By some odd accident, today has turned out to be Holster Day — it’s also, unrelatedly, the (96th) birthday of the late Bill Bright, eminent linguist and great friend — as the first panel in a Bizarro cartoon from my 8/11 posting “Toto, Tonto, let’s call the whole thing off” washed up against Lee Falk’s depiction of his comic-strip hero the Phantom, which came by me on Facebook. What they share is well-filled holsters (flaunting their phallic attractions).
(#1) The Bizarro panel. Phallos the skeleton gunslinger of the Old West, illustrating a variant of the Concealed Carry joke: Is that a banana in your holster, or are you just happy to see me?
(#2) Falk’s Phantom. The double-holstered hero, brandishing one of his two handguns
On my title, a take-off on the What’s in YOUR wallet? commercial for a Capital One credit card. From my 1/26/10 posting “What’s P YOUR N?”:
It started, so far as I can tell, with a Capital One credit card commercial in 2005, showing people repulsing marauding hordes, and avoiding other dire circumstances, by brandishing their Capital One cards. The voiceover goes, “What’s in YOUR wallet?” — an entirely ordinary English sentence, but with contrastive prosody, implicating that if viewers have something other than a Capital One card in their wallet, things could go badly for them in such circumstances, so they should get a Capital One card.
[It’s a triumph of language use that people work through these conveyed meanings so easily and quickly — which is why the commercials work. (I’m still entertained by them, even after five years.)]
About Phallos and the Concealed Carry joke. From my 8/11 posting:
In the desert of the mythic Old West, with a grotesque skeleton gunslinger as its central character. Dead-white ten-gallon cowboy hat, jeans with a cowboy belt, plus a gun belt with a holster. And then a little festival of phallicity, with three flagrant phallic symbols: a carrot nose (as on a snowman; noses are somewhat phallic on their own, but carrots are really phallic), a saguaro cactus body (saguaros are little men in several senses), plus, in the holster, not the expected naturally phallic gun, but — preposterous surprise! — an equally phallic banana, an allusion to a mildly dirty joke (in the first panel, the variant: “Is that a banana in your holster, or are you just happy to see me?”).
And then in a comment on that posting, with material from my 2/4/13 posting “Annals of phallicity: or are you just happy to see me?”, on what I’ve now named the Concealed Carry joke:
Is that a banana / gun / pickle / etc. in your pocket / pants / etc.. or are you (just) happy / glad / etc. to see me?
(And, no, apparently not Mae West.)
The banana version (the first one I heard, long ago) is still current. From the Dallas [TX] Morning News, “Is that a banana in your holster or …?” by Tod Robinson on 1/26/15:
(#3) The paper just assumes that everybody knows the Concealed Carry joke (somewhat cropped version of the Daily News photo)Open Carry Texas is justifiably taking stock of the scare tactics used by gun activists in the past few weeks and months, and decided that maybe it’s time to lighten up a bit. Instead of freaking out state legislators with threats and parading around with rifles and long guns, Open Carry Texas members will start carrying bananas and rolled-up copies of the Constitution in their holsters, reports Melissa Barnett from Austin.
“We wanted to make a statement without causing controversy. We try not to be in your face,” says Open Carry Texas founder CJ Grisham.
About the Phantom. From Wikipedia:
The Phantom is an American adventure comic strip, first published by Lee Falk in February 1936. The main character, the Phantom, is a fictional costumed crime-fighter who operates from the fictional African country of Bangalla.
… Unlike many other superheroes, the Phantom has no superpowers; he relies on his strength, intelligence, skill at arms (he carries two holstered handguns, a revolver and a 1911 .45 autopistol, one on each hip, and is an expert marksman with both), and the myth of his immortality to take action against the forces of evil. The 21st Phantom is married to Diana Palmer; they met while he studied in the United States and they have two children, Kit and Heloise. He has a trained wolf named Devil and a horse named Hero, and like the 20 previous Phantoms he lives in the ancient Skull Cave.
The Phantom was the first fictional hero to wear the skintight costume which has become a hallmark of comic-book superheroes, and was the first shown in a mask with no visible pupils (another superhero standard). Comics historian Peter Coogan has described the Phantom as a “transitional” figure, since the Phantom has some of the characteristics of pulp magazine heroes such as The Shadow and the Spider and earlier jungle heroes such as Tarzan, as well as anticipating the features of comic book heroes such as Superman, Batman, and Captain America.
Then from my 3/31/17 posting “The Phantom of the jungle library”, on two Phantom screen depictions — a movie with the 21st Phantom, played by Billy Zane; a tv series with the 22nd, played by Ryan Carnes — and on the comic-book character. From the Zane section:
(#4) Secure in the Chronicle Chamber within his jungle stronghold, The Phantom (Billy Zane) and his servant Guran (Radmar Agana Jao) discover the secret of the Skulls of TougandaThe Phantom of course works shirtless in his jungle library (amidst his collection of manuscripts and books) — I mean it’s in the steamy goddam jungle (and anyway we all need to appreciate his pecs).
But we’re here for the firearms, not Billy Zane’s sweaty pecs. His Phantom in costume, with two guns:
(#5) Zane’s Phantom wielding two AMT Hardballer pistols
The Internet Movie Firearms Database gripes about the pistols:
These are anachronistic, as the film is set in 1938 while the Hardballer wasn’t produced until 1977.
Anacronisms they might be, but they are, unquestionably, big hard holster buddies.