A Much Better Review of Advertising, By Johnathan

Oh, heavens. I was wrong. When I wrote the advertising review (see below) this is the only ad that I needed. Take a second and read it:

There. See what I mean? It's a much better ad for my purposes - the i Patrol gets called in by the Mayor of their presumably very small town to lead the Hero Parade (which appears to be celebrating the Mayor and his brothers, if those sashes are hereditary), which is ludicrous. The kids get top hats and canes and ride into history in the best parade ever. This is all great stuff, but I just can't concentrate on it, and all because of one man:

Parade Hater Horace.

I love Parade Hater Horace. I love him so much. I love that he tried really hard to have the Hero Parade cancelled, and that he had the conviction to wear that sweater while doing it. I definitely love any villain that shouts 'Foiled again!" when foiled two or more times.

I wish that Parade Hater Horace was part of DC continuity - he could have tangled with the Flash or been a part of Superman's ridiculous Silver Age mythos. He could have gone nuts and joined up with the Luthor/ Brainiac Axis of Evil during Crisis on Infinite Earths and been killed by Oans or shadow monsters or something. Then he'd have been eased back into continuity by the cool writers - the ones who knew that it was a good idea to bring back Superdog but skip Ace the Bat Hound - and killed off and replaced by his nephew (who would have P4R4D3 down one arm and H8T3R down the other and a 'cool' haircut and 'rad' sunglasses) by the uncool writers - the ones who keep doing that kind of shit to every character ever. Then he could have been reimagined sans continuity by John Byrne and re-reimagined by Grant Morrison or someone. We'd have learned how he was abused by a parade when he was a kid or how a parade stole his woman or how the government programmed him to combat parades because of an ancient prophecy that predicted that a parade would someday put out the sun. In the big fight outside of the Gulag in Kingdom Come there'd be some dude in a yellow shirt beating the tar out of one of the Wonder Twins, as lovingly rendered by Alex Ross. And after he found out about the mind wipes he'd have come back deadlier than ever.

hmmm.

Oh, Horace. What might have been.

Entirely,

JOHN APPROVED

Review of advertising, By Johnathan

So, as you might have been able to tell by even a casual glance at the rest of my entries in this blog of love and magic, I like the old comics - I find them delicious. One of the things that I love the most about these funnybooks of yore is the advertising - partially because the way that things are advertised has changed so much and partially because no matter how gandiose the claims made or exciting the typeface used, I know in advance how successful the product was, and can snicker to myself on a level totally different from that on which I usually snicker at advertising.


But enough generalities - how about some specific examples, eh Johnathan? (this is what I'm imagining you saying - good job on spelling my name right, by the way.) Very well: here are some advertisements that I have oh-so-tenderly liberated from their original contexts.
(I recommend clicking on the images to get the full impact of their majesty)

First up:
So, putting aside the fact that the cartoon spokescat looks like he's hooked on a mild euphoric (Which is not actually uncommon - I believe that if such characters were real, the stigma of possible drug abuse would hover over their misshapen heads like a life of petty crime haunts the future of every child sitcom star), and putting aside the notion that anyone could have fun playing with those crappy-looking models - let alone acquire a million laughs from each, or from both in tandem - the real eye-catchers for me in this ad were the three young chaps that were oh-so impressed by el Gato's drug-addled ramblings. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
The first of these youngsters, although noseless, might be the only honest one of the bunch - he took AMT's money but he just couldn't bring himself to praise such stupid models, so just went with an expression of polite disbelief. I'll bet that he grew up to be a mildly corrupt cop. The second child, who I'm guessing - due to the same congenital lack of nose - is the first tyke's brother, chooses to focus on the model-building process - with his talents of obfuscation and misdirection, he's probably gone into politics. The third kid... well, putting aside the fact that he's flat-out lying and he knows it: look at that face! You could insert basically any evil thing that you want into that speech balloon and it will look totally natural. "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." "In exactly thirty minutes the Statue of Liberty will be no more.""Kill all of the kittens." Kid gives me the creeps. Probably lurking in somebody's closet right now.
I include this ad only so that I can point out that a)"It's magically delicious!" is a much better catch phrase than "Tis a charmin' cereal... simply charmin.'" and b) Either this is Lucky the Leprechaun's dad, or ol' Lucky's had a facelift some time in the last thirty-odd years.
It's a bitchin' bike, and not a bad idea, but the four-panel format always left a lot of questions unanswered in the various adventures of the i patrol that've cropped up in my reading over the years. For instance: everyone leaps into action / onto their bicycles in order to find this kid, but the bikes don't really come into the resolution of the adventure, like they would if the kid were trapped in, say, a half-pipe or been kidnapped by someone in a motorized wheelchair. Also: character development. This kid in the sombrero intrigues me - I didn't think that sombreros were big as accessories in the late Sixties, and if I'm right I want to know why this kid's got one on. Is he half Mexican? Was the iversion Corporation so in the know that they were trying to woo the Hispanic segments of the purchasing public decades before anyone else? Sadly, I doubt that we'll ever know.
Hoo boy - this one's a doozy. Setting aside the fact that those kids look kind of like store mannequins brought to hideous life, and setting aside the fact that the text starts rhyming halfway through, we come to the really important question: What the hell?

What the hell was this thing? It looks like somebody read - no, skimmed - a book on mysticism and fortune-telling, and then crammed as much of it as possible into a single creepy package. You got the name, Ka-bala, which is surely not meant to invoke the spirit of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism, as popularized by Madonna), surely. You got Taro(t) cards, you got some faux ouija board stuff with the old Eye of Zohar (which looks a bit like a Magic Eightball, come to think of it) - you've even got several references to the marble being made of crystal, which is probably no mistake. Cripes - I'm surprised that there wasn't a little fold-out table where you could read the entrails of a plastic bird.

Little backgound on the last entry: the Phantom Stranger is this mysterious guy who gets into all of the magical business in the DC Universe. He might be all powerful, and he might be a semi-fallen angel, and he might be a lot of things. Every time that somebody tries to really nail down what the Stranger's really all about, somebody else muddies the water again. He's mysterious. Only three things about him are known for sure: he has a cool name, he has a cool hat, and in this one Hellblazer comic he shows up at John Constantine's birthday party and gets vomited on, which was cool. Anyway, apparently at one point he had a comic book all to himself, and here's the ad: Children! Are you prepared to follow strangers? Phantom strangers? Awesome.

Everything's JOHN APPROVED

Review of Old Comic Book Mail-Order Stuff, Part Three, By Johnathan

Next up: The SWITCH-BLADE COMB!


Kind of dumb-looking. Bad idea - bet it got some poor kid shivved.

NOT APPROVED

Review of Old Comic Book Mail-Order Stuff, Part Two, By Johnathan

In contrast with the astonishing and glorious POCKET SPY SCOPE (see Part One), may I present:

The X-RAY SPECS, a heinous and cynical exploitation of the same nerdish lusts served so faithfully by the altruists behind the POCKET SPY SCOPE.
Though an invaluable kitsch resource and generally cool-looking eyewear, the X-RAY SPECS are their core an example of the tendency of humanity to exploit the weakness of its fellows for the dubious pleasure of reaping stacks and stacks of cold, hard cash. The specs operate by optical illusion, and allow one to see 'bones' when peering through them at a hand or an arm. But look at the ad! It says that you can see through clothes! There's a buxom lass in the background! The clear implication is that one can employ these spectacles to play the voyeur on the sly - and how many of our nerdish forebears had their hopes dashed as a result? How many horn-rimmed, bryl-creme'd, zit-encrusted youths gambled their dollar on the specs, figuring that they would ogle their secret crush (and make no mistake - all of their crushes were secret) in public with none the wiser, only to find to their disappointment (six to eight weeks later) that these traitorous lenses simply didn't work as implicitly advertised? How many of those same intrepid, gawky lads had no money left after this soul-crushing betrayal, and were unable to purchase the POCKET SPY SCOPE? How many boys crouched in the undergrowth, pockets protected, squinting forlornly at the lighted window in the distance, where was visible only the occasional and oh-so-tiny glimpse of rosy girl-flesh, rather than the orgiastic/voyeuristic inadvertent strip-show that was their due? How many virgins wept in the rhododendrons?

Geeks of yesteryear, I acknowledge your sorrow.

NOT APPROVED

Review of Old Comic Book Mail-Order Stuff, Part One, By Johnathan

Part one in a series of close looks at the sort of things that people used to try to sell kids who read comics. Our first guest:

There's only the faintest of attempts to disguise the fact that this device was only ever going to be use for one thing: voyeurism. Watching sports? Counter-spying? Pshaw. This thing, for the low, low price of $1.75, enabled early-60s nerds (possibly the dorkiest nerds of all time, studies indicate) to gorge their pasty, lustful eyes on beehive-ed maidens en boudoir. Until I learned of this, I was troubled and confused by the insistence of the authors of the era on describing undergrowth as 'sticky.' Now, however, I am troubled and proud, knowing that as I read I am witnessing the legacy of my nerdish forebears - and the indomitable POCKET SPY SCOPE!

JOHN APPROVED