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Comic Book Oddities #1
23 Plays10 months ago
Derek and Corinne take a look at some of the weirder oddities in comics- like Peter Palmer the Amazing Spiderman or superhero nudity!
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Transcript
Introduction & Recording Challenges
00:00:13
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Comicly Pedantic, where we take a detailed look at the complicated concepts, characters, and history of comic book culture. I'm Derek L. Chase, and joining me, as always, is the wonderful Corinne Levy. It's me. Hi. I was gonna... Because normally what we do is we, like, play the intro live. I was like, we want... I can just, like, make the interviews by myself. But we're not gonna do that.
00:00:40
Speaker
This is gonna be like a weird one because basically every aspect of how we do this show is a little different today. For one, you do not have your microphone. No, I meant the leafy household. I'm at my parents' house. I'm surrounded by taxidermy and I don't have my microphone or my anything.
00:01:10
Speaker
We're going back to the beginnings of this podcast when I had nothing. We're also using a different service because there was a problem with the one that we normally use. So we had to pivot last minute. I'm hoping this comes out well. I apologize to anyone that's listening. If it sounds like shit, I promise you we did everything we could.
00:01:32
Speaker
I don't apologize. This is simply how life goes sometimes. Sometimes you just gotta be stuck at your parents house a couple of days longer. I'm just kidding. I love them very much. I'm very grateful that like, you know, I'm getting my car worked on. It's a time. Uh, it's taking longer than we all thought, but at least I get some nice home cooked meals that I don't have to cook. So.
00:01:54
Speaker
I'm excited. It's fine. Everything's fine.
Family Time & Movie Discussions
00:01:56
Speaker
This is great. Well, since things are going so well for you, I guess I should ask what your bright spot is for the week. Oh, I got it.
00:02:04
Speaker
I don't know, man. I get to see my family. That is a bright spot. I know it's for like a shitty situation with my car being poo-pay, but I love seeing my family, so like that's good. Got to watch some fun movies with them. Oh, what did you watch? Oh, okay. Well, truly quite a wide range of things. One night we watched the menu with like all four of us, which like
00:02:32
Speaker
is truly quite a film to watch with your family. I only, I watched like maybe 10 minutes of it and I realized I wasn't in the right like headspace to sit and watch it. So like I didn't continue. Yeah, it's fine. I totally get it. You do have to be kind of in the mindset to watch. It's like a thrillers suspense satire thing. I have like a
00:02:56
Speaker
culinary background, so there's moments of pretentious chefness.
00:03:07
Speaker
kind of talking about like how like you gotta cook with love and like how all these, it's like, you know, it was one of those eat the rich movies where it's like all these people are ruining everything and including like, you know, the love of cooking for chefs because they're put to such these dumb standards of like, you know, you gotta have crazy foams and shit like that, which is like, so like, yeah, I don't know. I liked it. And I was also like, but sometimes like it's cool like, cause
00:03:35
Speaker
Like, you know, not to go on like a culinary rant, but like those things are fun when you're excited to do them, you know, not when you feel like you have to because of like the market you work for. Like, yeah, I mean, I think that goes for pretty much any job, like a thing where you have to do.
00:03:52
Speaker
something like versus it being like, oh, this is a fun, additive thing. Yeah. It's like the pretentiousness comes from like being like, oh, like this is the only thing that makes like great cooking. And it's like, no, sometimes just like making a good pot of chili, like with your family is like what you need.
00:04:09
Speaker
So it's like, you know, it's a movie like that. And it also, again, it like makes fun of rich people. And like, so it was fun. It was a good time. And then we watched, I watched some like, you know, just like rom coms with my mom, you know, like a good like Melissa McCarthy.
00:04:25
Speaker
I love Melissa McCarthy. She reminds me of my mom to be very honest. She is such, I mean, I love her in Gilmore Girls as we've talked heavily about Gilmore Girls, but she's like one of my favorite characters in Gilmore Girls. And then just like, she is just such like a beautiful woman inside and out. Like I feel like she's just like,
00:04:46
Speaker
Like she's got so much goodness, I feel like. I mean, like, you know, and it just comes from outside. I'm like, wow, what a cool lady. I always want the best for Melissa McCarthy. And then last night we watched the greatest beer run ever.
00:05:02
Speaker
I don't even know what this is, but I like the name. It's actually really cool. It's based off of a true story. There was a guy, his name is Chiki Donahue. During Vietnam, he was in New York, and he was kind of like a barfly. And a lot of his friends in the neighborhood, they were drafted for the war. And at this point in the war, you have a lot of the journalist stories coming back about how
00:05:32
Speaker
actually shitty the war is and like, what are you even fighting for kind of thing? So then there's a lot of the peace protests starting. And so like, Chicky and his friends are like, man, we have like our friends over there and some of them are dying and like, you know, they're not feeling supported or like, you know, things like that. And that's probably really disheartening. And he's like, why don't I just go over there and bring him some beers from the guys?
00:05:58
Speaker
Okay, I like this. To show that we still care about them and they're doing what they need to do. Just to show support. And so he does it. He used to work on merchant ships. And so he gets a job on a ship that's going to Vietnam. And he ends up in battle zones just to give his neighborhood pals beers.
00:06:26
Speaker
You know, it goes through kind of like how he's like experiencing this war and like, you know, at first he's like a very like patriotic guy. Like you gotta respect the president and like, you know.
00:06:38
Speaker
these peace protests aren't helping. Like if anything, like you're hurting our guys and like, you know, he's not like, you know, but he gets like a lot of perspective from it. And he also does this bad shit crazy thing of bringing beers to people in Vietnam. And so like, I had like heard about him before. Like I had heard about his story before and I wanted to see the movie. So we got to watch it last night. It was good. It's got Zac
Self-Improvement & Podcast Reflections
00:07:03
Speaker
Efron in it. He plays
00:07:05
Speaker
Oh, I like Zac Efron. Yeah, he plays Steve Donahue. It's like, there are moments where it's like, this is straight goofy. And then like, you know, there's moments where it's like, wow, this is like really heartbreaking. And like, I feel for this guy, but it was pretty good. I was a fan. Um, and I just think that's like a really awesome, like true story from history that like, you don't hear much about like, I like things like that. Like when it comes to like my history, it's like, oh,
00:07:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I'm saying weird, like often overlooked, just strange things. Like he's literally just a guy. He's just a guy. Right. Yeah. He made it back. Oh, I honestly did not expect that. Yeah. He made it back. Spoiler alert. And like he was able to like, I guess like somebody helped him write a book about his experience.
00:07:53
Speaker
That kind of shows you some of the craziest stories are true. It's wild. But yeah, so I've been doing a lot of that. But like, hopefully I'll be heading back to my home soon so I can see my cat and Maxito and stuff. So I miss my boys. For me, I think I actually was thinking about this like pretty much all morning. And the only thing that I could come up with was something like
00:08:23
Speaker
I guess like self-reflection and the ability to like kind of like improve. I have been doing a lot of like different things. Like I found a barber I really like who actually does like my hair, my beard, everything the way that I want it. Got that going. I've been like cleaning my house and like maintaining it way better than I was before. But also I was
00:08:50
Speaker
editing a bunch of our older episodes. And I realized there are several things that I say quite often on the show because I genuinely don't remember if I've brought them up on the show before. And it's just really funny to me that this is a thing that keeps happening. And I can just imagine
00:09:10
Speaker
If someone was listening to the show, having this, like, this motherfucker brings up this thing every single episode. What? Like, that you talk about X-Men a lot? Like...
00:09:25
Speaker
I do like the X-Men, but specifically something like me stating the part of the dichotomy of me is like how much I like horror. And then my go-to example is always Sonic the Hedgehog in the opposite direction.
00:09:41
Speaker
It really is. It's like occasionally you'll spice things up with the Power Rangers, but like 99% of the time, like you just like that hedgehog, man. It's cute and it's fun and I like it. But it's, it's just one of those things that I was listening to this and I was like, huh, I did not realize that this was a thing that was just, I guess like a compulsion or like a tick of mine.
00:10:06
Speaker
that like I am constantly going to. And there's like a part of you that for a moment, so much, you know, like, so it's in the forefront when it comes to examples, like, right?
00:10:22
Speaker
There's a part of you that like when you come across something like that, you kind of go, oh, you could lean into like, this is an embarrassing thing. Like I need to like fix this about myself. Or you could just acknowledge it as like just a silly thing that you do and be like, okay, I'll be more cognizant of that in the future. And that's kind of where I fell on it. But there is that like moment where you're like, oh no, I feel bad about this and you know, whatever. So it's that self-reflection and the need to like,
00:10:52
Speaker
constantly improve, I guess. I think that kind of fits together as a bright spot that I've had over the last week, just constantly doing something different to get better and learning from the things that I've done in the past. No, that makes sense. And what you're saying I also can relate to, because I mean, and I also, I referred to Sandman and Saga
00:11:17
Speaker
I've always been aware of it, but it's also because, for me, that is because I'm still building my reading repertoire, I guess you could call it. Which is why I then decided to come up with the goal of trying to read something from essentially every genre.
00:11:35
Speaker
And like, you know, we'll see if we can find some new things that I'll really connect with or like, you know, want to reference and things like that. Just so, you know, I'm not stuck in a box. My, my two S's box, my Sawguns.
Comic Book Oddities & Listener Engagement
00:11:53
Speaker
But that's fun. It's good to learn things about yourself. You can't always look outward because what's the use in that? I probably look into myself too much and then I become anxious, but that's a different podcast.
00:12:12
Speaker
I think I kind of do the same, but it just, there are certain things that you're not prepared to learn that you've done. And I think that's kind of where that sort of came up. But oh, well, I mean, you know, we're doing what we can, the two of us. I mean, referencing Sonic a bunch is fine. It's just like, it's a wholesome thing. You like what you like and that's okay. Like, I mean, if you want to like other things or like discuss the other things that you like, you're more than welcome to.
00:12:44
Speaker
Thankfully, these are the things that we're repeating and not unhealthy behaviors or vocab and stuff like that. I just like Sonic. This reminds me of a thing from Sandman. But we're trying. We're going to expand, everybody.
00:13:04
Speaker
We're gonna read more than just two things. Well, speaking of expanding, this episode's gonna be a little bit different than what we normally do. See, normally on this show, we either do a deep dive into comic book nonsense like Comic Skate or our ongoing coverage of the Clone Saga. But I do like to take a break every now and then to look at something a little less intensive. We've done that before with like Dazzler or
00:13:29
Speaker
Sonic the Hedgehog, we've done a couple episodes on that. And that's mostly what today is going to be about. We're going to be doing an ongoing series of looking into some of the funnier, why did this get printed oddities made by the comic book industry? I've curated a few that I thought would be at least a little interesting to talk about, but that doesn't mean that I'm aware of all of them. So if any of you have a few that you'd like to email to the show, feel free. We'd like to do a follow up on this with what you've chosen. Hopefully it's something that is like
00:13:59
Speaker
not just a quick like, oh, here's a single panel that has absolutely no relevance to anything else, but I wouldn't mind that. But my question for you is to like, because, you know, I know you have found most of like sources for this. What are you gonna, what are you, what are we defining an oddity as? Cause I know we also want to talk about, at some point we would talk about mistakes in comics.
00:14:26
Speaker
So what are you defining as an oddity per se? So for me, I'm actually going to start this with what actually it starts as a mistake, but then I feel like it turns into an oddity. It's something that like is maybe not entirely deliberate. I would consider a mistake, something where like someone clearly goofed up and it is
00:14:54
Speaker
Like something that was overlooked that should have been like an editing is a mistake for sure, like. Right, yeah. And then like an oddity, I would look at as something that there is some level of intentionality behind it. Maybe not entirely on everyone's part, but at least on like a person's part that is involved. There's one I'm not using for today, but it's like maybe sneaking a secret message into a comic book
00:15:23
Speaker
So it's like the publisher, that was a mistake that should have been caught. But like that person who snuck that in, there was intention behind that. Yeah, like to me, cause like an oddity would be kind of like all the random, like some random subliminal messaging and like Disney movies, like in the stars where like spells something out or like what's the castle on the VHS cover? Like someone drew that.
00:15:51
Speaker
And they know what they were doing, but the stake might be they misspelled something, nobody caught it, and it totally changes the meaning of a sentence kind of thing.
00:16:05
Speaker
For our sake, oddity is going to be something that I'm, I guess I'm going to leave intentionally vague, but it's going to be something that is like slightly interesting. There's some intentionality behind it, like how it got published. And it's got to be something that is just a little weird. Like it's not something that you would entirely expect.
00:16:27
Speaker
There is a through line, I think, with the ones that I've chosen for today, where there is a twist on what you would normally see from the public. We're only, this particular episode, we're only doing Marvel and DC. But that's because they're the ones that have the easiest sort of like. They're the biggest targets. Right. I got it.
00:16:58
Speaker
I wish I had a better explanation for what an oddity would be, but it's kind of the, you know it when you see it, it's just weird and someone did something that they probably shouldn't have. So since we have been spending a good deal of time on the show discussing Spider-Man, I thought it would be interesting to start with the web head himself.
00:17:18
Speaker
So everybody knows Spider-Man is Peter Parker or Ben Riley or Miles Morales. But most people, when they think of Spider-Man, at least the original Spider-Man, they think of Peter Parker. And part of the reason for this is Stanley's use of alliterative naming techniques. There's Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Scott Summers, Warren Worthington, Pepper Potts, Matt Murdock, Jay Jonah Jameson.
00:17:43
Speaker
All of those are just like a handful of the ones that he's created where it's like, okay, you clearly like alliterative names. Stan explained in an interview back in 2006 that this was strategic because he says, I have the worst memory in the world. So I finally figured out if I could give somebody a name or the last name and the first begin with the same letter, I could at least remember one name. And it could give me a clue as to what the other name was.
00:18:12
Speaker
And this little trick seems to have helped him throughout his career, but that doesn't mean that it's without hiccups. And one major one happened incredibly early on in Spider-Man's career as a costumed crime fighter. I'm gonna ask you to guess a couple of things for me, and I want you to really guess. There are no wrong answers. Your role in this is to be the person who doesn't have much encyclopedic knowledge of comic books, so there's no shame in knowing the answer. Oh, perfect. I have no encyclopedic knowledge of, especially Marvel.
00:18:38
Speaker
So my first question for you is what year did Spider-Man debut? What year? My guess is probably somewhere in the sixties. Maybe like, because like I remember seeing like photos of just like, you know, old comic strips that are, they, they look very vintage. So I'm going to say maybe like 66, 1906 is my guess.
00:19:09
Speaker
My next question is, what is the name of the comic book that he debuted in? Oh, I don't know. When it comes to like a debut, is this like they made a cameo of the character and then he got his own comic book?
00:19:32
Speaker
I wouldn't necessarily call it a cameo, but it's like his origin story was in a comic book that was not called Spider-Man. Okay. Were there any other superheroes involved of this comic with his origin? Or is it just a comic book that's got Peter Parker getting bitten by a spider?
00:19:55
Speaker
No, it is a, so the series was like an anthology. No, it's okay. The series was an anthology where like pretty much every issue there would be like a different story that would be like, we're going to focus on this crazy thing. Okay. So the comic that he is introduced in
00:20:15
Speaker
If it's a, okay, I got two guesses. I feel like it's something like Caped Crusaders or something like that. That seems very like of the time. Because I'm also thinking of alliteration. So that's my first guess is like, you know, something Caped Crusaders. And then my other one is like a spectacular Spider-Man or something like that. Those are my two guesses.
00:20:35
Speaker
You're actually very close with the second one. So Spider-Man debuted in Amazing Fantasy number 15. So, I mean, you didn't really get the spectacular part, you know, whatever. You're close. You simply had an adjective and a noun.
00:20:53
Speaker
Well, but Spectacular Spider-Man is like an adjective that is given to him and it is- Yeah, no, I know that Spectacular Spider-Man is actually like a run at some point, isn't it? Like, cause there's like amazing Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, there's like ultimate, unlimited. Well, I have more encyclopedia that I thought that truly, I blacked out for a minute.
00:21:17
Speaker
So Amazing Fantasy number 15 debuted in, or I'm sorry, was published in 1962. The comic was such a massive success that it was followed in March of 1963 with an ongoing title named The Amazing Spider-Man.
00:21:33
Speaker
So Peter Parker is firmly established in Amazing Fantasy, and then the very next issue that he appears in is of his own series. In Amazing Fantasy 15, Spider-Man is frequently spelled without the hyphen. It's just Spider-Man, no hyphen between Spider and Man. This could be a simple mistake that's quickly looked over, but when we get to Amazing Spider-Man number one, which was just, again, like a year later, as Stan's most famous character referred to as Peter Palmer.
00:22:02
Speaker
Subsequent appearances would have Peter referred to as Parker and the entire comic book industry largely just forgets that this thing has ever happened. But that's part of the fun of these types of episodes. We want to look into the weirdness that we can find that has largely just been forgotten. At least I would say that this type of thing was forgotten. But then we flash forward to 2023 and find out it's become something entirely different.
00:22:28
Speaker
For those that want a little bit of behind the scenes information about this show, I originally wrote this episode well over a year ago in preparation to do some silly things that we could easily put out. So why is that relevant? Because the next line I had written states, I personally think it would be interesting to have this be followed up on currently with there being a Spider-Man from another universe named Palmer or something like that.
00:22:52
Speaker
There was also an actor around the time of Amazing Fantasy's publishing that was named Peter Palmer, so it could have just been Stan not thinking too hard and just getting the name of this relatively new character wrong, but Spider-Man did start out by doing tricks on TV so it could be a fun way to playing up that alternative take on the character for a silly gag.
00:23:11
Speaker
Just a few months after I wrote that, Spider-Man volume four, number four, debuted and introduced Spider-Man, a hyphenless take on the character named Peter Palmer.
00:23:24
Speaker
I didn't read the whole series because, as I've mentioned before, I don't find many of the newer Spider-Man books that interesting and I particularly don't care for the Spider-Verse stories. But from what I could gather, there are multiple heroes from across the multiverse banding together to fight some bad guy with, uh, with Madam Web.
00:23:42
Speaker
When he's brought in, he's drawn to look exactly like how the character looked in Amazing Fantasy, including having the blue spider symbol on the back of the costume, and even comments that he's a big TV star in his home dimension. They took a mistake.
00:23:58
Speaker
And then decades later said, wouldn't it be funny if there's an alternate universe that has all of these mistakes that were made in the original couple of issues? Yeah. And I think the oddity in and of itself could, to me, is also just the fact of whether Spider-Man is hyphenated or not. Because I never know. I never do. In my mind, it's almost like a Mandela effect of, you know,
00:24:26
Speaker
Is it hyphenated or not? I never thought it was until I had to start finding Spider-Man comics for me. And I would be searching and searching, but I would never find what I was looking for because I had to add a stupid hyphen. Well, so the hyphen, according to Stan, and I mean, he's an unreliable source when it comes to why he does whatever he does because he's really quick to
00:24:53
Speaker
kind of pump himself up. According to him, the reason the hyphen exists is because he didn't want there to be any sort of confusion with Superman. He wanted it to be very clearly like, Spider-Man is spider hyphen man. When you go to read a Superman book, it's Superman. I don't know. That's weird.
00:25:17
Speaker
I mean, not to kick the dyslexic people out of the chat, but those are very clearly two different words, spider and super.
00:25:25
Speaker
I mean, I've mixed them up in talking in the past. I go to say Spider-Man, I'll say Superman. I meant Spider-Man. I think it lives in the certain part of your brain, I think, where it's just like they're close enough, at least for me. I guess I'm just thinking of like, I get there's like an S and a P, but I don't know. I guess because in my mind, they do such different things.
00:25:53
Speaker
like one of them specifically like sticks to walls and like has webs like that I find but look I could be wrong I'm just one weirdo like I'm not the expert here so I could be wrong I guess it kind of makes sense but like
00:26:13
Speaker
Also a hyphen is this very tiny line. And if you're making comic book art, you're using more whimsical letters. You're not just like typing it out. Like, you know, you've got like block lettering and stuff. So like, it, like, it's still gonna, to me, like, look like one word. I don't know. I just don't like Stanley's answer. I think this is what we're coming to. Well, to, uh,
00:26:38
Speaker
to speak to what your point was a little bit ago in Amazing Fantasy 15 when it was produced, pretty much only on the cover and in the title page is Spider-Man hyphenated. The rest of the book, it's not. So like it gets confusing if you're like trying to figure it's not until like he's more established that the hyphen becomes a more important part of like how it's written. And Peter in the comics even has like
00:27:05
Speaker
made a big deal about like, no, no, no, it is spider hyphen man. That's another thing that I find funny that I was like thinking, like, do you think that like superheroes like care grammatically about their name or are they like too busy fighting crime? I guess my answer is they're not too busy fighting crime and they would like the reporters to know.
00:27:25
Speaker
Well, I mean, for Spider-Man, he got his start doing TV stunts. So I'm sure there's some sort of a copyright on the way that his name is to be presented. I mean, even in the ultimate universe, or the old ultimate universe, Peter, at one point, he doesn't own the rights to Spider-Man, because he started as a wrestler there. Oh, yeah, he was.
00:27:55
Speaker
The Kingpin buys the rights to the name and likeness of Spider-Man. So there is some sort of legality around how the name is produced. It's kind of interesting. I would like more of an explanation or an exploration of that. Well, and that's really funky too, because it's almost like it feels very much like the writers and the publishers are inserting themselves into the story, like fighting over how to
00:28:24
Speaker
like write out this name when it's like, that's pretty wild. I frequently would get that confused. I guess it's official. It is hyphenated and I'm going to just have to deal with that. While most of the sillier aspects of comic books have been made in the early days of Marvel's history, we're actually going to skip ahead to decades after Spidey became a hit.
Controversial Comics & Editorial Censorship
00:28:48
Speaker
The comic we are now going to discuss was produced, but after some pushback, it was re-released with a big change. We are going to start by talking about Spider-Man Reign, which was first starting to be sold in December of 2006. The series featured a much older Peter Parker who had retired from crime fighting only to have to be pulled back in. In this regard, and partially due to the tone of the series, it was widely recognized as the Dark Knight Returns, but for Spider-Man.
00:29:19
Speaker
It also happened to have multiple controversies. Perhaps the part of the story that caught the most side eye was the revelation that Mary Jane's untimely death was due to Peter's radioactive sperm from every time that they had sex without protection. For anyone that's listening to this show, Corinne just straight up put her head in her hands.
00:29:43
Speaker
I had to face Palm a little bit, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's just weird. People were like, no, no, no, scientifically, these little swimmers here, they're killers. I mean, back when the series was released, Wired criticized Mary Jane's odd death, accusing Marvel Comics of having finally gone porno.
00:30:12
Speaker
I've read Spider-Man Reign and I'm not a fan. Mary Jane's death is weird, but I don't think it's the weirdest thing in the book. It kind of fits the tone, but there's just some weird stuff that happens throughout that book.
00:30:33
Speaker
Yeah, that just seems like an oddball run. Like, I'm not like, I think it's funny. So like, I can't, I don't hate it. I just like, it's funky though. We're actually not going to talk much about that because I want to look at a piece of art from the very first issue of Spider-Man Reign. That's what got the book recalled. Okay. As the elderly Peter Parker sits on the edge of his bed, hands on his face,
00:31:02
Speaker
His genitals were exposed for the first time in the character's history. Spidey's little web shooter appears for exactly one panel, but that one panel was enough to cause a problem for Marvel, even though this book had been passed along many hands before it ever made it to a printer. This issue was soon recalled and the image was altered for the second run of Spider-Man Reign number one for fear of corrupting minors.
00:31:27
Speaker
There is an image out there and it's not like a full on super detailed view of Peter Parker's penis, but you can see some spider dick. That's wild.
00:31:39
Speaker
I don't know if I wanna look for it now. I don't know what kind of person that would make me. Oh, no, no. I'm about to out Austin for something because the next thing we're gonna talk about, Austin 100% Googled because she wanted to see the image. Oh my God. So while we're on the subject of dicks, let's talk about Batman. Batman.
00:32:06
Speaker
This one follows a pretty similar setup to the previous example, including that it was produced before being changed to get rid of the offending material. The first issue of Batman Damned features a scene in which Batman goes to the Batcave and strips off his costume, sparking a ton of controversy in the process because some panels showed Batman's penis for the first time ever.
00:32:26
Speaker
Around 115,000 uncensored copies were published. DC co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DeDeo attributed the lack of censorship to production errors. The colors had to be brightened to make the scene more visible, which in turn caused Batman's penis to become noticeable. Something that, as an artist, I say is bullshit. Because you don't have to draw his dick.
00:32:51
Speaker
Like that's not something, they put highlights on his penis. You could have just blacked out that, in fact, most artists do just black out that part of the anatomy when doing shadows. Yeah, like put out an emotional like fog effect. Yeah, but they apparently were not aware that Batman's dick was going to be seen.
00:33:14
Speaker
in this image, which I call bullshit. Because when you see the image, there is no way, like if I'm reading quickly, I probably wouldn't necessarily, but if you're looking at the art- Well, the point of a comic book is to read and look. Like they're not making 90% of this pictures just so you can like, oh, I only want to read the plot. And I'm like, no, you're looking at the character. That is, yeah, that's bad shit.
00:33:42
Speaker
So DC parent Time Warner had just merged with AT&T and as a result pursued a family friendly and corporate product at the time of Dam's release.
00:33:51
Speaker
I think that has more to do with the recalling of the comic book and the subsequent like, oh, we didn't know, we had no idea. Didios said the controversy really took the attention away from what we thought was quality storytelling. DC decided to remove the nudity from future printings, causing prices of uncensored copies to skyrocket. And shortly after editorial changes were put in place out of fear of repeats.
00:34:18
Speaker
This led to development on other black label titles halting and the cancellation of the religious satire, Second Coming. It's not like a play on the coming part. It's about Jesus coming back. It looks like an interesting book. I'm sure it is, but I haven't read it. DC also made the second issue of Damned Returnable and the controversy led to the series receiving minimal promotion.
00:34:46
Speaker
I actually hadn't read the series before writing this little piece because I only knew about the penis panel and I didn't think anything of the series.
00:34:55
Speaker
But I did go back and I read it for this and it's okay. It's not spectacular. It's a little too over the top edgy kind of for what I'm looking for. It feels very much like a 15 year old wrote it. There's even a scene where Harley Quinn tries to rape Batman and it just kind of rubs me the wrong way. It's a very weird part of the book.
00:35:19
Speaker
DC's rationale that the nudity was unnecessary for the story was met with criticism from journalists who felt it conflicted with the mature nature of the black label comics. I mean, the whole point of doing black label is to do like mature books. Yeah. I think also though, like sometimes just like random nudity almost isn't mature. Like it's,
00:35:58
Speaker
That wasn't there for like artistic purposes. I hate to break it to you. Um, but the movies that I also watched and kind of unfortunately, I don't think it was necessary. I mean, like, even like, if you look at like HBO, like, so, okay, this is, I know this is going to sound so wild on my part, but, um, when I was in like high school, Game of Thrones was huge.
00:36:12
Speaker
It's an adult being kind of childish.
00:36:26
Speaker
I didn't know a ton about it. At the time, my family had HBO. But my mom also wanted to watch the show. We watched the first episode together and it seemed like a really good show.
00:36:44
Speaker
And then, you know, we kind of forgot it was an HBO show. So there's going to be a lot of like crazy shit in it. So I watched Game of Thrones with my mom at most of almost the whole show until I went to college. And then like the last two seasons were finishing up. I watched that whole show with my mom and there were points where there were just random nudity scenes that like and sex scenes that were absolutely unnecessary to the plot to the point that her and I would look at each other and we'd be like,
00:37:14
Speaker
This is so boring when you fast forward through these unnecessary moments. What are you trying to prove? It's like, oh, we're a network that can do that? I think that's part of it. Yeah.
00:37:34
Speaker
But it's annoying. It's annoying to have to fast forward through a relevant shit. Because then you gotta hope that the scene ends to something relevant. Thankfully, me and my mom have a good relationship that we were able to just watch a good show together that had a lot of weird shit in it. But it sucks when you...
00:38:01
Speaker
you know, other scenes, it's like, I get it, it makes sense. This is like a power move or something. But if you're just like, what's the point of just having like random titties and dicks when they're not important? Yeah, there is a weird, because there, I also find it very strange when movies just have like, well, we're at like the 40 minute mark.
00:38:29
Speaker
time to whip out some tits because that's the part of the movie where we gotta wake people up. And it's one thing if it's the context of the genre. If you're reading a romance novel or a something and romance, the romance is clearly a part of the story and of the genre that you're writing in, then sure, that fits. But if you're just watching
00:38:59
Speaker
I don't know, a crime drama or an action or just reading a comic book. Obviously, if there's a reason to have it, I'm so for it.
00:39:17
Speaker
Show me what you gotta show me like for this story because that's why I'm here I'm here for the story like I'm not here to like And maybe that's just the kind of reader that I am now like I don't know like it but also if you're the kind of reader that wants to see Batman's dick then like people should be writing things explicitly for Batman's dick not for like just oh magically pops up because the
00:39:41
Speaker
Someone just wanted to draw it for shits and giggles. If anything, that's taking away from what you're supposed to be paying attention to. Yeah, I think the other thing that I was going to state about that is there are also scenes where it feels like you made a choice to not show nudity and that is weird.
00:40:05
Speaker
Like there are two different ways to approach these things and it very much relies on the context of the genre that you're within, the movie, TV show, book, whatever that you're within and like the intention behind those things. I don't know if I brought it up
00:40:27
Speaker
I think I brought it up on one of the last episodes that we recorded. But I was talking about hack slash. There is an entire section of hack slash comic books that are very about nudity and the sex scenes and stuff like that. But that's part of that genre. And that makes sense. You were supposed to see some booty cheek in that one. And that makes sense.
00:40:53
Speaker
I'm not going to complain about that because I know what I'm getting into when it comes to something like hack slash or again, like, you know, like that 80s horror like movie where it's like or especially the 70s horror movies where it's like, why are there boobs just out? It's like because it was the 70s. Like, so of course, like that that makes sense. I mean, sometimes it really just didn't have anything to do with it.
00:41:26
Speaker
I'm going to try and find out this so my point actually makes sense. When they're making the movies in the 70s, was the nudity required for the story? Absolutely not required for the story.
00:41:40
Speaker
However, what then happened over time is they created a genre for themselves, which was like bloody horror, like just like everyone's boobs are out and everyone's naked and like dying. And like they made that almost sub genre for themselves and it either aged fine or it didn't.
00:41:59
Speaker
whatever. And then if people are going to be writing like, you know, let's say you want to write a comic book that is very like reminiscent of a specific era, then like, yes, that makes sense. But again, that is like writing and drawing for the context of what you're going for. Like, so so I guess like it all goes back to like, what was the point of this Batman? Like, what were they going for? Because it sounds like they don't know what they were going for.
00:42:26
Speaker
I know that I, and I 100% agree with that. I don't think they knew what they were getting into or what they were really wanting to accomplish with, with drawing this. And, you know, there's some criticism back and forth about like, Oh, this is
00:42:46
Speaker
It's bullshit that they censored it, and people have spoken about that. But the thing that I think is kind of bullshit is the artist, Bermejo. He called the whole thing the biggest bullshit non-controversy in comics history. And DC mistreated him and the writer following this, including unusual encounters with other DC employees and
00:43:09
Speaker
having the artist constantly have to redraw artwork because the editors stepped in and they were like, oh, no, no, we got to keep an eye on this guy who drew Batman's dick. And it's like, well, you have editors for a goddamn reason. And that was something that you chose to allow until
00:43:28
Speaker
it became something that you thought might cause a problem for your image or the bottom line. And that's also like a thing that it's like maybe you need to take a look at like your process of making a comic book. Like how much are you defining the boundaries of
00:43:46
Speaker
your artists and your writers appropriately or not. Because if you're just telling them, I just want like, I don't know, make up your own thing. And they make up something that's like, you know, like incredibly edgy or like very like explicit, you know, whatever.
00:44:04
Speaker
And then they give it to you, but then you're upset with them or don't communicate that you're upset with them, that then becomes on you because you as the publisher or the editor or whatever, would you not be responsible for being like, this is what we can and can't do.
00:44:20
Speaker
And then that's up to you guys to communicate that. And then if this guy does draw Batman's dick and he was told not to draw Batman's dick, then that is his problem. And he should be watched for doing that.
00:44:38
Speaker
if you gave them all this incredible amount of freedom, and they thought that this was best, or that it's just like, this is what I wanted to do, and they told me I could do whatever I wanted, and then you're mad about it, then it's on you, because you told them they could do whatever you wanted, and that wasn't true.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah. And it's I didn't, I didn't write this part because I, it just wasn't something that I was going to comment on this episode, but it kind of flows with what we were talking about. Marvel had a series of
00:45:14
Speaker
more mature oriented graphic novels that were being published in the 80s. And one of those featured She-Hulk. And I genuinely don't remember if I've talked about She-Hulk on the show, but I love She-Hulk. I've been a big fan since the 80s. Well, since the 80s books, not since the 80s.
00:45:36
Speaker
And I specifically went out and bought this graphic novel because I was really into the character and I wanted to have a more pristine thing. And also at the time, the anchor on the book was a teacher of mine. So I got the book and I specifically went to him and I was like, can you please sign this for me?
00:46:04
Speaker
I also had the opportunity to ask him, I hope he doesn't get mad about this, I had the opportunity to ask him about a couple of scenes in the book, it's actually in one scene, but it's a couple of panels, where She-Hulk is shot by a bunch of guards on this shield helicopter.
00:46:23
Speaker
And her clothing is ripped and torn, and you can see her nipples in a couple of panels. And this had been a thing that had been put online about how no one would really cop to the nipples being put there, how they got there. Apparently, according to Kim, the inker, John Byrne, who drew it, didn't include the nipples.
00:46:54
Speaker
But Kim, being the anchor on the book, knew that's where your nipples go, like on a person's body. And he knew that this was a more mature book and it was supposed to be like four mature readers. So he just added the nipples in and it got published that way.
00:47:18
Speaker
and then became a problem. So again, it goes into that sort of like, you don't necessarily, like you come up with this is for mature readers, but you don't define that. And you don't let the people working on it know what is and isn't acceptable. According to Kim, he thought that this was something that was going to fly and was acceptable. And it did get published, but apparently Marvel didn't want to back. This is like what we're going to do now. Right.
00:47:47
Speaker
because they didn't create the boundaries and define them.
00:47:53
Speaker
Yeah, they went with, oh, we're just going to do what we normally do and we're going to say this is for like mature audiences. I mean, what's making it mature? Is it the plot line? Is it like the violence or is it the nudity or is it like, what is it? There is nothing in that graphic novel other than the nipples that make any sort of difference to what you could pick up in a regular She-Hulk comic.
Final Thoughts on Comic Oddities
00:48:19
Speaker
Like the violence is not over the top.
00:48:21
Speaker
The storyline is not over the top. None of it matters outside of just those nipples being in it. So it's like, why was this part of the mature line of graphic novels? You just wanted She-Hulk in a book. And I've read some of the other mature graphic novels.
00:48:43
Speaker
Nothing really stands out about them either. It's just, it was just a thing that they were putting out at the time. And I think they wanted to market it a particular way. And yeah, that's all it was marketing. It wasn't anything else. Yeah. That's, that's a pain in the butt. That's all I really have for, uh, for this episode. I wanted to keep it kind of short and sweet. I didn't expect us. I thought we were going to get into a little bit of talk about, uh, uh, the dicks, but I didn't expect it to turn into like a longer,
00:49:13
Speaker
talk about just nudity in general and the way that that intersects with art and business. But I mean, that's part of the fun of doing something like this. It's a little different from what we normally do. Yeah. Here's the thing. We always say it's going to take, oh, it's going to take a quick 30 minutes. And then in my head, I'm like, no, it's going to take an hour.
00:49:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I specifically, I don't know if you ever checked the shared calendar, but we have a shared calendar and I specifically blocked out an hour and a half, even though I thought we'll get through it much faster. Yeah, we know ourselves. We really can't take pedantic out of the title. No, of course not.
00:49:51
Speaker
I think that was kind of fun. How did you enjoy this little forum? No, I thought this was fun. I learned a lot. Hyphens still annoy me because I also, when we were talking about Spider-Man Reign, I Googled Spider-Man because I was like, I'm going to find that. I gave up. I didn't find it. I don't need to find it. It's fine. But when you go on Google,
00:50:18
Speaker
you get either Spider-Man hyphen or just Spider-Man. There's two options and they both show you Spider-Man. Yeah. So the internet doesn't help with this weird one. But no, that was fun. And I think it's a good exercise of getting to talk about different parts of comics and
00:50:42
Speaker
who knows where it'll go and stuff like that. So. Yeah. Part of my thought process in doing something like this is like that particular like set of things that we just discussed, like there's not enough there to fill like a regular episode. We would have very short episodes if we were just to do one of those, but to lump a few of them together, I still think like there is something to learn and to discuss there. I want to know more about like,
00:51:09
Speaker
weird shit that's happened in the industry. And this is a great way of looking at it. Yeah, for sure. No, I would say so. And again, it does get you thinking of other things. I know you thought we would just talk about how crazy it is that superheroes have dicks. But also, again, we're about concepts. The concept of nudity and adult content in comic books. Are people communicating properly to actually have it be effective? It depends on if you got a good team or not, apparently. Yes.
00:51:37
Speaker
And I could talk about that probably a lot more because I know we total it so full circle about how I literally only talk about Sandman and Saga, but to me, Saga's explicit content makes sense for
00:51:54
Speaker
when they're putting it in and like what they're doing with it. And like, it's quite explicit, you know? Oh, and some of it is very funny too. Like it adds something to the book. They use it in a comedic setting for if that's what they're going through and they're, you know, cause that's like about a family and like about a young couple that are like figuring their shit out, like during a crazy time when they're like,
00:52:20
Speaker
by their society standards, not supposed to be in a relationship. So of course, sex is relevant to their story. And that makes sense. And that's cool. And I'm about it. And it's fun. But again, it makes sense.
00:52:38
Speaker
And it's done well, but that's also a really great duo that work together that seem to really have their workflow down. But when you have such a... But that's also... It's published by Image. It's a more independent thing as opposed to... I'm not saying Image isn't big. Image has a ton of stuff that they publish. And at this point, in terms of indie comics, they got a lot going on.
00:53:02
Speaker
But in terms of something like DC, like I imagine, not that I've stepped foot in DC or Marvel, but I imagine it probably being a more bureaucratic, you know, to a higher scale, like what you're saying. So. I've never worked for DC, but I have been to DC's offices. It's very like, like you literally, it's a regular office building. You get let off, like they had like a mad magazine floor and they had like a DC editorial floor. And it's very like,
00:53:32
Speaker
If you read the, oh man, I'm going to forget the name of this. It's like Marvel Comics, the untold story. If you read that book, there is very clearly a line that was developed early in Marvel's career where Marvel was way more of the guys just show up probably high
00:53:52
Speaker
they do their art, they write, and that gets published. It's a very free flowing kind of a thing. And DC was always like, people showed up in suits and they made business decisions. And I think that they've grown to be a little bit closer together than either would have thought back in the day. Well, especially now that Marvel is owned by Disney.
00:54:17
Speaker
But you do get a little bit of that. In these big publishers in the industry, a lot more control is being had and there's a certain public image that they want to maintain.
00:54:33
Speaker
Yeah. That's definitely one thing we should talk about is like, you know, larger companies versus like smaller one day. I think that would be like interesting to like get into. Um, I don't know how yet not to like brainstorm while we're recording, but like maybe we'll talk about that more one day. Yeah. I mean, the ones that I like, there are some that are like mid-size, like just under Marvel and DC that I read a lot of, but there's also,
00:55:01
Speaker
Some, like the ones that I got into when I was younger, it's sort of like the underground comics scene. A lot of that is like more for like alternative lifestyles, I suppose, or what you would consider. They were like abortion comics, gay comics, things like that. When it wasn't necessarily something that was so mainstream. Like I have, I literally have a copy of a book called Gay Comics.
00:55:28
Speaker
So those are like smaller and you have to go to a place to, I mean, you can probably find them at a regular comic book store now, but you would have to go somewhere like a hole in the wall to find these kind of comics. And that I would consider way more independent. And then you would get a step up being like something like boom, and then Dark Horse and then Image and then Marvel and DC. It's a really interesting, the way that those books are published across these different
00:55:58
Speaker
publishers is, I think, really interesting. Yeah, we'll have to talk about it one day. This was fun talking about weird shit. You can find more information at comicallypedantic.com. You can also follow us on Instagram by searching at pedanticast. New episodes come out most Sundays on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and at comicallypedantic.com. If you have any comments or questions, you can send them in text or audio recording to comicallypedanticatgmail.com. Please indicate if you'd like your name or question read on the air.
00:56:28
Speaker
Also don't forget we still own fuckcomicsgate.com if you'd like to send a donation to the games and online harassment hotline. We will be back soon with another deep dive into the world of comics, but until then you can find more exciting adventures at your local comic shop.
00:56:57
Speaker
So while we're on the subject of dicks, let's talk about Batman.