Four images.

I was pretty surprised to see the above image staring up at me from a rolled-up newspaper on a relative's porch on Sunday morning.

Funky Winkerbean cartoonist Tom Batiuk and/or whoever helps produce his comic strip (I can't imagine he does it all by himself; surely he must at least have a couple of sadness experts advising him on the scripts) has long incorporated superhero allusions and homages into his and/or their work, but I think Deadman is perhaps the most obscure of 'em I've seen before (Not that I've read every installment of Funky Winkerbean or anything; for all I know DC superheroes who have never had their own TV shows or movies appear in Sunday strips regularly).

I mean we know who Deadman is, but how big a portion of the total Funky Winkerbean reading audience do we account for?

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Somehow I forgot to highlight the above cover for What If? Wolverine: Father, which in many months would probably be Marvel's most awesome cover of the month, but then, this month the month this particular cover is being released is the same one during which Ivan Brunetti's image of cute little Marvels all using the gym together is also planned for release).

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Let me tell you a very sad story. Somewhere, someone created this image, and was paid money for it, while someone else, who probably got paid even more money, looked at it and said "Yes, yes this is an acceptable image. I can't think of anything about it that should be changed."

Actually, that's the most positive way to look at that image.

The more cynical way to look at it is that those involved with its existence were all quite aware that it is a terrible, terrible image, but made it that particular type and level of terrible to cater to a particular audience with terrible taste. That is, they were thinking, "Hey, we have this prose urban-fantasy series we'd like to sell to those goofy people who read comic books...what do the things they like look like? Like this? Okay fine, make this look as much like that crap as possible."

Pardon me a moment, I need to go weep quietly in the closet....

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Oh say, look at the cover of JSA All-Stars #10, which came out a few weeks ago: I haven't seen Power Girl's blood-splattered breasts in a while, and I can't remember the last time I've seen them on the cover of a comic book.

Oh Comics, you sure do cater to some very specific fetishes!