Since I've already made such a big deal about how "Spider-Man" is one word...

Spiderman

You might notice there's no hyphen in that title. That's how they spelled it when the song was included in the 2005 box set Weird Tales of the Ramones, which for all I know is how it was spelled in 1995 when it was released as an unlisted bonus track on the Ramones final studio album, ¡Adios Amigos! CD, which I bought just for that secret track. A slightly different version of the song, also by the Ramones but spelled with the Marvel Comics approved hyphen, is on Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits, also from 1995, which I have never owned because most of its covers of classic cartoon themes are not improvements over the originals. Not every band can be the Ramones.

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Mister Trouble never hangs around when he hears this Mighty sound: "Here I come to save the day." That means that Mighty Mouse is on the way!

He gets the situation well in hand!

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As I usually find when I already have an inkling of the correct answer, Google's AI response is wrong. (Is it ever right? What's the point of having access to the accrued knowledge of the human race if you never actually read it?)

I've read a lot of Superman comics, and I know that Superman has a yellow S-shield on a cape. However, I'll grant that not a lot of people actually read comic books anymore, Google apparently included. I'll also grant that Superman's cape in the influential 1940s animated Fleisher Studio cartoons was solid red (to make the animation easier and less costly), a trend that has been followed often in animated adaptations for similar reasons. But every live-action adaptation since Kirk Alyn's 15-part 1948 Superman serial has an S-shield on his cape. Maybe Google needs to watch more television.

Google's obviously wrong answer sent me looking through old comics for the real answer to my question of its first appearance, and the earliest I could find the cape shield in my copies of The Superman Chronicles reprints was in the historically significant¹ untitled Superman story² in Action Comics #13, cover dated June 1939, published on April 14, 1939.

Here's a sample panel, easily found in a Google Search™ (once I knew what I was looking for):

And, as if I needed any further confirmation, here are the issue's indexer notes from the fantastic (and Google-able) Grand Comics Database (GCD), online at comics.org since 1994:

The "S" symbol first appears on Superman's cape. ... Paul Cassidy is credited with adding the "S" symbol to the cape (but it only appears in some panels and not others), and the pencils and inks here look like his work. Note in particular the odd flying poses of Superman in panels one and five of the final page, which are characteristic of Cassidy. He claimed that [Superman creators Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster gave both he and Wayne Boring free reign to interpret the scripts as they liked.

Old school library for the win. Why did you make that so hard, Google?

¹ Action Comics #13 is most famous for being the first appearance of Superman's first recurring super villain: a bald criminal mastermind who vowed to "use this great intellect for crime" who called himself The Ultra-Humanite. (What, did you think it was Lex Luthor? That second-rate knock-off wouldn't show up for another 12 months.)

² The original publication has no printed title, which is not uncommon at the time. Modern reprints often refer this story as "Superman vs. the Cab Protective League," named for a protection racket organized by, you guessed it, the Ultra-Humanite. His criminal genius obviously didn't extend to naming things.

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About a week ago, I took the boys for our usual walkies. It was unusually blustery, and I stopped to check the weather radar on my phone. At exactly that moment, a golf carts drove by.

Despite the fact that we live just across the highway from our local country club, golf carts used to be rare in my neighborhood. Back when I started walking the girls, there were only two carts on my street. The gas-powered one belonged to the people who teach horseback riding and use the cart to ride along the street and collect the horse droppings, like a motorized version of the street sweeper at the end of Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. I only saw the batter-powered one occasionally when the kids got bored and took it for joyrides, doing donuts in their yard.

(Side note: I personally don't think golf carts are more fun than watching Rocky and Bullwinkle, but I doubt those kids have ever seen it. Back in the day, there really wasn't that much to watch or that many channels to watch them on, so everyone knew everything on television, making pop culture references the coin of the realm. You made friends in school by quoting reruns of shows that had been first runs for our parents' generation: Leave it to Beaver or Gilligan's Island or Monty Python's Flying Circus. I have no idea what tweens watch these days after school, but if I threatened a kid today with a loaded banana, they'd think I was brain damaged.)

There are lots of golf carts in the 'hood now. The boys love 'em. They go crazy when they see one. I don't know why. So long as I've had the boys, they've never been within five feet of a golf cart. A golf cart has never brought them a treat. But I guess they do drive by slower than cars, making them easier to chase, and the ones in my neighborhood often have other dogs on board, making the chase worthwhile.

Anyway, as I was saying, the golf cart drove by while I was half paying attention, and Henry and Louis went berserk, and their leashes damn near pulled off the fingernail on my left index finger. Not totally. It just bent it back halfway. It hurt a lot the first few days, but it's gotten better. Or at least I thought it was getting better. I showed it to Mom earlier today, and she nearly swooned. So maybe not all better. I'm just taking it one day at a time. (Boy, that Schneider was a card.)

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I've been going through an ELO phase lately, collecting all of their studio albums. (Judge me if you want to, but you can do a lot worse than ELO.) And that led me to this animation that used tracks from ELO's 1981 album Time (specifically "Prologue" and "Twilight") as an unauthorized soundtrack.

Don't blink, or you might miss Batman and Robin!

https://youtu.be/-840keiiFDE

Believe it or not, that animation was originally created 40 years ago by university students for a 1983 Japanese science fiction convention DAICON IV. I'd say it stands up about as well as ELO's music does, which is to say, "Very Well."

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I'm not sure I would call myself a connoisseur of kids cartoons, but I sure liked 'em a lot when I was a kid. And a teenager. And an adult. And now as old man. The good ones remind you what's great about being a kid. The best of them remind you what's great about being human.

If you have little kids right now, you can already guess that I'm talking about Bluey.

Bluey is an Australian Broadcast Company/BBC show about talking dogs. More accurately, it's about raising children by allowing children to be children, but it takes place in a world of talking dogs. I'm not so nuts about children, but I love talking dogs. Especially this one.

click image to toggle 3D on/off

That's Bingo, Bluey's little sister. Mom's beau asked why I would paint Bingo instead of Bluey. The answer is pretty simple: I like Bingo better.

She's my kind of talking dog.

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When I was in elementary school, my favorite book was Bunnicula. (Actually, if memory serves, my favorite was the third book in the "Bunnicula" series, The Celery Stalks at Midnight. You gotta love that title!)

In a fit of nostalgia, I searched to see if that book was still in publication. Turns out it is. A 40th Anniversary Edition was released in 2019. And surprise, surprise, in 2016 it was turned into a series of 104 cartoons for Cartoon Network. (Where was I while that was happening?)

Now, I happen to know that the 2016 cartoon is not the first animated adaptation. Bunnicula, the Vampire Rabbit was produced in 1982 by Ruby-Spears (the same company that brought the world Police Academy: The Animated Series). I had only the vaguest recollection that this existed, and if you don't remember seeing it, that's because it is objectively awful.

Teach the kids early: the book is always better than the movie.

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From the article "U.S. Health Service Issues Warning," The Newnan Herald Vol. 54 No. 11, December 13, 1918, page 5:

The Bureau of Public Health, Treasury Department, has just issued a striking poster drawn by Berryman, the well-known Washington cartoonist. The poster exemplifies the modern method of health education. A few years ago, under similar circumstances, the health authorities would have issued an official dry but scientifically accurate bulletin teaching the role of droplet infection In the spread of respiratory diseases. The only ones who would have understood the bulletin would have been those who already knew all about the subject The man In the street, the plain citizen and the many millions who toll for their living would have had no time and no desire to wade through the technical phraseology.

Speaking as someone living one hundred years in the future, I don't think it's the "technical phraseology" that people object to.

"Covid Patrick Henry" published July 22, 2020 by Rick McKee politicalcartoons.com

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Movies watched in July, part one:

119. (1348.) The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
Historic romantic fiction isn't my thing, but I was captivated by Bette Davis' commitment to playing Queen Elizabeth I, including a pretty severe haircut. Not bad. Not bad at all.

120. (1349.) The Petrified Forest (1936)
Having just watched Bette Davis command the screen playing a queen, it's shocking to see her as a mousy waitress in this crime drama made just three years earlier. Wow.

121. (1350.) Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016)
This animated film, while still taking full advantage of its medium, couldn't have been any more loyal to its source material if they had made it in 1966. Loved it.

122. (1351.) Batman vs. Two-Face (2017)
The sequel to Return of the Caped Crusader, this one pits Adam West against William Shatner. Yes, please. What a shame there won't be any more. (Rest in peace, Adam West!)

123. (1352.) High Society (1956)
The musical remake of The Philadelphia Story is not an improvement unless you enjoy watching Grace Kelly perform her comedic impression of Katherine Hepburn. The only way this is better than the original is when comparing songs, though only because the original had none.

124. (1353.) Batman and Harley Quinn (2017)
I hoped to extend the joy I experienced watching those other Batman, but no. Is this what Batman: the Animated Series would have been if it hadn't needed to be kid friendly? Thank you, network censors? By all means, go watch the original cartoons instead.

More to come.

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DC Comics has declared tomorrow, September 23, 2017, to be Batman Day 2017. (In 2016, Batman Day was September 17. In 2015, it was September 26. Seriously, DC, can we settle on one date already?)

This year, DC is cross promoting the event with Harley Quinn, a character celebrating her 25th anniversary. Harley was introduced in Batman: The Animated Series in 1992 as a comedic Joker henchwoman with romantic delusions. These days, she appears in comics and movies (but not television) as a psychopathic mass murderer who dresses like a stripper. Hooray for progress? (Thanks, feminism!)

It's probably not a coincidence that DC is combining the celebration of these two characters now considering that the company released a direct-to-video movie titled Batman & Harley Quinn late last month. Despite being made by the same people responsible for the all-ages Batman: The Animated Series, B&HQ is adults-only material. At one point, after mistaking him for a homosexual, Harley seduces Batman's adopted sidekick, Robin Nightwing. Personally, I don't need that much sex in my cartoons. That's why I have the Internet.

Anyway, if you go to your Local Comic Shop tomorrow, you can get your own free copy of Batman Day 2017 Special Edition #1. It's mostly reprints, but a free comic is a free comic.

And if that's not enough Bat-fun for you, you can download the official Batman Day Kit (including mazes, games, and sweet, sweet Terry Dodson and Jose Garcia-Lopez coloring pages) from dccomics.com. At least there's no creepy hero-on-villain sex in there. I promise.

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