A day after discovering the Slovak Batman, I stumbled upon the Brazilian Caped Crusader. Apparently dressing up like the Dark Knight and fighting crime is a big thing.

The difference here is that André Luiz Pinheiro isn’t just some vigilante nut. He’s a nut who was hired — yes, hired — by officials in Taubaté, Brazil to help “combat crimes such as murder and drug trafficking.” Yeah, things have gotten that bad in Brazil.

It kinda makes sense since Pinheiro, 50, is a retired soldier who dresses as the Caped Crusader for children’s birthdays. Kinda. I just hope he has more than balloon animals to defend himself.

How do you say “Holy bad idea, Batman” in Portugese?

(via The Mary Sue)

Batman is real (real crazy?) and he lives in Slovakia.

Zoltan Kohari, a 26-year-old man who lives in an abandoned building without water, heat or electricity, wants to help police fight crime in some place called Dunajská Streda. He also wants to look creepy and Eastern European while doing it. (Neither of which, I think, he can help.)

Zoltan (in my opinion a pretty good superhero name in itself) has not gotten around to battling any baddies just yet, but he is said to “believe in justice.” Good for him! For now, the Slovak Batman helps his fellow residents however he can. (Probably by not killing them in their sleep.) In return, they give him food.

(via Buzzfeed)

Real Name: Unknown
First Appearance: Adventure Comics #330 (1965)
Aliases: Dirt Bag, Super Pig Pen
Creators: Jerry Siegel, Jim Mooney
Lame Abilities: Attracts dirt and, consequently, flies; disgusts humans; does a great impersonation of a homeless guy

The Legion of Super Heroes is a lame costumed adventurer’s wet dream. Their ranks include the pathetic heroes Matter Eater Lad, Triplicate Girl, and Bouncing Boy. So, you have to be really lame to be rejected by these losers. The Mess as that lame. In fact he was so lame he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry.

He was created by writer Jerry Siegel, who has the distinction of giving the world the greatest superhero, Superman, as well as the worst, The Mess. The dirt bag, whose “amazing” power is attracting dirt, first appeared in “Adventure Comics” #330 in 1965, a time when being filthy was groovy. He applies for membership in the Legion along with Eye-ful Ethel, a girl who has eyes all around her head so she can see in every direction, but both are rejected in favor of Dynamo-Boy, who impresses the Legion by re-invigorating a feeble old man after zapping him with radiation. So, being rejected by the Legion of Super Heroes is like being turned down for a date by that ugly fat chick whom you only ask out because you think it’s a sure thing.

The Mess recently appeared on the “The Legion of Super Heroes” animated series, where he was once again rejected.

In the right situation, his power could come in handy. If you needed your car cleaned in a jiffy, The Mess could suck the dirt right off. He could probably raise dirt storms. He also probably smells so bad that no villain would want to go near him. I’m sure The Mess can be re-imagined into a viable superhero. I’d call him The F—ing Mess and his motto would be “The F—ing Mess: He’s Gonna Clean Up the City’s Filth!” He’d be equipped with dirt bombs, nausea-inducing gas pellets, and an army of flies who’d do his bidding. His arch-nemesis would be the Filth Monger. Hey, I have to make a call to DC now!

(Thanks to Zep at The In-Sect for tipping me off about The Mess. Check out his own list of lame superheroes here.)

Real Name: Ralph Dibny
First Appearance: The Flash #112 (1960)
Aliases: The Ductile Detective, The Stretchable Sleuth
Creators: John Broome, Carmine Infantino
Lame Abilities: Elongating (of course), super-sleuthing, can do fabulous splits, never has to worry about erectile dysfunction

Like me, the Elongated Man was an accident. Editor Julius Schwartz okayed the creation of the character only because he didn’t realize that DC had acquired Plastic Man from Quality Comics four years earlier. Schwartz said he would have used Plastic Man as a supporting character in “The Flash” instead of the Elongated Man had he known. Nonetheless, the world got another Plastic Man. Then a year later, poor Ralph Dibny fell even further down the ladder of respectability. Another stretching superhero, Mr. Fantastic, made his debut and topped his predecessors in popularity. Now the Elongated was the No. 3 stretchy guy in comics.

It wasn’t anything as cool as acid or cosmic rays that gave Ralph Dibny his amazing powers. It was a soft drink. Ralph was obsessed with contortionists and wanted to learn their secret. He soon discovered that they all drank Gingold soda pop and that it had a mysterious ingredient, gingo fruit. So, Ralph isolated the ingredient and when he drank it in its concentrated form he had super elongating powers. Thereafter, Ralph must drink Gingold to continue stretching.

Like Plastic Man, the Elongated Man can stretch. Like Plastic Man, he was used for laughs. Like Plastic Man, he was in the Justice League. But unlike Plastic Man, he was one of the first married superheroes and the first to reveal his secret identity. Ralph and Sue Dibny were the Nick and Nora Charles (“The Thin Man”) of the comic book world, traveling the world and solving mysteries. But years later tragedy struck and Sue was murdered, a crime that figures prominently in two high-profile series — “Identity Crisis” and “52.”

The Elongated Man even appears in the Alex Ross mini-series “Justice,” in which he tries to justify his existence to his rival, Plastic Man. Threatened by Plastic Man’s appearance, Ralph tries to toss him out of the Justice League. “There can be two stretchy guys,” Plastic Man tells Ralph. “It’s okay.” “No, there can’t,” Ralph replies. “They don’t need you if they have me. And I don’t care if you were the first one with stretching powers.”

I know what the Highlander would have to say about this.

Real Name: Sharon Ventura
First Appearance: Fantastic Four #310 (1988) (as She-Thing)
Alias: Ms. Marvel
Creators: Mike Carlin, Ron Wilson
Lame Abilities: Super strength, super gross-out abilities, rock-hard boobs (literally)

Superheroines have one thing in common: they’re flippin’ hot. The history of perversion and unnatural female body proportions in comics is thoroughly known. A 50-inch bust and 20-inch waist was a fantasy first popularized in funny books, and the industry has done very well with unnaturally hot super chicks. So, if superheroines are the stuff of male fantasy, then She-Thing is a guy’s worst nightmare.

She-Thing is about as attractive as her name implies. She’s the type of woman who makes your testicles crawl into your abdomen and hide. It wasn’t bad enough that they created a female version of The Thing, but they actually tried to feminize her. It’s The Thing with breasts, man! Yeesh! They made a female version of the monstrous Hulk damn hot. Would it have been so hard to make a huge, lumpy, orange rock creature sexy? Okay, so maybe they should have just left this alone.

Not only didn’t they leave this one alone; they went whole hog. If you’ve read “Fantastic Four” #317 your eyes were molested by Thing-on-Thing loving. It’s puking time! There’s nothing more effective than two rock creatures French-kissing and groping each other to make you want to gouge out your eyes (see pics below; eye gouging recommended).

Like Britney Spears, She-Thing started out as a babe…then tragedy struck. She-Thing was really Sharon Ventura, a leggy, bosomy redhead, commonly known as a stone-cold fox. She got a power boost through the Power Broker and became a professional wrestler, taking the name Ms. Marvel. When she tried to leave the evil wrestling team, it was the Fantastic Four’s Ben Grimm, aka The Thing, who helped her escape. She joined the FF, but while battling Fasaud the electronic terrorist (don’t ask) in space, she and Ben were bombarded with those pesky cosmic rays. Ben mutated into a stronger form of The Thing and super-sexy Sharon turned into a concrete version of Janet Reno.

Sharon didn’t mind being She-Thing since it brought her closer to Ben and held off the creeps. She once told She-Hulk, “When I was cute and Ben was the only Thing in the world, I liked him. But I couldn’t love him.” But once Ben turned back to normal, Sharon sought the help of Doctor Doom to change her back to a babe. Things didn’t work out so well, and she left the Fantastic Four forever.

She-Thing isn’t gone from the Marvel Universe, though. She had a cameo in FF #543 earlier this year. But don’t hold your breath waiting for “Fantastic Four: Rise of the She-Thing”…unless Janet Reno is interested in making her feature film debut.