Sunday, June 16, 2019

Captain Ben on the Mississippi River in a Batman comic book

The Vintage Batman 2019 Calendar by Asgard Press features a different vintage Batman comic book cover every month.  This month's cover (the cover for June) is Detective Comics #90 from August 1944.  The title of the issue's Batman story is "Crime Between the Acts!"  It tells the story of a showboat called the Mississippi Mermaid that travels down the Mississippi River.  The troupe aboard the ship entertains the river folk at the little towns along the river, and during the intermissions of their shows, the troupe sneaks off the ship and robs the towns blind.  That is, until they're stopped by Batman and Robin!  But the funny thing is that the captain of the ship (and leader of the criminals) is named Captain Ben!


Captain Ben, of course, was also the name of a character in our Star Trek series of movies.  Our Captain Ben was Captain Cobalt Ben of the Starship U.S.S. Excalibur, played by Tracy Walters.

Does this Captain Ben look like our Captain Ben?
There's another funny thing in this issue.  In this story, the boat travels the Mississippi River and stops at little towns along the way.  The city where most of the cast & crew of Dramedy Productions' various productions is from is a city called Osceola, Arkansas...which just happens to be a small town along the Mississippi River!  As a matter of fact, the climactic lightsaber duels at the end of our movie Star Wars: Quest for Vengeance were filmed at the Mississippi River at Osceola!  Freaky...

Filming lightsaber duels at the Mississippi River close to Osceola, AR