Go West, Young Bunny.

Ty the Guy OUT.

It goes without saying how much Adam West impacted my life.  I was EXACTLY the right age to become a lifelong fan when Batman come into our living room in 1966.  I remember the Adam West style Batman and Robin costumes my mother sewed for my brother and me when the show was still on the air.  I remember how excited I was to grow out of the Robin costume and finally fit into the Batman suit so I could be the Caped Crusader for Halloween in 1970.  It’s no coincidence that the lion’s share of my work for DC Comics takes place in Gotham City, from the animated Batman series, to the recent Batman 66 series, starring Adam West himself, it’s always my happiest place to be with Batman.

Thanks for the recent animated movies, and “Back to the Batcave” and Family Guy.  Thanks for the years of unbridled joy.

Thanks.

 

I sketch Adam West style Batman covers at conventions ALL the time.  It’s likely the most common request I get.  Here’s a few of them from the last year or so… I’m sure there will be many more–

This is, maybe, my favourite portrait I ever did of Adam West’s Batman.  It’s hard to see in this image, but this drawing is on the back of a playing card, a fan brought to the table, and is only about three inches tall.

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For last week’s review of the Wonder Woman movie, please click above.

For the ancient Bun Toon archive…click

Breaking News Bun Toons! YAY!

This just in…

I wasn’t here last week to clear this up, but I’ve finally pushed my way back onto the internet to tell you all what you think.

Whew.

For those of us who survived it, the 90s was a time when everyone we admired as heroes were getting raped, maimed, wounded, destroyed, murdered, raped and murdered, and more….all in service of making fantasy super-heroes more “realistic”, the greatest oxymoron in fiction.  We’ve still got echoes of that nowadays, what with DC’s  chopping off the arms of beloved characters, or Marvel killing off of their flagship heroes…but there’s a sense of none of it being permanent lately.  We all KNOW, Wolverine will be back, and Alfred’s missing hand won’t last past the next continuity reboot.

For some reason, though…the atrocities done to female characters left more permanent marks.  Black Canary’s sexual abuse at the hands of Mike Grell created physical and emotional scars that lasted for decades.  Batgirl’s physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Alan Moore and later, the DC editorial staff, landed her in a wheelchair for a generation (while Batman’s trip to a wheelchair lasted a year and has never been mentioned since).

There’s a new crop of fans who weren’t there during the comic character holocaust, and don’t want to know about it.   Especially the female fans, who don’t, as a rule, enjoy the breaking of toys the way we boys often do.

These fans have spoken.   And I’m on their side…

Let’s glue the good toys back together and never discuss this stuff again, shall we?

PS:  I hope I don’t have to explain the difference between editing and censorship on this subject.  I’ve heard a few morons getting confused about that….

Ty the Guy OUT

The ultimate Broken Toys comic book.  I’m happy to see the misfits smiling.

But does this make you happy to see this  happen to Green Lantern?  (I shouldn’t give the editors at DC any ideas….they have a thing about severed limbs.)

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For the last new Bun Toon from two weeks ago, click here.

For last week’s re-run Bun Toon, click here

For the Bun Toon archive, click here

Equal Bun Toons! YAY!

warning: satire ahead. use caution.

It’s nice to see things finally changing in the world of comics.

–

At least we won’t be having this discussion again for another two or three weeks.

TY THE GUY OUT!

Because I have to:

Oh yes, it’s real.

So many important lessons for Lois to learn.

Oddly enough, this comic is not a collector’s item.

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For last week’s equally “inside baseball” Bun Toon, click here.

For more diverse Bun Toons, click the chick real quick, you hick!

 

Unseen Mr. Freeze Cover Artwork from Gotham Adventures.

The first appearance of our villain, from 1959, by Curt Swan. He was "Mr. Zero" back then.

George Saunders: The FIRST Mr. Freeze on TV.

I got an email yesterday requesting I return to my series of never-before-seen cover sketches for my blog, and I do what I’m told, so today we look into the cover for Gotham Adventures #5, which featured the frozen monster, Victor Fries,  vs. Batman on the rocks.

Otto Preminger. Freeze #2

I normally did three cover sketches for each one we used, but this cover got up a little higher, and the one that ended up being chosen was unique for a reason I’ll get to at the end.

Eli Wallach as the sub-zero bad guy. Clearly he went through a few versions as well.

I’ll start with the three cover sketches I sent in first.  Let’s see if you can play Armchair Editor and figure out what went right or wrong with these, as we play Rejection Roulette.

Okay, not bad.  A little too symmetrical perhaps, but all the elements are there.

Pretty well the same design.  I’ll be honest, I was padding the trio of designs because I liked the third one best, and felt if the first two were essentially identical, I’d make the third one look interesting to my editor.

Now we’re talking.  The interior  story was about the TWO Mr. Freeze characters locked in a duel, and this cover told the story well.  I noted that this was my favorite, and felt the editor would agree, and off I’d go to draw it.  But the response was cold.

(I know that was unforgivable, but that’s what happens when you start to write about Mr. Freeze.)

I am to blame for all the puns.

So I did another one later that day, featuring the disembodied head-spider that Freeze was sporting at that point on the TV show.  It was creepy and the cover featured Nightwing and Batgirl, just to shake things up.

Rejected again.

So the next day, I went for a cover featuring a big action scene from the story, where Robin has to free a suffocating Batman with a baseball bat to the ice-encased head.  I tried two different angles, to give the editor a choice.  But I was sure THIS time, I’d come up with a dramatic moment and we were good to go.

This one had Freeze in it, in case there was confusion as to who was the villain.  Never mind.  They were both still rejected.

Finally the JACKPOT!  It had the spider-head Mr. Freeze thing.  It had Robin smacking Batman with a bat.  It had Nightwing and Batgirl, and it had a lovely design.  This was, by far, my favorite of the covers, and I was happy that the editor made me keep going until I had a truly memorable image.  That’s an editor’s job, to push until you hit the zone.

So I was quite surprised to see it get rejected.  Instead the editor went with:

Number Two.

This marks the ONLY time of the fifty or so covers that I worked on for Batman Adventures, where my LEAST favorite cover was chosen.  Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t submit a cover if I didn’t think it had merit, but this one was as close to filler as I’d ever sent in.  Still, it was fun to work on, as I was really starting to learn how to colour on a computer, and I got to choose the trade dress colours as well as the image itself.

Here’s the cover, without the logos, etc, straight from my files.

I had this up on the wall over my desk as a really nice print for about six months, because I really liked the colours.   I wish I’d gotten to do cover #7 though.  Sigh.

Ty the Guy OUT!

HERE NOW, YOUR BONUS GOTHAM ADVENTURES #5 MOMENT:

Choosing sketch #2 affected someone else’s life FAR FAR more than it did mine.  Meet Craig Kandiko, or at least a small part of him:

Craig is one of the biggest Batman Adventures fans out there, and he has quite a number of tats all over his body featuring artwork by Bruce Timm, myself and a few other BTAS artists.  Craig liked the image of Freeze on Gotham #5 enough to burn it into his flesh, so maybe I’m not the best judge of what makes a good cover.  You can see a little more of Craig’s ink here, where you’ll also find a link to his facebook page.

Unseen Batman Gotham Adventures Artwork…Two-Face edition

Time for another installment of “How Many Cover Sketches Can be Rejected?” before we land on the right one?  Today’s contestant is Gotham Adventures #2, perhaps one of my favorite covers for a bunch of reasons.

Let’s start with the first round:

Rejected. Probably a little too complicated for an Adventures book.

For the time I was on the various Batman books, I tried to make sure all the #2 issues (including #12 and #22) were Two-Face stories.  Not just because of the obvious connection to the #2, but it allowed me to write a Two-Face story at least once a year.  Considering he’s one of the best characters in fiction, I’m no fool, and I wanted at him as much as I could.  Gotham Adventures #2 was about Harvey Dent meeting his father on the set of a live TV show, to steal his prize money and destroy his father’s life.

Rejected. Probably because it didn't give us Two-Face

That’s why there’s lotto machines in the background and money on the ground.  I was very interested in making sure BATGIRL was on the cover, since she was a new regular addition to the series at this point, I wanted to feature her as much as I could.

Rejected. Probably too passive an image.

  I usually give the editor three sketches as a rule, but all three of my first group were passed up and I was asked to do another sketch to get to the right one.  So back to the drawing board, I came up with a few more, focusing on the black and white element to the animated Two-Face design.

Going back to the big fight scene, this time with Two-Face more featured. Now we're talking....rejected.

In the same batch was the following image, which I strongly pushed to be the cover…but was leery, because it didn’t have Batman on it.  (Something I usually included in my group of sketches, as the editors often allowed it).

Despite my pushing for this one....rejected.

But I was on the right track, and this final sketch was the one that we all liked.  It still didn’t feature Batman, but it was striking enough to get that thumbs up.

Maybe it's because there's so obvious a "thumbs up" on the image itself.

Normally, I get a little testy if I have to do more than three sketches, but in this case, our fearless editor (Darren Vincenzo at this time) pushed me for the right reasons…as the final turned out GREAT.

And look, not a colour to be seen!

I LOVED that they let me play with the logo.  I loved that I was allowed to run a cover in black and white on a “kids book” which is usually VERY colourful on the cover.   And I love that it feels balanced between the black and the white, without being symmetrical.  A winner all around.

The best part was that the cover was so simple in its linework, that I penciled and inked it at print size…the size of the original sketch, in fact.  The original art for this was ten inches by seven inches…MUCH smaller than the average cover would be drawn.  Because if its tiny size, it’s one of the few Gotham Adventures covers I still own, as I can’t really sell something that’s so small to a collector.

I don’t recall why, but it’s one of the few covers I didn’t sign.

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now:  Your Gotham Adventures #2 bonus moment:

When the cover ran in Previews and online, someone from the art department had added the yellow of his eye, believing that I meant for that “spot of colour” to give it extra oomph.  Fortunately, I happened to spot this before it went to print,  it went out without the yellow.

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Tune in later this week, I’m itching to start showing off the goodies that are coming up in the all-new Holmes Incorporated Comic that I edit for The Toronto Cartoonist Workshop.  You can check out the early, early previews HERE.

Unseen Art by Ty

Sorry for the sparse posting lately…we’ve been busy doing that working-for-a-living thing around here, some Simpsons, some Mad Mag stuff, doing some final corrections on my Harvey Pekar/Marvel comics story, and a little superhero-ing production work, FINALLY sending off the Johnny Canuck comic for the printers (out in a couple of days now!).

Since there won’t be any new top lists for at least another week or so, I thought I’d devote a couple of days to some of my many unseen pages…things for projects that were never published, or thing published in small runs, art for private commissions or projects not really comics related, amusing things you’ve probably not seen, and some of them turned out rather nice.

A sampling:

This was done as a commission a few years ago, back when I was in the middle of drawing batman in the “animated version” like this:

 

(A convention sketch of animated Batman done a couple of months ago, in that old style)

I think I was having such a good time NOT drawing in the animated style for that Bat-Mite piece up above, that I overdid it on the “Bolland-isms” in the inking.  I forget who ended up getting that piece, but I still have a xerox of it, so you get to see it.

Next, a commission I did a few weeks ago (but took forever to actually get out to the fellow who asked for it, sorry Christopher

The world famous BREEON, the Green Lantern!

Christopher Matusiak has this wonderful collection of Green Lantern sketches on all green paper, often drawn by the artist who created that particular Green Lantern.  Well, I happened to have created an obscure Green Lantern from an annual or a Quarterly (I don’t recall which), written by Mark Waid, named Breeon, and Christopher asked me to contribute to the collection.  I hadn’t drawn on coloured paper since I was a kid, and I had so much fun I’m going to do lots more.  There’s some blackboard chalk in there as a highlighter…I had some in my pocket from earlier in the day when I’d been teaching my cartooning class, and figured “why not?”.

This is ancient, one of the first things I ever drew and got paid for:

A commission for a local comic store in Toronto, (The Dragon Lady…and they’re still around after all these years, too!)  for their newsletter, highlighting the “Direct Sales” comics that were taking the world by storm in the mid-eighties.  I started working professionally about a year after this piece, I don’t think I’d even thought of Stig yet.

Coming up in the next while:  Unseen pages from a never-published issue of Legion of Superheroes I drew.  Pages from the yet to be published Batman: Brave and Bold cartoon comic I drew a year or so ago and has been on a shelf, unseen production work for the DC direct figures I designed, rejected covers, and more!

Ty the Guy OUT!

Here now, your unseen and pulped comic book moment of zen:

My cover for the infamous Elseworlds Annual. So offensive, it was only released in Ireland, look it up.

 

The Ten Greatest All-Nude Fight Scenes in Comics

The all-nude fight scene has been a staple of literature since Eve asked Adam to bite into the fruit of knowledge and Adam said, “Make me.”

This can't be legal. And it better not be in a museum somewhere.

And why not?  We like nudity, AND we like fighting.

Back in the really old days, when the Youtube was called “actual Roman gladiators”, naked fighting was literally the “bread” in “bread and circuses“.  The circus part involved lions, but that’s another story.  What matters is that a snarling knock-down, drag-out is better when the delicate goodies are in play, and never more so, then when super-powers are involved.

And so, to continue my scholarly series about the prurient world of comic book decadence (following the highly educational “LOIS LANE: BONDAGE QUEEN” and “Comic Book Easter Zombie Parade” posts), and bring to you…

THE TOP TEN NAKED SUPER-HERO FIGHTS IN COMICS.

But before the festival of naughty bits, three quick ground rules:

RULE #1:
No Adult Comics. No taking the piss out of WARRIOR NUN, DANGER GIRL, VAMPIRELLA, or

Russ Heath's forgotten masterpiece.

ANYTHING HOWARD CHAYKIN HAS WRITTEN as that’s low hanging fruit, and I don’t pick, grab, fondle or tug at so easy a target.    Sadly, it means no COWGIRLS AT WAR, but we’re sticking to mainstream super-heroes—and do I mean STICKING!

RULE #2:
Only one nudie shot per customer.  WOLVERINE, for example, can pop it out of his pants as often as he pops them out of his knuckles… if we don’t impose the limit, the whole list becomes about Logan’s dangly-bits.

RULE #3:
The appearance of nudity isn’t good enough.  The character must have actual genitalia.  Sorry Howard the Duck and Silver Surfer.

As sexy as this super-hot cover seems to be, I consider it cheating if there’s no possibility of balls.

And now, without further ado, or further use of the phrase “dangly-bits”…

#10
AVENGERS ILLUMINATI #1

As a millionaire playa, Tony Stark was always willing to slip out of the Armani suit for the hunnies, and as a drunken gutter dweller, he was willing to step out of the Iron Man suit and give it to his pal Rhodey.  The suit, I mean.   Clearly Tony is very willing to drop trou, and that’s why he’s so calm, cool and TEACHING SCHOOL in this nude-fight classic.  With nothing but his “little Iron Man” to help him, and a few well remembered “training sessions” with Steve Rogers, Tony Stark smoothly kicks butt while his own is dancing in the breeze.

This is why they call him "Shell-Head".

IN TONY’S FAVOR:  Skrulls are not human, so it’s like being naked in front of your cat.  The things I do naked in front of my cats would get me arrested if I was doing them in front of say, the neighbors, tied up in my shower–

#9
The Watchmen.  Issue 12

Flee, enemies of democracy! The American Superman can stay clothed for only SO LONG...

The Watchmen is the greatest super-hero comic book of all time so it has to be on all lists that include the words “greatest” and “super-hero”.  Lucky for us, the naked fight scene between Rorschach and Doc Manhattan in Issue 12 is a keeper!  And it follows memorable  naked quantum physics scenes and naked menage a doppelganger scenes that changed my dating ambitions forever.

The socio-political implications of Alan Moore’s narrative and the intricate mechanism of this novel have been discussed endlessly by greater critics than I, so I’ll just leave you with two thoughts:

1)  It’s bad enough being killed by a friend, but killed by one waving his little blue weenie at you is insulting.
2)   Rorschach said was naked without his mask on, so he’s joining Doctor Manhattan’s free spirit–dying with his nose and lips exposed.

No matter what else, this is a dick move. Oh, and I've ruined the ending of the novel for you. Which is a dick move on my part.

#8
HOVERBOY #91
Hoverboy vs. Doc Natural.

With all the tags that say "nude Super-hero" this cover is going to get a lot of web hits.

If ever there was a reason to avoid calling him “The Bucket Headed Super-Hero” this issue is it.  After being hit with “fiber melting herbs” by the hippie super-villain Doc Natural, Hoverboy is forced to fight crime in the nude.  He learns to avoid shame by reading the first part of Genesis over and over, and eventually smacking anyone in the face who looks at him “down there”.

#7
TARZAN VS. TUBLAT the GORILLA

If you’re into the twin aesthetics of decorative baroque, and boy’s pink bums, you can’t do better than Burne Hogarth’s TARZAN  graphic novel, published in 1972 by Watson-Guptill.

I can't explain this, and I won't even try.

Freed of the comics code, Tarzan is naked for the first hundred pages…and just so you’d know where Burne’s bread was buttered, we are shown nothing but Greystokes curiously un-tanned buttocks for those hundred pages– the Jungle Lord’s crown jewels were hidden in shadows, or behind vines or strategically placed gorillas the whole time.  But, oh those glistening backside orbs were in full display–page after page—bulbously leaping from tree to tree in a cascade of male glute flesh rarely seen outside a clergyman’s rectory.

There really is a lot of this, all through the book.

And when Tublat (Tarzan’s gorilla father) starts messing with Kala (Tarzan’s gorilla mother), we’re treated to the second bloodiest naked super-hero fight scene on the list.

Um...could you check out what's happening in panel one?

EXTRA NAKED POINTS:  Everyone in this scene is stripped to the gonzos, INCLUDING TARZAN’S MOM!  I dare you to fight someone while your mom is watching nude.

#6
LEGEND OF AQUAMAN SPECIAL

Bark like a sea lion, boy! I said BARK!

If you didn’t want to see an “in the buff” teen-Aquaman fighting a grown man in rubber pants, then why have you read this far?  Seriously.  Some self examination is in order.

Don't sass me, nude boy. I'll teach you who wears the rubber pants around here!

Okay, I get that Aquaman’s origin story was kinda like “Tarzan of the Fish”, and if his dolphin pals weren’t ashamed of their blow holes, why should he be?  But this scene  goes that extra special mile for its entertainment dollar.  It involves, rubber pants, choking, punching, animal noises and a young lad tied starkers and spread in a chair.  That’s at least three-fifty downtown, but the comic retailed for two dollars, quite a bang for your buck in 1989.  You always wondered why Aquaman has such a devoted following–  it’s not just because he can breathe underwater.

How did THIS scene end up in a DC comic?!?

#5
MARVEL COMICS PRESENTS #77

Pants? I know I brought pants...

I wasn’t kidding about how often Logan goes sans pants. They even have a special term to alert the students at the X-Mansion when Wolverine is “sunnin’ the package”: It’s called “mid-afternoon”.

But of all the nudie Wolverine fights, this is the yardstick against which all others are measured.  And if you’re measuring with a yardstick, you’re already impressing me.

The zenith of Logan’s multi-issue

Graaah! Graah! Snarrlll! Graaahhh!

birthday suit wood romp comes when he fights the equally unclothed and competitively hirsute wolves in MCP: WEAPON X #77, and bathes in their mighty blood when it’s all done.  The most badass moment in comics is suitably bare assed and  has been referenced again and again.

Snarrll....grrrrr.....grrrrr....I swear to GOD I had pants....

#4
Ultimates #9

Big deal, you gotta take a PILL to be called "Giant Man".

Millar and Hitch’s Ultimates run was a leader in the naked fight scene genre, with an average of one naked fight per 3.7 issues.  The Cap/Naked Giant Man fight from #9 is my favorite, simply because it  involves a giant guy waggling the wand six stories above your head.

One of the most important aspects of a man to man fight is the ability to look your opponent in the eye and say belittling things to him.  But when you have to crane your neck just to glimpse your opponent’s eyes behind his BUICK-SIZED REPRODUCTIVE SAUSAGE, it’s a trifle intimidating!

And Cap hands Hank the beat down that he had coming all the same.  THAT’S why you salute the man with the shield.

Hank goes DOWN! Hank goes DOWN! Into the big, phallic tube-y things!

#3
Batman #357.

WTF? This is in a published comic? At least Bruce is saying "NO".

This can’t be a co-incidence.  There’s no way that the editor was  unaware that the first two words in this naked fight scene are “swish” and “Dick..?”–  WHICH WERE THE TITLES OF MY FIRST TWO HOMO-EROTIC HAIKU!!  Someone had to be spying on me.

And the second page of this memorable sequence begins with another unfortunately worded balloon that I’m not going to type up, in case I enjoy it more than I should.  Just read it yourself…out loud if the elderly are present.

This had to be a prank. This was never published...

And it all ends with a spread eagle boy wonder, and naked Bruce looking down on him, again saying “Dick…?”.  Don’t take my word for it.  Follow Bruce’s stare….Go check, I’ll wait.

It was as though the editorial team at DC had decided to give into the fan mail they’d been getting from “that anti-Wertham” crowd, and just let them have one issue to call their own.

I think the story had something to do with mind control, and Hugo Strange, and something like that.  Did anyone read the other eighteen pages in this issue when people were wearing clothes?  My copy won’t open.

#2
ULTIMATE HULK ANNUAL #1

Okay. He's naked, and unashamed. Got it?

This is special in so many ways.  First off, the Ultimate Hulk was a walking naked fight scene from the word go.  That was is raison d’etre, his meaning in life, his chewy center.  He doesn’t care if he defeats the Leader, or The Abomination…he just wants to meet a special someone and settle down, and the nudity was his version of Hulk Sized Foreplay.

This ANNUAL is nothing more than a big, long, extended, full length, and blood engorged naked fight scene that ends in a punch to the cojones that was visible from space.  And the subject

Ohh. Strike one against the Mighty Nards of the Hulk. The "Nulks".

matter of the fight?  Some chick named Zarda gets hired by Captain America to make the Hulk wear pants.  She attacks his Hulklings until he agrees, and then they go to a motel and snuggle like very bad bunnies who are not married to each other, and might not even be considering a formal engagement.   No wonder comics are considered literature nowadays.

And one more 'nad cruncher, in case you're missing the subtlety of the story.

#1
BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #18

This is why we all evolved to have eyes.

When the end comes, and the world is crumbling around me due to nuclear devastation or social upheaval, this is the comic I take with me to the escape shelter.  Full Respect to Fabian Nicieza and Kevin Maguire for making this objet d’art for us to enjoy.

Okay. That's a nice drawing.

The story has something to do with Catwoman stealing something, and running into an all-nude fetish club to escape Batgirl chasing her…and Batgirl follows her in and stuff happens.  Good god, I’m heterosexual, how am I supposed to remember the plot?

You’ll notice how sparse this list has been for naked super-HEROINE fights…up until now.  Oh, sure, She-Hulk and Black Cat do sometimes get all jiggy with their bid’ness, but they don’t seem to be PUNCHING anyone when they do it.  And Danger Girl and Codename:  Knockout don’t count if that’s ALL they do.  But THIS…?   This is naked fighting, folks, not naked prancing.  You want naked prancing, visit your congressman.

Honestly, it just goes on like this for pages and pages...

There are other naked fight scenes in comics.  I seem to remember Magneto fighting for his life in the shower.  And let’s never forget Bruce Banner’s narrow escape from Jim Shooter’s Traveling Shower Rape Stereotype Duo from that Rampaging Hulk in the Eighties…Ah, those memories I can’t seem to purge.

If you’ve got a naked fight scene you’d like to see featured in this column, please drop us a line.   We’re always willing to look at naked people smacking at each other, whether they’re flying through the air or not.

That’s it for today.  A long one, but a good one.  (That’s what she said!)

I’ll see everyone back here tomorrow for some all new BUN TOONS!  A new installment of LAST ROUNDUP ON THE SINISTER SPACECRAFT OF FORBIDDEN LOVE, and MORE!

Ty the Guy

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TY TEMPLETON’S IRONICALLY SELF-AWARE COMIC BOOK BONDAGE PARADE, part 2.

Bondage?  That’s where we are now?

I do six monthly posts about the rise of postmodernism as a result of new educational opportunities created by the second Industrial Revolution, and no one reads them.  I do an eleven day series about our collective struggle for a cultural soul in light of recent media consolidations and the blog gets thirty-five hits over those eleven days… But hogtie Lois Lane to a speeding truck with her thighs held open and 37,804 internet pervs find a way to my homepage.

But I’m no fool.  I understand the needs of the blog consumer, and I will accommodate with the content you heaving philistines so clearly demand.  Here is part two of…TY TEMPLETON’S IRONICALLY SELF-AWARE COMIC BOOK  BONDAGE PARADE.

I can't believe Marvel let me do this cover!

Both in the comments section, and in my email box, I was flooded with an estimated eight requests for Wonder Woman as my next subject.  Unfortunately, it proved nearly impossible to find images of the Amazon Princess in bondage, in either my comic collection or on the internet– even with the safe search off.  This screengrab from the Seventies WONDER WOMAN TV show was all I could find.

Those chains look uncomfortable. No wonder Nazis were considered rude.

morning

You’ll have to excuse me while I catch my breath after that much concentrated sarcasm.  Who here DIDN’T know that the ORIGINAL Princess Diana (Ms. Magazine’s Mascot) was THE poster girl for restraint fetishism for her entire career?  Her creator, Charles Moulton (aka Dr. William Moulton Marston, Phd in psychology from Harvard, and distinguished co-inventor of the lie-detector) was an outspoken bondage enthusiast who insisted in books and interviews that the world would be

noon

a more peaceful place if we all learned to sheepshank our loved ones.  This was before we knew that sort of thing was “weird” and he was still allowed to be photographed for glossy magazines and shop at local stores all through the forties and fifties. And if peace through mutual rope burns wasn’t enough for

night

Mr. and Mrs. America, the good doctor had two openly poly-amorous wives, each of whom bore him a couple of kids, and the whole sordid commune of anti-establishment love lived happily ever after.

Compared to Dr. Moulton,

she may look upset, but she still hasn't shouted her safe word.

Hugh Hefner was a pussy.

So finding images of Wonder Woman in bondage is about as hard as finding a closeted republican at a gay bar.  If you need to see shots of the chained up Amazon, grab your google and work your search engine, kids.  You’ll end up with enough drawings of Diana cattle-roped to a torpedo to wallpaper your sanctum sanctorum.

But in light of the double-mint twins marital arrangements that Dr. Willie had with the wives, this image (below) of two hot ladies RIDING THE MONSTER KANGAROO  does command attention, , but then, who hasn’t drawn two women riding the Monster Kangaroo?

Penis? What four legged penis?

Heck, riding the monster kangaroo is my regular phone-doodle, only I don’t draw the rollicking beast  with quite so phallic a body shape.

So it’s way too easy to go after the Amazon Princess, or the Phantom Lady, or even Robin and Bucky, the boy hostages.  No matter how much fun it is to draw a nicely restrained pale young boy wearing a domino mask, it’s just not “ART LAND” style to blog about the commonplace and mundane.

BATMAN is another story altogether.

I keep a sketch book.  All artists do.  It’s a place to warm up the  hands as we start our work day, like doing scales on a piano.  Sometimes the drawings are of two  headed nuns playing ice hockey, or equally silly images never meant to be shown to the public.  Sometimes I sketch ideas.  The following was never meant to be anything more than an image of how tough Batman was.  He can scare you pissless while still tied to a chair.

You want to see a tough guy? Find him some nails to eat.

This was just a doodle in a sketch book.  But I had an idea.  Could I do an entire issue where Batman is tied in a chair?  Where he doesn’t get out of the trap at all, and just SCARES the bad guys into giving up…?  That struck me as a fun challenge and I asked the editor if I could try it.  I was told “yes” but I had to include Robin and Batgirl in the story, since they were co-stars of the book at the time.  Well, that diluted the idea somewhat, but I was still happy to give it a chance, and I ended up writing one of my favorite little Batman stories for BATMAN ADVENTURES (vol 2) #6, during my more than ten years working on that title.   It’s only five pages, so I reproduce it below…THIS is bondage in comics done RIGHT.

page 1

pg 2

pg 3

pg 4

pg 5

Don’t ask about the Black Mask/Red Hood storyline.  The less said about that, the better.

There, I hope we’ve exhausted bondage for a while, you sicko pervs.  Tomorrow, the return of all new Ty Templeton Funnies for the weekend.  That post will be about coprophilia.

Ty the Guy

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Batman Adventures McDonalds Promo Art…

…now with prices.  Check ’em out.

Batman Happy Meal Box Art Part 3

Responding to constant nagging from the wife (ignoring me wasn’t working), Ty scanned me the rest of the pages for the McDonald’s Happy Meal Box art he did years and years ago. (I’ve actually finally seen a photo of the boxes; hoping to post those soon.)

It’s fun to see some of the old art…especially stuff featuring Catwoman.  Ty used our cats for inspiration: if you spot a Siamese kitty, that was Batman (seriously.  And Ty will swear ’til he’s a very old man that it wasn’t because of Batman, but a cricket-playing friend whose nickname was that).  Near her should be a tiny white kitty, and that was Epiphany Proudheart a/k/a Piffy.

Keiren