From last week I am following a new format for The Fabulous Fifties. On Sundays there will be new scans of strips I have shown and written about before. On Mondays there will be strips you have not seen before. And onSaturdays I will continue with oddities, rarities and other loose ends. Pick your day, come round often and feel free to comment. I have also started creating new superposts collecting series I have shown many times before in chronoligical order. But as you can imagnie that takes a bit of time.
So for today we have an oddity. At the hight of the Batman craze in the fifties, every one wanted in on the act. So Woolwroth's decided to include Batman and Superman in their Halloween costume line-up that year. At a full page it seems to me like the perfect collectable for any Batman collector who actually has one of those costumes. Identify yourself and we'll work out a way to get it to you.
The Batman in this drawing is similar to the Batman in the comic strips at that time, which was designed (though at that point no longer drawn) by Carmine Infantino. The rest of the poster isn't so I am guessing this is a swipe as well.
With that I have an article from the shortlived magazine '47/'48, a digest sized cultural magazine that was named after the year it was ublished (hence the chaning title). It features the first use of the Pow! Zowie! headline that was used on every article about comics until well into 2000, supposedly taken from the fight cards in the Batman tv show. Turns out it had been around a bit longer than anyone thinks. Fellow Comic Book Historian Bob hughes invormed me that he has seen it as early a 1927 on a cover of Life magazine (then still a Punchlike cartoon magazine) and that it came from The Katzanjammer Kids. Adjust your history books accordingly.
