When Aquaman's away...
...SOMEONE'S gotta talk to fish!
And, it might as well be THIS GUY!
He seems to be doing a good job of it!
Named after my former Fanzine and APA column est. 1994,"The Issue At Hand"! This Blog offers "The Universe of Things that Interest Me" – Now just a click away! Comics, DVDs, Animation, Classic TV, and occasionally more. Please enjoy your visit! Blog est. 2008.
While the world goes agog over today's SOLAR ECLIPSE of 2024, you might be wondering what tenuously-eclipse-related thoughts are rattling around in my one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-duplicated, accept-no-substitutes mind on The Big Day!
...Oh, you're NOT? Well, humor me and read on anyway...
It's simply this...
If Donald Duck had chosen TODAY to casually walk past that telescope, he would just have gone on his merry way, sans singed tailfeathers - and eyes unharmed, because he's looking away from the sun!
...And DONALD DUCK #71 (Dell Comics, Cover Date: May-June, 1960) would have had a different cover gag!
From the inside back cover of POPULAR COMICS #97 (Dell Comics, Cover Date: March, 1944) comes the following Public Service Message...
Please forgive me if I sound even the slightest bit unpatriotic, but wouldn't this be this very comic book's own equivalent of Daffy Duck saying: "WELL I SAY HE DOES HAVE TO SHOOT ME NOW! SO SHOOT ME NOW!
While Bugs (Easter) Bunny entertains you with his trapeze-Easter-egg-juggling-act, allow me to wish all of you and all of yours a Happy Easter 2024!
From MARCH OF COMICS #273 (Western Publishing, 1965), cover by Ralph Heimdahl.
...And here is why our Easter was so happy, even without a visit from Bugs (Easter) Bunny!
Check out this wonderful cover image for THE BATMAN & SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERIES (2024 series) #3 (DC Comics; Cover Date: May, 2024 - On sale as I write this!)...
...Which is a near-perfect send-up of the "Celebrity Window" running gag from the Batman TV show.
Or, as I described it at GCD: "The cover is a parody/homage to the oft-seen bit on the Batman TV show (ABC TV, 1966-1968), where Batman and Robin scale a tall building and a celebrity leans out of a window to address them in mid-bat-climb."
I say "near-perfect" for one reason... the homage is very clear but, quite frankly... the GAG ITSELF is NOT!
It seems to me that either something FUNNY, or a CLEVER REFERENCE should be coming from Catwoman's or Scooby's dialogue balloons - BUT IT ISN'T!
Or, perhaps Batman - or especially Shaggy - SHOULD HAVE BEEN GIVEN SUCH A LINE... but no!
How about Shaggy unintentionally doing something dumb 'n' dangerous to inadvertently imperil our courageous climbers - or maybe leaning out far enough to fall - if only to justify Scooby's line: "Rhi can't look!"
As it is, it wastes a great image by making it, like... incomprehensible!
The best I can do is describe it as I did in my GCD index of the issue: "As Batman and Catwoman scale a tall building to return stolen jewels to their rightful owner, Scooby-Doo and Shaggy pop out of the "Celebrity Window." You can see the entire GCD index HERE!
Indeed, it would have been better with NO dialogue balloons at all! Just perfectly conveying the fine homage it was intended to!
On the plus side, the open window nicely obscures a small corner of THE BATMAN & SCOOBY-DOO MYSTERIES logo, as one might expect a glass window to do! ...Don't they have window screens in Gotham?