DC Comics Presents #58: Superman and Robin the Teen Wonder and the Elongated Man (June 1983)

I've never seen the phrase "triple-threat" used so incorrectly.

Gil Kane drew the cover of this issue just in case you were wondering, like me, "Who decided to draw Ralph Dibny like a fancy boy desperate to play with the older, more rough and tumble boys?" If you were thinking that like I was, were you also thinking this (like I was!): "I wonder where on Ralph's spiraling torso his balls are?"

What I'm trying to ask is, "Are you like me? Or am I desperately alone in this cold and uncaring universe?" I used to think the universe was described as cold and uncaring because rocks and space and the majority of things in the universe are cold and uncaring. Stars, if I'm doing the pretend math in my head correctly (it's pretend because making up numbers by pure guessing isn't actually math), make up just 0.000000000000000003% of the universe. So it's cold! And it's uncaring only because we, as sentient beings, love to project our own sentience onto every other thing in the universe, like stars and Ralph Dibny's balls. And right up until the last decade or so, I would have characterized the universe differently because we live among other sentient creatures who are often warm and caring. But then I learned most of them are not those things at all and they're more like asteroids and infinite expanses of cold vacuum and the majority of planets. They're also like the end of most living creatures where the defecation happens. Why do you think so many people are so cold and uncaring? It's probably because they've never read a book or enjoyed poetry or experienced and connected with another sentient beings most intimate artistic creation. They're just superficial dickfucks who have only ever pursued sex, money, and power. Man, those people suck so much I can't even think of an artistic way to express how much I think they suck. All I can do is envision a dirty, hairy ape squatting over a Van Gogh and spraying a terribly soft shit across it. That's what I see when I see those kinds of people. Sadly, those kinds of people now make up 99.999999999999999997% of all sentient beings in the universe.

Hopefully this comic book will make me feel better about the living wet shits populating the world around me because it's about Superman, Robin, and Elongated Man! They're like three of the most upbeat personalities in the DC Universe! If they can't make me see the wonder and joy of existence, my next comic book might as well be a loaded gun!

I don't know what their original crime was but they just asked a teenaged boy to touch them.

It's good to see Batman has taught Robin to kick his adversaries directly in the dick. Superman, on the other hand, goes straight for the heart. Probably to make their heart go into arrhythmia so the criminal panics and thinks they're having a heart attack as opposed to actually stopping their heart and killing them. Do you think Superman uses his x-ray vision to make sure a normal human being doesn't have any heart problems before he punches them in the heart unlike Batman who just shrugs and thinks, "If they didn't want to get punched into a heart attack, they shouldn't have decided to be poor and desperate and turn to crime. I didn't kill them; poor health and life decisions killed them."

Dibny just punches the guy in the heart because he's copying Superman. Sue loves when Ralph pretends to be Superman in the bedroom so he's learning as much as he can on this adventure. Mostly Sue loves Ralph pretending to be Superman because Superman doesn't have stretching powers and it forces Ralph to not do weird shit during sex, like putting his nose up her asshole while they kiss.

The issue begins with a dad abusing his son.

I'll only forgive this father if he thinks he's taking his kid to see a sex show and/or elephants shitting.

Turns out I can't forgive the father because he believes a "real show" is comprised of clowns, lions, and monkeys. I suppose that line-up doesn't rule out a terrific show but I highly doubt this circus feeds clowns to the lions while the monkeys throw shit at the audience. If that was the show the dad was talking about, he and his son are about to be sorely disappointed as it turns out the Elongated Man and Robin have taken over the circus for a charity event. It's either for Retired Circus Performers or Circus Kids with PTSD from Seeing Their Parents Murdered During a Performance.

The performance is disturbing enough that I'm not willing to scan any of the panels lest I be accused of running an erotic site for NAMBLA members. Just know that Robin swings from and bounces all over Ralph's body while Ralph grins disturbingly.

"Why can't my boy share my enthusiasm for my erotic club that somehow isn't explicitly illegal?"

For some reason, Clark Kent covers the circus's charity event as the anchorman for WGBS news. Maybe he suspects Lex Luthor's behind the event trying to fund some anti-Superman waste of everybody's time. I often comment how Batman could use therapy but never mention Lex's dire need for it. That's probably because he's an evil super villain and everybody simply assumes that all evil super villains could use therapy. But specifically Lex since he bases all of his schemes over destroying a made-up rival. I say "made-up" because you know Clark Kent doesn't spend any actual time thinking about Lex personally. And I don't mean that in a Don Draper in an elevator saying, "I don't think about you at all," kind of way because it's obvious all Don Draper does is think about his young up and coming competition. Clark would forget about Lex in a matter of minutes if Lex just stopped being a kryptonite pain in his ass.

What I can only assume are three men dressed as NAMBLA mascots interrupt Clark Kent's news report.

These are the guys who plead for Robin to touch them so I'm simply assuming they're with NAMBLA.

For the younger generations, "chump" was basically the "cunt" of the '50s. I know this comic book is from 1983 but it was written by a man born in 1952 and I'm assuming Mike W. Barr, being a comic book writer, suffers from some form of arrested development so he probably, at 30, still thought of "chump" as pretty rebellious.

Instead of punching Clark's stupid lights out, the NAMBLA mascots run right through him (because they're intangible). It's 1983 so that's probably not a crime although I'd say it's not just physical assault but sexual assault as well. If anybody ever actually gains the power to phase right through shit, I am stating right here and now that they do not have my consent to enter and pass through my body, no matter how much time it saves them getting to Point B.

There's an advert for Dungeons & Dragons in this comic book because they knew Satanists were really into comic books.

Look at this table full of nerds! I mean budding Satanists!

If I were a weird online incel weirdo, I'd probably scream about how woke this scene depicting kids playing role playing games was. But I'm actually an old person who was playing table top role playing games at the time this advert came out and our table was almost always 50% girls and 50% boys. Weird, hunh? Although by high school, our gaming group was exclusively boys but that's because women mature faster and the girls who used to play with us were out getting laid and going to parties while we were role playing doing those things with other guys.

Clark, being super smart, certainly realizes he should just step on this guy's feet to immobilize him since his feet must be tangible to be able to produce friction with the ground to propel himself forward!

Maybe Clark's even smarter than that and has decided, if this guy's intangible, how much chaos can he cause? Just let him run around not being able to touch anything until his little criminal mind gets tired and bored. What a stupid super power. Unless you're main goal is to completely aggravate your sibling on a road trip, not being able to touch somebody doesn't seem like it'll allow you to accomplish much.

The Intangibles rush through the side of the tent and begin scaring the horses pulling the cages containing the wild animals. A tiger gets loose and an elephant stampedes. So I guess they can cause chaos but to what end? To steal the proceeds from the charity event, one of them will have to become tangible long enough for Robin to get his head in a scissor lock with his crotch mashed against the guy's face. Then the father of the son who hates him will stand up and applaud and everybody around him will be all, "Why's he got that huge wet spot on the inseam of his pants?"

Robin takes out the tiger with sleeping gas while Ralph attempts to stop the elephant. But Superman gets there first.

I probably would have stopped it in one of the many other ways that wasn't "grab it by its dick."

Elongated Man doesn't seem too upset that Superman jerked off an elephant to save the day while Ralph humiliated himself by rubber banding his body around a bunch of posts for no reason.

The elephant wasn't upset either.

Superman's next move is to use his x-ray vision on the Intangibles which feels redundant and unscientific even if it isn't. Can x-ray vision help him see fog better? Not see in and through the fog better! But to help him see the fog better. How would his x-ray vision help when looking into an insubstantial person? I need these questions answered before I can continue to enjoy this comic book! It was fine when Superman pulled the elephant's penis and then the elephant grinned from flappy ear to flappy ear. That's understandable! But what use is using x-ray vision on an intangible person?!

But what did you expect it to reveal?! I'm beginning to see why Lex Luthor hates this stupid fucking jackass.

Superman does try to destroy the Intangible Man's foot with his heat vision which, as I pointed out earlier, was a good idea. But even that doesn't do anything. That must mean these Intangible men are simply projections of light with some super ventriloquism added! It's all a big illusion. Ralph Dibny wiggles his nose at them so he's probably beginning to suspect the truth. Robin hasn't been seen since he put the tigers to sleep and Superman beat off the elephant. I'm not suggesting Robin's doing anything untoward but if he reappears with tiger semen stains on his outfit, I won't be surprised.

Meanwhile, a tangible man in an intangible man's outfit fiddles with some doohickeys in a van nearby, recording all of Superman's attempts to use his super visions: x-ray, microscopic, telescopic, and heat. I guess it's common knowledge that he has those abilities because the guy's van's computer seems set up simply to tick off every time Superman uses one. Eventually Superman decides that throwing his "indestructible cape" over the intangible person should do the trick because he's the dumbest fucking asshole I've ever seen. God, no wonder Lex Luthor hates him. It's like when I see high school friends posting on Facebook and it makes me want to destroy them completely! Not just because they post the dumbest alt-reality shit but because they're so confident in their idiocy! No wonder these dumb jerks call so many people elitist. I guess if I were a stupid fuck who believed all the dumb shit in the world and somebody was all, "You're dumb," I'd think they were being elitist too! Nobody wants to do any rigorous self-examination just to come up with the realization that they're as stupid as everybody says they are.

A guy I knew back in the old neighborhood growing up posted recently, "But us conspiracy 'theorists' are nuts...crazy...out of our minds, right?!?!" He then followed his statement up with the craziest fucking video as evidence that his beliefs weren't crazy. I saw that post and instantly shaved my head and began wearing only purple and green outfits.

Seeing Superman fail with his cape, Robin decides maybe he'll have better luck than Superman at catching an uncatchable person.

Batman's not even here. Just call it a fucking rope, you kiss ass.

What do you think turns an ordinary rope into a Batrope? It must be made of bats, right?

After the Intangibles disappear, Superman, Robin, and Ralph try to figure out what just happened. Superman somehow gleans that they got him to use all of his vision powers but can't figure out how that could be meaningful. I figure it's so meaningless that if I were Superman the thought never even would have occurred to me! But he's hanging out with some great detectives so he's really trying to pull his weight here. Ralph realizes that the Intangibles didn't sink into the ground which doesn't make any sense because if they were intangible and didn't have any mass, why would they sink? Maybe he's just dumbing down the whole science of friction for Superman. It's easier to be all "How did their feet touch the ground if they weren't corporeal?" than to be all "How could they propel themselves forward if they had no surface area to push against the surface area of the ground?" See? Even I'm dumbing it down for Superman although mostly because I don't know how to realistically explain the science of movement and mass and insubstantiality! I think it has something to do with one of Newton's half-dozen laws.

Being that Superman and his detective friends won't be figuring out what happened any time soon, the comic book shifts to the perspective of the Intangible Men who explain everything as concisely as possible.

I don't understand the power of harnessing visual powers to somehow make his intangibility real but I do understand workers being taken advantage of by corporations! Go Frank!

Superman still has one vision power that the intangibles didn't get their grubby Hollywood mitts on: super-vision! I guess that vision allows him to see radiation and, luckily for Supers (unluckily for everybody at the circus that day), the Intangible projections left behind a whole mess of radiation! Does that explain how the projections could project through the walls of the circus tent? Or did the Intangibles set up projectors all over the circus in preparation for the event? That would be my guess because then Ralph and Dick's eventual realization that some Hollywood types were behind the chaos would make sense because they could have conducted interviews with the performers about any strange people they saw before the show which would have led them to discovering holographic projectors set up everywhere which would have led them to tracing the serial numbers on the projectors which would have given them the credit cards used to buy the equipment which would have led them to the business that purchased the equipment which would have led them to Frank's hideout in Hollywood. Instead, they figured it out like this:

Only a truly stupid deduction like this and the assumption that they must go to California to investigate could make me ignore filling this caption with sexual comments about the way Ralph's riding Robin and Superman.

Meanwhile in California which is where anybody who can do special effects lives, the Intangible Man decides to steal the third movie in a popular movie franchise. Usually that wouldn't be enough of a reason to whip out your cop gun and shoot the guy stealing the film but the director just told everybody, loudly and clearly, that he was carrying the only print of the film! Also I was just joking about that thing where a cop wouldn't shoot somebody for stealing a film. Fucking cops only know how to shoot shit. They can't actually solve crimes so they try to stop crime by showing repeatedly that they'll shoot anybody they want to. That's somehow supposed to make people feel safer. Usually it only makes racists feel safer because they assume cops won't shoot white people for no reason. But they're wrong. Cops will shoot anybody for no reason! They just can't get enough of it!

Now the Intangible Man will be charged with the murder of the two people the cop shot because District Attorneys are as corrupt as cops. They have to be or the cops won't testify for them!

See that? Somehow the harnessed powers of x-ray vision, telescopic vision, microscopic vision, and heat vision have come together to allow a man to be partly intangible and partly tangible at the same time! This comic book came out in 1984. Why haven't the kids who read this then and grew up to be scientists because of it invented this technology? I bet they have but the government covered it up. Or the tech industry disrupted it when some loser with no ideas but could charm the money out of rich idiots was all, "Forget intangibility. Don't you think people would rather be completely tangible for only a small monthly subscription fee?!"

The Intangibles somehow decide they're now worth 25 million dollars after stealing a film they can't release or sell because everybody knows it's been stolen and the slippers Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz (which, you know, also can't be sold since they were so publicly stolen by these idiots). But their goal doesn't seem to be making money; it just seems to be in possessing items worth the most money ever stolen by any gang ever. Apparently they're just playing Grand Theft Auto but in real life (real life in this comic book, I mean).

How does that help, Robin? Do you understand time zones at all?!

I'm glad to see Robin kneeling on Superman's back instead of straddling it. When I say that, I'm speaking of my brain. My penis isn't glad to see it at all. Also I'm assuming Robin is the 19 year old teen wonder because I wouldn't want it to be weird. Although it's already weird (and completely fantastical) that I'd be interested in a twink like Robin. Have you not read all of my Justice League America reviews? I'm obviously into Ice Maiden and her constant under boob shots.

Superman scans all the Hollywood studios with his super-vision looking for the radiation signature left behind at the circus until he finds it all over a small studio in the Hollywood hills.

Ew. There's only one thing I can think of that Robin's using as a seat belt.

Superman breaks through the wall of the studio with his invulnerable body and Robin's face. Surprised, Frank pulls a gun plugged into a computer on Superman. Superman's all, "Ha ha! Give it your best shot!" And Frank is all, "Pyu! Pyu!" And Superman is all, "Oh fuck! I've made a huge mistake!" Frank thought the gun would make Superman intangible but instead it just fucked up his eyesight a little bit. Superman acted like it was the end of the world but I guess when you're used to 20/20 vision, suddenly seeing everything distorted can be a really slight irritation. At the very least, it causes enough of a distraction for Frank to get away.

Except Frank doesn't try to get away. He just watches Superman stumble around while thinking, "Well! That takes care of that!" Ralph and Robin also don't try to subdue the guy with the gun. Instead they follow Superman as he stumbles around the room. Is nobody going to take any of this seriously?

Um. What's with the glove? What does he plan on doing to these two?

Superman flies up into the atmosphere while Robin tries to kick a known intangible person in the dick. Seriously. That's twice in one comic book where Robin immediately begins the fight by going for some guy's junk. Superman doesn't have a clear idea how he's going to fix his vision. Maybe getting close to the sun and super healing? Anyway, before he can deal with his eyesight, he happens upon a plane that's going to crash due to damage to one of its wings. But Superman, having learned a few things about erotic massage from dating Lana, quickly fixes the plane without any need from his fucked up eyes.

Oh yeah. That's the stuff!

Superman flies up near the sun to stare into it and cure his fucked up eyes. Don't ask me how long it takes for Superman to get to the sun and back for two main reasons: this is a comic book and I'm an idiot. The only numbers I can come up with are "at least 16 minutes" and "probably four months." Neither of those numbers seem great for Robin and Ralph's survival against the show-biz folks. I guess they're dead, especially since there's only like two pages left in this story. I imagine one page shows Ralph and Robin being murdered and the final page shows Superman crying over their beaten and bloodied bodies.

Robin stole that breeze line from Superman!

In case you thought I was exaggerating about Superman staring directly into the sun from a few feet away, that caption should convince you to trust everything I say in these blogs. Like how Superman pulled an elephant's dick until it came and Robin wrapped Ralph's dick around himself for safety reasons.

Superman shows up just in time to take the credit for catching these guys even though Robin and Ralph have it all sorted. Then Robin makes a bad pun and Superman says, "How does Batman stand you?" And then Superman and Ralph laugh while Robin cries.

DC Comics Presents #58: Superman and Robin the Teen Wonder and the Elongated Man Rating: C. It was pretty fucking stupid. But it was entertainingly stupid which, really, is all I ask for from a comic book. Unless it's written by a British writer from the 1980s and then I expect my mind to be blown. The best part about this issue was the next issue blurb!

Ambush Bug! I have that issue somewhere!