Get Ready For The Ole Razzle Dazzle

Artist | late 20's | Was Hannibal Purgatory now Superbat Heaven

[pmamtraveller]

superman & batman by ashley wood

[hinamie]

i'm sure my telepathy will reach you, who have become a shooting star

[frownyalfred]

Jason and Bruce are out late one night in Gotham as civilians. They get cornered by a mugger and Jason nearly pisses himself, he’s so amused. He teases the would-be mugger about their hand placement, even tries to goad the mugger into a fight because he’s Red Hood. He can disarm anyone in seconds. It doesn’t matter if you have a gun — he has two.

He’s Red Hood, and he has the literal Bat of Gotham standing behind him like a wall of muscle. They’re as close to invincible as humans get, in this town. And that kind of confidence scares off their would-be mugger.

But then Jason turns around, a smile stretching across his face, and Bruce is white. Bone white and so so quiet, eyes wide and trained on where the mugger had been standing.

[not-another-robin]

Hehe

[daily-olly]

First Day

[hinamie]

adolescence

[kirakkkchs]

Superbat honeymoon somewhere away from crime (for a few hours, at least)

[danitalkscomics]

The less in control of the situation Bruce is, the more he pretends to be in control for Clark.

Let it be known to all superbat shippers that "Cowl off." is a complete sentence.

[enyoarchives]

Something about Superman or better yet Clark Kent being authoritative gives me the tingles

[mild-and-hammered]

Just musing on Superbat and Bruce with chronic pain from his Batman exploits and perhaps some pre-existing condition as well + Clark with hyper senses and overstimulation.

Clark, who hardly understands what being a regular human feels like, much less one with so many aches, is nevertheless one of the most accommodating and conscientious people in Bruce's life about it.

For one thing, compared to him, every human tires more quickly and has more aches and pains, its nothing to him to adjust slightly more. Bruce fights through it with so much practice as Batman that Clark would never know, but he sees the toll it takes when the cowl comes off. Some days, his lover walks like a man twenty years older than himself.

Clark and his Pa wittle a beautiful cane that Bruce always has on hand inside the manor, whether he uses it or not. He's never seen with it outside the house, but Clark doesn't mind, Bruce's disguises keep him safe, the cane only helps keep him comfortable.

Clark heats his hands and learns to massage some of the pains away (apart from more recreational uses, his superspeed allowing him to vibrate comes in handy here) he can see the knots in Bruce's muscles and learns to use only exactly what pressure he needs to tease them apart. He heats Bruce's bathwater and sits with him or apart from him, either way listening to his lover's heartbeat. If it slows too much he pulls Bruce out so he doesn't fall asleep in the bath.

He gets used to the smell of tiger balm. Over time, he smells like it too.

It all goes both ways. Wayne Enterprises R&D department creates some truly unique noise cancelling headphones that lack even the faint buzz of electronics. Bruce is one of the few people in his life who understand being so overstimulated (him by pain and Clark by...everything) that he wants to cry. Bruce never minds Clark occasionally flying off into the void of space to just float for a while.

Bruce pays attention to Clark's reactions, no matter how miniscule. If a set of sheets, no matter how luxurious the threadcount is, makes the muscles around Clark's eyes tighten, they never appear again. The air filters in the manor all get upgrades so that overwhelming scents are whisked away as soon as possible. He tries to stop using tiger balm, looks for other topicals to help, but Clark just smiles and brings some by the manor, warming it up between his hands because it smells like the two of them and somehow it never gives him a headache.

[januariat]

ok so let me preface this with saying that i'm not a big precrisis guy. like i've been reading golden age superman recently but that's very much an exception. I'm used to the darker, more hypermasculine characterizations of the late 80s-90s-00s, where male characters couldn't be seen as too affectionate with one another, and there were a lot of intricate rituals involving gruff one liners and beating the shit out of each other. so while i hadn't actually read more than 1 or 2 silver age comics (World's Finest 289: Worms Edition i'm looking at you), i went into reading Action Comics 241 (1958) already expecting it to read as pretty gay, if nothing else just by virtue of it not being my usual. anyways i was so, so wrong about how gay it was. it's WAY gayer. not in the sense of innuendo or anything like that- unlike World's Finest 289: Wormtopia, sex isn't even mentioned, let alone alluded to. what IS explicit, however, is how loving and playful bruce and clark are with each other. They just so obviously care about each other, in a very intimate and close way. The whole plot of the issue is bruce remembering that it's clark's birthday- even though it's implied clark himself has forgotten- and deciding to put together a fun gift for him in the form of a little mystery, complete with a cake at the end, because that's his dearest companion and he loves him.

In the process there are little moments where we learn things like "bruce and clark are among the VERY few people who know about each others' respective identities/secret bases" and "they trust each other completely"

superman realizing batman was the one responsible for the puzzle, and playing a prank back on him in return by pretending to succumb to kryptonite. and a worried batman immediately revealing himself in order to try and "save" clark:

batman playfully 'finishing' a painting clark had started, as part of the puzzle (this is actually pretty funny because clark's painting was an actual depiction of his view of the surface of Mars. and bruce just finishes it from his own imagination because he thought clark was just drawing random shapes. this, predictably, confuses the hell out of clark):

bruce being very cute and :3c about the fact that he might have successfully pranked his best friend:

and bruce literally baking the cake himself and decorating a room with streamers and banners for clark:

look. even if you're not a shipper, these two love each other. no one else calls or shows up to the party- it's implied bruce is the only one who remembered clark's birthday, and bruce pulls out all the stops for him to try and make him happy. and clark appreciates it, and is playful and affectionate with him right back. If 80s-10s comics have homosexual overtones because of weird misogynistic writing and hypermasculine posturing, precrisis comics has those overtones because the very sweet affection these characters have for each other is quite literally textual. you could have told me bruce and clark were dating in this comic and it wouldn't read any different.

reading stuff like this makes me wish we had more of this sort of openly caring, loving male relationship in modern comics, and all the more grateful that we're sort of getting it in mark waid's current run on world's finest. I can only hope we get more of it moving forward.

[blorb-el]

the reason this comic came up was because mark fucking waid commissioned someone to recreate the superbat painting and has it hanging in his house

[luna-azzurra]

Something neuroscience-y that helps with prose: attention is selective. A character will not notice everything in a room. They will notice what matters to their goal, fear, desire, training, wound, or obsession. A jealous character notices hands. a hungry character notices food. A soldier notices exits. A lonely character notices pairs. Description becomes character when attention has a bias.

[sakrafka]

fog dog

[creekfiend]

many women are excited to get old and weird, but i have great news that it's fully possible to become weird now, before you get old. just imagine the heights of weirdness you will be able to reach in fifty years if you get started now. that's what I think

[frownyalfred]

okay but the delicious angst of Batman and Robin getting trapped in a collapse or some other situation where an agonized Bruce is the only thing holding up the rubble/a piece of concrete on his back above an injured Dick, playing at being Superman by holding a superhuman amount of weight on his shoulders because if he lets go, they’ll both be crushed? and Dick wakes up, instantly clocks the situation, and knows that the only thing he can do to help is talk Bruce through it. to distract him long enough for someone to find them. to keep going, B, you can do it—

[vanessagillings]

Two little watercolor and graphite warm ups from a few months ago

[in-libris-liberta-s-deactivated]

Just finished hamlet & had to share THIS

[iamnmbr3]

btw this is literally what goes down. it’s great. 

[ovenroastedtwerkey]

You just know the ye olde peasants went NUTS at that last part

[elodieunderglass]

We don’t say sblood enough we should bring it back

[pianta]

childhood memories 🧵🍪

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