My wife (along with the whole family) just threw me a wonderful birthday party. Unsurprisingly, they chose a Batman theme for it! And it was glorious!

Fans like me have been celebrating Batman birthdays ever since the Adam West TV show. Geez, that’s a lot of birthdays. But nothing makes you feel more youthful the thought of donning a cape and fighting crime. Although I am told by granddaughter Lula that it is all about “saving the day” now, not only fighting crime.

It’s hard to believe there are so many cool Bat-Gifts still out there. This year, my kind friends and family gifted me quite a few – and a few of the standouts were:

• InkWork’s Projector Pen is really a mini-Batsignal. It looks like a standard pen, but projects a bat signal. I’m not sure how it will work if I try to project it onto a skyscraper or a cloud, but is sure works well in the kitchen!

• For many of us, the Batphone will always be red and kept under a glass cake cover. But my brother Colin found a RANGUOWEN Bat Phone Holder Mount that has a cool look to it. I can’t wait to put this one on my office desk!

• Brave and the Bold # 67 –. This Flash and Batman team-up was very appropriate for my brother Chris to gift me: the Flash is his favorite comic hero and Batman is mine (except for Captain Action, of course). And although I love this series, Brave and the Bold, I never owned this particular issue. That’s because as a kid I had stumbled across a Super DC Giant – which reprinted this issue (along with a Metamorpho story. This is a wonderful Silver Age team-up. In fact, Charles Paris’ loose inks over the Carmine Infantino pencils give the whole adventure a certain ruggedness.

• The Gift of Art : My wife Kathe also commissioned a wonderful Glenn Whitmore piece to commemorate the day. And if you like Glenn’s work – you can learn more about it all here.

• And there are a lot of Bat-Birthday Cards out there too – I loved all of them!

One of the sweetest parts of the day was when granddaughter Lula came up to me and innocently asked, ”Pappy, do you want to pay superheroes with me?” Wow – I would play superheroes with her all day/every day!

Looking Ahead to HeroesCon

I hope to see you at HeroesCon in North Carolina over Father’s Day weekend. This convention has always had a spectacular reputation, and I’m bummed that it’s taken me this long to get there. I’ll be moderating the Team-Up Companion Panel on Saturday, June 17th at 12:30 in room 205. I will also be a panelist on the Back Issue 20th Anniversary Panel. That one is on Friday, June 16, at 1:30 p.m. and this one is also in room 205.

Swing by if you can!