Things I 'learnt' from comic books

[Martin Gray]

Back in the Sixties, when the Superman Family were forever meeting/romancing doubles of themselves, I remember editor Mort Weisinger's lettercol telling us more than once that everyone on Earth has 17 doubles (so how many must there be across the universe?). I'm now 45 and have never met anyone unfortunate enough to look like me and am beginning to think he made this up.

Any more dubious facts?

[Captain Comics]

I "learnt" from comics that light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Flash Fact!

And speaking of doubles, I had a similar experience as Doc Beechler when I was attending Vanderbilt in the late 1970s. There appeared to be someone on campus who strongly favored me, but was an utter cad. One time a woman stormed up to me, called me an SOB and slapped my face for some unspecified slight. Another chewed me out in the refectory for standing her up on a date. I had never seen these women before in my life. When I was protested that I wasn't the guy they were mad at, that simply made them angrier -- because they didn't believe me. Very strange.

Also, when I was running the Memphis comics convention in the 1980s, an artist's wife (who shall go nameless) took an instant dislike to me, and would insult me when she wasn't giving me the cold shoulder. Her husband took me aside and apologized to me for her, explaining that I strongly resembled another convention president, who had hit on his wife throughout the weekend they attended, and wouldn't take no for an answer. He said the guy not only looked like me but also sounded like me, even to content -- he apparently favored quoting Monty Python routines also. The wife eventually apologized too, but grudgingly, and clearly still hated the sight of me. I tried to stay out of her way, and had someone else drive them to the airport after the con.

[Rob Staeger (Grodd Mod)]

Do the seventeen doubles include Astral Twins, like the two Al Desmonds?

My Astral Twin is in Chicago, and is a Facebook friend of mine. Tall, blond, clean-shaven hard-core conservative. Me? Short, bald with brown goatee, staunch liberal.

[suedenim]

I love Marston's stories. You need to embrace their nuttiness.

[Horn'd One]

Things I have learned from comics;

There maybe counter-/anti-matter/alternate universe/alternate timeline duplicates of me, but I have enough to deal with. The rest are on their own.

Any plot and/or story, at any time, no matter how significant, can be retconned by the next writer or simply removed without consequence.

Any character can be brought back from the dead with little to no fuss as long as the copyright doesn't run out.

The bad guys may get their time in the spotlight, but it's the good guys that win the audience.

...and ANY double-entendre that you can think of has already been concieved of, suggested, outright shouted about, denied, accepted and otherwise ignored LONG before you came along.

[Dagwan]

Horn'd One said:

...and ANY double-entendre that you can think of has already been concieved of, suggested, outright shouted about, denied, accepted and otherwise ignored LONG before you came along.

That's what she said.

---

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." -Groucho Marx

Check out the Secret Headquarters (my store) website! It's a pretty lame website, but I did it myself, so tough noogies

Listen to WOXY.com, it's the future of rock-n-roll!

---

[ClarkKent_DC]

suedenim said:

I love Marston's stories. You need to embrace their nuttiness.

I don't mind nuttiness. But that kind of nuttiness I can take only in small doses.

Anyway, one more thing I learnt from comics -- specifically, an issue of The Atom and Hawkman -- is that when a boat travels through the water, the water in its wake is warmer than the water around the wake, and that that principle helped the U.S. Navy invent the means for tracking enemy submarines.

[suedenim]

Does stuff learned from Superfriends cartoons count?

I just watched the "Lost Episodes" DVD collection, and indeed I don't think I'd ever seen any of them before as a kid. Most of them are pretty terrible, though with some interesting bits, like a post-"Challenge of the Superfriends" Legion of Doom story. In that one, I learned that Batman doesn't think it particularly odd that one of the salvage workers with permits from the Parks Department to salvage the Hall of Doom from that swamp wears exactly the same gear as Black Manta for underwater operations.

I also learned some surprising things about physics, both from the Wonder Twins:
- Roller coasters immediately stop moviing as soon as the power is cut, even when the car has started going down an incline. (Apparently there is such a thing as a powered coaster, but it wouldn't be like the one shown.)
- The expansion of steam in a closed space can cause a locked hatch to pop open... even when the Zan-sized volume of steam only fills about 5 percent of the space. This is both effective at popping hatches *and* avoiding exposing nearby people to scalding heat or discomfort.

[Rich Steeves]

I would cut Zan some slack. WHen your sister can turn into ANY ANIMAL IN THE UNIVERSE, you are stuck with finding ways to make your watery seld useful, science be damned.

suedenim said:

Does stuff learned from Superfriends cartoons count?

I just watched the "Lost Episodes" DVD collection, and indeed I don't think I'd ever seen any of them before as a kid. Most of them are pretty terrible, though with some interesting bits, like a post-"Challenge of the Superfriends" Legion of Doom story. In that one, I learned that Batman doesn't think it particularly odd that one of the salvage workers with permits from the Parks Department to salvage the Hall of Doom from that swamp wears exactly the same gear as Black Manta for underwater operations.

I also learned some surprising things about physics, both from the Wonder Twins:
- Roller coasters immediately stop moviing as soon as the power is cut, even when the car has started going down an incline. (Apparently there is such a thing as a powered coaster, but it wouldn't be like the one shown.)
- The expansion of steam in a closed space can cause a locked hatch to pop open... even when the Zan-sized volume of steam only fills about 5 percent of the space. This is both effective at popping hatches *and* avoiding exposing nearby people to scalding heat or discomfort.

[Kent Allard]

From a Batman Big Little Book (the Cheetah Caper I think, published in 1969 and acquired in the mid-70s), I learned that Robin's physical strength was the result of his skin-tight costume that made is muscles rock hard... later I learned only the gym can cause this.


Also, reading what I just paraphrased makes me uncomfortable