At least, they did back in the 1970′s it appears. If you don’t believe me, feast your eyes on this:
Yo Bats! You bring the leather and I'll meet you back at the cave.
I am not sure which issue this is from as I stumbled across it on the internets and that location didn’t mention it. Bummer. I think the Editor-in-Chief at DC back in the day might have taken one too many ‘liquid lunches‘.
Is it me or does Batman looked embarrassed to be staring at the … evidence … of a prior … tussle? Ok, I couldn’t resist that but for sure the early 70′s had much edgier content going on than people would believe and it got buried sometimes in panels like these. One of my fondest memories was one of my older brothers taking me to see my first scifi convention. It was around 1975 and it was a real eye-popper who was there including Howard Chaykin, Harlan Ellison * (he gave an amazing read of one of his short stories at night in a hall that was crammed to the gills*) and Frederick Pohl (he was signing copies of Man Plus if I recall) among a lot of other top names that I am straining to remember in my advanced years.
One autograph that I did get was from Don McGregor (The Black Panther, Sabre) who at the time was recently fired for edgy story lines like actually have two comic book characters of different race kiss! The horror!
I had him sign an old copy of War of the Worlds:Killraven which was renamed for the main character as Killraven: Warrior of the Worlds (a series than only ran about 2o issues but had a young P. Craig Russell as artist) but that was one of the few I grabbed in my stupor to get something signed by him and the title I thought fit “The Day the Monuments Shattered” which he liked and mentioned something like ‘thanks for the kind words, kid’ in addition to his signature.
I bought my first original art at that con (a panel from the Batman series that ran in newspapers) but couldn’t afford the original panels of Howard the Duck and many others that would be worth a nice stack of cash today considering this was around 1975 or 1976.
So here’s to edgy writing and taking risks! We could use that advice during these wacky economic times of uncertainty.
* Side story: I lived for a short time in LA trying to make it as a screenwriter (I failed before I got started which is a long but interesting story for later) and thought I would reach out to Harlan since he too was from Ohio (what is it with Ohio creating writers?). I called his agent and got bupkis. So, I thought I would see if he was listed in the phone book and low and behold…he was! So, I rang him. Knowing of his well earned reputation for not tolerating fools, I prepared my comments before dialing and kept it short. He answered the phone himself (whoa!) and I made my pitch which went something like this: “Mr. Ellison. My name is blah blah, and I am a young writer from Ohio out here in LA trying to make a go of it as a writer. Would you mind speaking with me for a few minutes?” Big sigh and a pause. He responded not unkindly, “Kid, I don’t mean to be shitty but I just had bypass surgery and now is not the right time,” or something to that effect.
What do you say to that?! I said I hope he recovers soon and well and that I wouldn’t tread any further on his time. He thanked me for understanding and hung up. I was happy to have gotten that much frankly. Now, if you don’t know much about Harlan Ellison, his writing is solid, dense, well crafted prose and he is legendary for telling people exactly what he thinks (including Gene Roddenberry over scripts such as the one for the original series, City on the Edge of Forever). His skill with the written word has few peers as evidenced here:
Say it ain’t so Batman!