30 day music meme #29

[beer_good_foamy]

29. A song you remember from your childhood
Electric Banana Band - Banankontakt av tredje graden (Banana Encounters of the Third Kind)

Watch on YouTube

Behold, the magic of early-80s Swedish children's TV. Two comedians being Tarzan and Cheetah's nerdy cousins, fronting a band made up of the cream of Swedish session musicians, doing a funk number about bananas from outer space conquering Earth "to end the misery". Still waiting, guys...
"It's a bird!"
"No, it's a plane."
"NO, IT'S A SUPER BANANA!"

Comments

A (Very) Brief History of Batman

[cjlasky7]

Bats started out in 1939 as a pulp noir detective, modeled after The Shadow. But as we hit the late 40s, the publishers thought the comic should be more kid friendly, so they brought in Robin and toned down the darker aspects.

The 1950s were really weird, as Batman veered into outright science fiction, with Bats visiting alien worlds, undergoing strange transformations and whatnot.

The 1960s brought the TV show and the attendant silliness. But when the series went off the air, the comics took a radical swerve back to the beginning in the 1970s. The Denny O'Neal/Neal Adams version took it back to its pulp roots (with a little Doc Savage thrown in). The more serious tone escalated in the 80s with Frank Miller's Dark Night (and "grimdark" was added to the dictionary).

These days, there's room for all kinds of Batman. You have the Lego movies, the Nolan movies, the Animated Series (my favorite!), and whatever Snyder is doing, and they all co-exist. In the comics, Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle (Catwoman) went on a double date with Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Besides providing some serious character work for these four iconic characters, it was just a lot of fun. And yes, Batman can be fun.

Re: A (Very) Brief History of Batman

[beer_good_foamy]

It's amazing how flexible he is, isn't it? I grew up on 80s Batman* comic books, pre-Frank Miller, when he was sort of pseudo-dark but still Superman's best friend and all that... so in the early 90s when we finally got cable TV I got hit with Burton's Batman, The Dark Knight Returns and the 60s TV series all at once. It was... weird.

* Actually he was called Läderlappen, an archaic word for "the bat", and I'm still bitter that they dropped that and started calling him "Batman" when Burton's movie came out.

Re: A (Very) Brief History of Batman

[cjlasky7]

I always loved the "World's Finest" friendship between Batman and Superman.

One of the best bits in the "double date" comic was Bruce and Clark both confiding in their SOs that the other guy is the better man and he'll never live up to that example. (That brought a tear to this cynical eye.)