Author Archives: JR19759

Ah, the 60's. A time of peace, love and superheroes undergoing random transformations every other week. Whether it's Wonder Woman being turned into a gorilla by alien gorillas (and not by Gorilla Grodd because that actually would have made sense in a "that makes no sense anyway" kind of way), Lois Lane using a machine to make her a black woman (yes, that happened) or everything that happened to Jimmy Olsen for a straight decade, DC comics were obssessed with turning their characters into something that wasn't a superhero. However, today on What Were They Thinking (the place where we look at all of the stupidest, most ill-advised things in comic book history), we're taking a look at Batman. Or rather, as the cover to Batman issue 147 says quite clearly; Bat-Baby.

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Time travel is a tricky thing. For a start you have to avoid changing history and breaking the laws of causalit,y both of which are not things you exactly want to do as they usually result in your potential erasure from existance (see Back To The Future) or an almighty space-time paradox (see Doctor Who). However, there is another danger that is often overlooked when it comes to going for a quick jaunt back in time, which is that you have a high chance of being killed by the locals. When considering where to travel in time to, your best bet is to consult a history book as if it were a weather forcast. "Ok, 1918. The year starts of with some rather heavy war, but that is expected to die down towards the end of the year and in its place there will be a strong front of Spanish Flu. Throughout the year there may be some smatterings of institutionalised racism and sexism along with some sufferage showers. Time travellers are advised to take an umbrella."

So, what happens when superheros from, say, the 1980's get transported back in time to both the Wild West and Ancient Eygpt without having time to consult their handy History Forecast. Well, this is What Were They Thinking, the place where we look at the stupidest, most ill-advised things in comic book history, so what do you think happened?

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So, here on What Were They Thinking? (the place where we look at all of the stupidest, most ill-advised things in the history of comics) we don't tend to look at current storylines (so storylines published with in the last year, currently being published or to be published soon), we mostly look at storylines from at least 5 years ago and, more often than not, earlier. However, there has been one occassion where we have looked at a more recent storyline, when we looked at Spider-Man's Clone Conspiracy crossover. That was what Marvel were doing last year, but what about DC. They were doing Rebirth at the time, which was their way of fixing the dumpster fire that was the New 52. It's not like they would do anything to ruin their legacy whilst trying to salvage it right? They'd never bring back classic characters from classic storylines that should be left well alone right?

Oh wait

Riiight... Ok.

Sorry, this weeks What Were They Thinking is going to be a bit shorter than usual. I urgently need to go out and buy a large whole tuna and a plane ticket to California.