This is one of my favorite comics, ever.

Dick Dillin was the artist, with John Calnan inks.

Dillin’s barrel chested, solid-as-a-rock men remind me very much of Alex Ross’s aesthetic, only Dillin also created impossibly beautiful women whose hair always looked as if it was made of plastic. It just never really got messed up.

This issue was the first I read and I loved it, even though I now acknowledge that it is as ridiculous as an issue of Prez.

Dillin is the first artist I noticed who made a point of trying to give characters individual faces. When he got bad ink jobs it was hard to see, but he got a terrific ink job on this comic. Young Clark and Young Bruce are both dead handsome, and most artists wouldn’t bother to try to vary their facial shapes or noses, but Dillin did here, and that made me sit up and go, “Hey! What a great idea! People should have different faces!”

Duh.

Clark had a younger, smoother face with a little nose like Dean Cain and Bruce was more chiseled and patrician.

Even Dillin’s gorgeous women got attention as some had little button noses and some aquiline. I know this sounds like a dopey minor point, but it set the gears to rolling in my noggin since individualizing women’s faces was something a lot of artists weren’t doing.

This Super Sons adventure was howlingly goofy. Bruce and Clark are out for a jaunt like the hip young guys they are and they run across a gorgeous woman working in a blacksmith shop, hurling a hammer and anvil.

That’s so not normal.

Bruce (who is a sexist pig) bounces up to help the glamorous chick with the hot tongs and the anvil, and she reacts with fury.

Clark (who has better manners) admonishes Bruce to move along and get over rejection, so off they go, driving their studmobile into town…a town populated entirely by gorgeous women!

Jackpot!

While Bruce tries to get over his case of Tourette’s Syndrome (he cannot seem to utter two sentences together without calling someone “babe” or “chick”), Clark plays peacemaker.

But none of the glamorous gals are having any of it! No sirree! Despite the fact that Clark and Bruce look like young Greek Gods, these women will have nothing to do with them and try to run them out of town!

What, are they lesbians or something?

No, worse!

They’re FEMINISTS!

That’s right, they have decided to live in a World Without Men! And yet, none of them look like Andrea Dworkin, they all look like Charlie’s Angels! They wear mini-skirts, makeup, and they have perfect hair.

OK, maybe they are lesbians, but one thing’s for sure, if a town full of gorgeous women won’t have anything to do with Bruce Wayne, then something must be wrong with them!

And women are mysteriously disappearing in the Southern swampy swamp! What could it be?!?

YIKES! It’s an alien invasion! An alien with a feminist agenda!

This big lizard alien thing has an enormous eye and is really ugly. I am not giving away any big scene spoilers because the retards who edited this book show you the damned thing right there on the cover.

Anyway, the alien hates beautiful women! Because, see, she’s really ugly and has been rejected by everyone! One ponders – but only for a moment – exactly why a big scaly one-eyed alien would even begin to consider American chicks the pinnacle of beauty – even if they are Southern – but that’s the plot, so there you go.

And to take revenge, she has lured all the most beautiful women to her town to create a World Without Men so she can manipulate them, make them call each other “Sister”, force them to wear spiked heels and false eyelashes even when they are working in a smithy, and then kill them one by one! It’s a diabolical plot indeed!

But it is stopped by our noble Super Sons, of course.

The loutish Bruce Wayne JR, then encourages the gorgeous gals – now free of alien influences by big scaly aliens who read too much Gloria Steinem – to line up for their dose of smootch medicine from the Doctor of Love, for they must have been fretting having to be away from hunkalicious guys like the Brucester for so long!

Clark Kent remains in background looking exasperated. What a Boy Scout.

This is one of the best bad comics ever.

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From the old blog, regular Donna noted in the comments: “I guess I have to be the one that points out that there is a BIG ONE EYED MONSTER on the cover of this comic. I mean seriously people, did no one else spot that yet?”

I have had that comic for years, and I never noticed it. Now that Donna has pointed it out, I can’t see anything else.

For more fun and games with classic, goofy comics, Check out Allan Harvey’s blog Gorilladaze. Enjoy this PREZ flashback.

Here’s another classic: Superman plays Witch Doctor Priest at the wedding of Jimmy Olsen and a gorilla.

Jimmy even has to rub a body part with his bride during the honeymoon. Good Lord.

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Made of Wrong…Filipino Batman movies.

This is obviously not an officially licensed work. Sometime between the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, several Batman features were filmed.

Here we have a bunch of Amazons menacing a young woman. Fear not, the Dynamic Duo will appear any moment!

Despite the fact that these young women are all scantily dressed, there’s not a lot to see. They have the figures of young boys. If you stacked them up, their combined breast measurement wouldn’t match Mamie Van Doren’s.

If these were officially licensed, the foreign rights department at DC should have been lined up and shot en masse.

Utterly, mind-bendingly bad Alyas Batman and Robin below! Gird your loins!

Wait! Where did that coconut come from?

Batman asks: “Would you like Bat-tea? Or Bat-coffee? Or Bat-milk? Bat-juice?”

And in this hideous, and yet oh-so-memorable clip, The Joker and The Penguin do a song and dance number in front of the Smith and Wesson Dollar Exchange.

Is there such a thing as a Smith and Wesson Dollar Exchange?

Hey, babe. He’s Mr. Joker!

The Penguin character’s name in Tagalog is, apparently, a reference to oral sex.

This is what happens when you do not jealously guard your intellectual property rights. The Penguin blows.

The Onion’s chilling report:

Bratz Dolls May Give Young Girls Unrealistic Expectations Of Head Size

I am ashamed of myself for posting this. It is made of wrong.

I wonder if Wil Wheaton knows about it? He’s a terrific writer, by the way.

Also, recovered from the old blog, Pon Farr Mountain, featuring the love that dare not speak it’s name in space where no one can hear you scream “SPOCK!”.

Got it from SF Signal, a wonderful blog. You should bookmark it.

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Some of you may recall that a few years back – approaching midlife and experiencing a general personal and professional meltdown – I decided it would be a good idea to go to art school and recharge my creative batteries.

While I had hoped to get intensive training in computer graphics, I ended up spending most of my time creating color wheels and writings essays. I didn’t actually get a single class that taught me anything about computer graphics, and I realized that the school was pulling a bait and switch – the computer graphics classes were all extra; you had to take every single computer graphics lesson at Lynda.com, negating the entire purpose of signing up for the very expensive art school in the first place. The classes at Lynda.com only cost $25 per month. The art school cost $80,000.

I filed a complaint with the president of the school that would have blistered his hands when he received it. I got a personal call from him by the end of the day, was able to withdraw from the school without penalty, and received a full refund on tuition for my last class. I was stuck with what I had already completed, but at least I can honestly say I went to art school and got straight A’s.

And this brief return to academia made me appreciate my professional life even more. My troubles seemed small after realizing I had nearly been suckered into paying for an $80,000 bachelor’s degree which wouldn’t actually teach me any new skills, and I went back to my real work.

But before I got to that point, I became increasingly hostile to the school and my assignments, and began writing essays that dripped with sarcasm and scorn.

The more obnoxious I got, the more my teachers loved it. Snark your way to a straight A!

Here’s one of my analytic efforts from my art school days.

Double Meanings in Advertising Phrases

I cannot be the only person who read the requirement of this assignment, and then immediately began making dirty jokes about almost every advertising line I have ever heard in my life. Rendered completely incapable of thinking of anything not filthy, I decided to run off to the grocery and see if I could find something to break my train of thought. Everything I saw looked like a dirty joke, and I am not sure they will ever allow me back in that Food Lion store.

The first thing I saw, right there in the pharmacy aisle, was a tube of toothpaste labeled “Cinnsational!”, I realize this is an attempt to meld the word “cinnamon” and the word “sensational”, but I would not be marketing anything that is supposed to clean my mouth that also sounds like an amalgum of “sin” and “sensational”. I would certainly not market it to kids. As an adult, I can’t get the neuro-association of mouthy sin out of my mind. But my nephew would likely not get the reference and would probably love it. Would I buy it for him? Heck, no.

There are a lot of jokes I could make right now, but I won’t because I am afraid I will be expelled.

Now, there are two advertising slogans from Burger King that are rather telling; “You’re the boss!” and “Have it your way!”

Both of these slogans give a sense of power to the kind of person who would be likely to be dining at Burger King, no one’s first choice for breaking one’s fast. However, at Burger King, even if you’re a shlub who has to eat there, you’re the boss! You’re the king! You rule! You can even request no pickle if you want! Wow! You’re a man! You will order a big, manly, massive burger that will shore up your self esteem with big, manly advertising slogans of massive powerfulness! By the time you get out of Burger King, you will be as massive a world leader as Kim Jung Il!
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