The Slashiest Thing Since Kordell Stewart
Oh. My. God.
I mean, I'm pretty solidly in the boring, whitebread middle of the sexual bell curve. Straight, married, kids, etc., with no really unusual diseases or scars obtained in the pursuit of pleasure, no interesting costumes stuffed into hidden closet spaces, and not even an especially noteworthy collection of pron. Sure, between my ears I'm a madcap trangsgender-doxy-defiling powerhouse crazed by pineal extract and ready to practice circular breathing techniques on Thai sex workers until they reach E above high C, but in what is generally known as reality, I'm pretty drab. I don't know handkerchief codes, or understand most of the acronyms in personal ads, and I only realized about two weeks ago that "Jailhouse Rock" actually has a rather suggestive undertone if you think about it for a minute.
But I'm here to tell you, folks: I have seen the face of slash, and it is Bob Haney and Dick Dillin's Superman/Batman: Saga of the Super Sons.
I found this 2007 collection of old World's Finest Comics stories at our local library a few days back, and I had vaguely nostalgic recollections of reading them in my formative years, but I'm now fairly sure I was mistaken; I think I must have been reading some other imaginary story or other, one that involved Superman's son being an incompetent young goofball whose powers were proving a menace when coupled with his immaturity and bad judgment.
DC was big on Imaginary Stories for a while there, simply deciding if a story deserved publication, even though it was in total conflict with established continuity, it ought to be published anyway, though usually with a large "I.S." banner on page 1 to keep the fanboys calm. Thus, we got things like the fantastic tale of how Superman was split into two separate beings, Superman-Blue and Superman-Red, who between them managed to solve the problems of crime, famine, disease, and every other problem on earth, including the most vexing of all: how to nail both Lois Lane and Lana Lang in monogamous relationships. (Still, I'm sure there's some Red/Blue slash out there, possibly involving a swinging pair of LLs as well.)
In a way, the Imaginary Stories were sort of the Ultimate Universe of their day, though they usually didn't form a coherent narrative with other Imaginary Stories. You can also think of them as predecessors of Marvel's What If? or DC's Elseworlds books, but a lot of the time they simply read like exhibition games--showing the crowds what the players can do, but not actually counting in the league standings.
But this particular set of Imaginary Stories was never clearly identified as such; the phrase doesn't appear on any of the covers or in any of the books, which hit the stands between 1972 and 1976 (with a couple of later additions to tie up loose ends and kill off any lingering sense of fun the readers of the earlier stories might have recalled.) We're simply asked, "Did you ever wonder if one day Superman and Batman had sons... what they would be like??" And we learn: they're essentially identical to their fathers except for their lengthy sideburns, their gullibility, and their "hip" patois, which reads like Rick Jones trying to describe a sketch from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Check out some of Bruce Jr.'s dialogue:
"Alfred! Douse that freaky light!"
"Swinging, Dad! Before I knew it, rosy-fingered dawn was gilding Gotham's skyline!"
""Real heavy Women's Lib stuff! But, baby, without men how will you have lovers... husbands... families?"
"Yeah, I can't believe they're our fathers--they're both so young and right on--!"
"Clark kiddo! Am I ever glad to see you, spiritual brother!"
It's even worse when Haney writes dialogue for other young characters, like the motorcycle gang that invades Clark Jr.'s space in the first story: "Baby, have fear! Satan's Sockers are here! And we're gonna really sock it to 'ya!"
The highlight of these dozen or so tales is of course "World Without Men," which is a progenitor of Y: The Last Man in the same sense that Hogan's Heroes is a progenitor of Schindler's List. The Sons ride into a town where every job, from blacksmith (in 1972?) to mayor is handled by a woman--naturally a trim, full-chested supermodel, including the blacksmith--and we're given the opportunity to watch Bruce Jr. try to charm them, which doesn't go so well, given that the town is under the strict control of "Sister Sybil," who forbids even a male-to-female touch. Let's just say that for a guy who grew up reading Ms. Magazine, this is an artifact of extraordinary doofusness.
But the slash! My god, it starts when the Sons meet on page 11 and it Never. Lets. Up. EVERY panel is fraught with things... often multiple things... that assault even the least slash-sensitive reader (that would be me) with hints that Bruce and Clark Are Having Gay Sex.
And it's not just the sideburns, though that probably contributes. It's not even that they're riding around on a single motorcycle It's word balloons like... oh, hell, I'll just quote them out of context again. It's funnier that way:
"I came as soon as I could! Guess we both had the same need!"
"Let's hit the cobbles and rap!"
"I'll never be more than half the man my dad is!"
"This is real fun, competing in a wild bronc-riding event!"
"Old Batmen don't retire... they just flit away!"
"All because you wanted to play 'trains'!"
"Hi, Brucie! How's the lover? What you won't go through for a hamburger!"
"Thanks for letting me handle the throttle!"
"We've been backing up the expedition secretly since the beginning!"
"Touch you? I ought to slap some sense into your pretty faces!"
"I'm going down... but so are they!"
"Sorry, chum, I guess my part got away from me!
Or this wonderful exchange between several suspicious townsfolk:
"It's horrible--them living right among us!"
"But they look and act like us!"
"Yeah, that's what's so scary."
I haven't decided yet if this is just astonishingly campy fun, or if Bob Haney was some kind of mad genius, setting up and actually publishing what was apparently an obviously gay super-hero partnership some twenty years before Apollo and the Midnighter came out of the closet. Either way, I can only assume that if I'm seeing this glowing in giant neon-pink letters on every page, an actual gay person's head might explode from reading it.
So. Check it out. But my god, do so at your own risk.
I mean, I'm pretty solidly in the boring, whitebread middle of the sexual bell curve. Straight, married, kids, etc., with no really unusual diseases or scars obtained in the pursuit of pleasure, no interesting costumes stuffed into hidden closet spaces, and not even an especially noteworthy collection of pron. Sure, between my ears I'm a madcap trangsgender-doxy-defiling powerhouse crazed by pineal extract and ready to practice circular breathing techniques on Thai sex workers until they reach E above high C, but in what is generally known as reality, I'm pretty drab. I don't know handkerchief codes, or understand most of the acronyms in personal ads, and I only realized about two weeks ago that "Jailhouse Rock" actually has a rather suggestive undertone if you think about it for a minute.
But I'm here to tell you, folks: I have seen the face of slash, and it is Bob Haney and Dick Dillin's Superman/Batman: Saga of the Super Sons.
I found this 2007 collection of old World's Finest Comics stories at our local library a few days back, and I had vaguely nostalgic recollections of reading them in my formative years, but I'm now fairly sure I was mistaken; I think I must have been reading some other imaginary story or other, one that involved Superman's son being an incompetent young goofball whose powers were proving a menace when coupled with his immaturity and bad judgment.
DC was big on Imaginary Stories for a while there, simply deciding if a story deserved publication, even though it was in total conflict with established continuity, it ought to be published anyway, though usually with a large "I.S." banner on page 1 to keep the fanboys calm. Thus, we got things like the fantastic tale of how Superman was split into two separate beings, Superman-Blue and Superman-Red, who between them managed to solve the problems of crime, famine, disease, and every other problem on earth, including the most vexing of all: how to nail both Lois Lane and Lana Lang in monogamous relationships. (Still, I'm sure there's some Red/Blue slash out there, possibly involving a swinging pair of LLs as well.)
In a way, the Imaginary Stories were sort of the Ultimate Universe of their day, though they usually didn't form a coherent narrative with other Imaginary Stories. You can also think of them as predecessors of Marvel's What If? or DC's Elseworlds books, but a lot of the time they simply read like exhibition games--showing the crowds what the players can do, but not actually counting in the league standings.
But this particular set of Imaginary Stories was never clearly identified as such; the phrase doesn't appear on any of the covers or in any of the books, which hit the stands between 1972 and 1976 (with a couple of later additions to tie up loose ends and kill off any lingering sense of fun the readers of the earlier stories might have recalled.) We're simply asked, "Did you ever wonder if one day Superman and Batman had sons... what they would be like??" And we learn: they're essentially identical to their fathers except for their lengthy sideburns, their gullibility, and their "hip" patois, which reads like Rick Jones trying to describe a sketch from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Check out some of Bruce Jr.'s dialogue:
"Alfred! Douse that freaky light!"
"Swinging, Dad! Before I knew it, rosy-fingered dawn was gilding Gotham's skyline!"
""Real heavy Women's Lib stuff! But, baby, without men how will you have lovers... husbands... families?"
"Yeah, I can't believe they're our fathers--they're both so young and right on--!"
"Clark kiddo! Am I ever glad to see you, spiritual brother!"
It's even worse when Haney writes dialogue for other young characters, like the motorcycle gang that invades Clark Jr.'s space in the first story: "Baby, have fear! Satan's Sockers are here! And we're gonna really sock it to 'ya!"
The highlight of these dozen or so tales is of course "World Without Men," which is a progenitor of Y: The Last Man in the same sense that Hogan's Heroes is a progenitor of Schindler's List. The Sons ride into a town where every job, from blacksmith (in 1972?) to mayor is handled by a woman--naturally a trim, full-chested supermodel, including the blacksmith--and we're given the opportunity to watch Bruce Jr. try to charm them, which doesn't go so well, given that the town is under the strict control of "Sister Sybil," who forbids even a male-to-female touch. Let's just say that for a guy who grew up reading Ms. Magazine, this is an artifact of extraordinary doofusness.
But the slash! My god, it starts when the Sons meet on page 11 and it Never. Lets. Up. EVERY panel is fraught with things... often multiple things... that assault even the least slash-sensitive reader (that would be me) with hints that Bruce and Clark Are Having Gay Sex.
And it's not just the sideburns, though that probably contributes. It's not even that they're riding around on a single motorcycle It's word balloons like... oh, hell, I'll just quote them out of context again. It's funnier that way:
"I came as soon as I could! Guess we both had the same need!"
"Let's hit the cobbles and rap!"
"I'll never be more than half the man my dad is!"
"This is real fun, competing in a wild bronc-riding event!"
"Old Batmen don't retire... they just flit away!"
"All because you wanted to play 'trains'!"
"Hi, Brucie! How's the lover? What you won't go through for a hamburger!"
"Thanks for letting me handle the throttle!"
"We've been backing up the expedition secretly since the beginning!"
"Touch you? I ought to slap some sense into your pretty faces!"
"I'm going down... but so are they!"
"Sorry, chum, I guess my part got away from me!
Or this wonderful exchange between several suspicious townsfolk:
"It's horrible--them living right among us!"
"But they look and act like us!"
"Yeah, that's what's so scary."
I haven't decided yet if this is just astonishingly campy fun, or if Bob Haney was some kind of mad genius, setting up and actually publishing what was apparently an obviously gay super-hero partnership some twenty years before Apollo and the Midnighter came out of the closet. Either way, I can only assume that if I'm seeing this glowing in giant neon-pink letters on every page, an actual gay person's head might explode from reading it.
So. Check it out. But my god, do so at your own risk.