Strange Tales

And the hits just keep on coming.

I swear to God, Commissioner Gordon saying "I'm worried about the boner he's readying for YOU!" is probably the funniest thing ever printed.

Between that and my recent Punisher rennaissance, I've been reading a lot of weird comics lately. For instance, I read one Mike Baron/Whilce Portacio issue where the Punisher fights "Charlie Samson," a Charles Manson analog who even has a swastika carved into his forehead and who forces his helicoptor pilot to "Say you love Satan!" (Interestingly enough, the very words J.J. Thunder uses to accidentally summon the Thunderbolt for the first time in Grant Morrison's Crisis Times Five). Unfortunately, Frank doesn't sport that awesome headband with his logo on it in that story.

War Journal #50, however... Well, that's a story for another time.

Regardless, comics are weird. One of the major benefits of working in a store with half a million frigg'n back issues is that you get to see tons of crazy-ass comics. I'm talking about stuff like "The Adventures of the Karate Pig, Ninja Flounder, and the 4-D Monkey." So it's sort of a game that whenever we find a crazy issue, we pass it around for everyone to check out. It's one of our patented time killers. And brother, does it kill time. Scott and I once spent an hour talking about this:





Now look, we all know that Silver Age Superman wasn't the nicest guy, but really, that's just cruel. I mean, if my best pal dragged me out to the desert and made me crawl through it with Aquaman (who, let's admit, is probably worse off than Jimmy there) while taunting me as I inched towards the bleached bones of his previous best friends, I'd probably order a motorcycle gang to run him over too.

Silver Age Jimmy had a hard life, man. He couldn't go a month without being locked in prison for a year, having Superman burn his gifts with heat vision, being prevented from reconciling with his long-lost father, or even running into Don Rickles. Also, there was a lot of cross-dressing. No wonder they called him "Mr. Action."

Anyway, I guess comics are just weird by nature. It's part of the fun. But really... is there any excuse for this?