World's Funnest: The Big Reason Why (An Introduction To The Golden Age Segment)

This is a nostalgia-laden sequence which, for several reasons, has become a nostalgia-laden entry. So, despite the Golden Age segment only lasting two pages in the finished comic, the post I planned about it will be broken down into two parts. Basically, the introduction to the GA post went so long that I decided to make it a separate post. Once it became it's own entry, it went into some new directions I hadn't planned on, and ballooned up and got out of hand all over again. I'm a shitty editor, in case no one's figured that out. Ritalin or no Ritalin, I spew words and type faster than I can think, and making matters worse, I try to clean up the mess while still throwing up all over the place. Ray Bradbury said you're supposed to clean up the next day, but I'm not Ray Bradbury. In case no one's figured that out.

I planned to write mainly about my childhood comic-reading habits, my intense dislike of all things DC Comics, and how weird it was that I ended up writing World's Funnest, which was essentially a love letter and a pipe bomb to the publisher, it's history and its characters. Along the way, the usual tangents, diversions and ramblings took me in too many other directions (the industry's embarrassment over being seen as kiddie stuff, the so-called relevant comics of the 60's/70, Marvel's influence on a  changing DC in the 70's/80s and DC losing its smile (unless it was one dripping with blood) in the 80s/90s. These things are actually relevant to World's Funnest, which, besides being a goof, was also intended as a polemic about DC – and mainstream superheroes in general – overcompensating in its attempt to be serious and be taken seriously. But all that blew up an already wordy post, so, if you want me to pull that stuff out of the garbage bin and polish it a bit, let me know. But two introductions to a two-page script is pushing things even for me.

Oh – I also wrote about my dropping out of comics as a teenager, my getting back into comics in High School, George Perez, The New teen Titans and I don't even remember what else at this point. My hand hurts like hell, I have to wrap this up soon or it will detach and crawl off, Orlac-style).

Anyway, here's part one. Part two will be posted sometime within the next few days.

The Golden Age of DC Comics is not something that I have inordinately fond memories of, to be honest. I came to it late, even in my own fanboy timeframe. I was not a DC reader as a kid, I was a Marvel Zombie before the term was invented (and exploited to sell Marvel Zombies comics to Marvel Zombies fans) and I just could not get the appeal of the “Distinguished Competition”.

Some of my comic book-reading friends were DC fans, Michael Kemper, who several blocks away from me and Clifford Black, who lived in my apartment building. They followed both DC and Marvel, which seemed to me like being a fan of eating ice cream and dirt. Clifford also managed to find a place that sold Atlas Comics when that four-color Hindenburg took off on it's short, doomed flight (those ersatz Marvel Comics fascinated me, but that's not a tangent I want to go off on today. Apologies to all you Planet of the Vampires, Cougar, The Destructor and Lomax, NYPD fans out there!)

As far as I can remember, the extent of my interest in DC was half-caring about The Flash (I always liked the costume) and a few oddball characters that caught my eye here and there (like Simon and Kirby's oddball Sandman revival, I must have seen an issue somewhere because I liked his sidekicks, Brute and Glob (!?!)). I was semi-aware of the characters and comics from the cartoons, and more formally from articles in fanzines and price guides and my friends trying to persuade me to check out the books. But DC in the 70's never interested me. I didn't follow their line, or their creators, or ask to borrow or read any DC Comics from anyone. I had no idea of the existence of things I'd later come to love, like Kirby's Fourth World saga. How did that all just pass me by, I still don't know. But I was aware of Prez, Ragman and The Dingbats of Danger Street. Oy. When it came to weird I preferred Steve Gerber's Defenders and Howard the Duck.

I was so anti-DC that I wouldn't even pick them up for free when I had the chance. Every Sunday night during our (boring, dreadful, awful) visit with my father, he would drive my sister Randi and I over to the Te-Amo newsstand on King's Highway in Brooklyn to buy all the new comics we wanted. My sister would get just about every Archie and Harvey comic they had. I would get just about every new Marvel comic (I never liked Conan, wasn't into any war or western reprints, I didn't buy movie adaptations until Star Wars came out, I was iffy on Dr. Strange outside of The Defenders and only picked up things like Dracula, Ka-Zar or Son of Satan if there was a superhero crossover). I would also get the Star Trek poster magazine or Starlog and anything along those lines (my father had previously bought me subscriptions to The Monster Times, Funnyworld and FOOM. He bought us stuff  as a substitute for interacting with us, great for the nerd collection, not so great for a happy childhood). But I  never grabbed a single DC comic, not even with my father paying for the stack every week no matter how high it got. I never even once considered throwing a copy of The Flash or Batman or JLA in with the Sunday haul just for the hell of it, either to check it out and toss it or give away to a friend. They were invisible to me.

(Ha ha, get it? He's a DC character and he's...ah, forget it)

If I got sick and my mother or grandfather bought me a DC Comic I would see red, especially that time I got a Shazam issue (which I kind of liked, but it had a talking tiger and characters said “holy moley” so ultimately I rejected it as “too silly” for a superhero comic. Which, y'know, it kind of was, those 70's Shazam books were pretty weak sauce, even as whimsy. Years afterward I would come to love the Marvel Family stuff, Talky Tawny and Mr. Mind – greatest villain in comics ever – all that silly stuff, as you can tell from the Earth S segment of World's Funnest). It never occurred to me that while I was making fun of silly comics I was also reading and enjoying all of my sister's Harvey and Archie comics, MAD, Peanuts, and many outright terrible newspaper strips. But those weren't superheroes, I heard no one say in the back row, there. Other than Don martin's Captain Klutz, that is true. But – but – Spidey Super-Stories! I read Spidey Super-Stories! SPIDEY SUPER-STORIES! Made for kids learning to read, with Electric Company villains and...oh, forget it.

Silliness abounded in the comics I read, even the “serious” Marvel superhero books I was obsessed with were full of beans. What can I say? Eltingville Club symptoms begin when the individual is young, and usually develops on it's own without any outside agency. I loved the 90's Batman TV show, I watched Batman and Robin team up with the (super-silly, super-stupid and completely insipid) Scooby-Doo gang I loved, but despite that, I just couldn't stand DC comics, to the point where there was this one time where...well, that's an embarrassing teenage comic convention story for another time.

So, yeah. I was a nerd. There was no logic involved. I liked what I liked for personal, immediate and immature reasons, but they seemed like perfectly valid, perfectly reasonable reasons at the time. I know, because I thought about it. And I was right. DC Comics was stinky.

So, yeah, the DC Golden Age meant nothing to me, despite the fulsome fawning of Roy Thomas and Don Thompson and whoever the hell else trying to convince people that All-Star Comics and the JSA were frickin' brillaint or whatever (holy shit, have you seen those? Have you tried to read those?). The ye olden golden days of comics was old, dim, dusty, distant, dumb nostalgia. My grandfather had nothing good to say about them (he used to always call comics, “jokebooks”, no matter what kind of comic he was looking at, Little Lotta, Ghost Rider or The Fantastic Four, which always cracked me up). They were ancient history, dumb old comics that had dumb old characters and old ugly art and old stupid writing. And I didn't like the Silver Age/modern versions of those goofs – the guy who fell down if you hit him with a wooden stick, or the guy who fell down if you hit him with a yellow wooden stick, etc. So you could keep the Golden Age of DC Comics and DC Comics entirely (weirdly, I considered the Golden Age to basically be synonymous with DC, despite reading about Timely, Fox, Fawcett, etc, in the Overstreet Price Guide). No thank you. I was a serious comic reader. I read The Champions. I read Nova. I read The Human Fly. I read...Spidey Super-Stories (One day I'll tell you a story about Spidey Super-Stories. Maybe. It's depressing).

Not that I thought this at the time, but 1970's DC Comics were largely made by jaded older adults flailing around in an attempt to get hip with the kids (and failing spectacularly), hapless golden age fanboys like E. Nelson Bridwell trying to carry on the dying spirit of the good old days (and failing unspectacularly, if that makes sense), and young turks trying “crazy” stuff that didn't look like comics enough to interest little, myopic Evan (and the other uptight Evans out there who were willing to go as “crazy” as Howard The Duck or the adventures of J. Jonah Jameson's son, Johnny Boy, the Man Wolf -- IN SPACE!!!).

All this nonsense being said, the funny thing is that I did read one DC comic story that I liked when  I was a kid in Brooklyn. Juts the one. But when I say I liked it, I mean, I really, really liked it. Like, a lot. A lot a lot. I mean, I kind of loved it.

How did an icky DC comic find it's way into my nerdy mitts? Well, I'll tell you. When I was ten, or nine, or whatever the hell, I got sick. Nothing interesting or dramatic or scary, but I ended up stuck in bed for a while. I had read my own comics a bazillion-krillion times, so my friend Mike Kemper was nice enough to lend me two books. Not two comics – two books two whole bog thick hardcover books, both filled with comics. Holy crap! I didn't even know such things existed.

The first book was this (and we can talk more about this book some other time, because this was a watershed comic book moment for little me):

And the other book was this:

Batman! Fucking Batman! Totally disappointing. Like, what the hell, Mike? Is this some kind of missionary work on your part for DC Comics? Captive audience! Forced indoctrination!

And yet...within this icky, stinky, silly DC Batman book, among all the stories of crime-fighting and derring-do and psychotic villains and smiling chums and nonsense, was one comic that stuck with me after I read it. I re-read it several times. It stayed with me for decades, and has stayed with me to this day.

What was this comic (as if you haven't guessed?). What DC Comic could have stirred my fan loins at a time when DC comics were anathema to me? Swamp Thing? Manhunter? Kamandi? Strangest Sports Stories?

It was a story reprinted from World's Finest #113, first published in 1960, five years before I popped out of another dimension and made my first appearance. It was called “Bat-Mite Meets Mr. Mxyzptlk”.

And it finally made me a huge fan of a dummy in a stupid bat-suit! Down below, see? The one on the right!

(This panel is from Bat-Mite's first appearance, actually, but play along, okay folks? This isn't fucking academia here.) 

I don't know why. I just fell in love with the little elf. Excuse me, imp. 

Interdimensional fanboy. 

Bat-Mite. 

So, yeah, basically, that's where World's Funnest comes from. That comic, that story, that little jerk. 

Little did I – or anybody, really – know that I'd write a big stupid comic book based on this story some twenty-five years or so later. And it would be a stinky, icky DC Comic.

Holy shit, Bat-Mite!