Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.

In 1939, just one year after the creation of the first comic book superhero, Superman, Bob Kane brought us a new comic superhero (a bit of an anti-hero, actually) named Batman. Like almost every cartoon character ever created, “Batman" has changed and morphed over the past several decades. Nonetheless, Batman’s popularity among his legions of fans has never waned and continues strong, to this day. Batman has starred in a classic TV series, a movie serial series, and several big-budget Hollywood films, but let's take a look at Batman, the comic book.

1) Why was he called Bruce Wayne?

Batman was, as we all know, the alter ego of millionaire Bruce Wayne. The “Bruce" was based on Robert the Bruce, the Scottish patriot. The “Wayne" came from Revolutionary War general “Mad Anthony" Wayne.

2) He originally used guns.

This would not seem logical, as young Bruce Wayne's parents were killed by a gun. And although nowadays Batman does, indeed, hate guns, the original character actually packed a six-gun. The Caped Crusader would carry his gun during his "night patrol" of Gotham City. But creator Bob Kane said it "didn't feel right" and eventually the six-shooter was dispensed with- permanently.

3) He was accused of being gay.

In 1954's highly influential (and controversial) book Seduction of the Innocent, American psychiatrist Dr. Frederic Wertham postulated that comic books contributed to juvenile delinquency. Although Wertham's study was mostly about crime and horror comics, Batman was included. As a suspected gay character.

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Patrick Stewart’s wife Sunny Ozell got him a hat for Christmas and recorded his embarrassment for all of us to enjoy. The man looks like he’s in pain, but he’s a good enough sport to stand still for this humiliation. -via Uproxx

A few months ago, we introduced you to Breaking Cat News, a webcomic by Georgia Dunn. This month, she’s posted an eight-part Christmas saga about one of the cats, Elvis, getting lost outside in the snow. The final episode is up today, and you can read the entire story starting here. Use the “next” arrow to advance to the next chapter. It will warm the cockles of your cockles. -via Metafilter

Redditor uscmissinglink was walking through Christmas Card Lane in San Diego and saw this display. He said he never would have understood it if they didn’t have a 7-year-old with them. It probably would have taken me a few minutes, but I peeked at the comments. If you need to get a closer look, you can enlarge the picture at imgur.

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Globetrotting filmmaker Casey Neistat lives a well-documented life. We got to know him pretty well when he took his son to Machu Picchu. We met his wife Candace in a film he made about her. And now we see that Casey was in California when Candace went into labor in Texas. Can he get there in time for the birth? We know he can boogie from Paris to New York in record time, so I think you know the answer to that. Congratulations on the birth of your beautiful new baby! -via Viral Viral Videos

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It’s been quite an eventful year. As depressing as the big news of the past year was, there were some funny moments, too. JibJab’s annual Year in Review skewers all of it, to the tune of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

The following is an article from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” But do you know where it comes from? Here’s the original letter, the reply, and finally, a little scientific analysis to help you decied for yourself.

YES, VIRGINIA

One of the most famous Letters to the Editor ever to appear in a newspaper was this query from an 8-year-old girl. It was first printed in the New York Sun in 1897, along with a response by editor Francis P. Church. It proved so popular that it was reprinted every year until the Sun went out of business in 1949. It’s now part of American lore. But few people have read the original letters. Here they are.

The Question

Dear Editor:

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in the Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

The Answer

"Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

"Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

"You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

"No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."

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UH, WELL, VIRGINIA, ONE SECOND THOUGHT…

The baby whose face became the sun on the TV show Teletubbies has spilled her secret. Jess Smith was just nine months old when she was recorded giggling, laughing, and looking. She’s now 19 and a student at Canterbury Christ Church University. Smith said students were encouraged to tell each other something no one knew, and her TV role came out. She later posted it on her Facebook page for her friends.  

In 1996, her mother, Anji Smith, 44, took her to Edenbridge Hospital to be weighed and a health visitor, who had been asked by Ragdoll Productions to find smiley babies, put Jess's name forward.

Mrs Smith said it was never intended to be a big thing: "It was just something a bit different to do and we didn't expect it to be as big as it was.

"They just sat her in front of a camera and she just laughed and smiled at her dad.

"We didn't hear anything until we got a letter when she was 18 months old saying she'd been picked.

"It was really weird seeing her on television."     

You can read more of Smith’s story at The Telegraph. -via reddit

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It’s Christmas Eve and the 100th anniversary of World War I’s Christmas Truce. It was not a truce hammered out by generals or diplomats, but by the soldiers on the front lines across Europe. Letters home described how the spirit of Christmas led the weary German, British, and French soldiers to reach out to each other. Much of the story has been pieced together from those letters.    

First, the rain that had plagued the troops for days on end had abated in the fields of Flanders, the northern part of Belgium, leaving the cold night air still and quiet enough for the troops on either side of the conflict to hear the stirrings of their enemies—in some places, British and German trenches were just a few dozen yards apart. In a letter published on January 9, 1915, in the Hertfordshire “Mercury,” Rifleman C.H. Brazier writes:

“On Christmas Eve the Germans entrenched opposite us began calling out to us ‘Cigarettes’, ‘Pudding’, ‘A Happy Christmas’ and ‘English – means good’, so two of our fellows climbed over the parapet of the trench and went towards the German trenches. Half-way they were met by four Germans, who said they would not shoot on Christmas Day if we did not. They gave our fellows cigars and a bottle of wine and were given a cake and cigarettes. When they came back I went out with some more of our fellows and we were met by about 30 Germans, who seemed to be very nice fellows. I got one of them to write his name and address on a postcard as a souvenir. All through the night we sang carols to them and they sang to us and one played ‘God Save the King’ on a mouth organ.”

The stories of the Christmas of 1914 varied along the 500-mile Western Front, but the result was the same: peace and fellowship between enemies, if only for a day. Read more of the letters home that told about the Christmas Truce at Collectors Weekly.

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Screen Junkies goes after a fairly recent movie, so you might want to avoid spoilers in this one. Maybe. There’s been a lot of criticism of the TMNT reboot, but I’m sure this will take it to the limit. -via Uproxx

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Yeah, Rudolph had a little problem with bullying when he was young, but when he became Santa’s favorite, all that changed. I’m glad Rudolph was able to forgive and become a leader as well as a playmate. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

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How scary can a ball of cotton be? Patrick Rea’s short from 2007 proves that you can make a movie monster out of anything. I’d probably still go see the full feature -of there was one. Yeah, if you are of a certain age, you'll recognize this as a parody of The Blob. We had those same questions when that one came out, because really, how scary can a slow-moving ball of jelly really be? -via Blazenfluff

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Ebenezer Scrooge has many faces. The story in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens has been told in so many movies, TV shows, cartoons, and other platforms that you’ll never be able to watch them all. But you can get a taste of many of them in this supercut. -via the A.V. Club

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Some dads are excellent dancers; others, not so much. Either type can embarrass their kids by dancing, but you know what? None of that matters as long as he’s having a good time! In this video, dancing dads of all kinds get down to "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars, edited skillfully by Robert Jones and Christian Baker for Tastefully Offensive. The individual videos these clips came from are listed at the YouTube page. You probably remember quite a few of them posted here at Neatorama. -Thanks, Robert!

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.

by Earle E. Spamer
Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Time was, if one was interested in natural history he did it for the enjoyment of it. There were no professional natural- historians in the world - or at least they were not paid for the job. Gentlemen of leisure cast about the natural world, indulging themselves in the ins and outs of living things and the ups and downs of evolution. Some made startling and worthwhile contributions to science; most were deemed eccentric amusements for the rest of the world.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Chonosuke Okamura of Nagoya, Japan, took time to look at things in a different light. Sadly, he has disappeared from the scholarly publishing scene, perhaps the last of the eccentrically productive naturalists. Not wasting his energies on the formalities of peer review, he took the fast track of communication. He delivered his findings directly to numerous paleontological professional meetings in Japan (one wonders if he was treated politely as an odd uncle, or giddily as a paleontological P.D.Q. Bach). He published more extensive descriptions and analyses in the Original Reports of tile Okamura Fossil Laboratory.

The Great Discoverer
Okamura did no less than discover the Silurian Period beginnings of all vertebrate life, including humans, 425 million years ago. Nearly everything he found was a new subspecies, whether the species was extant or extinct. Some examples are Gorilla gorilla minilorientalis (gorilla), Canis familiaris minilorientalis (common dog), Homo sapiens minilorientalis (humans), Pterodactylus spectabilis minilorientalis (pterodactyl), and Brontosaurus excelus minilorientalis (a dinosaur).

Figure 2 (left) “Fossil of kissing.” (Okamura. 1980. fig. 75.) Figure 3 (right) “Marble statue of the kiss by Nagaiwa miniman” (Okalllura. 1980. fig. 76.)

(Did I mention, that they were all diminutive, discovered through the eyepiece of Okamura’s microscope? In his description of the mini-man, he wrote, "There have been no changes in the bodies of mankind since the Silurian period ... except for a growth in stature from 3.5 mm to 1,700 mm.")