If you were to describe the cover of BATMAN #244 (DC Comics, Cover Date: September, 1972) to someone who's never seen it, based strictly on what it looks like...
...You could honestly say "A unconscious Batman lies out in the desert, stripped of his costume - but still wearing his mask" and that "still wearing his mask" part would have it sound ridiculous! I daresay it would conjure up images of "Batman surfing, costumed in full cape and cowl".
So much so that when I created a synopsis for this cover at GCD, I played it safe by simply writing: "Batman is left for dead in the desert by Ra's Al Ghul".
Not that I don't LOVE "Surfing Batman and Joker" (I do!), but this amazing cover image by the great Neal Adams is ANYTHING BUT THAT!
I didn't have this issue at a teen-reader. I had made the conscious (albeit reluctant) choice to give up comic books earlier in the year... because, in those less-enlightened days, you just couldn't get girls if you were still reading comics! ANY type of comics, not just "kids' comics"!
I still remember the day that fateful decision was made...I remember a lot of things, don't I? I had a girl over the house, and had carelessly left THIS COMIC out where it could be plainly seen!
I was successful in keeping both my reputation and relationship intact, but I solemnly vowed to never go through this again - so good bye, old friends... your sacrifice was for the greater good!
Comics were easier to give up than I thought, thanks in large part to the Hanna-Barbera license going to Charlton in 1970, and the slow, inexorable decline that had begun infecting Gold Key since 1969.
Where old favorites once looked like this...
...Sadly, they now looked like THIS!
THESE THINGS or GIRLS? Can ya BLAME ME?
Batman had NOT gone into such decline by 1972, quite to the contrary, producing such fine issues as these during the previous year...
Is that a "Legendary Super-Pickax" (Hi, Sergio!), or are you just "glad to see Batman"?
...And I JUST MISSED IT!
Comics would start inching their way back into my life in 1980-1981, and would come full-roaring back before the end of the decade! We were on our way toward a new world where guys no longer felt self-conscious about reading comics. Heck, gals were now reading them too! Vive La (lack of) Difference!
If only this had happened sooner, when I could have kept buying them new at 15-35 cents each, instead of retroactively chasing those ghosts at dealer prices! (Groan!)
So there you have Cover Number Five: BATMAN #244 in all its (as the post title says) "Desert Awesomeness"! A cover so nice I bought it twice! My original mid-80s purchase...
...And another one to be autographed (on separate occasions - close to the turn of the century) by writer Denny O' Neil, artist Neal Adams, and interior story inker (later editor) Dick Giordano!
Denny O' Neil and Dick Giordano
Neal Adams
...Where will we go for Number SIX? Come back and find out!
4 comments:
That's eight covers for today! We're getting way more than we were promised, here!
I am realizing that virtually all of my favorite comics covers are Disney Duck covers, with maybe a couple of Mouse covers thrown in. I have read and enjoyed other sorts of comics, including superhero comics, and I do have a smattering of non-Disney covers on my favorites list...but the only superhero comic cover on my list is the Pascal Campion variant cover for Ms. Marvel 15 (2015), which isn't yet shown on GCD (if I knew how, I'd scan my own copy and upload it)--it's a NYC variant showing Ms Marvel on the High Line, and it's always struck me as looking like a New Yorker cover! You can find it on eBay etc now if you google the issue number & artist.
So, does Batman wear black tights under his costume? Ra's Al Ghul seems to have stripped off Batman's entire costume save for the mask, but he's still got black tights on. Seems odd. Also, did RAG strip off Batman's costume before or after the apparently fatal sword-thrust? Because if it was after, then he must have had to remove the sword and then stick it back in.
Elaine (You write):
“We're getting way more than we were promised, here!”
Well, “getting way more than we were promised” is one of my many middle names… albeit one of the longer ones!
Actually, it’s not all that surprising to me to learn that “virtually all of [your] favorite comics covers are Disney Duck covers, with maybe a couple of Mouse covers thrown in”, knowing you as I do. I would have been surprised to find otherwise.
In some contrast, I operate under a very large tent comics-wise, with first and foremost being ALL of the funny/funny animal titles that were produced by Western Publishing. While their Disney titles are at the forefront, the Warner, M.G.M., Hanna-Barbera, Walter Lantz, King Features, etc. titles are not far behind. Also, their TV-based titles covered a wide variety of my favorites, from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Star Trek, to Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff! …How did they ever miss out on an “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” comic? I would have LOVED THAT… just to see a comic-book Hitchcock intro and outro all the stories as Rod Serling and Boris Karloff did in their respective titles!
DC Comics were also HUGE for me, from the Silver Age thru some point in the more recent 21st Century, when I felt they’d permanently “lost their way”. And all the stragglers and one-offs – older properties migrated from newspaper strips such as Mutt & Jeff, Dick Tracy, and Blondie and Dagwood – Casper being the only “actual” Harvey title I liked -- properties born of the Direct Market Age like Judge Dredd and Groo the Wanderer -- sixties favorites revived by modern smaller publishers like Space Ghost and Jonny Quest, -- the occasional mini-series for Lost in Space and Kolchak the Night Stalker – and let us not forget my most recent mania… Rick and Morty!
...I know I must be leaving some things out, so forgive me!
In a way, I’m glad DC largely dropped off my buying list, so there’s room for all the interesting new stuff that’s out – or is coming out – including things that will be of great interest to us!
Sure enough, the variant cover to MS. MARVEL #15 you cite is LOGGED at GCD, but with no cover scan! SEE IT HERE! …Or DON’T see it here, as the case may be! Provide me with a clear – and original – scan of the cover of your copy, and I’ll do something about that! It must be an original scan, not something lifted from the internet, because they’re fussy about that… and have ways of finding out beyond the voluntary “citation of origin” we are asked to provide. I’ve already been tagged for such a “crime”!
Finally, I guess Batman DOES wear black tights (and presumed black underwear?) under his costume! But he probably saves them for extraordinary missions like this one… always prepared is he!
I’ve never been of the mind that the cover depicts an “apparently fatal sword-thrust”. More that Ra's Al Ghul thrusts the sword into the desert sands to signal the end of their duel, which abruptly concluded when Batman was felled by the sting of a scorpion!
He does receive an antidote, but I won’t spoil how… and no, it ain’t in his trusty Utility Belt, and Robin and Alfred are thousands of miles away! …THAT prepared, he was not!
Oh, OK, I can see it that way now that you describe it--that the sword has been thrust into the sand right next to Batman's body. Makes more sense.
I have read and enjoyed various sorts of comics, including some superhero comics: read some League of Super-Heroes and Supergirl in childhood, had a subscription to Spider-Man when I was in college, and in the current century have enjoyed G. Willow Wilson's Ms Marvel (Kamala Khan--love that first name!), Patsy Walker, aka Hellcat, as well as The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. I just never was struck by the cover art on a superhero comic, with that one exception. The other non-Disney covers on my favorites list are from a smattering of other comics series: Lumberjanes, Womanthology Space, Muppet King Arthur (yes, I realize that's Disney in a sense!), and the anthology series Jim Henson's The Storyteller, which presented four comics on a particular sort of fantasy character (e.g. giants or witches), and each one was a one-shot by a creator with a distinctive style. Some stunning comic books in that series!
Elaine:
Oh, I never meant to imply that you were in any way one-dimensional in your comics reading tastes. I *know* that’s not the case!
It was intended more that it’s the Disney stuff that largely “bubbles-up to the surface” of my impression of your tastes. It’s pretty much at the top of mine too (…when it is done CORRECTLY, that is – no Wolverines or Legendary Super Pickaxes to drag it down), but I believe I would have more different things “bubbling-up” along with it. Just as I would (and do) simultaneously coincide and differ with David Gerstein. …Anyway, sorry if I misrepresented things.
The great thing about comics is that there are SO MANY different areas of interest, and that so many aspects of those interests can cross over with those of others! There’s almost always SOME common ground somewhere!
And, I’ll close by saying that the early-mid ‘70s period for Batman – with the team of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, and the additional efforts of Frank Robbins – is probably the BEST run that BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS ever had! …And I’ve read a LOT of Batman! …Needless to say they were edited by the great Julius Schwartz, who was responsible for SO MANY of DC’s greatest moments, across different “Ages” of comics!
Post a Comment