Secret Panel (4)

By: Jason Grote
September 20, 2010

Fourth in a series of twelve posts celebrating our favorite Silver Age comic double entendres.

Not double-entendres per se, but the comics of the ’60s and ’70s produced some of the best tone-deaf hipster slang to grace young adult literature. Teen Titans writer Bob Haney fancied himself a master of vernacular; he was a clueless bizarro-world Kerouac.

Teen Titans panel is from Brave and the Bold #54 (July 1964). The Superman-Batman panel is from unidentified issue of World’s Finest.

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What do you think?

  1. May I congratulate you on this fine series. I am more familiar with Marvel than DC during this period. So could I ask: For how long Bruce Wayne was portrayed as Elvis?

  2. No kidding — that’s exactly who he looks like!

    These hepcats are actually the Super-Sons: Clark Kent Jr. (who has half his father’s powers, because his mother is human) and Bruce Wayne Jr. Bob Haney dreamed them up as youth culture versions of Superman and Batman — their saga begins in World’s Finest Comics #215 (Dec. 1972), and sporadically appeared through #242 (1976). I had very bad taste in comics as a child, and own several of these issues. Though I don’t know which issue these panels that Jason chose are from.

    PS: A story called “Final Secret of the Super-Sons”, written by Dennis O’Neil, in WF #263, claimed that the Sons were computer simulations of what might have been, created by Superman and Batman on Superman’s computer in his Fortress of Solitude. But there’s some controversy over whether this one-off truly negates the existence of the Super-Sons.

  3. I also liken 1970s DC comics to the Nixon administration — deeply unhip, but taking advantage of the new opportunities for facial hair. Except Nixon was gone by 1974 and DC superhero sideburns stuck around until probably the 1980s.

  4. “Full of gumdrops”? “FULL OF GUMDROPS”? I’m not sure what it means but it may be my New Year’s resolution to use it daily.

    “Wassup, nbm? Lookin a little down.”
    “Yeah, not so full of gumdrops today.”

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