Is this Batman equation for real? HardOCP has an image with an equation which apparently draws the Batman logo.  Is this for real?

Batman Equation in text form:
\begin{align}
&\left(\left(\frac x7\right)^2\sqrt{\frac{||x|-3|}{|x|-3}}+\left(\frac y3\right)^2\sqrt{\frac{\left|y+\frac{3\sqrt{33}}7\right|}{y+\frac{3\sqrt{33}}7}}-1 \right) \\ 
&\qquad \qquad \left(\left|\frac x2\right|-\left(\frac{3\sqrt{33}-7}{112}\right)x^2-3+\sqrt{1-(||x|-2|-1)^2}-y \right) \\
&\qquad \qquad \left(3\sqrt{\frac{|(|x|-1)(|x|-.75)|}{(1-|x|)(|x|-.75)}}-8|x|-y\right)\left(3|x|+.75\sqrt{\frac{|(|x|-.75)(|x|-.5)|}{(.75-|x|)(|x|-.5)}}-y \right) \\ 
&\qquad \qquad \left(2.25\sqrt{\frac{(x-.5)(x+.5)}{(.5-x)(.5+x)}}-y \right) \\
&\qquad \qquad \left(\frac{6\sqrt{10}}7+(1.5-.5|x|)\sqrt{\frac{||x|-1|}{|x|-1}} -\frac{6\sqrt{10}}{14}\sqrt{4-(|x|-1)^2}-y\right)=0
\end{align}

The 'Batman equation' above relies on an artifact of the plotting software used which blithely ignores the fact that the value $\sqrt{\frac{|x|}{x}}$ is undefined when $x=0$. Indeed, since we’re dealing with real numbers, this value is really only defined when $x>0$. It seems a little ‘sneaky’ to rely on the solver to ignore complex values and also to conveniently ignore undefined values.
A nicer solution would be one that is unequivocally defined everywhere (in the real, as opposed to complex, world). Furthermore, a nice solution would be ‘robust’ in that small variations (such as those arising from, say, roundoff) would perturb the solution slightly (as opposed to eliminating large chunks).
Try the following in Maxima (actually wxmaxima) which is free. The resulting plot is not quite as nice as the plot above (the lines around the head don’t have that nice ‘straight line’ look), but seems more ‘legitimate’ to me (in that any reasonable solver should plot a similar shape). Please excuse the code mess.
/* [wxMaxima batch file version 1] [ DO NOT EDIT BY HAND! ]*/
/* [ Created with wxMaxima version 0.8.5 ] */

/* [wxMaxima: input   start ] */
load(draw);
/* [wxMaxima: input   end   ] */

/* [wxMaxima: input   start ] */
f(a,b,x,y):=a*x^2+b*y^2;
/* [wxMaxima: input   end   ] */

/* [wxMaxima: input   start ] */
c1:sqrt(26);
/* [wxMaxima: input   end   ] */

/* [wxMaxima: input   start ] */
draw2d(implicit(
f(1/36,1/9,x,y)
+max(0,2-f(1.5,1,x+3,y+2.7))
+max(0,2-f(1.5,1,x-3,y+2.7))
+max(0,2-f(1.9,1/1.7,(5*(x+1)+(y+3.5))/c1,(-(x+1)+5*(y+3.5))/c1))
+max(0,2-f(1.9,1/1.7,(5*(x-1)-(y+3.5))/c1,((x-1)+5*(y+3.5))/c1))
+max(0,2-((1.1*(x-2))^4-(y-2.1)))
+max(0,2-((1.1*(x+2))^4-(y-2.1)))
+max(0,2-((1.5*x)^8-(y-3.5)))
-1,
x,-6,6,y,-4,4));
/* [wxMaxima: input   end   ] */

/* Maxima can't load/batch files which end with a comment! */
"Created with wxMaxima"$

The resulting plot is:

(Note that this is, more or less, a copy of the entry I made on http://blog.makezine.com.)
