Monday, January 4, 2021

Pow! Bam! Biff! Monday!

First Monday of the year, and time to return to the ol' deskeroo and get back in action. Fortunately I don't have to fight this battle alone. Thanks to Santa Claus, I have some Bat-help for the challenges of the day:


Thanks to the Unemployed Philosophers Guild (most of whose other products I would throw in the garbage) and a thoughtful wife, I have these Batman Sticky Notes to help me punch! through the trials of a Monday. 

It's a nice selection and useful as well. If I need to stick an alert on something, there's the Bat-Signal stickies; if I need to flag things in a manuscript there's a variety of flags.


And of course, for important notes to myself or others, there are the large stickies with space for writing.


One of the interesting things to me with these is they've gone for the Bronze Age look for Batman for these notes, including the logo and the little picture of the Batmobile. This is how the Caped Crusader looked c. 1970 to 1985. Afterward we got the darker, grittier, grimmer Batman of the current day.


As Alan Stewart, retired librarian and comics memoirist, puts it, the Bronze Age Batman was more human, capable of a range of emotions, as opposed to "contemporary portrayals of the Dark Knight in which that range often seems to go right from grim determination to barely-controlled rage, with very little in between (or beyond)". 

Well, that wouldn't be a good attitude to approach work, would it? Better to have the Bronze Age Bats, who can be more even-tempered and less likely to resort to violence as a first option. And was probably the Batman most of the target audience would recall from childhood. 

Anyway, the Batman Sticky Notes are in the top drawer, where they will come in handy. Having the World's Greatest Detective close by will be helpful, because I can't find a damn thing on this desk anymore. 

2 comments:

  1. Biff! Thwack! Pow! Seems to be the default reaction to everything in real life post-Bronze Age Batman. Attack and destroy everything that irks you, and ask questions later.

    Adam West was the most human Batman, IMHO. Unafraid to wear a skin-tight costume that highlighted his lack of muscle tone, carefully reminding Robin to fasten his seat belt and study his Shakespeare, kindly telling poor Aunt Harriet the same lame bird-watching excuses whenever he had to suddenly fight crime. He was like the super-square uncle who always wanted to be a minister, but couldn't hack the seminary.

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  2. And yet he lived a life of adventure and heroics, and met many interesting citizens while climbing up the side of buildings!

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