Mountain of Judgment

Can you feel it? Can you feel your ass being kicked? Kicked savagely, without mercy? Can you feel yourself being forced by a lunatic into a fight to the death with a friend? Can you feel a spiked gauntlet crushing your jaw into splinters as it rips the skin clean off your face? Can you believe how many fricking logos are on this cover?

Brave & the Bold #118 was my introduction to a lot of things: the comic book version of Batman (looking nothing like he did on TV, I might add), Wildcat, Jim Aparo (to whom I've already written a valentine) and Bob Haney.

Oh, Bob Haney. Did I realize in 1975 how different, how special, okay, how utterly retarded this man's comics were? If "utterly retarded" is a synonym for "awesome" then yes, yes I did. I was 4 years old. And Aparo/Haney was the gold standard.

Haney's stories weren't merely stupid, or simply nonsensical. They were fucked-up fever dreams of the highest order. Intra-title continuity and character consistency didn't even make past the cover of a Haney comic. And internal plot consistency didn't fare much better. Batman snapping, and running off the kill the Joker after one crime too many. Batman sauntering down the street in broad daylight rapping about how much he "digs this groovy day!" Native American terrorists trying to sabotage a bicentennial train holding the Declaration of Independence. Batman being rescued from a well by Hitler (or maybe Satan...or maybe they're the same thing!!! Aaaiiiiieeeee!!!) Batman being sent through time by a recent issue of Brave & the Bold. I could go on about what "happens" in B&B #118: poison, a race against the clock to find a weird little dog with the antidote in its bloodstream, an ending that obliviously, egregiously contradicts the Joker's origin as the Red Hood, but pretty much the central awesomeness is right there in that cover, and the idea of Batman and Wildcat (separated by different earths in different "vibrational dimensions" in every other comic but never in Haney's) whaling the motherhumping shit out of each other as the Joker looks on in a state of downright sexual ecstacy. The only better fight I can think of is in John Carpenter's They Live, when Roddy Piper and his friend spend 15 minutes trying to kill each other with 2x4's because the other guy won't put on Rowdy Roddy's glasses. Worthy of Haney himself, that scene.

Thirty years have gone by, but Haney is no less wonderful to me, despite (or perhaps because of) my eventual awareness of his bizarreness. Every time I read a new Haney comic from that era (and thank goodness, I still have about a dozen 1970s B&B's to get) I starting yelling to my wife "This is the dumbest comic ever! This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen!" she asks if this is meant as criticism. Of course not. Many--hell, most comics are better, but no comics make me happier.