Batman and the Indians

My friend Lydia pointed out that the Hub has shown just about all of the Batman episodes, except for a handful--the first guest starring appearance of Vincent Price as the Egghead, a villain not from the comics, but created for the show, and a two-part episode from the Batgirl season with Cliff Robertson returning as Shame and Dina Merrill as his sidekick Calamity Jan. Checking a Batman chatboard, a few posters conjectured that these episodes were nixed because of the comical, and possibly offensive, depictions of Native Americans.

In the Egghead episode, Edward Everett Horton, the narrator from Fractured Fairy Tales, plays Chief Screaming Chicken, the last of a tribe which leases Gotham City to the original settlers for some pelts. In the Shame episodes, a dour Indian named Chief Standing Pat is part of the western villain's gang. Are these characters offensive enough to warrant not showing the episodes? I'm not Native American, so I can't say. But by the same token should we not show episodes of old sitcoms with swishy gay characters like Uncle Arthur on Bewitched or Hispanics with thick accents or Gone with the Wind because of the simplistic depiction of Prissy? Chief Screaming Chicken and Chief Standing Pat are comic figures but so was everyone else on Batman.

Unexpected Gay Subtexts in Batman

Aside from the most obvious gay subtexts on the Batman series were some subtles ones. In the second appearance of the Mad Hatter, The Contaminated Cowl/The Mad Hatter Runs Afoul, the villain (played by David Wayne with a sibilant s) sprays the Caped Crusader with radioactive spray turning his cowl a bright pink. Was this a hidden message to gay viewers--like the code phrase Friends of Dorothy--that Batman played on their team? Speaking of that expression, I was on a cruise a few years ago with my friend Diane and the ship's newsletter listed a meeting of Friends of Dorothy on the lido deck the first night. I thought, what is this, 1955? Do we gays still have to hide our identity like Batman from unsuspecting straights? I later asked the cruise's social director the reason for the anachronistic reference? He explained that in the cruise line's experience, listing Friends of Dorothy rather than gay and lesbian passengers, was an easier policy and wouldn't upset more conservative passengers. It turned out there was a huge group of gay guys travelling together and we all became friends during the cruise, and the straight passengers figured it out.

Sidenote: Featured in that episode of Batman was Leonid Kinskey, best known as the Russian bartender Sascha in Casablanca, as Prof. Overbeck, a German atomic scientist.

A few episodes later, there was a three-parter guest-starring the Penquin and Marsha, Queen of Diamonds, a villainess not featured in the comic books, played by Carolyn Jones, Morticia of The Addams Family. In the first segment, Penquin Is a Girl's Best Friend, Pengy tricks Batman into acting in a movie he's directing with Marsha as his star. As director of the project, Penquin forces Batman to kiss Marsha during several takes of a love scene. The female crook has coated her lips with a love potion to make Batman her willing slave. For some reason, the Masked Manhunter is reluctant to smooch the gorgeous villainness and he kicks his legs up and visibly resists. Robin later says "Boy I'll bet you never want to kiss another girl again." What kind of message is being sent here?

In an earlier episode, Marsha tricks Batman into marrying her in order to save Robin whom she has captured--mmmm, more subtle hints at the true relationship of Batman and Robin. Marsha wants to get the Bat-Diamond in the Batcave, but Batman vows no stranger will ever enter his secret liar. "Well, then marry me, darling, and I wouldn't be a stranger." Not exactly the firmest foundation for connubial bliss.

At the last minute, the Caped Crusader is saved from a fate worse than death by the quick thinking of Alfred who shows up with Aunt Harriet claiming she is Mrs. Batman--a beard if ever I saw one. We also learn Alfred has never been married. Double Hmmmm.

Best DVR Week Ever

This had to be one of the best weeks for my DVR ever. The Game Show Network has started showing the old black and white What's My Line at 3 AM weeknights. The Sundance Channel has gotten all Bravo and Logo-y with Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, a docu-series about straight women who are best friends with gay men. Batman had two of the campiest episodes ever--Hizzoner the Penquin, wherein the wily bird runs for Mayor of Gotham City; and The Devil's Fingers, the highest-rated Bat-episode ever because it starred Liberace. And to top it all off, the BEST Big Bang Theory yet with Leonard, Sheldon, Penny, Raj, and Howard headed to the comic book store for a New Year's Eve party dressed as the Justice League of America. New regular Zack, Penny's current hunky substitute for Leonard, is drafted into playing Superman. The scene at the end was priceless with the comic book store owher dressed as Doctor Who No. 4 (Tom Baker) announcing the winner of the best costumed group as the JLA--and there are THREE JLAs.

Where to begin? WML is like taking a time machine back to the 1950s when Broadway and movie stars would drop by to fool the blindfolded panel who were in formal wear to play sophisticated parlor games. America knew what was playing on Broadway then and cared. Not like now when the only show people know about is Spider-Man.

The Sundance series is fun and growing on me. But the hot guys in the ads on the sides of the bus aren't even on the show and they are way hunkier than the regular subjects.

The Batman episodes were a hoot. In the Penquin show, the pompous waddling kingpin of crime runs for mayor of Gotham and the script satirizes Barry Goldwater, polls, TV commentators, debates, etc. At one point game show hosts like Dennis James and Allen Luden play political TV anchormen as the Dynamic Duo and Pengy fight a mob of crooks at a jeweler's convention. The commentators cover the bat-fight as if it's a political convention--get it?

The Liberace segments were beyond absurd with the swishy maestro romancing Aunt Harriet and flirting with a trio of gorgeous lady crooks.

Oh, and DADT was repealed. So it was a perfect week.

Batman on The Hub

Batman, the hit 1966-69 TV version of the comic book hero, has recently begun a run on the new cable network The Hub. Now is my chance to get all my favorite episodes on DVD. As you may know, this is probably the ONLY TV series not to be on DVD--I mean they have all five seasons of Gilligan's Island, Family Ties, The Odd Couple, HR Puffinstuff, the Brady Bunch and myriad other pieces of video crap preserved for all time, but not the Caped Crusader. It has something to do with who controls the rights. If the series were on DVD, it would make a fortune. I'm worried the reruns are snipping out little pieces here and there in order to fit in a few more commercials. Anyway, I have some episodes from when the series was on American Family Life every Fri.

My favorite episodes were from the second season when the humor was very campy but had not yet descended to the utter bizarreness of the Batgirl third season. That was when the budget was totally slashed. Anytime the script called for a set that wasn't already built--such as stately Wayne Manor, the Batcave, Commissionner Gordon's office or Barbara Gordon's apartment--they used a black void with some furniture thrown in.

The second season had such kooky villains as Egghead, The Black Widow (as played by Tallullah Bankhead), The Archer, Clock King, Ma Parker (Shelley Winters), Marsha, Queen of Diamonds, the Minstrel, etc.

Bruce Wayne lived in an adolescent world, the only recurring female character--until Batgirl showed up--was Aunt Harriet, a substitute mother for the orphaned Bruce and Dick--or a house mother in the all-male fraternity of the Batcave. Aunt Harriet is a fascinating figure. She is supposed to be the aunt of Dick Grayson. In the comic book, Dick is abandoned when his trapeze-artist parents are killed but Bruce Wayne steps in and adopted the kid. The rather patrician Mrs. Harriet Cooper doesn't seem to be the type to have acrobats in her family. The real reason Madge Blake as Mrs. Cooper was brought into the Wayne household was because it was feared a household full of men would seem too gay. Yes, sexy Madge made the Dynamic Duo seem as straight as a quiver of arrows.

If you look in the Batman comic books pre-1966, you occasionally catch a glimpse of Bruce and Dick sharing a room. Yes, they sleep in separate beds, but doesn't it seem a bit odd for a 30-ish strapping bachelor, and a millionaire to boot, to be sharing a bedroom in a huge mansion with an adoloscent boy? What did Aunt Harriet have to say about that? And didn't she get suspicious that those two were always off bird watching or fishing together? "Hello, Commissioner Gordon, can I have your child abuse deptartment?"

But I never saw any of those other levels when I watched Batman as a kid. It was an action-adventure show to me, not a campy spoof. Just now I watched the one with Sandman and Spryng Byington as J. Pauline Spaghetti. At eight, it went straight over my head that her character's name was a take-off on J. Paul Getty. But even I got tired of it in third season when they jumped the shark and added Batgirl. Still, I often think about what would have happened in a fourth season which would have happened if ABC hadn't destroyed the Batcave set after cancelling the show. NBC was willing to give the Dynamic Duo another shot, but they didn't want to spend $100,000 to build another Batcave.

I had to be satisfied with the Batman cartoons CBS was showing along with Superman, Aquaman, and other DC heroes in the early 1970s. At least in those, Aunt Harriet has mysteriously vanished. They were actually pretty good and Ted Knight did almost all the voices including Penquin, Joker, Riddler, Commissioner Gordon, the narrator, Mr. Freeze, and dozens of others. There were new weird villains including the Judge and Simon the Pieman--that was an exciting segment. The later Batman cartoons with Adam West and Burt Ward doing the voices were pretty stupid because they included Bat-Mite.

There's some much to write about Batman and I've just scracthed the Bat-surface.

Scenes from the Life of an Amateur Comic Book Collector (17)--Fantastic Four

I've gone back to the Fantastic Four lately. When I was a kid in the late 1960s, they were very big and I watched the cartoon series on ABC. I even read some of the comics though at that time I was more into DC than Marvel. Marvel stories were complicated and continued from issue to issue and sometimes from title to title. DC was very simple and straightforward--which explains why kids liked DC and teenagers and adults liked Marvel.

When I first returned to the comic craze in recent years, I was only interested in the first 100 or so issues of FF because they were drawn and co-created by Jack Kirby with his bold striking images. The Silver Surfer-Galactus-Watcher saga is unparalleled in comic history for its scope and sweep, taking on almost Shakespearian proportions as these gigantic figures bestride the globe and dwarf the FF. I still love to think of the dialogue between Galactus and the Watcher as they debate the fate of Earth. When the Watcher calles Galactus "Pillager of planets," I get a chill.

Then I went beyond that into the later issues with John Romita, George Perez, etc. I've just finished Essential Fantastic Four Volume 8 which goes up until issue 183.

The fascinating thing about the FF--and I think it's what inspires loyalty to them--is they seem to exist in real time and space, and exhibit human emotions. Yes, they are in a comic-book world besides the obvious of having superpowers and not aging as quickly as the rest of us. Reed Richards and Ben Grimm are veterans of World War II which would make them in their mid-80s to early 90s if they were real people. But in a lot of other respects, their experiences parallel the rest of us. They change, get married, have children, have sex even.

For decades, Superman and Batman existed in an adolescent arrested development phase. Girls like Lois Lane and Vicki Vale were icky and the heroes hung out with younger male pals like Jimmy Olsen and Robin--surrogates for the readers. (I know it's different now, I don't keep up with the current storylines, but Superman finally did marry Lois, yet Batman remains a bachelor, having gone through several Robins.)

Reed Richards and Sue Storm actually got married and had a child. There are scenes indicating they really slept together--in the same bed--unlike Rob and Laura Petrie. In one story arc Reed's double from a parallel Earth takes his place and presumably does the nasty with Sue. The Invisible Girl is shown getting out of a king-sized bed, wearing a sheer nightie, leaving a sleeping false Reed. Her doubts about her husband apparently centered on their lovemaking. To add a touch of reality, she walks in on houseguests Thundra and The Impossible Man--a Marvel version of Mr. Mxyzplyzt (however you spell it)--watching a rerun of The Maltese Falcon on late-night TV. Their home--the Baxter Building--has an actual location in the real world, 42nd and Madison in NYC.

The current FF, they are almost at issue 600, has housed a bunch of mutant kids in the Baxter Building. Sounds kinda boring, like a kiddie X-Men. But I am now anxious to go back and read through up till the present.

Memories of a TV Childhood--Part 3--The Funniest Moments in TV History

1. That episode of Maude where Vivian was trying out someting called Total Womanhood, a reaction to Women's Lib in which the wife is supposed to be all sexy and submissive instead of an "aggressive female." Maude and Walter go over to see Vivian who has been acting strange lately. She answers the door stark naked except for Saranwrap. You can only see her from the neck up. She was obviously expecting her husband Arthur. She screams and slams the door. Maude and Walter stare at each other for about 30 second totally deadpan.

2. That episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show where Rob accused Laura of opening his mail. He sends for an inflatible raft. Laura can't resist her curiosity and opens it. The raft inflates and now she can't hide it. Millie and Jerry come over from next door and just the way they laugh so hard without uttering a sound is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

3. That episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where Paul Sand is an accountant auditing Mary. He sends her a box of chocolates. Rhoda starts to eat one and says "I don't know why I should bother to eat this. I should just apply it to my hips directly." At the age of 11, I had this image of Valerie Harper smearing her hips with chocolate.

4. That episode of The Carol Burnett Show when Carol as Eunice and Vickie Lawrence as Mama were having a fight. Lawrence delivered the line "Eunice, you gotta hole in your dingy! Your pilot light blown out! You got splinters in the windmills of your mind." Carol then breaks character and cracks up, sputtering "That's a new one, Mama." Obvioulsy Lawrence either ad-libbed the last one or the writers gave it to her as a surprise. She stayed in character and said "Now you look at me when I'm talking to you, Eunice!"

5. Laugh-In. There was one show where one of the running gags was Lily Tomlin as a strict librarian and Larry Hovis as a patron.
Hovis: Do you have any books on manners?
Tomlin: No we don't, stupid.

Hovis: Do you have the autobiography of William F. Buckley?
Tomlin: Yes, you go down that aisle and take a radical turn to the right.

Hovis: Do you have the autobiography of Lawrence Welk?
Tomlin: Yes.
Hovis: Is there a penalty if you keep it late?
Tomlin: Yes, if you don't return it after three weeks you have to keep it.

Speaking of Laugh-In, I'll never forget when the producer of the show was on the David Frost Show and he said they did 250 jokes every show. Of course, the next time Laugh-In was on, I counted every joke. And it totaled about 252.

6. On The Jetsons, daughter Judy was once again bitten by the love bug. Rosie the Robot Maid was sick of it. "This is Miss Judy in love, tra-la-la, tra-la-la" she said and pretend to prance around as best a robot can. "This is Mis Judy out of love, eh-heh, eh-heh" and then she bends over and moans. "I never sounded like that," Judy says. "I bet you could if you tried real hard," Rosie answers. My brother and I started imitating Rosie, going "Eh-heh" and moaning at the least provocation.

7. The episode of Batman with Tallulah Bankhead. She has them trapped in a giant electronic web and is open to unleash two spiders on them. "Well, dahlings, you may be caped and you may be dynamic. But to me you are a crashing BORE! So bye-bye, bat-baby."

8. On the Today Show they were interviewing people who were the subject of weird stories in the National Enquirer (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize this year for their John Edwards coverage). One woman claimed she had a toaster possessed by the devil. She displayed samples of toast with pictures of the antichrist scratched out of the burnt part. She put in a piece of bread and it caught fire. "So, why do you keep this toaster if it's so much trouble," the interviewer asked. "Well, you know, in spite of everything, it still makes a pretty good piece of toast."

Memories of a TV Childhood

While contemplating our new huge high-definition TV I recalled how much of a big deal it was just to have color. When I was little, our house and that of just about everyone we knew had black and white. Many of the programs were in B&W and the complete transition to color happened gradually from the late 60s to the 70s. I can remember watching most of the Mary Tyler Moore Show in black and white which premiered in 1970 and ran until 1977 (When the last episode aired, I was acting in a high school production of The Sound of Music. We had a set backstage and as I was playing Herr Zeller, the mean Nazi, I didn't have many scenes and I could watch it.)

My great-aunt Lilly and great-uncle Carl had a color TV and it was so exciting to visit them because we could watch our favorite shows in living flesh-tones. One time we had dinner with them and I remember we watched Time Tunnel which was on Thursdays (I think). I asked if we could have dinner with them on a Wednesday because that was when Lost in Space was on. The first season of Lost in Space had been broadcast in black and white. Then the second year the cast got all new colorful costumes--which I couldn't appreciate because of our cheap b&w set. Back then, I didn't understand why they suddenly change their clothes if they were wandering aimless in the cosmos. Where did they get the new duds? It was like the castaways on Gilligan's Island. Only the Howells had a complete wardrobe. The Robinsons had their black and white space suits and their color ones. Later I realized it was just to take advantage of the color. Judy in particular benfitted from the makeover. In season one she wore this drab dark skirt thing. In season two she was in a bright yellow and purple pants suit. (I later got Marta Kristin's autograph at a sci-fi convention, but that's another story.)

Speaking of visiting relatives and TV, another time we were visiting my Uncle Joe and Aunt Marion in January 1966 to go sledding with my cousins. I remember the date because my sister and I watched the George Sanders Mr. Freeze episode of Batman with my cousin James. (There were three Mr. Freezes, Otto Preminger and Eli Wallach were the other two) That was the third or fourth Batman episode. It was a Wednesday because it was part one. Part two was on Thursday. It was an unusual experience because in those days before DVRs, we would watch Lost in Space on Wed. from 7:30 to 8:30 and see part two of Batman on Thurs. Anyway, we kids were all excited because we thought with all the snow we'd have to stay overnight. I was only six so this was a big deal. But my dad said it was time to go home. Driving back, our car hit a patch of ice and we crashed into a fence. I don't remember how long we were there, but my dad must have called a tow truck to get us out and we got home eventually.

Scenes from the Life of an Amateur Comic Book Collector (10)--Superman and Batman Visit Krypton

Among the comics bought at the Phila. comic show was one with so many holes in the plot, I just had to comment. It's World's Finest no. 191. This was a series in which Superman and batman teamed up and was extremely popular. In this issue from the late 1960s, Supie and Batty journey back in time to the planet Krypton because Superman's parents mysteriously appear on Earth, mention they are about to commit a crime and then vanish. To begin with, has Superman forgotten he'll have no superpowers on Krypton? How will they get back before the panet explodes? They don't even travel in a time bubbble, Batman just puts on a space suit, hitches a ride on Superman's back and off they go (maybe he was used to riding bareback, if you know what I mean).

This also ties in with the theme of an earlier blog about how everyone and his brother--Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Mon-El, and now Batman and Superman--seems to have visited the doomed planet and Jor-El and Lara. I will have to do a time line at some point.

So Superman and Batman materialize on Krypton during a student protest against robot professors--yes, even though we are on a different planet and it's about 40 years before the 1960s, there are long-haired kids kicking up a ruckus just like on earth. Ridic! The two heroes break up the kiddies' fun by taking over the local weather-control station and starting a downpour. Evidently, Krypton was advanced enough to control the weather and have robot teachers, but they hadn't mastered space flight which would have saved them.

Jor-El, one of the few human professors, takes an interest in the costumed clowns--I mean visitors--and invites them to his home. They pass a Krypton movie house showing patrons carrying their own helmets with speakers and mini-screens (this contradicts another version of Krypton moviegoing shown in a Jimmy Olsen story wherein he visits the bottle city of Kandor and patrons experience the sensations of the movie including kissing without the aide of helmets. But maybe this was a fad in Kryptonopolis which did not take hold in Kandor.) But I digress.

The two earth heroes are welcomed into Jor-El and Lara's home. The scientist's wife remarks, "I have the feeling I've seen you before," referring to their brief appearance on earth. What Lara and the writers of this story have forgetten is that Superman did know his parents before. He was trapped in a time-vortex (or something) and wound up on Krypton just before Jor-El and Lara got married. He got to know them well and spent much time with them as Jor-El's scientific protege. He even fell in love with Lyla Lerrol, Krypton's leading emotion-movie actress (which goes back to the contradicting methods of Krypton cinema, perhaps I should write a disseration on that.) The four of them went out all the time, dancing and drinking in Kryptonian nightclubs. Superman was resigned to remaining on his homeworld and dying with his parents and new love, but he accidently was trapped in a movie rocket, took off, and headed into the same time vortex, returning to present day Earth.

All of this must have slipped Lara's mind. Anyway, it turns out the Els aren't crooks, but are leading a select troop of recruits to perform a secret mission on a Kryptonian island where committing crimes is the law and being honest is outlawed. So having proven his parents aren't theives, Superman heaves a sigh of relief and suddenly recalls he and Batman have no way of getting back to earth. He actually says, "I forgot about that." Luckily, the superheroes get caught in the same time thingie his parents did and are back on earth. It was part of a top-secret government project which must now be destroyed; otherwise Battie and Supie would be drawn back to Krypton. Sort of like the Time Tunnel. Remember that show? I recall asking if we could go to my great-aunt's house on Wednesday nights because she had a color set so we could watch it there.

Halloween on Bourbon Street

Exhausted after putting together a huge event for my job, my partner and I decided to get away and have some fun in the Big Easy. By coincidence, it was Halloween weekend, so our trip would be capped by a big costume party on Bourbon Street. I had been to New Orleans before--it was the starting point of a cruise I took with my friend Diane--but Jerry had never been. It really is a unique city in the US. Very relaxed and casual. These people have a party at the drop of a hat. In addition to the bacchanal known as Mardi Gras, they have parades on St. Patrick's Day and then so the Italians don't feel left out, another one a week later on St. Anthony's day.

I bought a Superman costume in New York before leaving (I had a layover in the Memphis airport which looks like a bus station). We had a wonderful time, had dinner at some great restuarants (Arnaud's, Pauline's, the Gumbo Factory), listened to jazz at the Maison Bourbon, took a walking tour of the Garden District, a bus tour of the whole city including the Ninth Ward still dealing with the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, walked around the French Quarter, visited the Confederate Musuem, and dressed up for Halloween. I had my Superman outfit, complete with muscles. We bought a funny hat for Jerry which he wore with a mask and a feather boa--he was a sort of a generic Mardi Gras person. We ran into lots of costumed revellers on Bourbon Street including a group of superheroes consisting of Captain America, Batman and Robin. The photo above is of our meeting plus one non-costumed partygoer. One man was dressed as a priest with a doll of a young boy strapped to his groin. He was a big hit. There were Halloweeners as beer bottles, traffic lights, Sumo wrestlers, Jesus Christ, and lobsters.

The whole city was beautiful and fun, smelling like sweet blossoms and beer. Wonderful food of which I probably ate too much. The famous cemetries were interesting. They bury whole families in one crypt, above ground. When a new body needs to go into, they just sweep the remains of the old one to the back of the crypt. This saves lots of space. Our guide also told lots of fascinating stories including one about Edgar Degas and his brother--who lived in the city. The brother left his blind wife for the younger woman who was hired to read to her. "You can't make up a story like that for Days of Our Lives," the guide laughed.

My Top Ten Favorite TV Shows

We all gotta get silly sometimes. So here's my top ten favorite TV shows of all time. Please add your own in the comments spot. (I never get any comments, boo-hoo! Is anybody there, as William Daniels sang in 1776.)

In no particular order:

1. Rocky and Bullwinkle. Funny and satirical and way over my head as a kid. Boris and Natasha, the Giant Metal Moon Mice (while disguised as a moon mouse, Boris was reading a book called Mice Kampf), Cloyd and Gidney, Fearless Leader (when I was little I thought he was named Phyllis Leader), fractured Fairy Tales (Snow White: We used to have a line of giants, but we had to cut them out, too much overhead), Peabody and Sherman (Oh, no, Sherman, in this Indian dialect "ta-ta" means "Let's Have a War"), Wrongway Peachfuzz, and of course the flying squirrel and moose. I actually met June Foray at a sci-fi convention once and got her autograph.

2. Hill Street Blues. Real-life drama. I interviewed Bruce Weitz (Mick Belker) and saw Joe Spano (Lt. Henry Goldblume) on the subway. Robert Prosky (Sgt. Jablonsky) grew up across the street from my grandparents in Philly.

3. Dr. Who. Greatest sci-fi series ever, still going on. I've met six of the ten doctors and several of the companions at various sci-fi conventions.

4. The Amazing Race. Of course, read blog entries on the current season for more details.

5. The Dick Van Dyke Show. (Funniest moment: Millie and Jerry discovering Laura with the inflatible raft.)

6. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (Rhoda: I don't know why I'm eating this chocolate, I should apply it directly to my hips)

7. Theater in America. PBS series in the late 1970s spotlighting a different regional theatre production every week. Arena Stage, American Conservatory Theatre, Negro Ensemble Company, Shakespeare in the Park, etc. How I wish there were something like that on TV now, but even with all the dozens of cable channels, nobody cares enough about theatre to present one.

8. Upstairs, Downstairs. (Ruby, it's 6 o'clock, what should you be doin'? Not speculatin', Mr. 'udson. I'll speculate you, my girl!)

9. Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Too much magnificence to go into. This deserves an entire column.

10. Batman with Adam West and Burt Ward. Of course, my favorite show from ages seven to ten. We didn't think it was funny at the time. But now it's wonderfully campy.

Subway Scenes: Kindled Spirits?

While riding home on the subway this evening I saw two people each reading a Kindle. That's the first time I've seen more than on on the same subway car. So the Amazon.com reading device is becoming more common. I can only see having it if I were going on a long trip and didn't want to carry around a bunch of heavy books. This led me to wonder if someday books would become like vinyl LPs are now, collectors' items only conneisseurs would care about or care to own. Would you only be able to buy them online or in little, out of the way, used bookstores in quaint little villages? Would Harry Potter paperbacks go for $50? It could happen. CD stores are folding because of I Tunes. No more Virgin Records.

But then you wouldn't have the physical book to put on your bookcase and refer back to. You'd probably download it to your Kindle and then erase it once you read it so as not to clutter up the hard drive. If you wanted to read it again, you'd have to pay that $10 again, so keeping the book would be less likely.

This would add to the impermenance of our society. Pictures are no longer printed, they're digitized and stored in your laptop. (I even have fallen victim to this trend, I'm so lazy I haven't bothered to have any pictures printed since my trip to Louisville in April, they're all posted on Facebook, so why bother?) There's less and less of your life you can actually hold in your hands. It's all in the cyber-air.

Will ideas and conversation become as fleeting and transitory? Well, maybe I'm worried over nothing. When television came in, they said it would be the death of the movies. But the art of cinema remains vibrant.

What will life be like in 20 years? Will everyone have a Kindle? Will it become mandatory for school and college? No more heavy book bags to tote around.

As the two men were reading their Kindles across from each other on the subway, I read my edition of Wednesday Comics I had just bought at Midtown Comics. The Superman art by Lee Bermejo is dark and beautiful with incredible details in the folds of the costumes and the creases of the wrinkles of the superheroes' faces. One panel is particularly gorgeous with Superman and Batman's capes flapping in the wind as they discuss Superman's alienation atop a skyscraper in a noir-ish Gotham City. Batman is in both his own strip and Superman's this week.

I wonder what the two guys were reading.

Scenes from an Amatuer Comic Collector's Life (2)--Sunday Funnies

Today is new comic book day, so I go into Forbidden Planet to check out the new goods. DC Comics has come out with an entirely new series I absolutely love which is in the form of a Sunday newspaper comic section like what we used to call the funnies. Remember those? This features epic 14 X 20 inch story pages of Superman, Batman, Kamandi (I have almost all of the Jack Kirby originals), Hawkman, Deadman, Green Lantern, Metamorpho, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Metal Men, Flash, Sgt. Rock, Teen Titans, Adam Strange, and the Demon teamed with Catwoman. Best of all, Metamorpho the Elemental Man is drawn by my absolute favorite artist Mike Allred--who has a cool retro sensibility--he's the guy who does Madman, which will conclude its current series next month from Image Comics. And this Metamorpho strip is written by Neil Gaiman (Geeky enough for yez?)

This will be a weekly series from DC for 12 weeks. Wow! I can collect them all! I remember the funnies used to be my favorite part of the newspaper. Saturday nights my dad used to drive us to this general store-sort of Wawa place to get the Sunday paper. We would go after dinner and get ice cream and pick up the Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was a weekly ritual, I remember sitting with him in the front seat and my sister in the back. We'd go in the store and pick up this enormous newspaper with the colorful funnies wrapped around the front. Sometimes if I had enough allowance money left--I got 25 cents a week--I would buy the latest Action Comics with Superman AND the Legion of Super-Heroes. So it had to be the early 70s, when the Legion was no longer the only feature in Adventure Comics, but had been relegated to second-class status behind the Man of Steel in Action.

I haven't read all of the comics yet, but I love the Green Lantern which has a real cool early 60s vibe like The New Frontier, a graphic novel series I've been meaning to read.

I also picked up issue 5 of the Marvel adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for my friend Lydia who is a Jane Austen fan.