, gruesomely awesome and totally apropos genre of art especially given her gal is Renee Montoya. This cover art + me = Total. Love.
The rest of the list is singularly amazing as well. It includes Cassie Cain as Batgirl, honorable mention for Det. Renee Montoya as The Question —Kate Kane’s sweetheart— and a shout-out to Detective Deena Pilgrim from the Powers world (I have always favored the idea of Retro Girl better than the actuality of Deena and her unmasked heroism, personally, ever since I shut myself in the bath one day following a fight with my husband and read Who Killed Retro Girl? until the water got cold, and I continually peruse Powers in the hope of seeing Pilgrim take on that intriguing mantle one day, but so far no go).
Renee Montoya, formerly one of Gotham’s Finest, now The Question.
Additionally, Thompson gives a glowing enough account of a “Micchone” heroine from Walking Dead that I’m actually willing to give a zombie comic a spin, so give the article a read if you’ve got some loose bills left over from Christmas folding money and are looking for new things to read.
“Hurt me.” And I thought I had Daddy Issues? Cropped from a scan by scans daily’s gallery from Batgirl 49-50 when Cass done got fired.
Super fat-bat-thanks to Peteski, aka nevver on the tumblr, who is always hooking me up to badass shit that brightens my day.
The Cat and the Bat girl do get up to some games, too. These cats and bats: it is kind of a Thing.
“Who Wants Saving?”
Pictures are part of the set “Cat Woman” by Sharon K Cooper, aka sosij on flickr.
“After A Night on the Tiles.”
Please note the Catwoman mask in Gidget’s hands. Hilarity. Also, where the where did those wonderful panties come from because I don’t have them yet and that is an Inexcusable Crime that I want to remedy as fast as possible.
“Holy Smokes.”
My wardrobe of Batclothes is ever-growing thanks to the combined efforts of Hot Topic and the Target little boys’ department, but without Nancy Droop* panties it is clearly still gross in lackage (I will never be done building my collection, and I hate it very much for the vain, materialistic, juvenile freak that it makes me, but I can’t fight it … it’s too deeply ingrained).
*(one of these days I will have to comb back through the journal and see how many insult-nicknames I have called Batgirl/Barbara Gordon by this year alone.)
Holiday greetings from a truly dysfunctional bunch. Talk about secrets.
Getting everyone gathered for a photograph to smile at the same time and not be blinking or pulling a face is a total nightmare, am I right??
by eikochan on deviantart.
l to r: Selina Kyle, Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson, and Alfred Pennyworth. Dig Alfred bunny-earing Dick and Strawberry Shortstacked in the first take.
I may have been a little hasty in my judgment of Hopalong P. Funbags (aka Batgirl).
So what this comic panel is telling me is that Barbara Gordon is
Oh, shit, am I suddenly sold??
The Thought Experiment 