The poorly drawn Electroman wants very much for you to consider the Cleveland Institute of Electronics
If the other assorted Cleveland Institute of Electronics ads weren’t enough to float your boat, it seems uncertain that Electroman, who looks to have been drawn by a third-grade art student, will get the job done. But maybe his blocky anatomy and unexpressive, gruesome half-face will be sufficient to embark you on your highly sexed electronics career. And who wouldn’t give serious thought to such a path after a man in tights interrupts what looks to be a drug deal by busting through a brick wall?
This 1969 Joe Kubert tribute comic will make you love the man even more – DC Special #5
We’re coming up on the one year anniversary of Joe Kubert’s passing. Much was said about the man last August 12th and the days following, most if not all of it celebrating a magnificent body of work that put him on the Mount Rushmore of his industry. It seemed like Kubert had been in comics from the beginning, and hence it seemed that he’d be around forever. This made his death more of a blow to the comic aficionado public than it might have otherwise been. That his distinctive, elegant, humble signature will no longer grace stop-you-in-your-tracks covers is still hard to believe. But through his artist sons, Adam and Andy, through the countless students who passed under his eponymous school’s tutelage, and through his magnificent art, immortality has in a sense been achieved. He’s missed but remembered.
There’s no greater testament to the breadth of his career and his longevity than the comic before us today. Kubert had been around long enough and developed such an oeuvre that it was deemed kosher to give him a retrospective book 40+ years ago, complete with cracks about him being old as Methuselah. As an old political science professor of mine once joked: “Strom Thurmond ran for president against Harry Truman, and he wasn’t young then!” Same thing here — minus the race-baiting, of course. Read more…
The M&M’s, with their magnificent athlete’s physiques, have a baseball card offer for you
If Hostess, purveyors of indestructible and indigestible foodstuffs like Twinkies, can get in on the baseball card game, then what the hell, why not M&M’S. Between the sunflower seeds, gum and tobacco, there are few sports more in tune with mastication than the national pastime, and after all, as the noteworthily rotund John Kruk once said to a woman incredulous at his hefty waistline: “I’m not an athlete, I’m a professional baseball player.”
Speaking of waistlines and M&M’S — is that George Costanza playing catcher?
Here’s an odd and at times unintentionally humorous anti-smoking comic from the 1960s – Where There’s Smoke…
Comics with their young readership have always been a prime target for well-meaning free PSAs, those designed to get the word out about the various scourges threatening youth, from tooth decay to child abuse and everything in between. Smoking has always been one of the prime villains in this arena, and indeed, we’ve seen eclectic assortments of superheroes tackle it on this very blog. Today’s comic is distinctive, though. You see, it’s so very strange yet so very square, it seems tailor-made for our mocking God, they were so goofy back then post-millennial jibes. Read more…
Everyone who has ever collected anything mass-produced, read this article from The Big Lead
While this article by Sam Eifling deals with the rise and fall of Upper Deck baseball cards, it should prove interesting to comic aficionados as well. Both industries have their shares of greed and hubris. And we’ve looked at Upper Deck cards on this blog before, in case a tenuous connection is needed. Anyway, it’s a good read.
Satisfied Dungeons & Dragons developer? Or a Bowflex model doing ab crunches? YOU DECIDE.
Not to put down Dungeons & Dragons or the RPG community that made it the standard-bearer that it was/is, but the ten-year development period put forward by this ad reminds one of that old William Shatner SNL skit. You know, the “GET A LIFE,” “COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME” one. I hope Forgotten Realms was truly worth all those man hours.
Are those pictures of Locksmithing Institute graduates at the top of the ad, or the last known photographs of wanted safe-cracking fugitives? Is that a distinction without a difference?
Up next: At-home counterfeiting courses.
Batman & Robin has become the comic book movie shorthand for “cluster**k bomb” since its release, with character overload and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mangled Mr. Freeze line-reads standing as touchstones of terrible. Every time a new property is translated from stapled newsprint to celluloid, B&R is always there, poised at the fingertips of the internet fanboy cognoscenti, ready to be uncorked in This movie is as bad as Batman & Robin, or Now way in hell is this movie as bad as Batman & Robin message board declarations. It’s thus become the Ishtar of comics on film, a cautionary tale of all-star casts gone awry. Tread near its mephitic stench at your own peril.
This is very unfair to Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, because that movie isn’t just a horrendous comic book adaptation, it’s a dreadful movie period, end of sentence, end of paragraph, set the type and send it to the printer. It has the dumb story, dodgy effects and general haphazardness necessary to cook up a righteously rank stew. That it was the last super-screen appearance for Christopher Reeve, who had managed to embody all that was good about the Man of Steel, only amplified the atrocity — and does so to this day.
So, of course, we should all dive in face first. Read more…
Thank goodness these Young America for ’76 bicentennial t-shirts ushered in a post-racial, gender-equal nation
If a mixture of X and Y chromosomes and skin colors could teach the world to sing, then this ad for dopey bicentennial t-shirts would be a start. Why, it’s so kumbaya-ish you almost expect a Coca-Cola commercial to break out.
Also, is the black kid a young(er) Willis from Diff’rent Strokes? Or do I not know what I’m talkin’ ’bout?
Come get your Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman sweatshirts and beach towels, all in one place
Is it wrong for a person to say that they want to rub their nude body with a Wonder Woman beach towel? If so, let me just say that I’ve never wanted to rub my nude body with a Wonder Woman beach towel.
Go over to this ad if you’d prefer to wear a t-shirt to the beach instead of a polyester sweatshirt — a literal sweatshirt, as it were.
Lucky the Leprechaun, the unluckiest of cereal mascots, is hidden in this old ad. Find him. Cheer him up.
Kids have been screwing Lucky the Leprechaun out of his Lucky Charms for decades, making him, like Trix’s silly rabbit, the sugary cereal equivalent of Sisyphus. Or Tantalus. Whatever. Anyway, he and his precious marshmallows are hidden in this pic. Here’s a hint for finding Lucky: he’s right at ass-pinching level.
In honor of tonight’s MLB All-Star Game, here’s an ad for Hostess Snack Cakes and their promotional tie-in baseball cards, complete with a befreckled spokeschild who looks vaguely like a certain satirical magazine’s dim-witted mascot. What, me collect and trade with my friends? So let’s get this straight: Not only are Hostess products a part of Superman’s world-saving arsenal, but they also have trading cards printed on the bottom of their boxes? How did humankind ever manage to produce such a magnificent item?
I wasn’t yet born when this wave of cards came out, but 150 seems like a hell of a lot for a complete set. If there were three cards per box, then you had to buy fifty — FIFTY — boxes of Hostess cakes to have a complete run. Knowing my card-collecting/loving uncle, who I’ve mentioned here before, he put on a few pounds to get Steve Garvey, Joe Morgan, Carlton Fisk and their ilk.
Even though Man of Steel has been a box office success, it has more tha its share of detractors. I liked it despite its flaws, though I can see how some people would get hung up on certain aspects of this new Superman’s first days on the job. (That he has a secret identity at the end but roughly 50,000 people have to know who he is at that point is one of them.) To each their own. But the naysaying got me to thinking: these people don’t know truly awful Superman films, as the penumbral glow of Superman: The Movie has largely (and happily) cast in shadow much of what followed. It’s been so long since Hollywood graced us all with a true abortion of a Superman movie (Superman Returns had its lion’s share of problems, but it wasn’t cover your face heinous), I thought it might be a good idea to look at the two awful entries in the old Christopher Reeve series, at the same time going through the comic book adaptations. The comics are especially fascinating because they have the strange distinction of re-adapting comic book properties back into comic book form, making them a bit like reading a novelization of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Up today: Superman III: Now With 100% More Pryor!, adapted by Cary Bates, penciled by the late, great Curt Swan, and inked by Sal “No Relation to Lawyerin’ Joe” Amendola.
Read more…
Bob Kane wrote(?) the song “Have Faith in Me,” which definitely wasn’t about his veracity with Batman credits, amiright?
We don’t need to relitigate Bob Kane’s overreach as the “sole” creator of Batman, or go over his history of plopping his name and distinctive signature down on material ghosted by others. We can, however, bathe in the dripping subsequent irony of a Batman record called “Have Faith in Me.” One hopes that Hank Leids and Courage got paid up front.
Could this possible have been better than Stan Lee’s rock opera? YOU DECIDE.
Jared
blog into mystery 