Encyclopantia Bobtannica

June 26th, 2009

Pantcyclopedia Bumtannica? Buttannica? Whatever. I’m thirty-one years of age you know.

Haven’t done a pant update for what seems like ages, but that’s not to say the world has saned-up and stopped selling them. Quite the reverse – the tide of new superpants is faster and stronger than ever before. Keeping track of them on-blog has partly* been a way of tracking the way the high street and concomitant fashion/cultural mores have responded to the superhero madness of he last few blockbuster summers. Our ongoing victory, if you will.

The mission is becoming an increasingly difficult, because – in no small part on account of this blog, obvs – these pants are more popular and common than ever before. They’re everywhere. Several of my fellow mindless can now be seen baring a splash of four colour idiocy by their bumcracks when they bend, and (and the pride I take in this is truly pathetic, I appreciate that) we received a genuine, honest-to-shitness Thank You email from a grateful reader whose girlfriend spied him checking out some of my hot strides, and is now the happy holder of a burgeoning collection himself. This post is dedicated to him.

cap-front

Look at that, fucking brilliant. Kirby or something maybe, or one of those Bullpen guys who cloned him so well. It’s not the line though is it? Not the pencils or inks, its the colours, and the pure vivid iconography, that makes me so happy to have Ole Hornhead ‘pon my morning horn. Or is Daredevil Ole Hornhead? Cap would be winghead I suppose… You don’t care, do you? Then things get a bit weird:

capfront

What? Where is he? No sign of Wakanda’s finest far as I can see. Got to be said, hell of a left-field choice to put on the back there, pantmaker man. Maybe it’s some kind of oblique reference to a rivetting recent reveal in one of Marvel’s mightier morsels. Maybe no-one is keeping an eye on what goes where with the design of these pants. Maybe its just cheap robots set loose on the Marvel archive. OR – going insane again for a second –  it’s a message from the pant designer, who as we’ve established at least to my own stupid satisfaction, reads these posts – it’s just a very well-worked excuse to Trojan the word ‘Pant’ onto a pair of pants, for me to notice and report. Thanks chum. These pants are fucking brilliant.

bat-front

So are these. I know for a fact that it was their use on these pants that made Frank Quitely go all crazy with the sound effects in Batman & Robin. Not sure what’s going on with that twisted, puckered waistband though. I’m going to blame some shoddy elastic, and not the rippling mounds of pale and hairy manfat weighing upon it like the 25 years of worthless comics currently clogging up my dwelling. And my parents’ dwelling.

batback1

So great. Simple, kind of non-ripped from an original comic source, far as I can recognise, then shoehorned with utter pop abandon into a pointless arrangement of panel borders. Flatus = ‘BATMAN’, Rektus = …bit hard to be sure, but it’s the Bat-symbol isn’t it? The proper, yellow-circle one around it and everything. Tops (bottoms). About as perfect a pair of Batpants as you can imagine really. He’s caught up a lot actually – time was the lack of Batpants in the wardrobe was striking and inexplicable. Then TDK happened, and the rest is underwear history. I’ve even got another, unblogged pair of Batpants somewhere, fallen down the back of the drawer I think, which I’ll maybe bring to you another day. In the pants stakes, Batman is now a very solid number two, second only to

hulk-front

The placement on that eye  is really perfect, isn’t it? These are, mmm…not sure, maybe sixth pair of Hulk pants I own? that’s plenty. In the past I’ve been very boring about why that might be so, but I really don’t understand why I’ve got so many big green underskids and exactly zero proper Spidey ones. Oh yes,  that’s right: licensing rights.

hulk-back

Hell of a flatus: ‘HWAK!’ Crisp like a gamma powered backhand. Is that Ultron getting the spank there? Is the rektus an actual piece of adamantium precision-engineering? What would an unbreakable metal screw do to your insides anyway?

Here are the seventh Hulk pants. He’s sharing the top of the bill, but they still go in his score-column:

ff-front

Woah! Look at that! Thick like The Thing’s forearm. You heard.

ff-back

Again, great. Classic House of Ideas style, big facial expressions, speed lines, flames, exclamation marks bloody everywhere!!! And a rektus like a brick fist.

That’s it, we’re up to date, apart from the missing Batpants mentioned earlier. Remember to send us in your own superpant news, and rest assured in a few months time I’ll be back with news of the next few batch.

The telly keeps saying Michael Jackson’s died.

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