Random Happenstance

Geez, there's about a million things that could kill Batman, but you don't hear him whining about it.

Great Rao, Supes seems whiny in that panel. I swear I can hear Cartman's voice there...From World's Finest Comics #270, "A Hole for Killing!" Written by Gerry Conway, art by Rich Buckler and Romeo Tanghal.

World's Finest Comics ran for a long time with Superman-Batman team-ups, which must've been a challenge for the writers, who would have to come up with something for Batman to do. After all, back then, Superman could rotate the whole continent a little to the left if he needed too.

One of the standard plot answers was to have Batman around to protect Superman from kryptonite, or magic. On rarer occasions, there would be a detective-style puzzle that Supes needs Batman's help with, but even the "Origin of the Superman-Batman Team" revolves around Batman protecting Superman from kryptonite.

In this panel, Metallo, "the man with the Kryptonite heart!" had escaped from Superman Island, a flying super-maximum security prison where Supes kept captured super villains. (Although, I think Luthor was usually in the state pen, probably because he had no powers. And so he could escape every twenty minutes.) The prison floats "over an unknowing (and uncaring) southwest," and I'm not sure that's a great idea, since if the Parasite got loose over Arizona, it could be years before anyone in the DCU would notice. And did they have an ACLU in the 70's? That's the sort of thing I should look up, but moving on.

I was kind of surprised to be reminded how much John Byrne changed Metallo in the revamp, since in this issue, he's more of a gang leader, has a green full-head mask, and he and his crew have costumes that look like Kobra Kult Surplus ("Naga sssssayssss, ssssave!"). Orange and green, man. You had to show up pretty early in the DCU to get a good color scheme, apparently. (Actually, it occurs to me Marvel's Hercules' classic costume is orange and green, but he rocks. So there.)

Short post today, since I'm working on something for this dumb site. Word balloons and lettering continue to elude me, and I need a better camera for more tomfoolery. We'll see...