Here’s a Swing with Scooter ad that will leave you wanting to drive the British invasion back into the sea
If this ad were a human face, I wouldn’t know which part of it to punch first. The nose? The jaw? The ear? Swing at Scooter, as it were. Even at a distant remove of years, the eponymous Scooter, DC’s lame (but fairly long-running) attempt to glom onto the immense popularity of the Beatles and their limey kin, is nauseating. Wouldn’t you love to go all El Kabong on him? The indecipherable, completely made up slang in the text certainly doesn’t help, and Shakespeare, from the grave, is renouncing the misuse of his good name. (If you set that “poem” to music, a crack would open up in the Earth and suck us all down to the depths of Hell. I’m sure of it.)
I have a headache now. Good-bye.
Deaths in comic books tend to be a lot like retirement/loser leaves town matches in wrestling: they don’t stick. Sure, the characters get a “last” hurrah, and their proprietors get to milk all the associated drama and roll about in the cash that comes with it. We need only look to the ultimately underwhelming, incredibly long Death of Superman Sturm und Drang to know that morbid sells. But you always — always — know that these deaths aren’t forever. The nails holding the coffin lid shut aren’t tight. The crypt door is left open a crack. The wrestler *gasp* unretires or re-enters the city limits. And usually, sooner rather than later, the superhero so recently mourned is back as if nothing ever happened, as if the passage into oblivion was no more taxing than a trip to the dentist.
Captain Marvel’s death was different. It stuck. And it resonates to this day. Read more…
I’d much prefer to have the good Captain convince me of the joys of reading rather than the most insufferable peer group on the face of the Earth. But would it have killed them to give this guy a parrot and a peg leg? Or have him recount some bawdy tales of Shanghai prostitutes?
Vern Estes’ horn-rims return
It’s worth saying again: horn-rims=1960s NASA=outer space trustworthiness. Commence with your rocket-building, astronauts of tomorrow.
If ever there was a ballplayer who seemed to spring straight from the newsprint pages of a comic book, it was Mickey Mantle. From the alliterative name to the prodigious speed to the great strength, he fit the bill, the outsized parameters of a four color champion. A Midwestern farm boy, he became the toast of a great American metropolis — where have we heard that before? All he lacked was a cape and Fortress of Solitude and he wouldn’t have drawn a second glance strolling through the Hall of Justice — and maybe the pinstripes of the New York Yankees qualify as heroic garb. Unless you’re from Boston. Or any other American League city.
So a Mantle comic book seems a natural fit. It was even more of an imperative in 1991, when both comics and baseball cards were riding sales highs never seen before or since. Mickey Mantle: The Comic Book had the inevitability of death and taxes. Read more…
Your 1986-87 NBC Saturday morning cartoon lineup, now with 100% more unwatchable crap!
NBC apparently bet hard on the “furry animal” cartoon genre during the 1986-87 broadcast season — even going with not one but TWO cartoons with “fur” in their titles. (Incidentally, are Smurfs animals? People? Aliens?) I can speak only for myself and my viewing habits back then, but I wouldn’t have switched over to this lineup with a ten foot cattle-prod for my dial clicker. And I had to remind myself that there was an actual Gummi Bears cartoon — A GUMMI BEARS CARTOON. FROM DISNEY. Vomitous. Poor Punky Brewster had to be calling her agent to get her the hell out of there.
I’ll grant that, in retrospect, Michael J. Fox is a better “One to Grow On” spokesman than the cheeseburger-fighting David Hasselhoff. But that’s it. That’s all you’re getting out of me.
I’m not sure of much in life, but I’m certain of this: I’d want to live in no municipality that subcontracts out its crimefighting to insufferable bike-riding know-it-alls, who in turn deputize young children to be part of a crack investigative team. And no amount of complimentary bike tires could convince me otherwise.
While the velvet-covered chin strap is a nice touch, you’d get about as much protection from this old-timey helmet as you would a babushka. You know why it was used by pilots? Because if a combat pilot finds himself in a position where he’ll need a helmet, he’s already screwed. Cloth, leather, steel — makes no difference.
It would definitely come in handy for your Amelia Earhart cosplay, though. If you’re into that sort of thing.
It’s said that you can’t go home again. It’s also said that you can’t raise the dead. Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan tried to do both in 1991.
Read more…
Poor Howard B. of South Carolina. He had what surely must have been the most hellish existence of any pipsqueak in the annals of American childhood, what with peers and teachers(!) relentlessly mocking his unsightly boniness. It must have been like having armies of George F. Jowetts wagging their fists in your face. All his (surely fake) physique S.O.S. letter lacked was a line that said “and because of my skinny arms my dog died” or something to that effect. Sheesh.
But really, aren’t all 13-year-old boys skinny? Unless they’re fat?
If you enjoyed the True Comics post form the other day, and should you have access to a time machine, feel free to use this subscription form to ensure that you get a steady stream of them. It features what looks to be a young, fresh-faced, pre-grizzled version of the Gorton’s fisherman, so that’s a bonus.
You wouldn’t think BMX cyclists would have much in common with éclair lollipop(?)-loving monkeys from India, but both include “licking” in their ad copy, and both are therefore off-putting. Even if watermelon Jolly Ranchers are perfectly acceptable snack sweets. All apologies to Brad Birdwell, Tom Corbitt, Kevin Foss, Marc Darnell and their imaginary rankings (how can two cyclists be #1 at the same time?).
The New York Yankees, Rin Tin Tin, Scotland Yard and Sweet Home Chicago – True Comics #65
Here we have another Golden Age potpourri delight. Once, not so long ago, we looked at an issue of True Comics, which had as one of its features a bio of old-timey cowboy comedian Will Rogers. While this edition lacks any such wattage for its “truth,” it does have a brief, superficial bio of Larry MacPhail, a baseball executive of yore (the Steinbrenner long before Steinbrenner), and also a metric ton of other material. Like all books back then, you got a lot of bang for your dime.
Let’s look inside. Read more…
Warning: Playing Lazer Tag may make you insufferable
Do you really have to blow on the barrel of your laser/lazer pistol after dusting your opponent? Isn’t that a bit much, like a basketball player doing the “holstering guns” move as he trots back on defense after nailing a three? And, on an odd note, doesn’t the guy doing the blowing kind of look like Charles Shaughnessy, Fran Drescher’s male co-star on The Nanny? Too big a stretch?
Kudos to this ad for at least making clear that, as in real life, you had to be about four feet away from the target to record a hit with this junk.
The Zombie Apocalypse as U.N. agitprop – World War Z
When exactly are we going to hit the zombie saturation point? The appetite of the masses for anything and everything to do with rambling hordes of the undead seems to be insatiable — as insatiable as that of the zombie subjects. For my personal tastes, the new century’s quota of zombie takeovers was met with 28 Days Later, which feels like it came out a hundred years ago. Yet the zombie movies, books, comics, shows — everything — keep coming. And coming. And coming. Again, much like the ambulatory undead themselves.
Maybe World War Z, Brad Pitt’s personal zombie love-child, will mark the turning of the tide. Read more…
Jared
blog into mystery 