Happy Birthday, Batman, or: I Wish My Parents Were Still Alive

We need to keep things short again today – we spent a large chunk of yesterday at the hospital waiting for news about and the discharge of a member of one of our extended families who happened to fall ill while we were the only ones around. So after a Saturday evening spent in the emergency room of a major metropolitan hospital’s emergency room (which is where you meet not only the finest, but the cleanest and sanest, people) and a Sunday morning and afternoon spent watching said family member to make sure that the crisis had, in fact, passed, we are fucking fried.

But we are not too fried to acknowledge that today is a huge day in comic book history. Because it is today, March 30th, in 1939, that one of the most important comic books in history was first released for sale. That comic? Detective Comics #27.

The first appearance of Batman, yo.

Even though the publication date on the cover was May, 1939, apparently back in the 30s, that date was used to sell news sellers (who also used to sell comic books. Once upon a time, one could go to a newsstand or a grocery store or a drugstore and buy comic books. And that’s where we got our comics! By God, we elbowed Noids and California Raisins out of our way, and walked to get our comics! Uphill! Both ways! Through a blizzard of Peruvian flake cocaine! Whoops! Mixed up the 80s and the 30s! Toldja I was punchy!) by when they should pull the books off the shelves.

Back then, the law was that a copyright went into effect on the first date that the work was available for general sales, and March 30th, 1939 was the date that Detective Comics #27 was first on sale to the general public.

So if you have the time and the inclination, sit back with a drink tonight and toast Batman’s birthday. Personally, I think my co-Editor Amanda and I will be sitting back with a drink, wondering if we will dream of the beeping and booping of hospital monitors, or of the gentleman who, after spending three hours zonked out on a gurney, then awoke and began shrieking at strangers in Russian, with his dork poking out of the front of his boxers.

(via Bleeding Cool)