Batman--Master Of Disguise!

Kids, can YOU spot the disguised Batman is this scene?? Look closely!

Need some help?? Let's try again--can you find the cleverly disguised Caped Crusader in this next panel?

Did you get it? Here's the big reveal:


So, Batman didn't even bother taking off his mask--he just put a wig over his cowl (and somehow covered those 1970s Bat-ears!) and held a tray in front of his face!!

Fortunately, criminals are not only a cowardly and superstitious lot, they're a pretty damned unobservant lot.

As for you, Batman, you used to put a lot more effort into these disguises of yours. You're slipping...

From Detective Comics #486 (1979).

Why Batman Needs Alfred To Do His Laundry

Batman goes to question Iggy, laundromat owner and supplier of chemicals to the underworld:







"No, Master Bruce, you never use the permanent press cycle for your grenades!"



"No, Master Bruce, you've clearly put in too much detergent again, you're over-sudsing again! Sigh...just let me do it, sir"

From Detective Comics #486 (1979)

Manic Catch-Up Monday--What I Missed Last Week Part 2!

We had two strong contenders for Comic Book Quote Of The Week last week.

First up, from Fail Itself: The Failless #3:

Hey, don't look at me, Valkyrie--I didn't plot the damned comic book you're in. Take it up with Matt Fraction, Christopher Yost and Cullen Bunn. (Of course, Bunn did the script, so maybe this is his way of critiquing the plot that Fraction handed him. Too bad it's Manic Monday and not Self-Awareness Saturday!)

Next up: Lex Luthor wannabe Simon Tycho in Supergirl #3:

Wow. Not only a brilliant quote in its own right, but how can it help but put you in mind of this (just sing "Brain" whenever he says "Clown"):



So who wins? You decide!! Vote in the comments!! Or not. Whatever.

Manic Catch-Up Monday--What I Missed last Week Part 1!

So, in last week's Avengers Origins: Luke Cage #1, it's revealed that a bank guard was crippled in a heist Luke foolishly got himself involved in right after breaking out of prison.

And it turns out that Luke had been secretly giving most of the proceeds of his Hero For Hire business to the guard. But it was an awful lot of money, so the guy put a pretty good good chunk of it back into the (formerly) decaying neighborhood--with one very unexpected result:

Oh, man is this a can of worms!

First, who's their mascot?!? Are they the Cages? The Iron Fists? (Their defense becomes like unto a thing of iron!) Let's hope it's not the Heroes For Hire Heroes, because that would be lame. What about school colors? Fight song?!? Good gravy, we need to set an entire series at Heroes For Hire High RIGHT NOW!!!

Then again, that name might make them a magnet for super-villain attacks.

And does anybody donating money get a school named for him? If Magneto were looking for good publicity, could he throw a kazillion dollars at a broke school system to get Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants High (a magnet school, naturally)?

Furthermore, are there any other schools named after famous Marvel citizens? Man, there had better be a Benjamin J. Grimm Elementary School or three in New York City (And they had best be called The Things, and have orange as their school color, and have "It's Clobberin' Time" as the chorus of their fight song). And given that he was believed dead for a couple of decades, there have got to be dozens--nay, hundreds--of Captain America High Schools out there, right? (Odds are, there are no Speedball High Schools out there)

Lastly, Heroes For Hire was, essentially, a business--it generated enough money to refurbish neighborhoods and build schools, according to this story. Isn't naming a school after a business a bad precedent? Because while, yeah, good guys and all, what's really the difference between naming it Heroes For Hire High and Goldman Sachs High or Amazon.com High?

Then again, if it brings money into the school systems...Still, I'm just suggesting that they might have been better off naming it Luke Cage High School.

Overdue

Well, phew, that was some trip to 1981. Did I miss anything here in 2011 while I was gone?

Oh, dear, yes:

Look at the "bonus feature" DC gave us to justify charging us one dollar extra for Justice League #3.

All right, so Geoff Johns (who is credited with "writing" the "bonus feature") decided to waste one whole page--20% of the allotted 5 pages--on a particularly poorly designed book cover.

Fine, fine, so I'm whining. Surely it gets better, though, right?

Wow.

Really, that's exactly what we needed, an exciting and stimulating facsimile of a book's library status. That adds so much depth and information to our understanding of the nuDC Justice League.

Seriously, don't you feel like you're reading a 10-page assignment from a student who decided to get cute and put on 3 title pages and used triple-spacing and an extra-large font to fill up the space? Except, of course, we're being charged extra money for this shallow bit of "contractual obligation."

I don't mind if DC wants to charge us extra for this magazine, as long as they give us something extra. But this has the rancid stench of Geoff Johns and "designer" Brian Walters saying, "This will be our highest selling comics, so let's charge them an extra dollar. This whole Flushpoint business was so rushed that we don't have our back-up features ready to go yet, but really, who cares, so we're only going to put 12 seconds into actually giving the reader anything for their money."

It's greedy and contemptible. DC Comics, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Marvel 1981 Week--Iron Man #152!

Let's see... who haven't we checked in on back in 1981?? Oh, I know:

Wait, it's an empty cover! There's no one there!

Oh, how I kid--that's Iron Man in his stealth armor!! But if you have a proper 21st century computer monitor, you can probably see him just fine.

Well, that overwrought cover-blurb ("The Now Ebon-Avenger"--really?) has given us a heads up on the plot, so let's leap right in:

Again, pretty scenery, but no hero?? (Again, I kid...)

And our creators?

One thing about the Michelinie/Layton era, they let the billionaire play with his toys. Tony has space armor, Tony has stealth armor, Tony had snow armor, Tony had deep-sea armor. The cat had almost as many costumes as Silver Age Batman!!

Another thing they loved is have Tony travel around to exotic spots, playing international man of mystery in spy intrigue games (until he screwed up and needed his alter ego to rescue him, of course). Which is why tooling around Berlin is so fitting. Back in the good old Cold War, East Berlin was communist, the West was the Good Guys, spies were thicker than thieves and the Cold War was usually at least lukewarm.

So why is Tony there? Patience. Let's look first an the installation he's trying to penetrate:

Impressive. Practically a Bond villain hide-out. But will stealth armor be enough to get Tony the info he needs? Of course not--a boy has to use more toys!

A sonic screwdriver, you say?


Oh, Tony, you know that whenever you get smug...


All of his special armors had some drawbacks, and this one is no exception:


No problem!

Well, Iron Man the info he needs...but when he tries to leave through the puny East German laser grid:



Tony, lasers have the right to be more powerful, if they want to!.

Tony limps back to an abandoned Stark Enterprises facility in the West side of the country, and we finally get a flashback reminding us why he's there:


Really, Daily Bugle? The entire front page for a spy being caught in East Germany? What, Spider-Man was on vacation?

We also learn one of Tony Stark's methods to influence government workers: BRIBES!!

"Diplomatic assault," my tush!! Hey, Tony, when you try to bribe government officials, you probably shouldn't sign your name.

(For the record, I can't tell you what Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1953 went for in 1981. In 2011, it will run you around $4,300 for a single 750ml bottle, so a case, if you could scrape one together, would be over $50,000. So yes, that would be a bribe, not a "gift.")

Meanwhile, let's check in with Bethany:


What?!? But her husband, the former West German ambassador to the United States, supposedly died in a car accident!!

You really should be asking yourself these questions BEFORE the rescue mission, not during, dear.

Anyway, the KGB got it into their heads that a former ambassador would obviously know the identities of all of NATO's espionage agents in Europe. Which proves the commies were pretty dumb, methinks.

So they tried kidnapped him, faked his death, and tried torturing him with drugs. But as he was a pretty big drug addict himself, well, that just sort of put him into a coma for a few years. So when he woke up...


Well, fortunately, Bethany's ah...ahem...boyfriend ("sorry, Alex, you were dead, bro") has found a way to sneak into the facility:


And being Tony Stark, he's suave enough (and speaks German well enough) to pull off an unlikely impersonation...

...and get access to a very important prisoner:

But surprisingly, she's not happy!


Oops. Fornicated the pet on that one, Tony. And now her plan can't work (it's complicated, don't ask). So the only solution:

Whaaa??


Note to every girlfriend of a superhero who doesn't figure that out: Bethany Cabe suggests that you're stupid.

Next we have a weird little scene that probably plays better in you imagine a smooth-jazz soft-core porn soundtrack playing:

So enough James Bond action!! Time for Iron Man to smash things!! Like this:


And this:


So it's time to leave, and Tony's already making dinner plans...

But remember that "no right to be that powerful" laser system?




Uh oh...

[SPOILER ALERT: Iron Man did NOT die, or fall with burning finality before the unparalleled power of the Living Laser.]

[SECOND SPOILER ALERT: Iron would save Bethany and Alex, but Bethany decided she had to stay with her husband to help him recover. Exit Bethany (for awhile), and Tony cries.]

This was the end of an era. Aside from some cover work, this was Layton's last issue of Iron Man for several years; Michelinie only lasted a few more stories before he, too was gone. They'd both be back, though...

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Speaking of Bond-esque spy adventures in Cold War Europe...

Oh, my. A comic adaptation of one of the most criminally underrated James Bond films, drawn by Howie Chaykin?!? Man, I got to find me this...

And speaking of the concluding chapters of movie adaptations in November 1981 by well-known comics personnel:

Raiders Of The Lost Ark?? Cover by Walt Simonson, script by Simonson, art by John Buscema and Klaus Janson?? Great, more comics I have to hunt down...