5 Famous Comics That Got Totally Insane Out Of The Blue

No longer cowering at the sight of a traditional tough guy, Mickey decides to teach this sweet baker's boy a lesson and kicks his ass.

Walt DisneyH-O-M, O-P-H, I-B-I-A

Not satisfied with merely beating up a completely innocent person, Mickey adds that Nipp is a "cream-puff inhaler," which is way too specific to not be some kind of homophobic putdown. Disney seemed to agree, because when the comic ended up in a collection, they changed it to "cake-eater," and the baker's boy to a baker's girl.

Walt Disney

Walt DisneyGoing from hate crime to casual violence against women is really more of a lateral move.

Bizarrely, that wasn't the only time Diana tried to fashion a disguise out of dead meat. There was also the time she defeated some Nazis by making a ham version of herself. This one requires some backstory. In World War II, Diana meets some starving children whose brother has gone missing. Forgetting she has a war to fight in, Diana heads to the deli where they last saw the boy. While there, her Nazi sense goes off and she manages to trick the men there into giving the Nazi salute by giving them a salute first. The deli Nazis figure out Diana's trick and put her in a sack.

DC ComicsSo she stays fresh, we suppose.

But when they aren't watching, she slips out of her bonds and changes into Wonder Woman. Being unreasonably worried that the deli Nazis will figure out that this random unnamed woman is Wonder Woman, she feels the need to fashion a decoy so that her kidnappers think she's still in the sack. She spears three large hams with a broom, proudly proclaiming she has made a "perfect woman's figure" -- which makes a great case for Wonder Woman having some serious body dysmorphia.

DC Comics

DC Comics"Let's hurry up and get this over with so we can go back and have sex with those hot hams we've been saving."

The Germans come check on her and assume she is dead meat, ironically, so they toss the sack into the water. In the end, Diana manages to stop the deli Nazis and their plan to invade the U.S. Fortunately, we don't get an entire follow-up comic about the local coast guard confusedly dredging up a bunch of ham while looking for the corpse of some nurse.

But as it turns out, you can add "being politically correct" to B.C.'s list of things that are way too progressive for its neanderthal sensibility. But it's not the silly cave people who are to blame for this small slice of blatant antisemitism:

Johnny HartSpoilers for Mel Gibson's Passion 2

In this 2001 strip, famed cartoonist Johnny Hart decides to take being excruciatingly unfunny to a whole new metaphysical level by invoking Jesus on the cross. In the cartoon, the candles of a menorah (which has seven arms instead of nine) are snuffed out one by one by Jesus' seven "last words" as told in the Bible, and as the last one goes out, the symbol of Judaism is broken into a cross. We're probably not reading too much into it when we assume the point of this comic is "Christians rule, Jews drool."

So why would a comic strip which is literally called Before Christ do an entire spread throwing shade at Judaism? Because it was Easter, and Hart happens to be a vocal Evangelical. Naturally, it caused immediate controversy, especially among Jewish leaders who claimed it was trying to assert that Judaism stopped being a "real" religion 2,000 years ago after this hip new Christianity thing came into town. Hart countered by saying the strip was meant to honor both Easter and Passover. Of course, this came from a guy who two years earlier said that "Jews and Muslims who don't accept Jesus will burn in Hell," so let's not invite this guy to Purim just yet.

Crankshaft relates the ongoing adventures of old and cynical bus driver John Crankshaft Sr. Already you can see that this could go south really easily. But some of the strips are cute in a grumpy old man kind of way.

Tom Batiuk

But a few years ago, the comic took a turn for the dark and depressing. For example, when Crankshaft meets up with his buddy who owns the local movie theater, the conversation suddenly turns to elderly survivor's guilt. How whimsical.

Tom BatiukMaybe they keep leaving because you keep talking during the movie.

Isn't being old funny? Ha ha! We're all going to die! But Crankshaft is only getting started. In a later comic, John is seen dressing up to the nines, maybe for church, maybe for a birthday party. Maybe it's his birthday party! But then he finds his dress shoes laying around on the floor, which prompts him to come to a realization so depressingly morbid that it would've made even Nietzsche curl up into a ball and give up.

Tom Batiuk"It gets even worse when you realize that they'll also be the shoes I'll wear at my own funeral."

Yeah, we don't think that most people flap open the Sunday paper during brunch to enjoy seeing a man realize he's now so old that his main reason for getting dressed up is to lay his friends to rest. And we thought Family Circus had issues.

Superman's reply boils down to a quote he heard on NPR about what it is to be a radical (because Superman is, like, such a rebel), which leads to him high-roading the very not-superhuman dude to go Superman himself if he cares that much. To which the obvious answer is that he can't Superman, given that he's nothing but a guy with a poodle.

DC Comics

DC Comics"Other than peeing your pants right now, I mean?"

But while Superman's soul-searching leaves him with no time to save lives, it does allow him to stop and shoot some hoops to help some random dude's self-esteem.

DC Comics

DC ComicsYes, this scene was written by a middle-aged white man, why do you ask?

If this is him trying to reconnect with the common man and figure out his place on earth, he is doing a really shitty job of it. But in the end, Supes does get the chance to show what he has learned from his existential crisis: by telling a girl to kill herself if she really wants to.

DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics

Deciding that free will is more important than anything, Superman promises a would-be jumper that if she does jump, he will let her fall. She doesn't, because this is a Superman comic, and nobody pays to see a splash page of Superman trying to explain the finer points of existentialism to some grieving parents.

DC Comics"Yeah, I'm drinking a double tonight ..."

Let's all just stick to watching the Wonder Woman movie over and over and over again.

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