from Super DC Calendar 1976 (DC, 1975)
According to that fount of information about birthdays and anniversaries in the DCU, the 1976 Super DC Calendar, today is the (Pre-Crisis*) birthday of that greatest gentleman's gentleman, the battling butler, the one and only Alfred Thaddeus Pennyworth! Let's hope Bruce, Dick, Tim, Barbara and Damien take him out for a nice brunch at one of the finer Gotham City restaurants, and not one of those shaped like a giant typewriter or an oversized penguin.
I don't have any panels showing Alfred's birthday or childhood at hand (Hey DC! Do a Teen Alfred comic book, huh? It'll sell a million copies!), so here's a retelling of his very first pre-Crisis appearance to a bewildered and baffled Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. Let's call it "Alfred: Who He IS and How He Came to be (At Wayne Manor!)":
from Untold Legend of the Batman #2 (DC, August 1980), script by Len Wein, pencils and inks by Jim Aparo, colors by Tatjana Wood
Happy Birthday, Alfred!
*Alfred's birthday has also been listed in a non-canon comic as August 16. As far as I'm concerned, though, today's the day!
Man. That little sequence feels weird.
ReplyDeleteUsed to Alfred always working for the Waynes. The idea of him coming into the story after Robin hits an off note.
Well, Alfred used to be a British Joe Besser before there was a Joe Besser, if that helps.
ReplyDeleteHe stumbled onto Bruce Wayne's dual identity by accident, then bluffed his way into convincing the Dynamic Duo he was a master detective. Afterwards he went on a diet that apparently shed fifty or sixty pounds, aged him twenty years, but made him more or less immortal.
I figure two more full-universal reboots and Alfred will be "discovered" by Batman while he's swiping the hubcaps off the Batmobile.
Also: I have one job and I can barely keep my one-bedroom apartment clean. When Alfred moved in, eighty percent of stately Wayne Manor must've been covered in dust so thick he needed a damn shovel.
ReplyDeleteI laughed so hard at that panel where they said they got along without servants standing in that giant lobby. In my personal canon, Alfred has to bring in a cleaning team every week or month or so when he's locked the important rooms and hidden the silverware.
ReplyDeleteIt's always nice to see someone flabergast the unflappable Batman.
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