Meanwhile, Back at the Secret Lair of the Confirmed Bachelor...

Thanks so very much to listener Coye who sent me the link to SuperDickery.com, a growing collection of covers and snippets of pages from the golden age of comic books (mostly the 40s, 50s and 60s), that can obviously be looked at very differently today. SuperDickery.com's main gallery page is here (pick your old-fashioned vice), but of interest is the "Seduction of the Innocent" section, which milks that good old reliable in super hero comics: homosexual overtones, for everything it's worth and then some (examples left and right - click to enlarge). Even the most naive and optimistic among us cannot deny that by today's standards these examples are shocking. Intentional or not? Have a look and you'll agree it's hard to tell exactly. Were these earnest attempts at wholesome comic art in their day, seen only now as value-corrupting, amoral sleaze because of our society's increasingly jaded addiction to lurid sensation? Or were these old comics cruel pranks created by sick perverts with malformed brains who secretly knew exactly what they were drawing? Far be it from me to reveal their true identity. I suppose in a day when you couldn't view women's ankles, guys had to get their thrills the old fashioned way: by drawing Robin "unintentionally" giving a bank robber a rim job while tackling him from behind. Kind of makes you wonder how Mike Diana's Boiled Angel will be looked at decades from now.

Comments

[Andrew]

The BATMAN comic books had Bruce Wayne, his "ward" Dick Grayson and Alfred -- in other words, three unmarried, unrelated grown men -- living together at stately Wayne Manor.

Which is why ABC executives demanded that the TV show introduce Aunt Harriet.