Daily Batman: We hold these truths to be self-evident

via Comically Vintage on the tumblr.

Don’t listen to the crackpots, kids.

Tell the whole cotton-picking town

via Jacque Nodell’s wonderful sequential crush on the blogger.

“Nobody Wants a Girl Auto Mechanic!” Career Girl Romances #66 (December 1971), Charlton Comics.

Daily Batman: Bi-knock-ulars

via.

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I’m still waiting, it’s all been to seduce women basically.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Motives.

Daily Batman: Deeaaaaaaad

The classic.

Daily Batman: A-caroling we shall go

It’s Christmas Eve, kids. Get out there and earn some figgy pudding today! Make a joyful noise.

Daily Batman: Tzin-Tzin’s plan is a gobsmacker

No way, dude — stop him! Even though he is just thinking about Tzin-Tzin’s plan, look how Batman’s mouth has dropped open in outrage and chagrin. Go get ‘im, buddy!

Daily Batman: Batman and Robin love a gay party

He’s just waiting for them to go so he can start listening to “Little Orphan Annie” on that radio.

Daily Batman: Batman has a socking in his stocking just for you

Daily Batman: Tough on Santa. Tough on crime.

This guy and orphanages. He almost acts like his parents are deaaaaaaaad!!!

Daily Batman: Silent as a child’s prayer

Wanted: Santa Claus, Dead or Alive. Frank Miller and Denny O’Neill. DC Special Series #21. April 1980.

Aw. Baby’s first goddamn Batman story. The Dark Knight Returns didn’t come until six years later.

Daily Batman: the Joker is on Batman and Robin’s naughty list

via.

Daily Batman: Sock ‘im one for ol’ Santa

via.

Santa is a bloodthirsty punch-monster. I’ve always said that.

Daily Batman: Every one is a moon

via.

Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.

(Mark Twain.)

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 8: Super Dictionary, “I am against the people who make trouble.”

It’s interesting how quickly, even before the infamous code descended and cut out some of the popular gory lines, comics became dominated by superhero/crimefighter stories, due of course to the mad success of Superman. Sure, there have always been pulp adventure and horror comics, but when most people even think of comic books, it’s the heroes with which they associate the genre. The writers are driven by the publishers, who are driven by sales, which are driven by readers — so the natural conclusion is that a story about a badass goodhearted hero who fights crime is what the audience wants to read.

Drawing by Anthony Tan via fyeahww on the tumblr.

Comics are such manifestly wish-fulfillment-meets-folktale, flimsy-and-touching paper myths, that I think there’s a beautiful lesson here: we want to read about the hero who fights crime, who is “against” troublemakers and waiting with her golden lasso to show them what real trouble is, because we, ourselves, wish to do that. We wish to have a secret identity and fight for those who have no voice, to put a stop to injustices against our fellow men. All these generations of readers have wished to make the world better, not just for accolades or girls but because it is the right thing to do. And that’s really a great and inspiring thing. It’s sweet and charming and kind of triumphant, isn’t it?

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 7: Why then, o brawling love, o loving hate, o anything of nothing first create?

(This was all news to me. So the theories advanced here are kind of fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants.)

Wonder Woman’s archnemesis Cheetah was apparently introduced in No. 6.1 of the original, Marston-penned Wonder Woman line (1943). The original Cheetah was Priscilla Rich.

via the wiki, Cheetah’s first appearance, 1943. Cover art by Harry Peter.

Priscilla Rich was depicted as a young, insecure debutante who suffered from a split personality developed because of her inferiority complex. Following a benefit dinner, Ms. Rich’s alternate personality became dominant, triggered by an encounter with Wonder Woman, whose superiority to earth women activated Ms. Rich’s coping mechanism for her low self-esteem. This other self, Cheetah, continues to come out from time to time to try and kill Diana, foil her plans for good, etc.

I noted with interest in researching her that, in a lot of the panels I read, it seems that Ms. Rich’s alter ego, Cheetah, actually hates the Priscilla personality almost as much as she dislikes Wonder Woman.

Priscilla retreats to her room and collapses before her makeup mirror. There she sees an image of a woman dressed like a cheetah. “Horrors!” she cries, as she gazes at her evil inner-self for the first time.

(the wiki.)

“Don’t you know me?” replies the reflection. “I am the REAL you — the Cheetah — a treacherous, relentless huntress!” The image commands her to fashion a Cheetah costume. “From now on,” intones the reflection, “when I command you, you shall go forth dressed like your TRUE self and do as I command you…”

(Ibid.)

It is not terribly difficult to see metaphors here for female cattiness. I think it goes back to what I wrote about earlier, the empty need for women to best each other. Ms. Rich and Wonder Woman had no actual beef: why did Ms. Rich create one? Because she felt insecure.

And why does Cheetah hate herself almost as much as she hates Wonder Woman?

I think because she despises her own weakness, and, as Cheetah, she sees her Priscilla personality as hampering her goal to become the greatest woman alive.

So a) she makes something out of nothing because b) she feels badly about herself, doubly over. That’s crazy and yet so true and typical.

She does not want to, but she must. Why? It is so unnecessary, just as it is unnecessary for women to gang up on one another in real life, too. But they always do.

Final note: the IGN ranked Cheetah in 2009 as the 69th Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time, which is great synchronicity for our 69-day project.

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 5: Fruitlessly turned against each other instead of joined in force

It seems to me that despite all our claims of girl power and sisterhood women are still our own worst enemies, and I do not have to ponder or prod at the why of that: it is manifestly so much easier to lay the blame for a situational upset or emotional turmoil at some other chick’s feet than to examine your own self.

Scanned by yours truly.

“We have met the enemy, and he is us” (Walt Kelly, Pogo creator, comic legend). You know?

And so we fruitlessly turn against each other instead of joining forces and really making new and great things happen, and the more often we do that, the less is ever truly resolved, and women end up with all these doubts and neuroses that we’ve unfairly placed on ourselves. We are all doing ourselves a bad turn. Like, why, on meeting someone equal to you in strength, would you need to best them instead of teaming up and being friends? Wouldn’t they understand you better than anyone else you’ve ever dealt with, and wouldn’t you better benefit from mutual friendship than from facing off? What a horrible instinct, to destroy what’s like you in order to be sure you are still alone and “The Best.”

Wait, I feel like I’ve written something about this before … I want to say it involved a picture of Zooey Deschanel looking twee with a pink ribbon.

(three or so minutes later)

Okay, found it. It’ll be today’s Flashback Friday, and it’ll be posted directly following this WW Day 5, inspired by and related to this post. And actually it works great because that was about my first parent-teacher conference for kidlet last year, and I just went to her first parent-teacher conference for this year yesterday.

Synchronicity: still for dinner.

69 Days of Wonder Woman, Day 3: Clothes make the (wo)man

The original Wonder Woman costume must surely rank high in the list of all-time great, iconic comic hero get-ups. Is this part of what puts me off?

Costumed (or semicostumed) heroes such as Wonder Woman and Superman, rather than the villains they fought or the outlaws rampant in crime comics, were the main objects of the Catholic Church’s early [1938] criticism of comic books, censure that began to take the form of a serious campaign against comics.

Bishop Noll explained that the NODL [National Organization for Decent Literature]* objected only to Wonder Woman’s costume. “There is no reason why Wonder Woman should not be better covered, and there is less reason why women who fall under her influence should be running around in bathingsuits,” Noll wrote.

(Hajdu, David. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008. Print. 75-78.)

I did not save a lick of info related to this pic, but from the moment I saw it, I thought she was about to turn in a circle and transform in to Wonder Woman. If you can help with credit, please do!

I guess it’s true that I never liked her costume much, but I’ve never found it any more all-that-scandalous than those of usual dat-ass suspects such as Power Girl, Emma Frost, or Huntress. (God, I hate Huntress, and there is nothing mysterious about it. She sucks. You will not be seeing a “__ Days of Huntress” around here, ever.) I don’t think I ever gave Wonder Woman’s outfit much thought in print … but I did contemplate it onscreen, watching the Lynda Carter television series. The TV Diana had so many great wardrobe changes, not only with that wonderful spinning-into-Wonder Woman sequence, but with gear tailored to her various missions: remember that slick diving suit?

Separate from my later feelings about Wonder Woman as a comic hero, as an early television role model I had nothing but full esteem for the character, in particular her outfit. I can remember sitting on the tacky rose-patterned velour daveneau on which I’d been conceived and on which I took my afternoon naps — and, depending on where we were living, sometimes slept at night on the hide-a-bed as well (very strange experience, since my parents were extremely up front with me about the couch-conception thing and seemed to find it heartwarming; I had more mixed feelings) — in the early afternoons before I even started school, watching syndicated re-runs of the program and being wowed. If I picture Lynda Carter in a blouse and blazer speaking confidently to a male coworker, I can still vividly feel kid-sweat from playing after lunch melting the sofa’s scratchy, worn fabric in to faint little clumps under my legs. She was so glamorous that she wore earrings everywhere. Everywhere. I loved that shit.

This is definitely a non-issue. The outfit has nothing to do with me shying away from Wonder Woman for the last mumble-muffleth years. Asked and answered!

In any case, Wonder Woman’s costume recently underwent a redesign. That’s her new look up there. I don’t really care one way or the other. I guess I’m a little wary and disappointed, as always, by tampering with classics, even ones of which I’m not a fan — and, in the same way that I was slightly rankled by the initial reinvention of Kate Kane as a Jewish lesbian in the Batwoman comic (Why not make her deaf and HIV-positive, to boot? How unforgivably uninclusive of you, Non-PC D.C.!), I feel not-just-vaguely pandered to. Then again, I like the new Batwoman line now and I am hunky-dory with the matchup of Renee Montoya with Kate. So maybe the costume redesign of Wonder Woman will be another in-my-face situation. Tough to gauge since I don’t know if I’ll come out of this project wanting to read her or not.

Longtime fans, what do you think of the change?

*more on those guys soon.

PSA: Keep it real

PSA: Keep it real.

via.

Young ladies, you’re growing up now, and it can be hard to avoid peer pressure when you badly want to fit in, but remember — whatever you do, don’t do your hair like Ann-Margret.*

Oh, my god, Lindsay Lohan, what did I just say? I wash my hands of this girl. Like everyone else who touches her. That reminds me: almost time for a penicillin refill …

Don’t let it happen to you — keep it real.

*Reference image of megahot vintage ginger Ann-Margret for the littluns.

Mean Girls Monday and Daily Batman: OMG, Robin

I think this is via thatissofetch on the tumblr.

The Boy “Blunder.” Originally the “My parents are deaaaad” panel.

Daily Batman: We all act like dicks, sometimes

via comicallyvintage on the tumblr.

I’m going to give Batman a little leeway on this one. In his defense, the dude is under a lot of stress. I’ve seen Superman be a way bigger dick, way more often.