Superdickery.com
Comic Books can be very, very strange sometimes. They can feature the hero acting like a jerk for no reason, endless innuendo, extremely racist propaganda, monkeys, and stuff that's just plain weird.
Superdickery.com is a website dedicated to tracking down and documenting as many of these weird and wonderful comics as possible, often presenting them completely out of context, solely for the purposes of humour. The site was rebuilt in 2014 to resolve long-time security issues, but if you're still suspicious, there is a mirror on tumblr. The links below still lead to the original website though so be careful!
These comics are mostly from The Silver Age of Comic Books (although there are quite a few from more recent eras) and mainly from DC Comics, due to the many, many instances of Superman acting like a complete dick.
These are split into several categories:
- Examples Of Superdickery: Home of the phrase that started it all, "Superman is a dick." Witness an ever growing selection of examples of Superman acting like... well, a dick.
- Confounding Comic Covers: Comic book covers that are so out there, so random, and so bizarre that you'll be wondering how on earth they ever got published in the first place.
- Frames and Pages: This section contains scans of individual panels and frames from the interiors of comic books, completely devoid of context.
- Everything's Better With Monkeys: Gorillas provided a guaranteed boosts to circulation with every cover appearance. Do not argue with the mesmerizing powers of gorillas. And yes, I know gorillas aren't monkeys.
- Seduction of the Innocent: Covers and frames from a more innocent time, a time ignorant of how friggin' hilarious these would be to future audiences. If it's inappropriate sexual innuendo, it's in here.
- Weird Science: Gadgets and gizmos and doodads, oh my! A section devoted to everything from the Helmet of Hate to the Man with the Electronic Brain.
- Suffering Sappho!: "Hi, you've reached Wonder Woman. I'm sorry I can't come to the phone right now - I'm all tied up." You'd think she'd leave that rope at home, seeing how often she gets tied up with it...
- Propaganda Extravaganza: Home of the most astoundingly politically incorrect covers you've ever seen (the vast majority being from the Golden Age, during World War Two), plus some more modern day examples of propaganda.
- Stupor Powers: Witness the demonstration of superpowers you've never even dreamed of, such as SUPER-WEAVING! Yes. Super-Weaving.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: The site (jokingly) regards Superman as a Complete Monster of the highest order, to the astonishing amount of times he has apparently:
- Killed Lois Lane
- Destroyed Jimmy Olsen's life
- Killed Batman
- Committed genocide
- Denied water to people dying of thirst
- ...so you can see where they're coming from.
- Also, Batman is a dangerously repressed closet pedophile who sexually abuses Robin.
- And Wonder Woman is a BDSM-obsessed sex freak who is way, way, way Too Kinky to Torture.
- Given the creator, this is probably true. DC is lucky he didn't include polygamy as one of Wonder Woman's traits, though, given Paradise Island, you never know...
- Ascended Meme: The premiere of Batman the Brave And The Bold's third season is a tribute to the website. It recreates some of the more famous Superman comic covers featured on the site and has Lois get called out for trying to trick Supes into marriage all the time. The site's name even gets a Shout-Out:
Jimmy: "Superman's turned into a real di-"
Lois: "-fferent person."
- Beware the Superman: Given the number of times he's accidentally or purposefully destroyed buildings/cities/nations/planets....
- Butt Monkey: A good amount of Superman's Superdickery involves screwing around with Jimmy Olsen.
- Captain Obvious: Any time the evilness of Superman is note on a comic book cover, the bottom note regards it as this trope.
- Comically Missing the Point: The captions sometimes do this, pointing out some random detail in the pictures.
- Complete Monster: See Alternate Character Interpretation.
- Critical Research Failure/Writers Cannot Do Math: You're off by a factor of ten there, Supes...
- Drinking Game: Every time you see Jimmy Olsen with superpowers, take a shot.
- Grand Finale: "You know, if there were ever to be a permanent end to Superdickery (yeah, yeah, I came close), this would be absolutely perfect as the capstone image."
- Have a Gay Old Time: Half of the examples in Seduction Of The Innocent. The other half is devoted to...
- Have I Mentioned Batman Is Heterosexual Today
- Innocent Innuendo: We think.
- In the Blood: One cover gives insight into Superman's behavior: Jor-El is a dick.
- Some covers even imply Supergirl to be one, mostly towards her cousin.
- It Makes Sense in Context: The creator of the site acknowledges that most of the examples likely sense in context (probably because it is the SILVER AGE we're dealing with), but it's simply funnier this way.
- For example, that panel showing Superman with Super-Weaving? That's actually Van-Zee, a Krytonian from Kandor who happens to have an Uncanny Family Resemblance to Superman. The story deliberately plays with the reader's expectations by not having anything from characters to the narration refer to him or Silvia Dewitt -- an Identical Stranger of Lois Lane -- by their actual names until The Reveal (even skipping over certain scenes that easily give away the surprise, then showing them once the twist is executed). So technically, Superman himself doesn't actually have Super-Weaving powers. That we know of.
- There was a similar case when Superboy threatened to rape Wonder Girl: it was an ugly alien disguising itself as him. That's about it. Still a threat of rape.
- There are a couple of cases where the site's creator is familiar with the context, but says it doesn't make sense anyway.
- Jerkass: Superman, but (less frequently) Batman, Jimmy, Lois... pretty much everybody.
- Nice Hat: Superman's "pope" hat, which seems to be a personal favorite to the website's creator, as he constantly laments that it only appeared once.
- Perverse Sexual Lust: Forum user Rad McAwesome has an obsession over Thriftie, the Super Stoic Shopkeeper from The New Batman Adventures. He even wrote a backstory for her and had a Rule 34 website draw her naked.
- Rule of Funny
- Running Gag: Several types of covers crop up a statistically alarming number of times. There's a few in the commentary as well, particularly, "Batman's not gay!"
- Smug Snake: See: Jerkass.
- Values Dissonance: Most of the Wartime propaganda featured is astonishingly racist by today's standards.
- Very Special Episode: Mocked in the infamous Green Lantern / Green Arrow crossover, which shows Green Arrow's apprentice, Speedy, caught shooting up heroin:
"You nicknamed him Speedy. What did you expect?!"
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Many of the Stupor Powers are of this variety.
- X Called. They Want Their Y Back.: Bucky, Wonder Woman called. She wants her cover back.