‘Spiderman: Reino’, una novela gráfica de 2006 que nos muestra a un Peter Parker envejecido y que con el paso de los años cada vez se vuelve más grotesca.
Algún día habría que analizar el daño que hizo ‘El regreso del Caballero Oscuro’ a la historia del cómic. No el tebeo en sí, que es una obra maestra, sino todos los que vinieron después queriendo hacer su propio Frank Miller sin el talento, las ganas ni el saber hacer del autor. Uno de los mejores ejemplos de este intento de imitación burdo es ‘Spiderman: Reino’, una novela gráfica de 2006 que nos muestra a un Peter Parker envejecido y que con el paso de los años cada vez se vuelve más grotesca.
Un programa gratuito para Android, de Marvel Comics.
El fluido radiactivo
‘Spiderman: Reino’ está creado por Kaare Andrews y es más conocida como “la historia en la que Spiderman mata a Mary Jane con semen radiactivo”. Sí. Como suena. Peter vive solo y hace mucho que no se pone el traje de superhéroe hasta que finalmente descubrimos que es porque mató a su mujer con un, digamos, “intercambio de fluidos”. Una absoluta locura que empaña cualquier otra cosa que nos quieran contar (que, por otro lado, tampoco es nada del otro mundo).
Pero en plena resurrección de formatos y de historias, alguien en Marvel ha pensado “Oye, ¿no dejamos esa historia con un retorno triunfal al final?” y han decidido traerla de vuelta. Para Marvel sigue siendo el cómic de Spiderman más “célebre” (aunque solo para ellos) y de ahí que crean que una secuela va a ser bien recibida entre un público que se lleva riendo de la colección original desde hace quince años.
El primer número saldrá en noviembre, y de momento nos anuncian que la historia “aún no se ha acabado”, con una imagen en la que Spidey lleva el fantasma de Mary Jane a las espaldas. Hay que decir que en la colección actual de ‘Amazing Spider-man’, MJ y Peter no están juntos porque ella se casó con otro señor en una dimensión alternativa, donde tuvieron dos hijos que no eran reales. Bueno, una movida Marvel.
En la previa que se ha podido ver este mes vemos a un Kingpin monstruoso y una MJ diciendo “Tanto daño y dolor y muerte… Demasiadas cosas que no puedes rebobinar. ¿Qué les dejaste hacer, tigre? ¿Y qué vamos a hacer al respecto?“. En fin. Cuánto daño hizo Frank Miller sin querer.
Everyone, including even the most gullible readers, knew that he would be resurrected sooner or later, seeing that the reaction that the rest of the Marvel superhero team has been completely impassive. Not a tear.
When she was born in 2013, Kamala Khan was a fresh, dynamic, young and powerful character. Perfect for a Marvel that at that time was breaking the shackles of lifelong superheroes and focusing on creating new characters to pass the mantle to. But a decade has passed, the authors have changed, they have become bored with the old Kamala and have decided to follow the canon set by the TV series… even if it is with a shoehorn.
Ms. Marvel died a couple of months ago. Marvel died a couple of months ago, but not even in the pages of his own collection, but in the pages of ‘Amazing Spider-man‘. The current stage of the superhero, scripted by Zeb Wells is not catching on with the public because of his mistreatment of Mary Jane’s character, but what he has done with Kamala Khan has been unforgivable: she appeared in a couple of background comics and the next thing we know she was killed. A special “Funeral for a friend” comic and bye bye.
Everyone, including even the most gullible readers, knew that he would be resurrected sooner or later, seeing that the reaction of the rest of the Marvel superheroic staff has been one of complete impassivity. Not a single tear. And it was easy to sense that after the monumental failure of the ‘Inhumans’ series, Ms. Marvel’s Inhuman origin was not going to last and they were going to change it whenever they could.
And so it happened: the teenager was resurrected thanks to the machinery of Krakoa, where all mutants are now housed, during the party of the Infernal Fire Club. Only she is no longer an Inhuman, but a mutant. How is this possible? Well, by a coincidence that the screenwriters have pulled out of the sleeve: it turns out that she had a latent X gene and, as Charles Xavier explains, there may be more like her. Translated into Spanish: a los Inhumanos que les vayan dando.
What happens now? Kamala’s powers have changed and are no longer the same, but she will learn them in her new series ‘Ms Marvel: The New Mutant’. Especially taking into account that after years of helping Black Lightning and his friends, she has decided to dedicate herself body and soul to defend Homo Superior. What amounts to a paint-and-color to save the junk of a lifetime, wow. Oh, Marvel, the trouble you get into.
If you’ve only seen the Marvel movies, you probably don’t believe this is real, but I assure you: it is. And how.
It is perfectly normal for Marvel characters to die, resurrect, change their identity, try to present a new one… Since issue 4 of ‘Avengers’ in which Captain America was resurrected after being frozen for twenty years, twists and turns have been part of the DNA of the house. But, in spite of everything, what has happened with the Punisher (The Punisher, for the veterans) is bizarre, unprecedented and very, very crazy. Let us tell you about it.
First, the headline: Punisher, now, is a Joe Garrison, who will not ring a bell even if you are Marvel experts because he is a new character created in the wake of the last thing that happened to Frank Castle in the last miniseries scripted by Jason Aaron. If you’ve only seen the Marvel movies you probably won’t believe this is real, but I assure you: it is. And in what a way.
We all know (more or less) that Frank Castle became who he is the day his wife and children died. Okay. Things have changed a bit in the fifty years that the character has been dishing out bullets here and there. And it turns out he’s been cast as the avatar of the Beast, a god of murder (not the first time he’s been an angel or something, by the way), which leads to being able to resurrect his wife Mary once and for all.
During his stint as an angel of death, Punisher kills the god Ares and gets new Inhuman superpowers. Everything seems to be going swimmingly for him, within his usual uneasiness. And then, when Mary comes back to life, he tells her what he wanted to tell her the day he died in the park: “We’re done, Frank, I want a divorce“. Boom. She also informs him that she has sold all her shelters and stuff, and has given her half of the proceeds to various NGOs. “This is how you honor your dead family, Frank. Not by using them as an excuse for murder.”
Of course, after this, Frank Castle couldn’t just come back, and his place has been taken by this Joe Garrison, who no one knows anything about beyond being a SHIELD double agent whose past haunts him. I give it three months until Frank Castle shoots him as a welcome back to Marvel.
The umpteenth plagiarism of an author who has lived by copying others… and has suffered the consequences.
Year 1971. Quino draws a ‘Mafalda’ strip in which her father, at the beach, encourages his son Guille to build a sandcastle, only to discover that he has created sand apartment buildings (“I can’t waste time on these stupid things, I’m building apartments”). Another masterpiece among the many by the master of humor.
Year 2006. Nik draws a ‘Gaturro’ strip in which, at the beach, the protagonist encourages Gaturrín to build a sandcastle, only to discover that he has created sand apartment buildings (“What castle? Now the business is to build apartment towers”). One might think it’s a coincidence, but it’s just the umpteenth plagiarism by an author who has lived off copying others… and has faced the consequences.
Nik began drawing Gaturro in 1993, and even then, some said that its protagonist was a kind of Garfield, something of which Jim Davis is fully aware. Thirty years of cartoons and marketing later, the adult audience has not embraced it. As evidence, take the case of the Paseo de la Historieta in Buenos Aires, where Gaturro’s statue was the only one vandalized in mid-2022 with graffiti and various drawings. They took it away to repair it and installed something called “anti-vandalism technology”: two small fences. In just one day, the statue ended up worse than before, and they had to remove it again.
Why does nobody like Gaturro? Quino himself stated in an interview that nobody can stand Nik, and it’s not without reason: among the evident plagiarisms are ‘Calvin and Hobbes’, Roberto Fontanarrosa, Juan Carlos Argüelles, Caloi, Leo Arias, CartoonHarry, or ‘Garfield’, among many others. These artists have suffered from an artist who seems to have a penchant for copying others’ work. However, to his credit, it must be said that Nik has never avoided the question regarding these allegations. Nonetheless, his response has been criticized and considered unsatisfactory by many.
“You find two or three drawings that resemble something pre-existing, and that’s enough to create controversy,” he once commented. Perhaps it’s the anger over his success in marketing his character (Gaturro has starred in movies, animated series, and has attractions in various parks) or simply the fact that he has never shown remorse or apologized for plagiarism. Either way, the truth is that the public has never given a warm reception to this supposedly wry cat who, frankly, smells like last week’s Tupperware.
For example, trying to conquer a market that, at that time, which was so distinguished by gender, choked them: that of adolescent girls.
In 1991 Marvel was on the crest of the wave. Their comics were selling without problems, they had created characters such as Matanza, Bishop or Squirrel Girl and they still had a lot to do. For example, to try to conquer a market that, at that time that distinguished so much by sexes, was still difficult for them: that of girls and adolescent girls. For this reason, the publishing house obtained the rights to a character that would come back into fashion thirty years later: Barbie.
Five years before Aqua made the character even more legendary with ‘Barbie girl’, Marvel released issue #1 of ‘Barbie’ which had a cover by the legendary John Romita and was accompanied by a “Barbie credit card” in a somewhat desperate attempt to get girls to embrace capitalism. In this first issue she fought a villain who wanted to turn the whole city into a shopping mall, taught a dog to sit, and helped a friend feel better about herself. Well, hey, it could be worse.
Yes, we can look at it with the irony of the years, but the truth is that by 1991 it wasn’t so bad. It also gave work to Lisa Trusiani, Trina Robbins and Mary Wilshire, who continued their careers with success: Trusiani wrote ‘Morbius‘, Robbins won an Eisner for a whole career and Wilshire was in charge of ‘Power Pack’, ‘The New Mutants’ and even ‘Conan’. Big words.
The surprising thing is that, having it there, so close, Marvel did not give in to the opportunity to mix Barbie with their superheroes in either of the two series of the doll, ‘Barbie‘ and ‘Barbie fashion’, more focused on their models. During the course of the issues, our protagonist won the Venice film festival with a documentary about cats, became a superheroine, starred in a jeans ad and even sent messages of encouragement and confidence to girls who wanted to lose weight.
It wasn’t perfect, but at the beginning of the 90’s it could hardly be improved: a comic for girls, empowering and written by women. It hasn’t gone down in history or been collected in Omnibuses, but the 63 issues of Barbie and the 53 issues of ‘Barbie fashion’ were a key piece of the 90’s sadly forgotten but that did incredible things, like drawing girls sending pictures in pink comic style. What more could you ask for?
It is true that in 1962, the same year ‘The Fantastic Four‘ was released, Barbie already had her first foray into the world of comics at the hands of Dell in five, to be generous, forgettable comics. What’s surprising is that no one has taken the character in all these decades and given her a fantastic ‘Flintstones’-style comic book spin. Will the movie come to change all this? Frankly: I wish it would.
Buckle up, because you are about to see the moment when, 83 years later, the pupil surpassed the master.
If you only know Batman and Robin from the movies, get ready for what you’re about to read, because there’s a lot to explain to get to what just happened in the American comics. To understand something that happened in 2023, we’ll have to make several stops along the way. More specifically in 1940, 1984 and 2016. Fasten your seat belts, because you are about to see the moment when, 83 years later, the pupil surpassed the master.
If you like comics and want to learn the art of creating them, Comics++ is the program for you.
Holy bat-travel!
April 1940. Batman was already a success in the pages of ‘Detective Comics’, but, in addition, he was about to receive a golden secondary, a child who would help him fight crime. His name, Dick Grayson, a circus acrobat whose parents are killed in a performance and who is saved by the Masked Crusader at the last moment. He takes him in as his ward, gives him a rather tacky costume even for the time and names him Robin, The Boy Wonder. They would get along wonderfully… for almost 43 years.
July 1984. Dick Grayson, a member of the Teen Titans, stops being Batman’s sidekick and adopts a name he heard on Krypton a few years earlier: Nightwing. For his part, Batman would adopt a new Robin, Jason Todd, whose fate would be placed in the hands of the readers five years later. They decided to let him die… But that’s another story that would go down in comic book infamy.
May 2016. During the events of ‘Darkseid’s War’, Batman gets the powers of the New God of Knowledge by sitting in Mobius’ chair, which gives omniscience to anyone who tastes its power. Although he claims he’s fine and can quit whenever he wants, the truth is that the power ends up eating away at him and he refuses to get up, stubborn, until Green Lantern puts a ring on him and he manages to have enough willpower to accept that he can stop being a god. If not even Batman could resist, then who could?
And we come to what just happened in issue 104 of ‘Nightwing’. The demon Neron gives the powers of a god to Dick Grayson to try to corrupt him and thus take the soul of Olivia Desmond, a girl that the former Robin has sworn to protect (and the daughter of his archenemy, but that’s another matter). If he has godlike powers he will be able to save more people, and in exchange for only the soul of a little girl: Batman, as we have seen, would have agreed in an instant. “Not gonna happen,” Nightwing replies with a smile, showing that even the greatest temptation can’t keep him from his duty… And the final example of him finally overcoming his master eight decades later. Holy emotional bat-moments!
Everyone at the time wanted to have their own Superman. Some more or less succeeded and others stayed by the wayside. This is the story of one of them.
Some say that before 1938, there were no superheroes and everything changed when Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman, as if he had come out of nowhere. And there’s some truth to it: although characters like The Phantom, Sheena, Flash Gordon, or The Green Hornet were born decades earlier, the real revolution was the one brought by the Kryptonian who could lift cars, use X-ray vision, fly, and had an unwavering secret identity. Such was his impact that everyone at the time wanted to have their own Superman. Some achieved it to a greater or lesser extent (Timely), while others fell by the wayside. This is the story of one of them.
In those years, being a comic book creator was a promising career (unlike now). That’s what Bill Everett thought, a young man who avoided becoming a truck driver like his father and, somewhere along the way, became a teenage alcoholic, a young marine, and eventually a talented comic book artist. The thing is, while he was working at Centaur Comics, a publisher specializing in pulp and science fiction stories, no one saw the overwhelming success of Superman coming. But it hit them hard.
That’s when the editor-in-chief, Lloyd Jacquet, asked Everett for “a Superman-like character.” The surprising part is that, since he couldn’t come up with anything, his mother rushed to his aid. In fact, there’s a preserved letter where she asks another family member to help them: “He needs a new character for a strip that Jacquet wants him to create to compete with the new one called ‘Superman,’ I believe. We’ve racked our brains trying to come up with a new type of character, but I can only think of going back to old folk tales, foreign if necessary, and trying to find some unusual character with which we can build an unusual story for these modern times.” We hope the mother at least received a little bit of copyright compensation.
The superhero that Everett (and perhaps his mother) ended up creating was like a toned-down version of Superman: Amazing-Man, who first appeared in issue #5 of ‘Amazing-Man Comics’… despite there being no preceding four issues. He was the second superhero in history to have his own comic book, and his story was, let’s say, unique.
John Aman was raised by monks in Tibet for 25 years: each member of the Council of Seven, as they called themselves, taught him to master a different superpower, in addition to granting him the ability to disappear in a green mist. Amazing-Man was super strong, invulnerable, super fast, could heal himself, and practiced telekinesis. In other words, he was a Swiss Army knife of strange powers. From issue #5 to #42, he was the star character of the publisher, but in February 1942, the company went bankrupt and left him lost in the (green) mist of history.
Bill Everett would later join a small company called Timely where he created a character named Namor and, much later, a blind lawyer named Daredevil alongside Stan Lee himself. In 1973, Everett passed away at the age of 55, without getting to see his character make a comeback in 1990 in the pages of Malibu Comics and in 2008 as the Prince of Orphans in a comic book called ‘The Immortal Iron Fist,’ published by Marvel. It goes to show that in real life, you may die, but comics are always eternal.
Before, a house could be surrounded by books, records, DVDs, comics and video games. Now four devices are enough to have the walls of our home much cleaner… Or not?
“Let’s see when it comes out on Netflix“; “The new releases are already on Spotify”; “I’ll download it on my Kindle”; “It’s available on Game Pass”… One would think that modernity has brought not only great advancements in the art we enjoy but also differences in how we consume it. In the past, a house could be surrounded by books, records, DVDs, comics, and video games. Now, we onlyneed a few devices to keep the walls of our home much cleaner… Or do we?
Surely you have heard (or said) at some point the phrase “I’ll download it, and if I like it, I’ll buy it.” For example, you download the latest book by Laura Gallego, and after reading twenty pages, you’ve already decided that it deserves a place on your physical bookshelf. Being able to touch things used to be the only way to enjoy them fully, but now it’s a privilege reserved for the best of the best.
And brands know this. Perhaps that’s why they dare to release special editions with more tangible items (figurines, coins, unique booklets). Not everyone wants to fill their home with things, but those who do know how to make the most of it. Maybe you wouldn’t buy ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in a pocket-sized edition, but what about a luxury edition with gold-edged pages and giant size? Physical format serves not only as a means of consumption but also as decoration and status symbol.
You may never actually play ‘Casablanca’ or ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ on your Blu-Ray player when you have them available for streaming, but owning their collector’s editions is a way to acknowledge their value, showcase your taste to visitors in your home, and hey, if the often-predicted online apocalypse ever happens, you’ll have a plan B. Despite claims that empty spaces and minimalism are trending, if you have a couple of hobbies, those empty spaces will soon be filled.
Back and forth
Indeed, it’s much easier to share a song with someone by simply sharing a link instead of taking the CD (or vinyl), going to their house, and leaving it there. But there’s a reason why we continue to collect vinyl records beyond their musical quality: it’s the feeling of owning something. Even if we purchase the album digitally and it comes with loaded extras, we will always feel a stronger connection to something we can manipulate, touch, and lend. It’s not just nostalgia; it’s being human.
There will be those who say, “Well, what about newspapers and magazines? They are in a crisis in their physical format.” That’s true. They lack the magic of collectability and have always been seen more as disposable content: the transition to digital is easier, especially because what we seek – current news – will always be more up-to-date on the internet than in print a day later. Magazines follow a similar path; it’s the next logical step: we don’t feel the urge to collect them, they are not fetish objects.
Despite the naysayers trying to kill off the physical format, the truth is that every year there are more and more comics and manga published, more and more vinyl records finding their place, more and more video games of all kinds and colors. Even indie games that were initially released exclusively in digital format have ended up being released in physical form due to this trend of wanting to have the good stuff encapsulated in our hands. If I have it, it means I am acknowledging it. It says something about me.
The film problem
In this new quest to see what survives in physical format, there is one format that has been fatally wounded (at least in Spain): the Blu-Ray. While in the UK and the United States it is still enjoying a sweet moment, partly thanks to collections like Criterion or Arrow, in our country, which has always been more prone to piracy, the arrival of streaming has definitively condemned movie (and series) discs to oblivion.
This is the exception: although it may seem that Spotify has killed CDs to create, in return, a revenue stream through more concerts, the truth is that vinyl records have a thriving community that has taken everyone by surprise. The same goes for books: despite Amazon’s efforts, many of us prefer to have them in our hands and be able to take them on a journey without worrying about battery life, even if it costs a little more.
Usually, we shouldn’t pay attention to those who announce “the future,” whether it comes in the form of NFTs, cryptocurrency, or digital formats, because Nostradamus 2.0 doesn’t exist. The revolution of physical space should not only be aesthetically pleasing but also fill us internally with a single glance. And that’s something a Kindle, no matter how hard it tries, will never achieve.
We have decided to tell you what has happened at Marvel in recent months, to make it much easier to catch up. Be careful, because curves are coming (and spoilers)
Reading comics is a hobby as beautiful as it is complicated (and expensive). Hundreds of issues come out every month. If you read superheroes, manga, indie comics, some French BD and Spanish comics you could spend the whole month between issues without having time to do anything else, but, for whatever reason, you also need to eat, hydrate, work and go outside to step on the grass. That’s why we’ve decided to tell you what’s been going on at Marvel in the last few months, to make catching up a lot easier. Watch out, because curves are coming (and spoilers if you’re a little behind on the American editions, you’ve been warned).
After Ben Reilly, Peter Parker’s clone, became Spider-Man for a while while the original was in the hospital (Peter ended up dying in his battle against the Sin Eater, but he’s better now), he ended up losing his memory and becoming Abyss, a supervillain who swears revenge against Peter. Typical Parker luck. Taking advantage of the juncture and clone friendship, the new villain allied with Madelyne Pryor, Jean Grey’s clone and current Goblin Queen.
During the battle, Abyss locked Peter and his allies in a replica of New York in Limbo until our hero surrendered and decided to return his memories in exchange for losing them himself. It didn’t happen, of course: with the help of the X-men, a demon-turned-version of Spider-Man named Rek-rap and Pryor herself after losing control of Limbo, Ben Reilly was locked up in the prisons of his dimension.
On the other hand, Mary Jane is married to a certain Paul and has a son, she gets along regularly with Peter and still nobody knows what exactly could have happened, what did Spiderman do to turn everyone against him. Right now we only know that Mary Jane and Peter were trapped in an alternate dimension: she sacrificed herself so he could get out: the return trip caused a near-nuclear explosion. Upon returning to the dimension where he left MJ stranded, where time passes faster and the days are weeks, he found that she had taken a new boyfriend and had two children. Still no more is known about this temporal gibberish, which is written, all things considered, regulinchi.
Oh, yeah: and Peter Parker now works for Norman Osborn, who no longer has Green Goblin powers (apparently). Just another day at Marvel.
The Fantastic Four
The 4F, Marvel‘s oldest group, has split up. No one quite knows why, but they’ve all decided to go their separate ways – even the Human Torch has been posing as a salesman named Jonathan Fairweather! However, when the time comes to reunite they discover that the Thing and Alice have turned into a giant stone dome.
Finally, it is discovered what happened to make them separate and before the stone dome: the whole block next to the Baxter Building disappeared by Reed Richards to appear a year later without them noticing anything. Among those who disappeared were the children of Ben and Alice who, for whatever reason, did not like the invention. After Sue, Ben, Reed and Johnny settled their differences and freed themselves from the dome, they went on a journey between dimensions with which they brought a bacterium that could cause global extinction by turning the water poisonous. They could have stayed put.
Iron Man
After an explosion ripped through his house and killed his neighbors, Tony Stark went back to drinking (and how). But he couldn’t relax too much: Feilong, one of his greatest enemies, wants him dead at any cost, not only literally… but also figuratively. Maybe that’s why he’s bought Stark Unlimited, discovered its secrets and set about creating Sentinels to wipe out mutants. Put down that scotch, Tony, it’s been sitting on you pretty good. Or at least take refuge in your new love… Emma Frost!
X-Men
Just to read the adventures of the X-Patrol in Krakoa you need a master’s degree. Over the last few years they have founded their own country, they have taken over Mars, they have discovered the secret of infinite resurrection. For once since their birth in the 60s, mutants are happy. Of course it’s all going to go down the drain at the next Hellfire Gala, because apparently we can’t allow these people to live peacefully.
Hulk
Okay. Believe it or not, after a fatal accident in El Paso, Bruce Banner has turned the Hulk into a galactic ship using his body as a form, Bruce Banner piloting and the Hulk’s rage as an engine. He finally arrived on a planet crawling with Hulks who promised him a home, but instead of staying, he let out a devil that lived inside him and had to be placated by Doctor Strange. Don’t worry: Bruce Banner is still alive and under control. Sort of. Personally, I’d rather read ‘The Immortal Hulk’ again.
Daredevil
The President of the United States is dead. Well, rather, he has been assassinated. By Daredevil. Reread those last three sentences before continuing and digest them: Daredevil, now married to Elektra, has taken over the power of The Fist, the organization that fights the ninjas of The Hand (the real architects of the assassination in question). To do so, he has freed a bunch of criminals with the intention of saving them from themselves, convinced of the futility of prison. With Elektra trapped by The Avengers and Matt Murdock being enemy number one, it doesn’t look like the best future for the Little Horned One. He’s come out of worse.
Doctor Strange
Stephen Strange died. But he’s better now. He lost his love, Clea. But she found him again, transformed into the new Sorceress Supreme. And now, after her hardest moment, she is back to her sanctum sanctorum as never before. Wong, meanwhile, has founded a new group of superheroes searching for the paranormal called WAND. Of course, happiness will be short-lived for Stranger. That’s all it takes.
Captain America
Right now there are two Captain Americas: Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers, with interconnected stories. To put it simply (as simple as it can be): Ian, Steve’s son from Dimension Z, has arrived on earth 616, becoming Sam’s partner. Meanwhile, Bucky the Winter Soldier, who intends to create a revolution with the help of an organization created by Arnim Zola, has betrayed Steve and is going to take Ian back to his original dimension using the White Wolf’s portal technology. Not even the AI would make it so complicated.
So, to avoid being caught, he’s unleashed a whole bunch of monsters from Dimension Z into ours… And, in the meantime, he’s started to psychologically torture Cap’s son. Oh, yes: the Black Widow has shown up to get everything she knows out of Bucky. Well, here we all are.
If you got stuck in the Mefistazo or in one of the many crossovers with the symbiotes, as you can see, there is still a lot to scratch: following the Marvel news is not just about watching the movies… Take note before everything changes again (this time, for real) forever!
As you read it: the 42-year-old billionaire could, technically, walk through the pages of Batman at any time because it is more than stipulated that both live in the same universe.
Batman. Lord of the Night. Guardian of Gotham. Friend of Paris Hilton’s great-grandfather. Okay, no, wait a minute, what?! Just as you read it: the 42-year-old billionaire could, technically, stroll through the pages of the Batman at any time because it is more than stipulated that the two live together in the same universe. Don’t believe it? Fasten your bat-belt because this story is not to be believed.
Surely you remember some of the ridiculous ‘Batman’ covers from the 50s: Batman and Robin meet the three musketeers, fight against El Papagayo in South America, adopt the Bat-dog, become a mermaid… Every month, three absolutely bizarre adventures awaited children at a time when superhero comics were nothing more than a diversion for kids. The good thing is that the hero was not a universal icon, and these absurdities remained only in children’s playgrounds… Until 1966 came along.
A few years earlier, the arrival of ‘The Fantastic Four’ broke superhero comics in two: for the first time, Marvel showed that more or less mature stories could be made, even if they were aimed at children. Comic books crossed the borders of schools and reached universities: DC could not be left behind, and in 1964 Carmine Infantino reimagined Batman with a darker, more realistic tone and a new costume that could not show off enough. The culprit, William Dozier, an ABC producer tasked with making a series about a certain masked superhero I had never heard of.
It mattered little that Infantino and John Broome were changing the history of comics at the time: Dozier bought a dozen Batman comics, including a compilation of stories from the 1950s (the 1965 ‘Giant Batman Annual’), and assumed that the character had not evolved at all. Said and done: the 1966 series starring Adam West would be exactly that campy, absurd and unabashed. But that’s another story. For the moment let’s use it to understand the context.
Press that presses you
The TV series changed everything. Suddenly, Batman was born for many people who began to wear his logo on T-shirts, hats, cards, toys and every kind of merchandising imaginable. It was such a success that, as if it were ‘The Simpsons’ now, celebrities began to line up to have a part in the series. Bruce Lee, Otto Preminger, Jerry Lewis, Joan Collins, Zsa Zsa Gabor… Everyone who was anyone in the 60’s consciously made a fool of themselves in ‘Batman’.
The series was such a success that it managed to revive newspaper strips that had not appeared in American newspapers for a couple of decades. Only that, this time, they would be based on television episodes. Whitney Ellsworth and Joe Giella were in charge of it and, above all, of drawing the guest stars. If they were on TV, they had to be in the comics too, right?
January 1967. Batman and Robin encounter a man sitting in the Batmobile (“Strange! Who would do such a thing in Gotham City?” says our hero). His name would remain a mystery until the next day, but the more seasoned reader would get to see the realistic caricature of Conrad Hilton. Hilton was born in 1887 and at the age of twenty was already in the hotel business. In fact, the world’s first hotel chain was (and is) named after him: he was famous to everyone… even Batman!
Bat-hotel, sweet Bat-hotel
Hilton appeared in the strip to ask for help with the Batman Hotel he had designed (“Holy Taj Mahal!” says Robin) in which the waitresses wore Robin-inspired uniforms and the five-square-mile lake was designed with the Masked Crusader’s logo. It even had a golf bat-car that, as Batman notes, “It runs on BATs, surely.” This Batman, the things he has.
In reality, as you can see, it’s all a plan by Poison Ivy to rob the hotel guests, but that’s not what matters to us. What is certain is that Conrad Hilton’s appearance in the comic book caused an uproar in the hotel industry. After all, this was free publicity for his chain… And, apparently, advertising was denied in the press that brought out the daily strip. Don’t think that, after the controversy, he would say little: from January to March, Paris Hilton’s great-great-grandfather became a regular in the adventures of the Dynamic Duo.
Specifically, March 17 was the end of Conrad Hilton in the Batman strips, once Poison Ivy was caught. He never came out again and the role of guest star was taken by the comic Jack Benny. It’s clear, then: Paris Hilton and Batman could still team up in a crazy crossover – who knows? Stranger things have happened.
