Strange Book Saturday: The Super Dictionary

It's time to explore another strange book from my shelves. Even before I fell down the deep, dark hole that is comic book fandom, I was fascinated by this volume.

The Super Dictionary is best known for the following meme (and it’s variations):

Lex Luthor: criminal mastermind, sugar addict.

Intentional or not, there's a sort of comedic genius in this phrasing. (Please, someone, direct me to the comic this panel was borrowed from. What was Lex originally stealing? Cakes of uranium?) But even beyond this entry, Super Dictionary is much loved by the internet. You can find blogs and articles dedicated to its strangeness.

The Super Dictionary was published by Warner Educational Consultants in 1978, and it is now, sadly, out of print. Several of the characters in The Super Dictionary appear to have been created just for the dictionary. These characters also appeared in a series of elementary readers known as Super A (and possibly AA, B, and BB). According to some internet sources, the art in Super Dictionary was repurposed from earlier comics, which would explain its sometimes unsettling disconnect from what's being defined.

I think what makes the Super Dictionary so fascinating is that A) it offers such weird, out-of-context images of our favorite superheroes, and B) it fails, so beautifully, as a dictionary for young readers.

Consider this entry:

"A Slow News Day"
or "Instilling Globophobia in Children Everywhere"

What exactly is this image supposed to represent to children? Why is the balloon shaped like a pterodactyl? I suspect this panel was taken from a story in which Wonder Woman fought dinosaurs and they just doodled in some strings. In case you are wondering, pterodactyl is never defined by The Super Dictionary.

Even when the entries have no images, they are headscratchers:

Ted and Teri Trapper are married detectives created for The Super Dictionary. They spend many of their scenes being ant-sized for no clear reason. They also have the sanest Super Dictionary experience.

Okay, yes, breakfast defined as the first meal of the day works. And I can understand dividing the concept of breakfast into categories (cold/hot, healthy/children’s cereal, late/early, homemade/on the run), but indoor/outdoor never seemed like a important part of the meal’s definition. Does Super Dictionary worry that children will stand outside, shivering, munching on pop-tarts because no one explained that breakfast could be eaten indoors?

The individual oddities of this dictionary’s entries were enough to make it worth owning. But I also enjoy the accidental narratives created by reading the dictionary in order:

Batman is a terrible guardian.

I can't tell if Robin is being sarcastic or just resigned.

"Be careful of the outside covering of your body. If you scratch the finish, I can't get my full refund."

The dictionary reminds us that Robin has nine more toes, but that still doesn't make this okay.

"Can I leave you here in this alley? Can I continue to ignore my responsibilities?"

Robin's life is just sad.

Look at how wobbly Robin is, Batman. I think you really damaged his toe.

"You think my constant repetition reeks of desperation, but it doesn't!"

Look at Robin's face. He knows that even the dictionary is mocking him now.

I guess it's never too early to introduce children to the looming horror of parental disappointment.

Batgirl and the robin are sharing that "maybe if we ignore him, he'll go away" look.

During the panels where Green Arrow isn't courting Black Canary, he's a ball of barely contained rage.

HULK SMASH PUNY ARROW! (The cop is trying to nod himself out of frame.)

Black Canary's face says that she knows exactly what those problems are.

I'd say that it's nice to see Green Arrow express something other than anger, but he looks pretty mad about that tear.

And Lex Luthor just loves him some cake.

I don't think I've ever seen him this happy. And I've seen him kill Superman.

Strange Book Saturday: Boring Postcards USA

I'm introducing a new series of posts: Strange Book Saturdays!

In these posts, I invite you to gawk with me at oddball books. I won't write these posts every Saturday, but when they do show up it will be on a Saturday (or late Friday evening). Because I am a sucker for alliteration.

The preliminary "strange book" is a long-time favorite of mine: Boring Postcards USA (Phaidon).

Exactly what it says on the tin.

A friend and I used to send each other bizarre books we had discovered, and I think this is the first one she sent me (thanks, Cara!).

I spent three and a half of my college years in northern Indiana, yet I still never managed to cross a stretch of road quite this unremarkable.

Warning: You spend enough time staring at these postcards, you start to believe their claims. When I first saw this photo, I grimaced. Now, it actually makes me a little hungry.

The wonder of the book lies in the fact, not that someone took a photo of each of these places and objects, but that someone turned these photos into mass-produced postcards. What's more, some of these cards have obviously gone through the mail. I like to imagine the sort of messages sent from middle-of-nowhere America:

Dear Joan,

I wish you were here. But for all I know, you are here because "here" is indistinguishable from anywhere else.

In the moments between eating at diners dubbed only "Diner" and driving under the blue eye of a sky that never blinks, along a purgatory of endless interstates, I think of you.

Yours,

Jack

This looks less like a location you'd send a postcard from and more like the setting of a low-budget horror flick.

There's a part of me that desperately wants to take a road trip and find all the places where these photos were taken, to create a "before" and "after" series. Which seems like a waste. It's not as though there aren't many more interesting locales in the world, enough that I will never have time to visit them all. (If you'd like to learn about little-known, non-boring sites to plan a road trip around, check out Atlas Obscura.)

But Boring Postcards appeals to a part of me that relishes innocent delight in the ordinary. Anyone can see the beauty in the Grand Canyon. It takes a vigorous imagination to appreciate the beauties of the Gaines Truck Stop in Boyle, Mississippi. At one point, each of the places depicted here meant something to someone, was worth snapping a photo of or sending a note from. Even if only to say, "This is where I was today when I remembered that I love you."