Rare Batman Preview Strips

 

In the 1940s, these strips ran for a week in advance of new newspapers picking up the BATMAN daily strip with stories already in progress. 

R.I.P. Annette Heinz (1953-2024)

ANNETTE HEINZ (1953-2024) You may not know the name but one of the last great exotic dancers from Newport, KY has passed. Annette Saylor aka Annette Heinz, died today at a nursing facility in Campbell County after taking ill very suddenly little more than a month ago. She was 71.

Annette started out working for Hustler’s Larry Flynt in 1970 at his club in Cincinnati. Then she switched to Newport. Her acts including everything from fire eating to snake charming. (Her main boa constrictor was named Mr. Cooper.) Over time she worked her way up to the big time, working at New York’s famed Melody Burlesk for a decade.

It was there where she was spotted by adult film director Gerard Damiano, of Deep Throat fame, which led to several years in adult movies during what is now considered the Golden Age of Adult Entertainment. In the 1983 XXX political comedy/drama Public Affairs, her character is integral to bringing down a narcissistic, sexist candidate who is consistently lying to everyone about everything.

In time, though, she returned to the Midwest, where she graduated Cincinnati State College with honors in 1995 with a culinary arts degree. This eventually got her a position as chef on one of the casino boats in Indiana for a number of years.

My wife and I had known Annette only since 2016. She had much the same issues with weather that I have with my PTSD and would often alert me to weather warnings. She would also offer me recipes and cooking tips.

With her fascinating background, I had tried to talk her into letting me help write an autobiography. As her friend Jeanne Silver told me, “She always thought there’d be more time.”

We got to visit her in person a couple of times over the past few weeks, the only times we ever actually met her in person. We aren’t even sure she recognized us but she seemed to appreciate that we were there.

R.I.P. Annette Heinz, one of the nicest, sweetest people I ever knew.

Walter Johnson, Comic Book Artist

 

Fibber McGee and Molly's 20th Anniversary

For four decades now, FIBBER McGEE AND MOLLY has been one of my very favorite radio series. You'll have to embiggen these pages and maybe still zoom in a bit but here's a great five-page tribute to the long-running series and its stars on the occasion of its 20th anniversary on NBC in 1952. Even the advertisers got in o  it!

 

Booksteve Reviews--Batman-The Caped Crusader

 

I quite like the new BATMAN-CAPED CRUSADER animated series on Prime. Although visually and in its tone the most obvious successor yet to the classic ‘90s BATMAN-THE ANIMATED SERIES, this new show is at heart quite different. 

 

Produced by Bruce Timm of the original series along with J.J. Abrams (the STAR TREK reboots) and ace comic book writer Ed Brubaker it is, in a way, a serial, with all ten episodes essentially connecting into one larger story arc of Batman’s early days in Gotham.

 

Besides Bruce Wayne/Batman, there are quite a number of continuing characters throughout including Police Commissioner Gordon and his public defender daughter Barbie, Detective Renee Montoya, corrupt cops Bullock and Flass, Boss Rupert Thorne, D.A. Harvey Dent, and Dr. Harleen Quinzel. Oh, and Pennyworth, the butler.

 

Which brings me to the one thing I really don’t care much for in this series and that’s, as odd as this sounds, Batman—Bruce Wayne. As either Batman or Bruce, he’s simply not a likable character. For one thing, even though he knows all his secrets, poor Alfred here is considered, even in private, as just an employee of Bruce’s. Thus, even after all the years he raised him, he is still called “Pennyworth.”

 

That said, Hamish Linklater is surprisingly good in the dual lead role, seemingly channeling the late Kevin Conroy without in any way doing an impersonation of him. Most of the other performers, all top notch, are veteran voice actors, with one exception being former Wednesday Adams Christina Ricci as Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman. Wayne associate Lucius Fox is voiced by Bumper Robinson, a name I remembered from the original 1987 TV movie of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, where he played the Ebony White role (although called Eubie) opposite Sam (Flash Gordon) Jones as Denny Colt. 

 

There are a number of not quite familiar characters throughout the series including Julie Madison (Bruce’s fiancée in the 1930s Batman stories, freelance news photographer Eel O’Brien (not Plastic Man), Lt. Corrigan (not the Spectre), and Dick, Jason, and Stephanie Brown, not who you think they are, either. No, except for Pennyworth (Jeez) Batman’s on his own here in a Gotham City that may or may not exist in the 1940s. It’s just as possible, however, that we are in an alternate, cell phone-free version of 2024 with cool vintage cars. 

 

The latter would explain why there are so many women and people of color in prominent positions they simply would not have had anywhere in the U.S. eight decades ago. Commissioner Gordon and his daughter, for instance, are black. Dr. Quinzel appears to be Asian.

 

We meet a very different Penguin as well as very traditional versions of Catwoman and Two-Face. Kudos to Timm and all for having the restraint not to throw yet another version of The Joker in. Well, not in this season, anyway. 

 

There are also a number of Easter Eggs such as Pennyworth reading a book called Alias the Gray Ghost, the title of the original series episode that guest-starred Adam West. Harvey Dent who (not really a spoiler) becomes Two-Face is a major character all through the season, voiced by Diedrich Bader. Bader himself was Batman in the excellent BATMAN: THE BRAVE & THE BOLD from 2008. That series also featured Tom Kenny, who plays Eel O’Brien here, as Plastic Man!

 

The animation on BATMAN-CAPED CRUSADER itself is near-flawless, with much of the art deco style carrying over from the ‘90s. The writing is adult without hitting you over the head with that fact and the overarching story of Batman’s journey to becoming Gotham’s protector is riveting. I just wish either Batman or Bruce could have had me more on their side. 

 

Booksteve recommends…but wishes he could recommend it more!