Today marks the TENTH anniversary of BLOG TO COMM, and if you think I'm going to commemorate this momentous occasion in any way shape or form you're sadly mistaken. Sorry to disappoint all of you sickoid thrillseekers out there, but this ain't exactly a time I feel like tooting any horns, my own or otherwise.
And now on to the review. A few months back I pecked out a piece on the premier collection of early Detective Comics Batman sagas, and as you can tell if you'd only click on the link and find out for yourself I was pretty gung ho on these stories that were created long before the Batman character was domesticated to the point where he was nothing but a cop who walked around wearing a faggy costume. Given that the original Batman character was a vigilante who was not only making life hard for the bad boys but making the police look like a buncha ballerinas I found plenty of adolescent oomph in these sagas. Really, just look at how different they were from the Batman stories of the sixties with that anti-authoritarian element that never could get past the Comics Code what with the way Batman always got the best of everyone that got in his way without looking like the Dudley Dooright that he could have been only a few years later...man were these comics downright even more subversive than those sickening dark Knight fables that popped up in the eighties!
After that boffo volume of classic stories of which you'd now have to pay millions to see in their original form, what else could I do but snatch up these wondrous eyeball strainers that originally appeared in Batman's own title way back in the dawn of the forties. And yeah, these comics are pretty hotcha as well even if some of 'em just don't snap the ol' nerve endings like ya hope they woulda, but then again a good portion of 'em most certainly DO and with a perverted vengeance to boot!
A few points of nausea do turn up, such as when the moral guardians at DC just hadda make Batman and Robin look just too straight and clean/skidmark-free living for any self-respecting kid to truly appreciate. Y'know, that total whitebread geekdom style of hero role model paragon of virtue that makes Pat Boone look like Larry Flynt to the point where you almost wanna puke your pablum given the head crushing goody-two-shoesness of it all. Like in that one story where the Dynamic Duo set a buncha street brats straight as to just how jerkoff those toughguy gangsters they idolize really are by using the old "throw away your guns and I'll show you a real coward" schtick...sheesh!
I'm sure you guys all had enough of that tinhorn moralizing when you were sprouting pubes to last a lifetime, and although going the crime route whether organized or not might be one of the worst career choices since butt cleavage boil biting I sure hate it when these gangster types are portrayed as cowards sans balls who just don't fall for the sappily sentimental aspects of what constitutes right and wrong. Maybe if they made these bad guys look bad inna eyes of any self-respecting blubberfarm kid---y'know, squeaky clean cubeoid dressers who probably wipe with their left hand. I wouldn't wanna root for 'em inna first place, but then again many people always get virtue and outright squaredom mixed up with a passion---and some wonder why I keep rooting for the Germans and Japanese in those old World War II moom pitchers considering "our guys" seem like such hokey dolts who deserve to be rounded up and taken on death marches!
But when these DARK KNIGHT sagas are pumping on all cylinders they're pushing the speedometer up to a good hundred with no motorcycle cop in sight. The early Joker sagas are particularly tension-grabbing especially because he's an extremely creepy and merciless foe who always seems to cheat death even when he accidentally gouges a dagger into his very own chest! The original Catwoman is a tasty enough character considering how she's more or less on of those "good bad" characters rather than "bad bad" or even "bad good" like Batman, who even lets her escape in one story because well, he's such a soft touch and she does have a nice set on her. And even the token "Dr. Jekyll" swipe has enough interesting twists and wrong turns to come off at least a one-time read that won't make you wanna reach for that copy of LITTLE DOT you have stashed away somewhere.
Fave of the volume's ish #1's "Professor Hugo Strange and the Monsters," a saga which was to have appeared in DETECTIVE #38 only it got bumped in favor of the Robin origin story which I guess was a more important scoop at the time. Noted among Batfans for its unmerciful brutality, Batman does away with a gaggle of maniac giants (originally retarded patients injected with growth hormones by the evil Prof. Strange, I assume no relation to Marvel's Master of the Mystic Arts) in some rather extreme ways, such as by turning two against each other so that they rip themselves to shreds or by machine-gunning them in his Bat-Plane ("Much as I hate to take human life, I'm afraid this time its necessary!") and lassoing yet another around the neck and flying around with him dangling from the plane until he dies ("He's probably better off this way")! And as the story climaxes Batman re-enacts the famous scene from KING KONG when he swoops his plane around the tallest building in town until the remaining monster plunges to his splattering demise!
Stories like this make me wish there weren't any moral do gooders going after comic books and other forms of fun kiddoid entertainment because hey, I sure coulda used a story like this with its disregard for touchy-feely aspects of growing up concerns when I was a budding turdburger! It sure woulda made a good counterpoint to alla that "Kumbaya" moralizing that was going on I'll tell ya!
So if you really wanna get in touch with your inner pimplefarm like I try to as often as I can, you know what to do.
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