Topless Robot’s blog gives the details:  Batman Peed His Pants.  (Language warning for the blog’s content.)

Kevin Smith takes one of the most awesome scenes in Frank Miller’s “Batman: Year One” and has Batman recap it.  For the effect, Batman wired up some explosives.  One of them went off too hot and it caused Batman to pee his pants.

Now…if Batman was having an out-of-his-weight-class battle with Killer Croc or Bane, and the rascal punched Batman so hard in the gut that he lost bladder control… I might quibble that that is a little TMI for a Batman comic, but it also conveys the dirty tactics of the opponent or how tooth-and-nail the fight is getting.   If Batman was on stakeout for hours, perched on top of a gargoyle, and in his thought balloons he said that he needed a bathroom break, I’d be surprised that DC permitted such a reference, even though it shows his human vulnerability.  (After all, Superman processes 100% of what he eats, which means he doesn’t need to use the bathroom.) But recounting years later how he had an accident in his costume during one of his great set pieces?  Appalling.  Adam West is rolling in his grave.

But, what do you expect from Kevin Smith?  Sadly, his name has enough cache to generate sales even though his comic book writing is fanzine-level at best.

Over on Chuck Dixon’s message board, contributor DesScorp made this point:

Honestly, how far are we from someone on JLA monitor duty rubbing one out to pass the time? Or being caught watching porn by his relief? We’ve already had Speedy and Hawkgirl with after-sex scenes. How long until everyone realizes that these are no longer mythic heroes as much as they’re instruments of writers and artists self-fantasies? It’s like the very horniest fanboys have been handed the reigns at the major companies, and they think a scat joke would be just awesome in print.

It seems like Garth Ennis is the chief editor at DC a little more every day.

Frankly, there isn’t far to go on that front.  A similar scene has already played out.

Not just that Red Arrow and Hawkgirl were having sex, but Red Tornado (at the time inhabiting the satellite’s computer) was watching them.  When he told this to Kathy Sutton, his common-law wife, she said, “All these monitors up here and you don’t get porn?”

In the JLA comic book, this happened!

There’s been something I have wanted to say all year, and I’ve been holding back:

Comic books were better under the Comics Code Authority.

Censorship can chafe, I know.  But I now honestly believe it made people better writers because they had to find a way around sleazy shocks and low humor.

It’s dumb when you can’t show a dead body in a war comic; but drop the CCA and suddenly Gorilla Grodd is eating the severed limbs of superheroes while laying around on their piles of corpses, Black Adam shoves a gold mask through Psycho Pirate’s skull, Black Mask makes Catwoman’s sister swallow her husband’s gouged-out eyeball, entire families with little children are getting high-speed shredded in JSA, and Green Lantern Corps members get showered in a rain of hundreds of eyeballs from their dead relatives.  Restrictions on the portrayal of sex under the CCA may have made it difficult to even show Green Arrow and Black Canary having a physical relationship out of wedlock (as recently as 1986, they showed Black Canary sleeping on Ollie’s couch), but say good-bye to the CCA, and now under-aged superheroes are having sex in Pa Kent’s barn, Sue Dibny’s getting abused so graphically that it makes the attempted rape in Watchmen look quaint, and Superman comics (SUPERMAN COMICS!) now have a Kryptonian villain who has brutal sex with Earth women until they’re dead from the hours of punishment.  Red Tornado watching a couple have sex because he doesn’t have access to a porn channel is one of the tamer examples.

Maybe comics were never just for kids, but now they are not for kids.  If I saw a kid in a comic book store asking for a Superman comic, I’d have to alert his parents that they need to read it first to see if there are any women getting ripped apart in Preus’ bedroom.  I can’t tell you how sad that makes me feel.