[jimmm kelly]

Oh yeah, just in case it wasn't clear in my previous post--Moldoff did that Catwoman daily. In the story she has a new costume. And this costume shows up--kind of--when Moldoff draws her again in DETECTIVE 364, where it's blue (the original comic strip version was in black and white, of course). When Catwoman returns full time in BATMAN 197, another version of this costume is coloured green--which as I say makes her look like a fish. And BATMAN 197, as I stated before, has a lot of swipes--one of those swipes is from Moldoff's Catwoman in that daily strip. Really, whoever did the artwork for that issue was shameless.

[profh0011]

Thanks.  It's a little frustrating because for the last 9-10 years, I've been thinking it was Joe Giella's work.  Ah well.  Good thing I don't mind going back to my blog pages and making additions / changes (which I do all the time).

[profh0011]

Jimmm Kelly:
"I love the bits where she's in jail wearing prison stripes but in stiletto heels. Makes me think of that Gwen Stefani video."

Not to mention they let her keep her mask.

The continuity of the first 2 weeks has always been frustrating to me.  This is because, and this is painfully obvious-- MY newspaper, at least, clearly printed AT LEAST one of the strips out of order.  You saw the Batmobile driving at night, and they pass a truck going in the other direction-- and mention that it's heading toward the prison.

However, the NEXT 2 strips both have Batman & Robin visiting the prison!

Despite this obvious snafu, I pasted the strips down in my scrap book (way back when) in the order they appeared in the paper.  This is easy enough to fix at the blog (I did a similar thing with SPACE CONQUERORS-- twice!).

However, there's also a strip where Bruce & Dick are at home, discussing something Catwoman said at the bank.  Initially, this looks like it happened shortly after the bank job, but I found myself wondering if it was supposed to happen AFTER they visit the prison.  However, I kept looking over the strips, and came to the conclusion that they went home after the bank job, then visited the prison the FOLLOWING night (if not later).  Because, otherwise, it would mean Catwoman was sprung from prison the SAME night she was captured by the cops.  That's just too much for one evening, especially since it had to take SOME time to have her thrown in the slammer, and outfitted with stripes.

I'm also wondering if I have a day missing in the first week- or if the story may have started on Tuesday.  Is it possible there was a "teaser" or "promo" strip on the 1st Monday?  The Saturday strips tend to mention "be back Monday". 

For us, there WERE no Sunday strips-- there WAS no Sunday COURIER-POST.  Instead, we got BOTH the PHILDELAPHIA BULLETIN, and PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER-- just for the color comics sections.  And we never got either as a daily paper, until many years later, when the COURIER-POST raised their price.  I'm not kidding.  The BULLETIN always had better comics of the two, until they went out of business in the early 80's. 

I think there's another missing day a couple weeks later, but that's on July 4, and I'm pretty sure they didn't publish any papers that day.

[jimmm kelly]

Maybe I'll have to make a trip to the UBC library and look at the microfilm again. If they still have it. And when I start looking at those newspapers, it's like going down the rabbit hole. According to my memory, our newspaper didn't start carrying the BATMAN strip when it originally started--I think they were a month behind, but carried the first strips and then skipped ahead to be in sync with the rest of Noth America. Anyway, I believe the Catwoman story was the second or third continuity in the daily strip. I remember that Moldoff was doing a continuity in the Sundays, involving this Napoleon villain and his female sidekick--and maybe a Penguin continuity came before that one. But I know the Napoleon story was the last Moldoff Sunday, because Infantino took over at that point so you had this odd change in the art, where Infantino's Naopoleon was very different from the cartoony Moldoff Napoleon.

This is all according to memory--so I reserve the right to be wrong on some points.

[jimmm kelly]

Actually looking at your blog site, Prof, I see that you list the Catwoman story as the first story. And you're right, I'm sure. I think I may have just assumed it was second, because I assumed there had been a continuity before it that our paper didn't publish. Also the Sundays and the dailies were completely independent, until some time in the Joe Giella run (maybe on the Poison Ivy story) when both the Sundays and the dailies carried the same story.

[jimmm kelly]

Here's the info from BATMAN: THE SUNDAY CLASSICS--The Sundays began on May 29 '66; the dailies began on May 30 '66. Moldoff pencilled and inked Sundays until August 14 '66; dailies until August 6 '66. Infantino pencilled Sundays from September 4 '66 to October 16 '66. Joe Giella pencilled and inked Sundays from ???August 21 '66??? until March 10 '68; dailies from August 8 '66 to March 17 '68.

The SUNDAY CLASSICS date for when Giella began the Sundays doesn't quite jibe with the dates they give for Infantino. I think what they mean is Giella's Sunday pencils and inks started on August 21, then he went to just inking Infantino on September 4, before going back to pencilling as well as inking Sundays on October 23. I think this would mean that the Napoleon story was in fact pencilled by three different artists--Moldoff, Giella, and Infantino at the very end transitioning to a new story.

[profh0011]

Another odd thing is that on most of the strips I have, there's no dates printed.  But on some of them, I've scribbled dates with a ball-point pen (in the margin above the art).  Most of the strips in general seem to have been cut up and pasted down IN THE NEWSPAPERS, before I did my own cut and pasting, because you can see where the edges of the art don't quite match the drawn borders. The impression I get is someone was trying to CRAM as many comics into the newspaper pages as possible.

As part of my exhaustive clean-ups, I've been "fixing" (replacing") the outside panel borders. It's amazing how MUCH better this makes them all look!

The 5th strip I have (which I have "No.5" scribbled on), I can just barely make out the top of a printed date, "6/4", which would have been Saturday, and that's the one that says "Be back on Monday!"  So either I'm missing a strip in the middle of the week, or, it started on Tuesday.  I was discussing this with my best friend on the phone last night, and it occured to me... MONDAY would, quite probably, have been MEMORIAL DAY.  There may not have been ANY newspapers that day!  So if there was a Sunday strip that week (and again, Philadelphia NEVER saw them), it would have been 6-29-66, but, the daily would have started on 6-31-66, because there WAS no 6-30-66.

I haven't looked at the rest of the strips too close, but a quick count told me there were 34 strips in the 1st story.  I wondered WHY there were 2 missing, but before I even thought about Memorial Day, I realized there would NOT be one on 7-4-66 (INDEPENDANCE DAY).  So I probably do have the entire 1st story.




We did get the 2nd story (The Penguin) and the 3rd story (The Joker), although I remember distinctly being frustrated that-- FOR WHATEVER THE HELL REASON-- we somehow missed a few days worth of newspaper during The Joker story.  Also, I suspect a few of those strips we did get were also run in the wrong order. I cut & collected the 2nd & 3rd story., but never put them in a scrapbook.  I have a VERY STRONG, CLEAR memory of seeing the collected strips in a stack, all together, in a small box-- no more than, say, 15 years ago.  But I have not been able to locate them since.  DAMN.

I'm not completely sure, but I have a strong suspicion that the COURIER POST dropped BATMAN after the 3rd story.  Although, when I think back on their often-wretched track record when it came to continuity strips, there's every chance they dropped it IN THE MIDDLE of the 3rd story.  They always seemed to do that-- cut you off in the middle of a story and leave you hanging.  Many times they would do this and readers would write in to complain, and sometimes, they would reinstate the strip, usually at the beginning of the next story.  But they would ALMOST NEVER print the "missing" strips. I do seem to recall one instance where they did, but that stood out in my mind because it only happened ONCE.  (Can't recall which series they did it with.  It must have been unusually popular.)

I now have the impression that the comics editor must have hated him job, and his readers, and was deliberately "playing" with his readers to see if he'd get a reaction or not. A lot of people in the world are petty little tyrants, who push people around BECAUSE THEY CAN.  It makes them feel less "small".  (When, to my mind, that sort of behavior only makes them "smaller".)


The ONE exception to the local papers pulling a popular strip I can recall happened in the 80's.  The INQUIRER (I think) had a poll to see which comics were the most popular, and least popular.  They announced, in advance, that the least-popular strip(s) would be dropped.  SPIDER-MAN "won".  At the time, Larry Lieber was doing full art.  My Dad, who normally never noticed the art, had actually been complaining that MJ looked "ugly".  I remember digging out an issue of the comic with John Romita art to show him "Now this is what she's SUPPOSED to look like." 

Dad was also a fan of Stan Drake's art on JULIET JONES.  I remember what a laugh I got when I informed him that Drake had taken over BLONDIE.  Drake was SO GOOD at drawing things with absolute precision, that he had perfectly imitated the previous artist's style. Apart from hairstyles & fashions, and the occasional high-angle camera shot on a Sunday strip, you COULDN'T TELL it was Drake!  I'm sure he threw those things in just to let his fans know, yeah, it's him.

I read they eventually got Joe Sinnott to ink Lieber on SPIDER-MAN, and the two are still doing it to this day.  But we never saw any of those...  The last I heard, Stan Lee had threatened his brother's only source of income if Larry didn't testify in Stan's behalf at the court case involving Jack Kirby.  (NICE-- GUY.)

[profh0011]

Okay, I've gone back and done some additional clean-up to the 1st strip.  So, the 1st week is up!  I'll probably wait to post this around elsewhere until I get the entire page done.  I figure each blog page should have about 2 weeks' worth of strips (normally 12 images).

http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/2013/06/batman-1966.html

[jimmm kelly]

These are great. I look forward to seeing the rest.

[profh0011]

I just fixed a 47-year-old problem.  The strip dated 6/6 was originally run on 6/7.  The 6/7 strip was run on 6/8.  The 6/8 strip was the one run on 6/6.  I'm posting these in the correct order.  It's a small thing, but why perpetuate mistakes?

The last 2 Julie Newmar Catwoman stories on TV were originally run out of sequence, too.  I syndication, they CONTINUE to be run out of sequence.  Figures, doesn't it?  One of the times the TV series actually had "continuity", and ABC screwed it over.  OY!  (When I was taping the show, it was on while I was on the road, on the way home from work.  So I had to "copy-edit" every single episode to get rid of the commercials.  Naturally, I made sure the edited tapes were in the CORRECT order.)

[jimmm kelly]

It's great to be able to see clean copies of these strips.

I do have some of my photocopies saved to my old photobucket, but I've pretty much decided to stop using it. They changed the functions on it, so now it's pretty useless. Also, everytime I put up a link to one of the pics, I'm essentially allowing everyone access to my whole album of pics. Its not so much that there's anything in there I don't want the public to see--it's more the principle of the thing. When I link to a pic, I want it to be for that specific purpose, not for seeing a lot of pics that aren't related.

[narfstar]

I enjoyed seeing the first six strips thanks Henry

[Drahken]

The batman '66 comic is decent so far. My major issue with it though has to do with the hype. They say that this is some new thing, taking advantage of digital comics to present comics in a "new" way that print comics just can't. The problem? MARVEL DID IT NEARLY 20 YEARS AGO. Yeah, really new there DC.....
I'm sure most of us remember marvel's "dotcomics", but they started with "cybercomics" all the way back in 1996. Someone has archived some of them here: http://capitalistfiction.com/web/cybercomics/comics_carousel.html
As you can see, the whole "dynamic comics" thing that DC is pretending is so new was very much present in those old cybercomics.

[jimmm kelly]

I'm curious about the Batman '66 comics. I would buy them in the physical copy--or maybe it's prudent to wait for the TPB. But i wouldn't buy any digital comics. Scans are one thing--a necessity for reading old comics--but I have no desire to buy new comics in electronic media.

But now I'm worried that there's something electronic about this Batman '66 which would make it cutting edge and different from a physical comic. So would a TPB even be able to reprint this?

The thing about digital--what Scott McCloud was on about in one of his books (as I referenced in another thread)--is that you have all these hot buttons you can use. For him it was all about the scrolling or the zooming. But that was some years ago when he wrote that. And the electronic possibilities are so enormous that I believe digital comics are an entirely different medium from traditional comics (or will be soon).

In comics, the artist has to think about how to make you scan the page and turn the page--but all those techniques become useless when there is no page, but just this ever expanding and retracting platform--where even sequential story telling becomes moot, because the comic is now more like an interactive game. To me that's what the "digital comic" really is, or will be, and it's impossible to print that out on paper and still have it be what it was.

So if that's what Batman '66 is about, then it's not a comic you can get on paper.

[paw broon]

Thanks for the links to the Batman strips.
Digital comics for me, mean digital versions of the same comic I'd buy in a shop.  Titles such as Bandette (issue #5 out now on Comixology)  I can only buy a digital edition and it's good entertainment.  Reading standard digital comics on my Samsung tablet is quite easy and the space saving is incalculable.  The time I have to use  scroll (and that's the only control or button I need is when reading a French g.n. from Izneo, for instance, as the page is too big and on screen you don't get enough detail. so, turning the screen to landscape, you can scroll down as required.  I do not have a lot of time for added content digital stuff.  Just give me the comic in digital form, exactly as it would be in paper.
I never thought I would be reading on a device, or would even have considered it, but for scans it's excellent.  The space saving, as I don't think many new comics are worth the price or the space, is, as I said, incalculable.  All in all, I'm keen on this format as long as I still have my original, old paper comics.

[jimmm kelly]

One thing I would like is to turn my laptop on end and read the comics on this site like that--as the dimensions would make a lot more sense. That's the only way that I see a tablet as being better than my laptop--but it's not worth it.

[Drahken]

The whole point of these batman '66 comics is that they are not merely conventional comics on your computer, they are "dynamic comics", something that falls between normal comics & motion comics. Each time you "turn the page", the panel/s actually change. For example, it might start with a single panel on the left & a bunch of blank space on the right, with just 1 word balloon in the panel. the next "page" will add a second balloon, then a 3rd balloon, then a second panel, then the next "page" adds a 3rd panel and changes the colors of the first panel. The next page turn might truly start a new page, then repeat a similar process, etc.
DC has panned from the beginning to make a print version of it as well, but nobody knows yet (or at least, nobody is saying yet) how they will actually pull that off.
This site has more info & a video of the digital comic in action: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/07/batman-66-digital-comics-future/

[jimmm kelly]

I don't see this gimmick working in a physical book. And the art doesn't do anything for me. Kind of reminds me of the comics DC did in the '60s when they were trying to be camp. As opposed to comics that were just campy (but good just the same).

Also the animated gif thing always irritates me--I'm prone to migraine headaches and I feel one coming on. I find it very distracting on message boards or anywhere else. I try as much as possible to stay away from such things--so I can't see myself deliberately looking at such stuff.

I either want a static comic book image, or a fully animated production--not anything in between.

[Drahken]

The animated gif is my own doing (better than posting 6 seperate pics). In the actual comic, the "page" doesn't change until you tell it to.

[jimmm kelly]

I get that, but I still think it would give me a headache. And I just think this is a dead-end road with the motion comics and the not-really animated pages. It's a desperate attempt to carve out territory for digital comics, using digital capabiliies, but avoiding direct competition with interactive gaming and animation.

Now if they found a way to do this in a book, that might be interesting. I mean for kids. I sometimes work with kids in reading programs and it's nice to find those books that have flip out pages and pop ups and stuff like that. I guess that DC couldn't sell this kind of thing to adults, who are too worried about looking foolish. I like the old foldees from the '60s. And I found a great flip style book like this for kids--which I have fun playing with, too. So I could imagine a book where you have fold over pages that slowly create a bigger and bigger image and story. And it would be tactile. It's nice to have books that you can touch and feel and manipulate in the real world. For kids just getting into books, these type of books are great because they can play with them while slowly developing reading skills.

[Drahken]

The print version is out now & it contains all 3 of the digital chapters in one volume.
They really just threw the whole "dymnamic" bit out the window. They kept the art style as well as the story & comedic styles, but did it in a very conventional way. For example, here's the print version of that gif I posted. The digital version was 6 seperate "pages", but the print version compiles it all down to just 2 panels.