Comics are my life!

Well, not quite but I've found some great websites concerned with the comics medium.

One is The Comics Curmudgeon, in which Josh does for contemporary comic strips what Mr. Cranky does for movies, ie he never likes anything. He's popularized such catchphrases as "More zippers, mule!" (said to Margo Magee when she was going undercover in a sweatshop in APARTMENT 3-G) and "Work it like a claw and call me Randy" (a line from the ineffable JUDGE PARKER). It's at http://www.joshreads.com

A similar site is http://qomicsforqueers.blogspot.com which reads endless gay subtext into strips like BEETLE BAILEY. (I enjoy it, and I'm straight!) Unfortunately, it hasn't been active for over a month.

Another site is Mister Kitty, who has an ongoing "Stupid Comics" series discussing, well, stupid comics. I can't resist posting a scan from "Gorilla My Dreams," a page devoted to the gorilla theme in comics. You can see the whole thing at http://misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics106.html



Mr K comments: "I know this has been seen around the internet for a while now, but it bears repeating, because this is pretty much what most people think of when they hear the phrase 'stupid comic.' Let's just forget about the fact that it's a talking gorilla for a moment-- he's using a gun to take books out of the public library. DUDE IT'S FREE ALL YOU NEED IS A CARD. For that matter, he could just read the books in the library and never check them out at all. Oh, well! Just further proof that gorillas are dumb!"

Another question I would add: If he's this big gorilla, why does he need a gun? Why can't he just overpower the librarian? He's a shame to gorillas everywhere! It's also interesting to learn that you can conquer the world with the help of boy's adventures like ROBINSON CRUSOE and TREASURE ISLAND. You'd think books like DECLINE OF THE WEST or NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR or MEIN KAMPF would be more useful.

Just recently I discovered http://www.comics.org, a site full of cover scans from a VERY wide range of comic books. Looking there, I found covers I remembered from my childhood, from series like TWEETY AND SYLVESTER and THE THREE STOOGES and JERRY LEWIS. My parents weren't keen on the superhero genre, but I do recall reading this one from the JIMMY OLSEN series. (I also remember one where Jimmy had to live in a slum for an investigative report. They were trying to be Relevant then.)



The cover depicts a story in which Jimmy Olsen went undercover as a hippie for another investigative report. In this story there were some bad men posing as hippies who wanted to kill Superman (who'da thunk it?), and decided to make Jimmy their tool. They introduced him to this magic incense or something that put him into a dream he could manipulate, to pretend to get even with people he was mad at. For example, he was POed that Perry White wouldn't advance him a raise, so he got to manipulate his own dream so that he went to the Daily Planet and decked his boss, leaving Clark and Lois appalled. Except what he didn't realize was that his dreams were REAL! (Jimmy isn't too bright.)

So next the bad guys made Jimmy think Superman was mad at him, which he wasn't really. (It has to do with the protest suggested on the cover, but it's too convoluted even for this description.) Then they got him to "dream" he was killing the Man of Steel with hippie beads made of kryptonite, with vibrations from his super-watch removing their protective coating. Except that at the last moment Jimmy wised up and figured out it was real, because of the paint stains on his knees, and saved Superman by putting the beads in a tank of leaded gasoline.

The other story in the comic had Jimmy inheriting these kachina powers from an old Hopi Indian, which meant that with the touch of his finger he could bring pictures to life. So he managed to foil crooks by animating the kings on playing cards and the Jolly Green Giant. (One group of these crooks was robbing a library--did they get the idea from a gorilla?) But then some other crooks got ahold of a stamp with a picture of Lex Luthor holding a piece of kryptonite...

Did you ever notice that Jimmy's super-watch, as well as Lois Lane's ring or whatever it was she used to call Superman, were always getting broken or swiped at just the times when they had most use for his help?

Chief: "Until your mission is a success, Max, she'll [Agent 99] learn to live without you." Maxwell Smart: "Yes, but what if my mission is a failure?" Chief: "Then we'll all learn to live without you"--GET SMART