“Ah, c’mon Bruce, can’t I sit on your lap instead?”

Why, just look at the graceful way he, er, trips over that sleeping dog lying in plain sight…

Now, before you express any sympathy for Robin, or make a predictable little “I’m the goddamn Batman” or “Batdickery” joke, think for a minute…

Who hasn’t wanted to smack Dick Grayson around a little?

It’s cute. But I’m stumped as to which is more trite at this point; “Gay Batman” jokes or Brokeback Mountain parodies.

Of course, I can never get tired of gay Batman jokes. Hell, if I had to stop making gay jokes about comic book characters, I’d have to delete about half my posts…

Originally spotted at Heroes and Villains

Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne hurriedly putting on their clothes before Lois Lane gets to the cabin they’re sharing on a cruise…

I swear, sometimes these things are so easy to spot I almost feel obligated to point them out.

Commissioner Gordon really isn’t a very good detective:

Yes Jim, that’s right…blowing yourself up is one of the classic insurance scams…

Jim Gordon isn’t a big fan of C.S.I.:

Wayne Industries uses the same accountants as Enron:

How Alfred describes himself in personals ads:

That there’s nothing creepy at all about the Batman/Alfred relationship:

Bruce Wayne doesn’t just dislike cottage cheese, he hates it. I don’t know, for some reason that makes him sound kind of…lame.

Alfred shouldn’t give up his day job:

There’s also this:

When was the last time you saw an editorial note which presumed you weren’t familiar with the Joker?

I’m sorry. I really don’t know what came over me. I really shouldn’t be uploading stuff like this to the net, should I?

Sometimes I really miss the simpler, gentler, more innocent comics of the past…

I recently purchased and read Steve Gerber’s Fool-Killer series from Marvel. Great stuff. I suspect I might do a more thorough dissection of it here. The best short-hand way I can think of to describe it is: What if the Punisher was created by Ayn Rand? And the timely politcal aspects of the story have come full-circle: American military involvement in the middle east, a Bush in the White House, and lots of people struggling to get by in what we’re continually being told is a boom economy.

It’s such a far cry from what Marvel puts out now. It’s a genuinely thoughtful work, with a strong satirical edge. In fact, I’d say the weaknesses of the book are the neccessary intrusions of the Marvel Universe into the story, including an utterly pointless Spider-Man cameo. Now Marvel’s idea of edgy work is border-line mysogynistic porn like Eternal.

But what really annoys me about Marvel these days is this: their ordering and variant covers policy. To get the “Arachnoman” variant of Ultimate Spider-Man we had to order Amazing Fantasy in quantities of five. So for every five AF we ordered, we could order 1 Arachnoman. A similair gimmick was in operation for the two Astonishing X-Men variants. So, in order to get copies of something that we know we’re going to get asked for, we had to order more copies than we’d have liked to of a title we know isn’t going to sell. And now, Marvel is offering retailers a discount on Avengers #500 if we order it in equal or greater quantities than Amazing Spider-Man #509. On the retail end, it all feels like a desperate ploy on Marvel’s part to make retailers over-order in order to drive up sales so that Joe Quesada can go to San Diego and claim that Avengers #500 was the #1 book for July. And I suspect a lot of retailers will fall for it in order to get “hot” variant covers and “sold out” titles. Bah…