The improbably named Saul New York wants you to engorge your pectorals, the HERCULES II way
Comic book fans tend to have no problems with the “Gain Weight!” part. It’s the “Muscular and Admired!!” codicil that gives them fits.*
Add this to the vast pile of bodybuilding ads that have appeared in comics over the years — if you stacked them all on top of one another, you’d probably have a Great Pyramid of chest grease or something (the capstone would of course be Charles Atlas). Two things make this one special: One, it seems highly improbable that “Saul New York” was the manly test case’s real name, but who knows. Is there a Joe Des Moines out there who can also attest to the HERCULES II method? And Two — and this is related to the Hercules usage (or HERCULES, as it were) — Herc should probably sue for improper use of his name. But which one would have legal standing to file suit? The Marvel Hercules? The Charlton Hercules? The DC Hercules? The Steve Reeves Hercules? The “real” Hercules? All of them? The mythological legal community may never know.
*Based on countless hours of observation at spinner racks and in comic book stores and conventions. And in front of mirrors.
Batman vs. Hawkman vs. The Silver Age vs. You, the Reader – The Brave and the Bold #70
If you had to pick two DC characters who you might not normally picture having a knockdown, drag-out, throwdown fight, but who you’d nevertheless like to see battle one another, Batman and Hawkman might rank up toward the top of the desired pairings. They’re two of the most dour, grim characters that comics have to offer, though in different ways. Batman’s “get away from me” bona fides are well-established. He’s not the kind of man an autograph hound would approach for his John Hancock — unless he wanted a batarang crammed where the sun don’t shine. He dwells in a cave. He’s the very definition of badass, the Dirty Harry of his Technicolor peer group.
And Hawkman? You don’t see a whole lot of smiles beaming out from beneath that hawk cowl of his. Yes, he’s married, which means that someone’s able to put up with his icy, arms-across-the-chest personality, and that there has to be something else underneath all that tireless vigilance (granted, his wife is a superhero as well, but still…). Nevertheless, he’s one of the more unapproachable classic Justice Leaguers — the sort of guy you wouldn’t want to get in the annual Secret Santa drawing. Maybe it’s just the hawk head. Maybe it’s the bare chest, with the aggressive nipples. Whatever — he’s not a Hawkman to be trifled with.
All this means that any confrontation between the two — Batman vs. Hawkman, Hawkman vs. Batman — has some built-in drama. Two pent-up titans clashing at last! This should be great! I mean, look at the Carmine Infantino/Joe Giella cover to this mag! Yet, like many things in Silver Age DC, said showdown is utterly ruined by the silly ethos of the time. And the people putting the story together couldn’t even be bothered to, well, keep their story straight, as it were. Read more…
I see siege towers in the background of this ad. (If I’m not mistaken, there’s also a catapult mounted on top of one. This is like a shark riding on the back of a lion. AWESOME.) I see no siege towers in the roster of things you’d get with the advertised set of Roman soldiers. This is a rip-off, since siege towers were, like, the greatest thing going back then, right up with vats of boiling oil. Will they take the four buglers for one siege tower, like four houses for a hotel in Monopoly? If so, we might have a deal.
And about the ad itself: You have to think that this is about as sanitary as an ancient battle could possibly be. (Are there even enemies?) Usually you’d have a lot more viscera involved back in those good old days. It was the era of the slow death by gut-wound — i.e. perfect for your typical box of men shenanigans.
The senses-shattering return of Walter White
Breaking Bad returns tonight to AMC for its final run of episodes. It might be the best TV show ever, so enjoy its stark, drug-addled, New Mexican brilliance while it lasts. Will Hank finally throw his crooked brother-in-law in the hoosegow? Who lives? Who dies? We’re all on tenterhooks.
BB has little to do with comics, but enough that I once wrote a brief piece on how its central character, Bryan Cranston’s bald, bearded, constantly-descending-into-evil Walter White, has a number of aspects that made him very much a comic book superhero — or anti-superhero, as it were. He’s certainly no avatar of virtue, but there’s endless fun to be had in dissecting his web of deception, not to mention the onion layers of his mind. Feel free to check out my one small stab at one strand of the web, one layer of the onion.
Now that I’ve pimped that article from close to two years ago (or pushed it like fine, pure, blue meth), you can go on about your day. Enjoy the final eight shows.
Charlton’s Yang: 1970s precursor of Valiant’s Archer? – Yang #1
Many comic book aficionados of a certain age have a soft spot for Charlton, and with good reason. They were an alternative. While Marvel and DC ruled the field during that company’s time on Earth, as they do now, there’s always room in the world for something different. That’s just what Charlton was: different. Maybe derivative. Maybe kind of crappy most of the time. But they presented a counterweight to the industry titans, the Dr. Pepper to Coke and Pepsi (okay, maybe the Tab). A variation from the norm. A choice. And bless their hearts, they held on for a good long while. In a business where companies come and go, open and fold before a second issue can be run off the presses, a run measured in decades is an achievement.
I don’t know where Yang fits into that flowery opening paragraph. I’m not sure if he’s bad or good — if he’s Yin or Yang, as it were (and as the cover above queries, though in another vein). I’m pretty certain he’s derivative. I’m also pretty sure he looks a bit like Armstrong’s tag-team partner, Archer. So he’s worth a quick word. Two, even. Read more…
Get a head start on your Internal Affairs dossier and disciplinary review board hearing with the Peace Officer Training Service
Did the people putting this ad together double-check the images they were going to include to spice up the copy? Because what, might I ask, is the leggy broad sitting oh so suggestively doing in here? “Take our course, and you too can take advantage of your power and position of authority to coerce sexual favors from suspects!” Maybe the Peace Officer Training Service also offered the aspiring Paul Blarts of the world courses in shakedowns, evidence tampering, mob ties and excessive force. We can only hope.
Just what the world needs: cops trained through comic book ads — a not uncommon phenomenon, apparently.
The Pit Stop Gang had more quiet dignity than the Monkees in the 1969 CBS cartoon lineup
There are a number of big names in this ad, from Archie to Shaggy to Davy Jones, but nevertheless CBS’s 1969 Saturday morning cartoon lineup feels like a bleak wasteland. The Mystery Machine denizens are the only ray of light. No, Sabrina is not a selling point in this dojo. (My grandmother loved the live action show from 10-15 years ago. She liked the talking cat, for whatever that’s worth, which is admittedly not much.) We need a Richard Pryor infusion, STAT.
On a related note, and apologies for the crudity, but Scooby-Doo looks like he’s screwing up to drop a huge deuce. It would land on the Monkees, too, which is oddly appropriate. DAYDREAM BELIEVE THIS, BOYS!
Science-fiction, the Howard Zinn way – Elysium
Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 was such an original breath of fresh air in 2009, was so out-of-nowhere, its refreshing scent lingers like fine perfume. Read more…
How many ads does it take to get you to buy Toosie Rolls and Tootsie Pops? The world may never know.
Tootsie Rolls had some of the best comic book marketing going back in the day. Whether we’re talking about the crime-fighting, bear-killing adventures of Captain Tootsie or the Toot Sweet, these folks worked hard for your “excessively tough chocolate candy” dollar. And we’re not even getting into their Tootsie Pop/TV arm, which produced one of the more iconic commercials we’ve ever had. Apparently the Mad Men geniuses had the Tootsie account.
Occasionally in 1960s comics you see a multitude of Tootsie Roll ads crop up in one single comic book, often occupying the bottom third of a page. This was the case in the Lois Lane book discussed here a couple of days ago, which had not one, not two, but three ads. They aren’t that remarkable, but they deserve some brief comment. The first you can see at the top of this post, and it has that grandest of hooks: an optical illusion. And yes, it works just as well when you press your nose to a computer screen as it does when you press it to a printed page.
The second goes with the “other candy sux” angle:
Yes, “chewy chewy” Tootsie Rolls last a long time. That same rigid viscosity is also useful for ripping your teeth out by the roots, which is especially handy for children who still have baby teeth and are in desperate need of Tooth Fairy cash. Knowledge for life.
The last ad apparently shows a nascent stage magician and his pals cutting the old Gordian Knot and getting right to that chewy center:
The kid with the saw — is that his nose or his mouth? Forget the dot in the first ad, this is the real optical illusion.
There you have it. Tootsie Rolls and Tootsie Pops: the one issue ad campaign. I just want to point out, in conclusion, that there were three ads here — three, just like the number of licks it took the owl to get the chewy center back in the day. Cosmic.
Protestations of the National Social Welfare Assembly aside, there is no “hip way to learn”
I’d just like to say that I was handicapped in all three of these areas while growing up — TVs were constantly blaring in my house, I was always leaving schoolwork to the last minute, and I never asked questions (for fear of a Mooninite-like rebuke) — and I turned out fine. I mean, in my spare time I now run a blog that earns upwards of pennies a day. (Wait a minute…)
If the National Social Welfare Assembly really wanted to give kids some tips about learning, the word “hip” should have been quarantined from this PSA, as no clearer sign exists that the contents will be anything but. Also, if the library you’re supposed to study in is frequented by the world’s most insufferable peer group, it might not be such a great place to focus.
We’ve seen a one-man band Bullwinkle fall through a sewer grate and our favorite dim-witted moose dunk himself in a basketball hoop, so getting snared in a clothesline is par for the course. Rocky is such an enabler.
Youngsters: Don’t try this at home. The parachuting, not the Cheerios. Cheerios are okay. (I think.)
That’s for New York! – Thor: The Dark World Trailer #2
There’s heavy dose of Loki in this trailer (far beyond the stinger in the first), and that should come as no surprise since Tim Hiddleston has embraced Asgardian evil with such open arms. When a man shows up in costume and in character to a comic book fanfest and has an audience eating out of his hand, well, this is an actor with whom one must reckon.
Not much Malekith (again), the Dark Elf who’s the primary villain in this upcoming October release. Saving him for later, one supposes. Was that Rene Russo I saw swinging a sword? Is she hoping for a role in the next Red sequel?
Can Lois save Superman from, horror of horrors, marrying a fat woman? – Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #61
The Silver Age was a Golden Age of sorts for shrewy women, and the significant others of male superheroes were some of the frostiest ladies in the annals of ladydom. The unquestioned queen bee of the super-girlfriends club was Iris West, whose belittling comments to Barry Allen made her the Secretariat of bitchiness, with 12 furlongs between her and her nearest competition. (To extend the sports analogizing: she was like Larry Bird showing up for the three-point contest, looking around the locker room and declaring “I’m just seeing who’s going to come in second.”) Others, like Jean Loring, got their time in, but never quite measured up.
And then there’s Lois Lane, the most famous of them all, the lady who could emasculate Clark Kent while simultaneously getting all gooey over the hunky Superman, rocketing from cold to hot and back again like a bad shower. And God help any fat chick who gets between her and her Kryptonian quarry — Bridezilla comes to Metropolis. Read more…
There comes a time when boys are no longer allowed to go this crazy for the TYCO catalog
Only in a world in which Playboy model centerfolds don’t exist are adolescent boys allowed to get that excited about model train centerfolds in a TYCO catalog. Fellas, it’s time you started becoming men, and went beyond marveling at trains by the side of your pipe-smoking, sweater-vested old man.
True story: When we were the same age as these kids, and few friends and I went on a post-midnight excursion — through thick woods, deep snow and sub-zero temperatures — to the house of a classmate of ours. You see, his father kept a stash of porno mags hidden in his barn. These were the aggressively filthy magazines that wouldn’t even make it onto the back shelf of the newsstand, and were very much lacking the sheen of class that Playboy has always possessed. They were sub-Hustler. They were revolting. Anyway, we heisted a big pile of them — though not enough to be noticeable in the context of this guy’s humongous horde.
This was our Stand by Me — minus a young, unbelievably menacing Kiefer Sutherland. Heaven only knows what Ocean’s Elevenish lengths we would have gone to if he had had Playboys. The corollary, of course, is that we wouldn’t have risen off the couch for model trains.
Point? I don’t know. I just hope the statute of limitations of filthy magazine theft has run its course. I guess that’s it.
A few weeks ago we looked at an advertisement for Scooter, the mod, cool hipster purportedly loved by women and respected by men. That ad, with its horrid, stilted verbiage, was one of the most insufferable promos ever crafted by man, and forced a reader to suppress an urge to scissor-kick the entire book containing it into oblivion.
This subscription ad featuring Super-Hip (née Tadwallader Jutefruce (seriously)), a part of Bob Hope’s comic’s supporting cast (his fictional nephew), is similarly bad, though it lacks the refined horror of Scooter’s since S-H was a (slightly) more creative character. (His main weakness in his super-state was Lawrence Welk music. This was/is fun. My grandmother’s record collection would have been his Waterloo.) He’s even re-appeared in recent years alongside Batman (of all people), long after the cancellation of his native series, and long since his Austin Powers/Jon Pertwee Doctor Who attire went out of style. That’s something beyond the ken of Scooter’s Beatley good looks.
That said, you still want to El Kabong the bastard. For his very name — actually, both of them — if nothing else.
Jared
blog into mystery 