MORRISON MONDAYS! By BILL MORRISON When Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film was keeping theater owners busy counting popcorn profits, many business enterprises scrambled to find a way to make a buck off of the Masked Manhunter. Even tabloid newspapers found a way to work the Caped Crusader into articles in an effort to sell their publications. I came across a few such stories in rags like the National Enquirer and the satirical Weekly World News, and being a Batman fan, couldn’t resist clipping them out. In 1990, I worked at the Willardson Associates illustration studio, mostly painting movie posters for Disney. But I also contributed to a promotional, tabloid-size magazine that we produced named LAX. Every issue had a fun theme, and for the second issue it was decided that the subject would be “The Art of Kitsch.” After a studio discussion of the definition of kitsch and what aspects we might focus on, it was decided that since tabloid newspapers feature articles on kitschy topics, we should do an illustrated story about something found in such a paper. Knowing a fun opportunity when I saw one, I brought up the Batman articles I’d clipped and pitched a story and illustration based on them. I got the green light, and for the article we took elements from two actual stories that were about Batman-obsessed men and merged them together. One was about a guy who got Batman and Robin outfits for him and his wife to wear to a costume party, and then refused to take his off afterward. He worked at home dressed as Batman all the time, stripping off the Bat-suit only to have it dry cleaned. He would actually wait at the cleaners in his shorts for them to finish. He tried to get his wife to wear the Robin costume, but she refused, so he paid their maid $150 extra per week to put it on while she made beds and cleaned toilets. The other story told the tale of a Bat-fan who built a “Batcave” in his basement, cut a hole in his living room floor, and installed a fireman’s pole that he would use in lieu of the stairs for fast access to his secret base of operations. The mash-up of these two articles made for a fun couple of columns about one...