Egg Beater Turkey Levitator

Returning once again to Adventure Comics 156, we see that, in order to prevent his pal Tubby from consuming the roast turkey placed before him, Johnny Quick uses an egg beater to create a draft that sucks the turkey through the window.

I laughed so hard at this. It is so completely, totally, patently impossible. I am not aware of anyone having the nerve to stand up to blatantly obvious goofiness like this back in 1950, but nowadays of course fanboys would be instantaneously up in arms in chat rooms and blogs, calling the writers on such a monumental bluff. Even internal consistency, which allows Superman to fly and Spiderman to swing on webs (natural and artificial) can't hope to bring this one home.

Magic Math

Okay, again in Adventure Comics 156, the character of Johnny Quick appears. He is essentially a slowed-down version of the Flash, who, while an advanced math student, discovers a formula that, when spoken, allows him access to a higher dimension that somehow allows him superhuman speed.

Never mind the ultra-weird design of his costume, and certainly don't mind the conservation of momentum problem that he'd have moving through a room at less than 1/24th of a second, and concentrate on the elements not in this comic book that were revealed to me by this link:

http://theflash.wikia.com/wiki/Johnny_Quick

...in which are shown many interesting things that are clearly linked to my favorite superhero movie of all time (and on my top 10 list of ALL movies!), The Incredibles. The idea that anti-communist paranoia in the 1950's forced superheroes into hiding rather than follow the dictates of the government forcing them to reveal their secret identities is another twist on the Pixar film's use of the one power superheroes couldn't avoid - the lawsuit.

But all of that pales in comparison to my reaction to the idea that a mathematical statement (incomplete and therefore meaningless) can be used as a version of the "Shazam!" Captain Marvel would use to transform. It not only gives him access to the dimensional freedom he needs to move, it also apparently materializes his costume at the same time. This is closely linked with the occultism that continues to flourish at odd times in American culture. Comic books of this era, when they could be bothered, merely glossed over those elements by giving them the faint air of scientific respectability.

Pun Overload

And you thought Arnold Schwarzenegger movies were bad....

Spider-man, in his 1985 incarnation, is inundated with three "helpers", fan boys with stupid costumes and tech gadgets who proceed to fall all over each other trying to prove to Spider-man how great they are.

The puns come fast and thick in this one. Then, as the three fat fan boys go "boinging" off into the sunset, you get this little bit of linguistic fun. The misfits want so desperately to be cool, to have trim and athletic bodies, to be useful. Given their current physical and mental state, this is a pipe dream to beat all pipe dreams. But as the delusional say, when your delusion is shared, you at least aren't lonely anymore. The writers can't resist putting in the "jock" comment at the end, though. Almost casually racist (hardly surprising in 1985) and certainly cruel, it seems strangely out of character for Spider-man to dish this out, considering that until his radioactive spider bite, Peter Parker wasn't really any more impressive.

As for Peter Parker's situation relative to the Superboy post earlier, even Sam Raimi couldn't quite let Peter have the technical wizardry necessary to invent spider webbing and a shooter that pumped out, volume-wise, more than his body weight every time he'd go out to fight crime. Mind you, making it a natural occurence didn't help much either, since the volume is still very problematic. Maybe he did as other spiders do and went back and ate it.

The Other Boy Wonder

Now, in Adventure Comics #156, we see Superboy take on some robbers doing their nefarious work with the help of a helicopter (which they park in an aircraft enthusiast's private collection so as to avoid detection...man they have to stretch this stuff to fit, don't they?). The robber dudes proceed to try to crack the safe on a moving train, are foiled by Superboy, then blow the trestle ahead of the train so that Mr. Honorable can't go after them since he's got to protect the innocent first.

Here's where I had to put on the brakes and really take in everything you are expected to swallow in this scenario. I don't know about you, but I never saw Superman as being this hyperintelligent being who could quite literally fix a trestle bridge (with full knowledge of the engineering and physics involved), then go off to his backyard and make a fully functional, rocket-powered double of himself, arranged with sufficient skill in painting, fashion design and fabrication, and rocket physics to pass as himself flying through the air.

I just don't know, folks. A lot of people aren't actually aware that this past exists for Superman - a sort of Hardy Boys version of himself that totally misses the sex appeal of his later incarnations. And let's face it, the sex appeal is a LARGE part of what the readers of this book back in 1950 would have been looking for - the idea that with a little radiation they could transform themselves from a five foot six inch 98-pound weakling into a six foot four 220-pound Man of Steel, with everything that goes along with that name.

Small wonder that no one outside of hardcore fandom even knows this happened.

Surrealism meets...sexual politics?

From Dell Four Color Comic #244, circa 1948. A lot of cartoons were openly playing with your mind at this time, inserting dream sequences which were a hundred times more entertaining than anything in Inception. The Brownies, a group of three little boy wood sprites, find missing chicken chicks (thought it was a duckling and wandered off into the water), and in this episode, travel through a portal under an oak tree into a land that redefines the term "non sequitur".

Having just seen an ad for the Blu-Ray release of Alice in Wonderland, I can say I've always loved loopy, loony stuff like this. But if you read between the lines, you discover something else about dreams, at least in art. You can insert lines like "you can be our king and king!" and have them play unquestioned. A paranoid parent would surely be gathering a small army to protest outside the publishing offices today, claiming that it's teaching their children that being gay is okay.

I Wanna Play Batman!

Yes, there are quite a few people who play role-playing games as adults (and no I don't mean strapping on a plastic stethoscope and playing "doctor").

As witness the boys (and several girls) who get together for these sorts of games in the comic book Knights of the Dinner Table. Mostly they play a modification of Dungeons and Dragons known as Hackmaster (a real game based on D&D with a license to do so!), but occasionally they take a break and use other game systems. The central group that lends its name to the comic book usually play a Wild West version of the game called Cattlepunk, while the players you see here from the Black Hands group play a superhero game. In this game, you can either make up your own superhero or play an established character from a comic book or movie.

Naturally this leads to people thinking, "Hey, I'll play the coolest one with the unbeatable powers!" But as anyone who plays these games knows, the GM (GameMaster) is always right, and if he chooses to modify things, he can. You want to play Batman? Fine. But I'm going to take away all the stuff that makes his crime fighting so effective, like his money to start...:) But as Kick-Ass's alter ego Dave discusses with his friends in the movie of the same name, what is Batman without his money? A brawler with a gas-guzzling car.

I love how the artist, who reminds me of Matt Groening in so many ways, draws "the boys" gathered around the table, most of them in costume. The only one who doesn't is Stevil Van Hostile, who as you can tell from his name, is a bastard who always plays a bastard. The art itself doesn't change much (like Groening's, at least in the early days). It's the story that really gets you laughing.

Good Girls Wear Chain Mail Bikinis

Ah, Red Sonja. A character that has fueled the dreams of more than one fanboy since her inception. Many were the cries of disappointment when the deal fell through to make Rose McGowan into the flame-haired she-devil.

Considering her origins (Goddess grants her extraordinary fighting ability after she is gang raped and loses her entire family to a band of barbarians), her choice of clothing (if you can call it that) was always a bit odd, to say the least. This excerpt, from the more recent incarnation by Dynamite Comics in 2003, puts the rationale for this decision in a nutshell. Rather like the couple that join the Hotzone Club in ARMY@LOVE and have sex in the middle of a firefight, then get surprised by an insurgent soldier who can only stand and stare at the girl.

If you look closely at the costume of Red Sonja as she has traveled through the years, you will notice odd changes. Her very first appearances were much more modest, with at least some nod to covering herself against at least some blows. Then they stuck her in the bikini and all hell broke loose - her popularity rose dramatically. She had a return to some semblance of modesty in the '80's, although her outfit still looked like something she'd wear to bed rather than to a battle. In the new millenium she has discarded her previous trappings and wanders the lands in her bikini once again.

Ah, but look closely even then! Different artists have the job of rendering her adventures, and all of them have their own way of dressing her. Some will give her the chain mail she is always famous for wearing. Some will give her scale mail, interlinked scales over some kind of mesh underneath. Some will give her linked mail, small disks sewn together with lots of space in between. Some artists will even switch up in the middle of the same story, making the attentive person say "Hang on a minute, how many of these bikinis does she have?"

But if that same person looks closer still, he will notice that some artists draw her with something obvious underneath the metal, while others will try to make it appear that she's naked and that a strong breeze will knock her bikini flap aside and, as the saying goes, "Let them see Christmas." Needless to say, the famous "gratuitous booty shot" is VERY common.

She has been described as the original bad girl, the female who every man lusts after but no one can get close to without getting seriously hurt or even killed. The dream of the pasty-faced fanboys, naturally, is to be the ultimate alpha male who does manage to win her love by defeating her in single combat.

Love her or hate her, Red Sonja still draws the eye and the heart. Me personally, I want Robert Rodriguez to get off his butt and get the ball rolling again on that movie he promised two years ago.