Icon_UK makes a post about sidekicks.. what a surprise!

[icon_uk]

Yeah, yeah, I know my rep.

Here, in light of the recent Batman and Robin Annual #2, is a story of a dark avenger of the night and his first night with a sidekick, and what led him to taking one on in the first place.



Excerpts from webcomic/dead tree comic Love and Capes written and drawn by Thom Zahler has been posted on s_d before, and is, in it's own cover blurb "A Heroically Super Situation Comedy Comic Book".

We have our three basic expys based in the city of Chronopolis as part of the Liberty League; The Crusader, the supertrong, superfast, super nice flying brick (Real name Mark Spencer, CPA, married to Abby); Darkblade, a brilliant detective, combatant and is in reality Paul LaCroix, business mogul and Paul's best friend. Last but definitely not least, Amazonia, superheroine, media star and author. She dated Mark for a while, but they amicably split, and she and Paul are now an item.

This miniseries is "Love and Capes: What to Expect..." and covers the period of Abby's first pregnancy. To allow me to post the scenes I'm interested in this,, which is issue 3, I'm not going to deal much with the pregnancy, though it's a rather fun. (I feel I'm doing the series a disservice by doing this, since they deliberately tend to leave the superheroic side of things off panel to deal with the characters, but such is life)

We start with a nice geeky little moment from the first page of the issue.



"Fez's are cool"

Darkblade is having a bit of a problem in his relationship with Amazonia. Because of the type of heroes they are, their schedules are a little... conflicting, and they hardly get to spend any time together. We also meet "Mrs O" here, sort of a cross between Alfred, Aunt May and Ida from "The Middleman" (If you've never seen that show or read the comic, you should try, it was great fun too). She really does seem to have Darkblades best interests at heart, but she is not a huge fan of Amazonia, though whether out of jealousy (very well hidden jealousy) or resentment at anything disteracting her charge from his mission, is a little vague.



Now what could they be talking about...

A brief moment from Abby going in for her regular scan. The supers' regular physician/mystic, one Doctor Karma, has arranged for his female equivalent from a parallel world come over to be Abby's consultant.



Mark's a nice guy, a super nice guy, but like most of us, he can be a trifle thoughtless when he's stressed (and since the baby may be super powered, he's a little stressed on Abby's behalf), If only all of us had a Doctor Karma on hand for such moments.

So Mark and Pau meet up again that night, as friends do...



Well Dan Didio certainly does...



I love that his reason for getting a sidekick is that he wants to spend more time with his girlfriend, but is worried about it making him feel old.

So, some time later...



So, not an EXACT Bruce Wayne expy then...



I had to google "Mean Girls", and I still have no idea if this a Lindsay Lohan joke or a reference to someone else in it.

And how do these three potentials line up? Well we get a peek...



(I don't think Batman ever sent his Robin's for coffee, but only because Alfred probably packed a thermos in the Batmobile just in case... we have seen Nightwing have a thermos of soup with him on a stakeout, though where he stored it, given his costume, is perhaps better NOT wondered about too much)



Because of the fact I rarely see Love and Capes in the comics, I still don't know who finally won the position, Dart, Dagger or Dynamite, which irks me, but I will find out eventually!

Oh, and I had to post the "Next issue" cover, because I love it.