OK, boys and girls… confession time. I am very much out of touch these days when it comes to comics. Sure sure sure… I know enough to check on-line every so often to see if the next issue of Tom Strong, Astro City, Finder or Planetary is out yet, but I’m definitely not up on all the latest. If today’s comics are American Idol, I’m over on C-Span 2 watching some author speak about his latest book on the Civil War.

That’s why I’ve been genuinely surprised by the events taking place at DC. (For the full effect of that last sentence, picture that groovy new logo they have and make a little “swooshy” sound either before or after if you’re reading aloud to yourself… again.) To wit: the strange place it’s becoming as a result of Infinite Crisis. Worlds live, worlds… well, live… and clearly nothing will be the same.

And by that, I mean that everything will be the same. Is everything old destined to become new again?

Call me cynical—and after thirty some years of reading comics, I think I’m a little bit entitled to be cynical—but I’d say the answer is a resounding yes. And I couldn’t be happier about it! Is this because I am a die hard fan of the DC Implosion? Because I miss identifying heroes strictly on the basis of their color schemes? Because I long for a Gene Colan run on JLA?

Oh, friends… it’s all those things and more. You see, all those things can mean more bad comics! And bad comics are the only thing that keeps me returning to you in this hallowed forum. They are laughable! They are brightly colored and poorly conceived! They are so freakin’ easy to make fun of. I like a challenge as much as the next guy, but… aw, scratch that. I actually hate a challenge.

Let’s see what we might very well be in store for if my predictions about DC’s new direction turn out to be true. A look forward via a look back, if you will. See… I’m already throwing out poetic gems!

If we’re all of us lucky, we might see DC return to the greatness of comics like the immortal classic DC Comics Presents #35, starring Superman and Man-Bat. And no…that is not a typo. Man-Bat was… er, how can I put this… a “man-bat.” Kirk Langstrom created a serum to blah blah blah blah. That’s not the important part. The important part is… he teamed up with Superman to fight The Atomic Skull, a villain who had the second worst villain costume of all time. I say second worst, since the worst one has to be a feminized version of his own, the outfit worn by his girlfriend, Felicia.

I should now apologize to the word “outfit,” and its family and friends for associating it with this monstrosity of fashion that can only be described as carnival sideshow barker meets lemon yellow thermal underwear meets the flag of Brazil meets Cher’s garage sale. Sorry, outfit. Sorry.

In fact, the costumes worn by the tasteless twins are really the most interesting thing about this story—in which Skull steals a device out of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. It seems that Skully is smart and resourceful enough to create a huge variety of skull-themed weapons and vehicles, take over an entire Skull Syndicate (twice destroyed by Superman), discover the super-secret location of the Fortress of Solitude and apparently whip up a stunning (in the “stun an ox” sense of the word) outfit (sorry again) for Felicia, but he couldn’t invent a machine like this particular machine. I guess that’s the same logic that has a guy with a skull for a face wearing a mask to apparently conceal his identity.

So it turns out that the device is something that Man-Bat needs too, and HE was trying to steal something just like it from S.T.A.R. Labs. I guess when a semi-heroic man-bat thingie steals something, it’s quite alright. Maybe the powers that be were just more put off by the Atomic Skull’s outfit (again, my apologies) than by Man-Bat’s seven-and-a-half foot wingspan. Cops—honestly!

Have I gone too far in this article to say that the plot is the least interesting part of this comic? I have? OK, well… um… the device at Superman’s hideout was some kind of alien mutagenic machine that Man-Bat needs to fix his daughter’s mutant bat-hearing. The Atomic Skull, listening in via his amazing illegal wiretap, figures out what this device is and realizes it would be just the thing for him and Felicia. So blah blah blah…they steal it and yadda yadda yadda…Supes and Batty steal it back and bleep blap bloop…it turns out that Felicia is actually a panther. You heard me: she was a panther the Skull had—I don’t think ‘evolved’ is quite the right word—transformed into a voluptuous woman in a green-and-yellow burlesque stripper’s outfit (mea culpa).

In the end Felicia turns back into a panther, the Atomic Skull falls to his apparent death, and Langstrom’s kid sleeps soundly after her mutant bat-hearing—brought on by her parents’ habit of popping pills that turned them into bat-people—was cured. I guess Child Protective Services thing was an Earth-2 thing at that point. Again… all beside the point.

Now on to that point I keep promising to get to. This comic may very well be a portent of the wonders we’re in store for, post-Infinite Crisis. It’s got old-school villains with colorful costumes and wicked weapons, a team-up where both characters get to do some good stuff with their powers, a done-in-one happy ending with the possibility that the big bad might still return to menace our heroes later—all those things that made this obviously crappy comic seem very very exciting when I was just a mere boy of 12.

And lets admit it… what Geoff Johns and company (and Geoff, sweetie, you’re looking amazing as usual. Still married to that nice gal? That’s too bad… for me.) really want to do is revive the feeling—and the resultant sales—that comics had in those halcyon days of the early 1980s. A glossy in-house ad right in the middle of the book illustrates what was going on: these were the days of “Dial H for Hero” in Adventure Comics, All-Star Squadron, “Dollar Comics” starring a huge variety of characters, and probably the epitome of comics of those days, Wolfman and Perez’s The New Teen Titans. I’d say “Excelsior!” but it seems somehow inappropriate.

Those were the days of comics storytelling that captured the imagination of Johns’ (and my) generation. They were looking back on the Silver and even Golden Age of comics and reviving old characters and concepts to a new audience who lapped them up like hungry puppies. Hungry puppies with allowance money to burn on comics, Welch’s Grape Soda and albums by K-Tel (if my experience is any indication).

In the aforementioned glossy ad, the company even calls itself “The New DC,” in a surprising mirror of the newness of today’s DC, complete with its swishy new logo. Why, DC Comics Presents #35 even has an installment of the long-running backup feature “What Ever Happened To…” starring Rex the Wonder Dog…and that sleuthing simian Bobo, The Detective Chimp! And if you don’t know how that fact ties into Infinite Crisis, you obviously haven’t read Day of Vengeance. And, thank GOD you haven’t. It sucked!

DCP #35 is one of those books that, at first glance, seems to be nothing more than a pretty wretched comic with one amazingly ugly outfit and one unbeLIEvably ugly outfit (I’ll make all this up to you someday, outfit). On closer inspection that no one other than me would be willing to make, however, its true nature is revealed: this comic isn’t so much a look into our past, as it is a look into our possible comics future.

But hey, other pop media are doing the same thing—recycling old ideas to create some kind of instant nostalgia. And now at least you and I won’t be caught unawares. Want to meet this weekend to shop for a yellow-and-green jumpsuit and cloak combo? I need something to wear to the premiere of “Welcome Back, Kotter.”

Choosing to spend most of his adolescence hiding out from roving gangs of pickup touch-football teams, native West Virginian Kyle Minor now resides in San Francisco, where he chooses to spend most of his adult life hiding out from roving gangs of politically active hipsters.

All images and characters TM and © 1981 DC Comics, Inc. Review © 2006 Kyle Minor.

Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).