Bob Haney and Dick Dillin are crazy. I mean it -- they are both so kooked that you have to simply love them. 1972 was a good year for them to prove it, too. The place: World's Finest #215 (and many others but let's start at the start). The idea: What if Batman and Superman had kids?

God that sounds so simple. It sounds like a great way to explore characters and show Batman and Superman through the light of their offspring and to also show their parenting skills and truly who they are as people, because when you're a parent, things do change. These stories have the set-up to be something deep and meaningful.

None of that happens here. I mean not a single ounce of it is anywhere in this collection.

First of all both children are named, shall we say, obviously? Bruce Wayne, Jr. and Clark Kent, Jr. are both fed up with living under their respective parents' shadows. So what do they do? They decide to be heroes. They don costumes and take on new superhero names.

Except they don exact duplicates of their fathers' suits and call themselves Batman, Jr. and Superman, Jr. It doesn't really speak of getting out from under a shadow, does it? No, not really. It's more like they crawled under the rock of their dads and hid while crying, hoping no one would notice them. And then touched each other in the darkness, swore themselves to secrecy, and wondered if they could afford a Robin yet. Someone should do their laundry.

But let's leave the crazy behind and -- oh, we can't leave it behind can we? Huh, all right. Let's break this fucker down then!

They have mothers, don't they? Well, sure. Sure they do, and we see them. Except, see, they didn't want to come down on an answer to the eternal questions of the DC universe: who will Superman choose in his big Archie-like romantic life? Lana Lang or Lois Lane? And what was up with the fact that they were kinda Betty and Veronica? Was that on purpose? Did it happen by accident? Who was responsible for that entire love triangle that caused so many bad stories over the years? I'm straying. The other half of the equation was Batman's ladylove. Who could it be? Would he end up with Selina Kyle, Catwoman, or ... uhm... someone else that no one had heard of or cared about? Uhhhh... wait, why was that a mystery? Huh.

Anyway! In an attempt to not blow those answers (Because maybe, just maybe, some fan would hold Haney responsible if his random-ass choice proved wrong?), we never see the mothers’ faces. Ever. Big floppy hats, veils, everything and anything is used to hide their mug shots so the reader will always wonder just who the Super-Sons’ mothers are.

Not that the reader cares, actually. I mean, it was only noticeable to me because they went to such lengths to hide them. So I started to assume the kids were spawned by Superman robots, cross-dressing Superman robots. Because Superman and Batman just needed some hot loving and all they had were these robots and ... BAT-MISTAKES WERE MADE ALL RIGHT?

Let's move on some.

We are told that Superman, Jr. has half the powers his father does, so he can't fly. His powers are "still developing," but he can't fly (yet). Except then we see him flying. Fairly often. Did someone forget to tell Dillin that he wasn't drawing the real Superman? The fact that this kid looked just like Superman, wore the same costume, and had the same sort of adventures might have confused him. Would you be surprised? Not at this point, I fear.

I mean, look, these stories make no sense. Pretty much ever. They're just insane nuggets of goof. Any collection where Batman (Jr.! JUNIOR damn you!) has the following exchange:

"Crazy Hippie in a Batman suit?!"

"I'm hip, all right -- but not to creeps who call me crazy!"

Well, Batman, Jr., I'm calling you crazy. You and Clarkie-boy ride an orange motorcycle everywhere. You go into small towns. You are seen on the only orange bike in town. Then Superman, Jr. and Batman, Jr. are seen riding around town to right wrongs on a... yup... orange bike. Way to hide who you are, idiots.

The whole thing is like that. Christ. A story where they send their fathers to jail because heroics aren't about getting applause and then have to work with Flash, Green Arrow, and Aquaman to save a town sounds good, right? Except for that jail part. But we get these constant doubts that the other, older, heroes are real -- that maybe they're just the kids’ dads pretending to be other heroes. WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT? What sense does that even make?

I don't know, but Haney felt it made sense because at the end we get a random reveal where, you guessed it, we find out that their dads did fake being other... it hurts. All right? I admit it, this fucking hurts.

I can imagine the moment Batman and Superman decided on their course of action though.

"Hey, Bruce, let's fuck with our kids."

"Again, Clark? But we've already given them complexes the size of Krypton and that shit blew the fuck up."

"Harsh, but why not? We mess with their heads some and maybe those snot-nosed brats will see the light."

"What light?"

"Don't bother me with details! Let's do this!"

"Right on!"

It hurts, I tell you.

But it hurts in a good way. This isn't a, "It burns when I pee," kinda pain -- it's the pain of an old crazy loved comic. This shit was written with a mad disregard for anything but the moment of its creation. The stories weren't meant to pass the test of time; they were of the moment and meant to be forgotten and left where they were. And that is kinda fucking cool. There was no baggage there, no lingering doubt, just constant goofy fun that took itself seriously so that the kids reading it would take it seriously.

Except the next to last story. We will not discuss it here. Even in the collection they manage to warn you about it. It just ... it didn't work, and it should be read, if only because you can feel that everyone involved knew it was a mistake.

Still, overall? The Super-Sons stories just make you laugh and keep reading.