Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating Batman

[lordultimus]

15 of 45 pages.



Wayne Williams is a young man whose father, a cop, has been shot and killed, leaving a bitter Wayne to try to take care of his mother in their crime-infested neighborhood. Wayne, while working at his crappy job at a convenience store, witnesses a drive-by shooting attempt to kill local crime boss Handz Horgum. Wayne manages to save Handz' girlfriend Nita, which anger Handz and the two get in a fight that Handz easily wins, only backing off at Nita's request. Handz, still angry at Wayne, stages a masked robbery of Wayne's store where he and his goons claim that they're friends of Wayne to his mean boss, shooting him in the shoulder and knocking Wayne out and leaving a gun in his hand.







Over the months the bat becomes more and more comfortable with Wayne as outside Handz gains more and more power and influence. Wayne also befriends fellow inmate Frederick Grant, a scientist who was arrested for attempting to damage the machinery of a factory that was polluting a river. With Grant's encouragement, Wayne dedicates his time to developing his mind and body with the prison library and gym.



Wayne soon hears his mother died with no one to take care of her. Furious that he never got the chance to prove his innocence when she was still alive and will never get the chance to make it up to her, Wayne swears revenge against Handz. Meanwhile, Reverend Dominic Darrk of the Church of Eternal Empowerment speaks to his followers.



The inmates try to hold the warden hostage, but Wayne manages to protect him before the cops show up and gets a pardon.









When Wayne gets enough money, he realizes he needs someone to give him advice for what he should do with his life after he gets his revenge on Handz. So he finds Grant, revealing his identity.

Comments

[thosefew]

"You'll see at night, like a bat does!"
"You'll have acute hearing, like a bat does!"
"You'll fly, like a bat does!"
"You'll have bulletproof skin, like a bat doesn't!"

[kamino_neko]

That is one terribly drawn bat...

[alschroeder3]

Huh? Looks like a normal bat to me...

[kamino_neko]

The wing membranes only seem to connect to the legs when the bat is in flight - note how when it's landed the wing goes behind the leg, rather than folding along with it. The legs are also too long for any species of bat that looks particularly like that (it appears to be a particularly large vampire bat). They also seem to be jointed differently in different panels. (Neither of which looks right to my eye, but that might just be due to the membrane issue above.) The thumb claw is too big relative to the digit itself (which seems to be nonexistent). And in the one panel it appears to consist entirely of head, wings and legs, with no body at all between the limbs.

The head's not bad, though.

[captainbellman]

[mister_terrific]

That "no prisoner ever..." bit needs to be set to Gaston's song.

[beyondthefringe]

Oh, Stan Lee.

[sanjuro]

How many origins were smashed into this?

Iron Man
Spider-Man
Luke Cage

Any others?

[philippos42]

I thought of those three too!

Captain America had the scientist mentor, but there's not a lot of this that's particularly Cap.

[philippos42]

I like these scans, actually. It's clearly a mash-up of elements that resemble other characters, but going in different directions from those characters. And I like Joe Kubert's art in this.

[captainbellman]

The moustache is actually very distracting, as it rather makes Wayne Williams look like he ought to be played by Steve Harvey.

Looking forward to seeing more of these!

[clayhornik]

Wayne Williams was the name of the Atlanta Child Killer.

[alicemacher]

This looks like fun, and it's better written than I'd have expected from latter-day Stan Lee. His "affable wiseguy" narration, which I can only take in small doses, is...limited to small doses, at least judging from these scans. There's some over-the-top stuff, such as the "penitentiary as Gold's Gym" cliché and Handz's "history ended for me in 1977" design, but what's a superhero comic without at least a little of that?

[tripodeca113]

Wow Aang was a wrestler.
I guess this seemed okay.