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Apr 25

Bubble boy bottle babyClick for larger image

Tom Noir Comments: Experimental subject 7934B believed in dressing for the job you wanted, not the job you had.
Published 1970

Actually, that cover IS a classical work of art!I would touch it without protective gloves.I've seen worse. Far, far, worse.Interesting, but I would still read it in public.Middlng: Neither awful nor awfully goodWould not like to be seen reading that!Awful... just awful...That belongs in a gold-lame picture frame!Gah... my eyes are burning! Feels so good!Good Show Sir! (Average: 5.93 out of 10)
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24 Responses to “Superbaby”

  1. THX 1138 Says:

    It’s like a ship in a bottle, you can’t work out how it got in there. Wait till he does his “wall of death” around the sides.

  2. RachelJ Says:

    What are his feet resting on? Not just that- both feet and hands are casting shadows on… nothing.

  3. THX 1138 Says:

    It could be a trick of perspective and he’s crouching behind the bottle we’re looking through. He’s still crouching in mid-air, mind you.

  4. fred Says:

    This cover needs a Bunsen burner.

  5. Michael Toland Says:

    Some good ol’ fashioned chauvinism in the tag line there. Yeesh.

  6. Raoul Says:

    If I were concocting a new Olympic super-sprinter I’d add a few more Jamaican genes.

  7. Bibliomancer Says:

    I think Good Show Sir has exhausted the Felix Mendelsohn, Jr. catalog.

  8. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @Bibliomancer—Not quite. I don’t think anybody’s posted the cover to the Space Violin Concerto in E minor (OP. 64) yet.

  9. StevenLP Says:

    “A mere woman” … presumably she was a mermaid from the Lake District?

  10. Tor Mented Says:

    I picture him launching from his sprinter’s crouch and bashing his head against the glass … again and again.

  11. Francis Boyle Says:

    The title typeface just screams “It’s 1970 and things are about to get FUNKY”.

  12. RachelJ Says:

    @StevenLP. Shhhh! You’ll set GSS ex-noob off again…

  13. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @Tor M 😉

  14. Anna T. Says:

    Why does the flask have an invisible floor?

    Also, the gross misogynistic tagline makes me want to stopper the flask and bury it somewhere where no one would be able to find it.

  15. Longtime_lurker Says:

    BC #8: How about a Space Midsummer Night’s Dream (https://www.allmusic.com/album/mendelssohn-a-midsummer-nights-dream-mw0001430325). And if the book doesn’t exist it ought to.

  16. Tat Wood Says:

    This is freaky! I picked that up yesterday on a trip to Providence, specifically to answer GSS Admin’s call to supply more pics.

  17. B. Chiclitz Says:

    @LL—That would be perfect for GSS. I’m trying to imagine the tags the Wiz would put on it: “Asshead,” “Hair Issues,” “Too Many Fairies,” etc.

  18. MakkaPakka Says:

    He’s trying to beat David Blaine’s record of 44 days. The illustration would be enhanced with a helicopter dangling a cheese burger.

    https://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/15/1063624983064.html

  19. Mellie M. Says:

    Gotta watch out for us mere women. We routinely put men in boiling flasks. It’s how we throw them for a loop.

  20. Tor Mented Says:

    Well, the book might be more interesting if he was thrown for a loop by a meerkat.

  21. GSS ex-noob Says:

    Apparently he’s gained the ability to hover. Mid-air, mid-flask, he doesn’t care.

    But if he’s Superbaby, where’s his blue suit and red cape? And where’s Krypto the Superdog? (Yeah, I read Bronze Age comics, what of it?)

    Don’t worry, RachelJ, I’m too busy grumping about the sexist tag line, which contrasts with the funky bass line in my head caused by the title font. Was the font suggestive of what happens during the loop-throwing?

    That font says “blaxploitation” to me so strongly that I’m surprised that the dude is white. Even “white-clad protagonist” or whatever that tag is.

    Yay, a misogynistic tag line and possibly racist implications for the character-building. (Even in 1970, we knew black people ran better than the whitey white guy here) Ah, the good old days.

    @B’mancer: The other cover shows Michaelangelo’s David as a baseball player, a sporty font, and no tag line. It’s better. The one here is the second cover, so it got worse.

    Maybe getting such terrible covers drove Felix out of the biz.

    —————————————————————————————-

    One of our old friends, “Dinosaur Samurai” is available in audio here:
    https://www.humblebundle.com/books/classic-scifi-and-fantasy-books?hmb_source=navbar&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=tile_index_2

    Scroll down for another awful Alfred Bester cover involving exposed brain.

  22. RachelJ Says:

    @GSS ex-noob. He’s casting a shadow on an invisible surface. Unknown Artist just didn’t think it through, I suppose. Like, at all.

    This is the plot, according to Google Books:

    Superbaby was created by research team selecting and combining genes from the best minds, the best bodies, and the best talents from the 21st century, and by his teens, he’s won various competitions and titles, but when he falls for a girl, he questions the methods that made him.

    Think Felix should have stuck to composing? Well, Google Books agrees with you:

    About the author (1969)

    “A German composer and conductor, whose brief life resulted in many great works, Felix Mendelssohn wrote songs, sonatas, cantatas, organ works, concertos, and symphonies. His first masterpiece, the overture to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” was produced when he was only 17. His symphonies and incidental music are remarkable in that someone so young composed them. Mendelssohn is also responsible for the revival of interest in Bach’s vocal and choral music by having performed the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829.”

  23. A. R. Yngve Says:

    SUPERBABY
    The saga of the cringiest, whiniest people who have ever ranted against their pet peeves on social media

  24. Will Duh Says:

    Context matters, as every human would be ‘mere’ from the standpoint of a genetically engineered superhuman … which the catchphrase is actually detailing the inherent irony of functional female upperhanded superiority in which the superbaby’s arrogance as vulnerability was a theme explored by the author. This book also somrwhat uncannily presages and foreshadows the Sabermetric revolution in the sport of baseball

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