In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just not one of the five examples that I chose.

Today, we look at the way too casual way that superheroes like to mindwipe people. And don't worry, only one of the examples is Professor X!

PROFESSOR X

Obviously, this is Professor Xavier's whole deal, so it is hard to pick one example. I'm going with X-Men #3 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Paul Reinman), where the Blob is just living his life when the X-Men try to badger him into joining the X-Men. Instead, he turns on them and kicks their collective butt and things look bleak before Xavier just wipes everyone's mind...

That proved to be a costly mindwipe, though, as when Magneto cured him of the mindwipe, a now super pissed off Blob became a super villain. Boy, the X-Men sure botched THAT one, huh?

SUPERMAN

In Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #17 (by Robert Bernstein and Kurt Schaffenberger), a rich woman gets an amulet that allows her to read minds and she finds out that Superman is Clark Kent. She then tries to manipulate Clark into marrying her. When he figures out his scheme, he has a plan...

CAPTAIN MARVEL

Captain Mar-Vell is a terrible undercover agent. The dude seriously wrote C. Marvel on the sign-in log at his motel! The motel clerk was beginning to suspect him, but was then caught in an accident.

In Arnold Drake's first issue of the series (Captain Marvel #5, with Don Heck and John Tartaglione), Mar-Vell uses a memory eraser on him even while he is in a coma!

Mar-Vell is then attacked but he returns and finishes his job and the clerk's memory is wiped out and Mar-Vell's secret is safe...

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JUSTICE LEAGUE

In Justice League of America #167 (by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and Frank McLaughlin), a few members of the Secret Society of Super-Villains switched bodies with some of the Justice League.

Their scam worked for a while but by the end of the next issue, they were captured and then Zatanna used her magic to mindwipe them...

Just like Xavier and the Blob, these mindwipes would come back to haunt them, as seen in Identity Crisis. Mindwiping is not a game, people!

BATGIRL...OF HERSELF?

I did a Meta-Messages on this Batgirl one, so here's the intro to the Meta-Message...

Right from the introduction of Batgirl, her secret identity made her stand out, in the sense that her true identity was a secret to Batman and Robin while their secret I.D.s were similarly secret to her. This allowed the comics to do a bunch of those classic "Maybe she'll find out his secret identity in this issue!" type stories, as seen on the cover of Detective Comics #363...

In that issue, however, Batman revealed his "true" identity as Bruce Wayne because he knew Batgirl was being bugged and if he made it obvious that he was PRETENDING to be Bruce Wayne (by adding some makeup to make it look like his Bruce Wayne face was a put on) then he knew Batgirl wouldn't believe it and therefore wouldn't shout it out loud over the bug (yes, that's obviously some extremely strained logic, but hey, he was right, right?).

When the caper was over, Barbara Gordon fascinatingly noted that she actually wasn't all that interested in figuring out Batman's secret identity, but she seemed confident that she COULD if she wanted to...

As it turned out, she must have at some point over the years, as in Batman Family #3 (by Elliot S! Maggin, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Vince Colletta), the issue ends by revealing that in the years since, both Batgirl and Robin knew each other's identities (and if you know Robin's secret identity, then you would have to be a pretty big moron to not also know Batman's)...

I don't know why, exactly, but it appears clear that that decision did not sit well with someone in editorial at DC Comics, as within a couple of years, there was a specific story in Detective Comics (back when it took over the anthology format of Batman Family) in issue #489 (by Jack C. Harris, Don Heck and Vince Colleta), where Batgirl loses her memory. Robin eventually helps her regain her memory, but in the process of doing so, he asks if she would be willing to erase the parts of her memory where she knew Robin and Batman's secret identities and she actually agreed!!

That's kind of crazy, right? What a weird thing for Robin to ask!

Now, go here to see how angry DC creators responded to this story!

If anyone has an idea for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!