When I went in to my Local Comic Shop yesterday to pick up Absolute Power #3 (specifically Cover A by Dan Mora, where Batman does his best impression of Wolverine from the 1988 Todd McFarlane cover of The Incredible Hulk #340), the Guy Behind the Counter asked if I was also going to pick up Batman #152 (specifically Cover F by Nicola Scott recreating the iconic 1986 Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns #1 cover pose with Adam West's Batman from the 1966 television show).

I can hear you already. "Nope. That's too geeky for me. I'm out of here," you say. I totally get where you're coming from. You're not wrong. Godspeed to you, sir or ma'am. In point of fact, this is not the blog post that I sat down to write. Even I find myself gobsmacked by how much detail was necessary in that first paragraph just to get in the door of this particular rabbit hole. Maybe I have been reading comic books too long.

Not so long ago (in astronomical time), People In The Know used to point to high issue numbers as the unclearable hurdle turning away new comic book readers. Now every series starts over with a "Brand New Number One Issue!" every few months. But what does it say about comic book culture that even these new, lower number issues are impenetrably obtuse because of a fire hose of variant covers overtly referencing, literally, sixty years of comic book ephemera? Is there a hobby out there somewhere that doesn't wear its accumulated detritus as a badge of honor? If yes, I may be in the market for another pastime.

Anyway. The point here is that no, I did not buy Batman #152 Cover F. Its cover is printed on card stock, which, while being a sturdier paper than a standard cover (which these days is the same paper as is used for the interior pages), is $1 more expensive than the base cover price ($4.99 for a 22-page story) which is too rich for my blood in no small part because I remember when 48 pages of comics printed on newsprint cost less than a dollar.

Yes, I have definitely been reading comic books too long.

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I didn't want to buy a new phone, but the last one stopped ringing, and I cannot have a phone that doesn't do the one thing a phone is supposed to do. So I bought a new one (though not a Google Pixel: they apparently have a well-documented problem of stopping ringing which the commercials conveniently forget to mention). As always, a new device calls for new backgrounds, and these are what I am using for my locked/unlocked screens respectively:

For the record, the Superfriends on the left are by Alex Toth (with a Superman head by Curt Swan) and the Superfriends on the right are by Jose Luis Garci­a-Lopez. Always gotta have some Jose Luis Garci­a-Lopez.

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Think the Olympics are all about fun and games? Heck, no. They have practical origins.

Police Comics #1, August 1941

You never know when you'll have to harpoon a fleeing pirate!

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Want to know why Louisiana would willingly violate federal law to require the 10 Commandments in all kindergartens? The 1991 Chick tract Sin Busters has the answer:

Declaration of Independence writer and third president Thomas Jefferson may have written that Congress should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," but that's just because he was part of the evil world system!

God bless the real America!

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Action Comics #582, September 1986

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Superman #198, April 1976

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Today's Science Lesson from Batman, the Science Fan:

from "It's A Bird... It's a Plane... It's Supermobile!", Action Comics #481, 1978

If a man dressed like a bat says it, it has to be true.

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Welcome to June, the 18th annual Wriphe.com Superman Month!

I'm typing this without my left index finger, which I cut while washing my car. (I'll never make that mistake again. Stay dirty, car!) My injury made me wonder when was the first time in comics we actually see Superman bleeding. So I went looking.

As you can see in the above panel from his two-page origin story published in Superman #1, Summer 1939, Superman's skin was essentially impenetrable from the get-go, so the opportunities for him to visibly bleed have always been few and far between.

If those aforementioned bursting shells led to any bloodshed, it was always hidden by smoke and debris. When Superman needed to give blood to save Lois Lane's life in 1940's Superman #6, he had to give the doctor a hand. Literally.

But that wasn't technically an injury, so I kept looking for something that could hurt Superman that wasn't Superman.

Magic was an early weakness (bloodlessly stealing Superman's powers multiple times in 1942), but Kryptonite wasn't introduced into the comics until 1949 in Superman #61. (Like many elements of the Superman mythos, Kryptonite first appeared in 1943 on the Adventures of Superman radio show.) It usually just made Superman weak and fall down. He doesn't even scrape his knees.

March 1960's Action Comics #262 would introduce Superman's immediate weakness under a red sun. In that issue Clark Kent gets stung by a bee for the first time. Two years later, a bare-knuckle boxing match against Lex Luthor on the planet Lexor under a red sun would give Superman a face full of bruises, but still no visible blood. This might be because beginning in 1954, the Comics Code Authority strictly forbid showing, among many other things, "All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism." Bloodless injuries were no longer optional.

Action Comics #49, June 1942

The code would relax beginning in 1971, and by the time Superman was beaten to "death" by Doomsday in 1993's Superman #75, blood was everywhere. (The 90s were a violent time.) Unfortunately for Superman, the Code was nowhere to be found on the cover of 1978's All New Collectors' Edition #C-56, better known as "Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali." In that issue, following a different boxing match under a red sun, Superman gets beaten so badly by Ali that he bleeds all over his pillow. If there's a lesson here, it's probably that Superman should give up boxing.

For whatever reason, that bloody pillow was removed in a re-colored 2010 reprinting. But that's okay. I'm sure it wasn't the first time Superman unwillingly bled on panel anyway. Because after four (delightful) hours of looking through comics and comics websites, I found this sequence in 1976's Superman #297:

Ouch! Be careful where you put those fingers, Superman.

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Three things:

Thing One: Coca-Cola's summer promotion involves decorating their cans and bottles with pictures of Marvel Comics super heroes. I bought a 24 pack expecting an assortment of heroes, but no, all 24 cans were the same picture of Electra. Very disappointing. I've now drunk more cans of Coca-Cola with Electra's picture on them than I have bought comic books with Electra pictured in them. Meanwhile, my aunt bought me a 20-oz bottle of Coke Classic because she saw a picture on it of some guy in tights on it and thought I would like it even though she had no idea who it was or which characters I liked. It was Wolverine. To be fair to my aunt, even though I haven't bought a single Wolverine comic in decades, I have definitely bought more Wolverine comics in my lifetime than I have bought Elektra comics.

Thing Two: When I composed this post in my head while walking the dogs, I knew there were three things. However, I don't currently remember what thing two is. Give me a minute. I'll come back to this one.

Thing Three: I wore a kilt for the first time yesterday. I'd been saying for years that I was going to shop for one at the annual Georgia Renaissance Fair, but haven't, in part because it seems a little like cultural appropriation to me, even though Mom can trace her (and therefore mine) very WASPy ancestry well back to Scottish Clan Napier in the 18th century. I ended up buying one online, a modern cotton twill utility kilt instead of the traditional wool tartan because the whole point of wearing one was to stay cooler in the long Georgia summer. To my surprise, I liked it. I liked it a lot, especially while walking the dogs. I might buy another.

Thing Two Again: Hmm. I recently broke a part on our washing machine, but I don't think that was it. And my car was in the shop again, but that's not it either. Shit. What was I going to say here?

You know what? Never mind. It couldn't have been that important. So just two things, then.

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In news shocking to all Baby Boomers and younger, it has been widely reported that current manufacturer Ferrara Candy has decided to discontinue Fruit Stripe Gum, thereby once-and-for-all answering the question: no, we will not still feed you when we are 64.

Sixty-four years is a long time, but Ferrara Candy has only been selling Fruit Stripe for a small fraction of that time. Prior to 2012, Ferrara Candy was known as Farley & Sathers Candy, which itself was only founded in 2002 and bought the pre-existing Fruit Stripe brand from Hershey Foods in 2003. Hershey only had Fruit Stripe for about a year; they bought it in 2001 from Nabisco, which had acquired it in a 1981 merger with E.R. Squibb Company, which got their hands on it in a 1968 merger with Beech-Nut Life Savers who had introduced it in 1960.

(For more fun information on American corporation brand hi-jinks through history, I encourage you to visit the online archive of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, which retired their old TESS [Trademark Electronic Search System] last year for a more modern and easier to use but less acronymically friendly "cloud-based trademark search system" [CBTSS? Blech.] )

As has been the trend in recent beloved-but-unprofitable food brands being killed off by one corporate parent only to spring back to life under another (see: Hostess Twinkies and Necco Wafters), I expect that this media brouhaha will lead to continued life for Fruit Stripe. In fact, as of January 10, there is already a pending request at the US Patent Office for a new trademark just registered by Iconic Candies, a company dedicated to continuing discontinued "classic brands" like Bar None (discontinued by Hershey in 1997) and Creme Savers (discontinued by M&M/Mars in 2011).

Anyway, while we await zombie Fruit Stripe's inevitable return, in tribute to its nostalgic greatness, I offer a page from my personal comic book collection in which I demonstrated my 4-year-old's love of brightly artificial-colored, briefly artificially-flavored chewing gum by helping brand mascot Yipes the zebra navigate a maze of marketing Q&As.

from The Friendly Ghost, Casper, July 1980, No. 211

(Disclaimer: I might have cheated.)

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