INDEPENDENT COMICS: Bat Lady (Zeus Comics)

Independent Comics in the media

Artists and Models is a 1955 Paramount musical comedy in VistaVision and marked Martin and Lewis's fourteenth feature together as a team. The film co-stars Dorothy Malone, Eva Gabor, Anita Ekberg, and Shirley MacLaine.

MOVIE PLOT:
Rick Todd (Dean Martin) is a struggling painter and smooth-talking ladies' man. His goofy young roommate Eugene Fullstack (Jerry Lewis) is an aspiring children's author who has a passion for comic books, especially those of the mysterious and sexy "Bat Lady".However, each night Eugene has horrific screaming nightmares inspired by those ultra-violent comics which he describes aloud in his sleep and which are about the bizarre bird-like superhero "Vincent the Vulture" who is, according to Eugene's nocturnal babblings, the "defender of truth and liberty and a member of the Audubon Society" and is "half-boy, half-man, half-bird with feathers growing out of every pore" and a "tail full of jet propulsion". Also known as "Vultureman" or more simply "The Vulture", the golden helmet-masked hero with his stubby wing-like arms and talon-like hands and feet soars through space from his "homogenized space station" orbiting the Milky Way to battle his shapely but sadistic purple-eyed archenemy "Zuba the Magnificent" who hates Vincent because "she's allergic to his feathers" and who enjoys blasting big "oooozing" holes into his highly resilient flying form ("It'll take more than that to stop me!") with her "atomic pivot gun".A neighbor in their apartment building, Abigail Parker (Dorothy Malone), is a professional artist who works for a New York comic book company called Murdock Publishing and is the creator of the "Bat Lady". Her energetic horoscope-obsessed roommate is Bessie Sparrowbush (Shirley MacLaine) who is secretary to her publisher Mr. Murdock (Eddie Mayehoff) and Abigail's model for the flying bat-masked superheroine. Bessie develops a crush on Eugene who is unaware that she is his beloved "Bat Lady" in the flesh.Abigail becomes frustrated at work at the increasingly lurid and bloodthirsty stories the money-hungry Murdock demands and quits to become an anti-comics activist, dragging Eugene into her crusade as an example of how trashy comic books can warp impressionable minds at the same time that Rick gets a job with the company after pitching the adventures of "Vincent the Vulture" from Eugene's dreams. He attains success at his new job, but after falling for Abigail he keeps his work a secret from both her and Eugene.Unbeknownst to all of them, Eugene's dreams also contain the real life top-secret rocket formula "X34 minus 5R1 plus 6-X36" that Rick publishes in his stories. With spies all around them, they manage to entertain at the annual "Artists and Models Ball" and capture the enemy, preserving national security.

ZEUS COMICS: BAT LADY
After the Senate debacle, Zoosman tried to regroup his line with a sure-fire seller: a comic based on a Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis motion picture… a movie about comic books! Zoosman had served as a consultant for the film Artist & Models, providing the artwork for the fake comic company Martin works at in the movie, and was evidently the inspiration for the over-the-top comics publisher played in the film by Eddie Mayehoff. Unfortunately, DC Comics had the rights to Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis in comic books, so Zeus had the rights to a Martin & Lewis film, but couldn't use Martin & Lewis, or mention their names. Zoosman solved this by basing the title on a comic character in the flick.

The comic that killed Zeus! Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis make a Marilyn Monroe sandwich with some Bat Lady garnish. The only known existing image of the BAT LADY comic, as all copies were ordered destroyed after a lawsuit.

BAT LADY (played by Shirley MacLaine in the movie) became the star of a comic that was a weird mix-up of superhero-crime-horror and romance, but this being after the Comics Code, a lot of those words were not allowed to be used. Furthermore, even without Martin & Lewis, DC Comics, and its parent company, the powerful Independent News Service, had a major problem with a character sporting the name "BAT" in it. Worse for Zoosman, the new Comics Code is prominently plastered on the cover, yet Zeus did not have the comic reviewed by the Comics Code board nor were theye even a member. After surviving public burnings of their comics, Zeus could not survive the court-ordered round-up and destruction of every single copy Bat Lady Comics. DC soon premiered Batwoman in order to cover their legal butts in the future.