If you were to catalogue my obsessions in to some sort of, well, catalogue and then flip to the ‘B’ section you’d find ‘Beatles, The’ and ‘Batman’ snuggled in comfortably together (seperated by ‘Bears’ and ‘Bay, Car Chases in the Films of Michael;’) How thrilled I was then to hear that, back in the mists of time, these two iconic forces had collided in the pages of a comic book. Sort of. The Beatles, in this particular story, are re-interpreted as ‘The Oliver Twists’ but it’s pretty obvious what the writers are getting at. It’s also clear that the writers were, for want of a more succinct phrase, mad as a flannel of badgers. Tonight (or whatever time of day you’re reading this), I present this, possibly the most extraordinary comic, nay piece of literature, ever written, to you.
Now before we get cracking on the issue itself, I think I’d better put this piece of work into some sort of context. In 1970, a rumour circulated that not only was Paul ‘Thumbs Up’ McCartney dead, but that he’d popped his clogs in 1966 when he’d been decapitated in a car crash and been replaced in The Beatles by a lookalike in order to keep the lucrative business of the band going. However, those myschievious Scouse band-mates of his had subsequently managed to place a number of clues in their music and artwork to let dedicated fans know the truth about their deceased songwriter and the conspiracy to replace him. This is what lunacy looks like when it’s Olympic standard.
Some people have, however, spent the last few decades mercilessly trawling through the Beatles work to find these hidden messages. The full list of ‘clues’ they’ve come up with is far too lengthy and, frankly, bizarre to go into here but- as a taster, let’s have a look at the cover of ‘Abbey Road’.
At first glance, it’s the Beatles wandering over a zebra crossing but, for believers in this sort of thing, it’s actually a dazzling cavalcade of signs and signifiers that makes Dan Brown’s ‘interprative’ ‘work’ in ‘The Da Vinci Code’ seem like he simply wasn’t looking hard enough. You’ll notice that Macca himself has no shoes on despite wearing a suit- a situation that can be easily explained when one considers his twin ports of wacky old hippy and rampaging commercialist. But the death theorists claim that he’s barefoot because, in Italy, dead people are buried without shoes. And, just to prove the point, the rest of the Beatles are lined up in the order of a funeral procession- Lennon all in white representing God/The Chruch, Starr in black as the mourner, the dead body of McCartney and Harrison in denim as the grave digger. And the numberplate on the Volkswagen Beetle reads ’28IF’ because McCartney would have been 28 if he’d lived.
Quite impressive bit of deduction, isn’t it? Well it is till you realise that pretty much every Beatles photo of the era has Harrison dressed like a Russian farm-hand and Starr in the suit of a working-class man who was never entirely comfortable in the group that had become the leading lights of psychedelia. Lennon’s Daz-white garb, meanwhile, is explained by the fact that his LSD intake at this point was so prodigious he had become genuinely convinced that he was Jesus. And McCartney was 27 at the time, not 28.
Every other ‘clue’ to this mystery can be easily explained away with basic rationality or the slenderest grip on reality but if you want to head over to http://homepages.tesco.net/harbfamily/opd/index.html and check out such phenomena as the backwards message before ‘Blackbird’ on The White Album or what happens when you put a mirror horizontally through the text ‘Lonely Hearts’ on the front cover of Sgt. Pepper then be my guest (also, take a trip to the site’s forum for some genuine weapons-grade insanity). However, to get back to the story, the rumour of McCartney’s demise soon spread around the world until Paul himself had to give an interview to Time Magazine under the headline “I’m Not Dead”. Evidently the rumour also eventually found it’s way round to DC Comics and issue #222 of Batman was born.
As I’m not as avid a comic reader as some, I’m going to assume that the images of Batman and Robin appearing behind Bruce and Dick when they think about what they could do to solve the mystery as their respective alter-egos are to be taken figuratively and not as actual occurances, otherwise they’d be something of a giveaway.
Well it would appear that Frank Robbins has decided that, so we don’t swerve too close to real life, the Paul character should be re-named Saul and, if his facial hair and dress-sense are anything to go by, changed from a cheery mop-top to an evil magician. There definitely appears to be an obvious George Harrison clone, and a Lennon lookalike who also looks like he’s a good three decades older than anyone else in the band whilst the artist seems to have forgotten all of Ringo’s distinguishing features like his massive nose and sad eyes and instead decided to base his character on 1972 Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz. (Also, the car Wayne sends to pick them up appears to be chauffered by M. Bison from Streetfighter II. Or Cheryl Cole.)
Do Superheroes regularly go pinching stuff from celebrities bedrooms as they sleep just on a hunch? Don’t they have to get warrants? It must be hard enough being famous and coping with all the attention without Wonder Woman flying through your window at all hours trying to swipe your toiletry bag in case it’s got blueprints in it or something. Frankly Robin deserves to be clattered in the back of the head for snooping around like Raffles in latex. And he’s not much cop as a crime fighter if he get’s taken out by someone as fey as a pop star. The only musicians who it’s acceptable to take a leathering from are the notoriously ‘handy’ Roger Daltrey, Ted Nugent or all 35 members of Earth, Wind and Fire at once.
Now they’re bugging the Twists’ calls! Even ignoring the fact that they’ve apparently got dressed up as Batman and Robin just to sit around in private listening to other people on the phone this is some seriously unethical behaviour. No wonder America comes up with Camp X-Ray and friendly fire if they all grow up reading their heroes pissing all over the UN Human Rights Charter with gay abandon.
“They call this a mike- BOOM!”, “Lets make this in STEREO! I’ve balanced the LEFT channel… now for the RIGHT!”, I can’t help reading lines like that and picturing Robin sat alone at night trying to think of every possible arena for him to have a scrap and then trying to think of things he’d find there to attack people with and then an appropriate one-liner to accompany it- something akin to a cross between Jackie Chan and Emo Phillips. I like to think that similar lines to these spoken by Robin were uttered by Phil Spector when he attacked the various musicians who’ve had the opportunity to work with him through the years. But not when he shot that woman as that would be in extraordinarily bad taste.
That tape recorder must be made of kevlar or something! That’s the second person it’s been used to batter and there’s not a scratch on it. Try that with an I-pod and you’ll be picking bits of white plastic out of the carpet for months.
Let me get this straight- Saul has perpetrated fraud on a massive scale and get’s adulation-a-plenty on the final page whilst Glennan/Chumley, who’s only apparent crime was smacking Robin over the head whilst the Boy Wonder was in the middle of robbing a sleeping house guest is last seen being man-handled out of the door- no doubt en-route to a life in solitary! Can’t help but think the writer of this particular comic was more a McCartney fan than a Lennon one. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if Mark Chapman had a copy of this issue stuck in his bag between the gun and Catcher in the Rye…
NEXT WEEK: Iron Man meets The Bee Gees