Batman vs. the Joker's Boner

I once came across Orson Welles discussing the way the meanings of words he'd grown up using had changed over time. In particular, he mentioned the word "gay" whose meaning is certainly a bit more charged than when it was more or less a synonym for "happy". Another word whose meaning has shifted gears over the years is "boner", whose current scatological meaning is pretty far removed from its previous life as a colorful substitute for the word "mistake".

While some may lament the loss of innocence symbolized by that dissonance between past and present usage you'll get none of that from me. Language inevitably evolves and if it does so in a way that appeals to my inner-adolescent I'm all for it. Which brings me to the Caped Crusader. As anyone familiar with Dr. Frederic Wertham's infamous book Seduction of the Innocent knows, Batman is no stranger to curious interpretations. It's not surprising, then, that some Batman stories from the 1950s are entertaining for different reasons than the original creators intended.

A classic example is the 1951 story "The Joker's Comedy of Errors" (from Batman #66) which features the Joker basing his crimes on famous historical mistakes. There isn't enough time to list all the times that mistakes are referred to as "boners" throughout the text, and DC Comics (as owners of the intellectual property) probably wouldn't like me posting the entire story online. Fortunately, the brief (and legally acceptable) excerpt below gives you the general idea.

Even Grant Morrison can't write Batman this way anymore. It's even better than the story from the same era about Batman marrying Vicki Vale whose splash-page features an onlooker observing that he never thought he'd see the day Batman would fall for a girl.

There was a time when superhero characters were an endangered species with many characters vanishing as the 1950s progressed. Having handled both Frederic Wertham and the Joker's boners with his dignity intact, it's no surprise that Batman turned out to be one of the survivors.