DON'T call him Bubbles Pt. 3

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.

When I was little, the world was a very small place.
I pretty much alternated between living on the edge of a pretty sleepy city of less than half a million, the farm, and little towns of less than 3000 people.

Three TV channels

with one of them in French

and all in black & white.

Yeah, I watched this live

and this too

although neither of them had all that much impact on me at the time.

I do remember this

And they all pretty much looked like that at the time, too. Or worse

Any fuckin ways, the point is, when I was just wee, my perception of what constituted reality was considerably different from, I think, most people's.

Like comics, for example.

You know, like, this

seemed a fuck of a lot more real than this

At least Bats was in colour.

Interestingly enough, I'm pretty sure we never got a colour TV until the 70s, which means that I only ever saw the TV show, which I believe I've mentioned before how nuts I was about, in B&W.

Which is, you know, roughly the equivalent of watching fireworks

on the radio.

Any fuckin ways, I had this weird centric interpretation of what was "real".

I distinctly recall one time, being up long before anyone else in the house (yeah, I did it then, too) and reading this

actual comic.
Doing the various maths, I can pretty much guarantee I was 6, maybe going on 7, and it was summer, because even that early it was light out.

Anyways, I was up at some unforsaken hour, and I read the one story in the comic called "Batman, Robot"

in which a major plot point is that a bunch of hoodlums (hoodlum!) lure Batman into this abandoned mine

and then blow it up.

It collapses, and

BATMAN IS KILLED.

Now, this would have been an EXcellent time to recall the similar plight of Johnny Rambo and note that just because it LOOKED like he was killed,

of course didn't mean he WAS killed.
The bad news was, of course that Johnny Rambo/Sly was like fuckin 14 at the time.

So we were pretty much screwed all the way around.

So, any fuckin ways, I'm like sitting there, 6 years old, all alone, and I read this.

And I freak

Fucking

Out

Now I know it sounds stupid, like it's a comic book, but for me, then, it was like I'd just read the front page of the paper, or seen it on the news or something.

Except that I cared more about Batman than anyone I read about in the paper or saw on the fucking news.

And I'm crying and wailing and all.

In FACT, I was SO upset that I actually went and woke up my older sister.

Now, you must realize, waking up my older sister, especially on a holiday when she didn't have to get up, well...

Remember when Conan
(Arnie Conan

not [different but equally fucking awesome] JMo Conan)

was robbing the big ass jewel from Thulsa Doom's temple with Valeria

and 1972 and 1973 Pipeline Masters winner, Mr. Pipeline, Gerry Lopez?

And Conan drips sweat into the eye of the Gigantor-assed snake and wakes it up?

 

Well imagine if, instead of just dripping sweat on the big bastard, one woke it up by squirting half a bottle of Mad Dog fucking 357

right in his fucking eye, while making a comment about his Ma pulling the train with Motley Crüe

and stealing his WoW

password.

Waking up my sister was worse than that.

Anyways, she kind of smacked me and told me it was just a damn comic and not to be such a baby.

And sure enough, by Jiminy, when I settled down and went and read on, it turned out that Batman wasn't dead at all!!

It was just a ruse to trick the hoodlums all along!!

Fucking Batman, huh?

Well that was certainly a relief, anyways.

 

Raj