The Wizard of 1,000 Awesome Plot Devices Thursday!

Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. At least, that's true where comics are concerned:


A villain with Giganticism in his head and invisible robots? And all you want is 12 cents? Comics, you once again prove that my devotion to you at the expense of relationships with real live human beings has been totally worth it!

Oh, but there's even more:


There's Alfred, winking at Ace the Bat-Hound! I'm one of those pathetic people who talks to dogs as if they were people, so it's good to see that even someone as relatively stable as Alfred does it as well.

There are gigantic tigers!:


There is a ridiculous coincidence:


Yeah, I'm buying that there was a guy who was actually named "Lancelot Wayne," and he just happened to dress up like a Bat himself. Just like Bruce's father did once. See? There were all kinds of Wayne men dressing up as bats, and I have to believe it. Do you know why? Because if I don't, my entire existence is a sad, pitiful lie, and I'm just not ready to face that reality today.


Say, Dick, why are you nudging Bruce Wayne that way when you speak of Batman?

What? Um... no reason.

There's even Random Ray Usage! (tm!):


See? Bad things happen in labs. Once we cure AIDS and cancer, we really need to shut them all down because it really seems like they do more harm than good.

And of course, there are the promised invisible robots!:


Because what's better than a robot? You know the answer: An invisible robot!

And some awesome dialog:


That's awesome. Of course you're going to ask the guy what was up with his head! It's amazing to me how many heroes encounter the villain and are too polite to ask that sort of thing.

I'm not a fan of characters with deformities almost always being the bad guys, by the way. It seems like you're destined to a life of crime if you have something like a scar on your face in nearly all forms of media, and that's seriously not cool.

And of course, the resolution of the story has to involve the invisible robots....


Only they aren't invisible anymore! That's right! Wrap your brain around that one! You come at Batman with an invisible robot, and do you know what he's going to do? He's going to make that robot visible and have it turn on you, that's what! Superman would just smash it, but that's no fun! Batman is going to have that robot betray you, and crush your testicles beneath its robot feet while you choke on the bitter irony, because Superman is lame and Batman is awesome!

Ah, I love the Silver Age. It makes my job here soooooo easy.

See you tomorrow!