More Comic Book Ads

Alright, lets start off with another infamous series of comic book ads:

I love how lame the villains are in all of these, you just know these were written by ad executives, but they look just like real comics!

There doesn't seem to be too much funny about this one, but look closer:

First off, that doesn't look like a kid's room in the big panel. It looks like a living room! Look at how fucking smug the kid looks in the "door" panel. You know he just stuck that somewhere he wasn't supposed to. The "notebook" is probably his sister's diary, the lunchbox looks like it's his dad's...and of course he stuck Green Arrow and Green Lantern on his parent's car! This kid is a brat and seeing as how spanking wasn't as frowned upon as it is now, probably got his ass beat pretty hard.

Ah, Sea Monkey's. Another well known comic book scam:

Do they even sell these anymore? Everyone and their grandmother knows it's just fucking brine shrimp. You can buy them at pet stores to feed to certain kinds of fish for crying out loud!

Another muscle ad:

Damn is this one gay looking! I wonder how many 90 LBS nerds bought this only to have it smack them in the face and take out an eye? Check out a pre-movie fame Ahnuld down by the send in square.

Another muscle ad, the books I have are full of them:

Build your muscles by jamming dynamite into them!

This one is interesting for a few reasons:

One, I would have totally sent away for this. Two, this was probably released to capitalize on the then upcoming horrible King Kong remake. Third, it mentions Queen Kong, a movie so bad that it never received theatrical release and was only really seen by anybody when it recently came out on DVD! (Which I'm going to rent soon, of course.)

For some reason there's a lot of ads for Slim Jims too:

I had always thought that Slims were a 90s thing, but I guess I was wrong. Check out the ad for "grit" too. Don't sell seeds holiday cards or any of that junk, sell grit! You'll be able to take Suzy to the roller rink in no time!

And now we have what I like to call "buy crazy shit":





I would totally have blown all my allowance on this stuff when I was a kid. Sadly, all of these ads seem to have gone away after awhile. I have a couple 90s comic books that just have video game ads in them. Its Kind of sad really. Where will today's kids get exploding pens, hypno-coins, and x-ray specs? Where I ask you, WHERE?

And finally, Wendy wants you to join the female branch of the Hilter Youth:

Apparently signing up turns you a nice healthy shade of blueish-green!

I'll end with this unrelated clip, which you should watch because it's awesome.

(From Maniac! (1934))

Not sure what I'm going to put up tomorrow night. Probably the rest of the covers. I don't think I'm legally allowed to post up full comics am I? If anyone has any idea, let me know!

Harvey Comics, Another Ad, and Nightmare Fuel

I hadn't really heard much about Richie Rich other than the horrible live action movie that came out in the 90s that starred Macaulay Culkin and this conversation from The Simpsons:

Lisa: Hurry, mom! If we don't get to the convention soon, all the good comics will be gone!
Bart: Ah, what do you care about good comics? All you every buy is Casper the Wimpy Ghost.
Lisa: I think it's sad that you equate friendliness with wimpiness, and I hope it'll keep you from ever achieving true popularity.
Bart: Well, you know what I think? I think Casper's the ghost of Richie Rich.
Lisa: Hey! They do look alike.
Bart: I wonder how Richie died.
Lisa: Perhaps he realized how hollow the pursuit of money is and took his own life.
Marge: Kids, could you lighten up a little?

So I was mildly curious about him. Mildly.

(This issue has lots of pretty lame references to Happy Days. This would have been around the time that Harvey was in decline so maybe they were trying to rope the kids in by trying to be hip?)

Richie Rich, like all Harvey Comics Characters, is a one gag character. While Casper's gag is that he scares the fuck out of people but doesn't mean to and Little Lotta's is that she is fat, Richie's thing is that he's rich. He's rich and uses money to get out of tough situations.
Other than the occasional unintentionally sexual gag

it's pretty darn bland. He was Harvey's most popular character though and to be fair, the comics were aimed at little kids. I suppose the fact that he's rich but not snobbish was enough to endure him to a whole generation. But that's where Harvey's genius lies. They knew what kids wanted. They knew that the stories just had to be simple with characters that their readers would either want to be or hang out with, and they ran with it for 40 some years. So, while I wouldn't read these comics everyday, I can appreciate them for what they were.

For a really good history of Harvey Comics and it's impact on a generation of kids (Way better than I could hope to write), please go here: http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v3_3/jackson/

And now for some Casper:

Jesus, what the Hell is that?

Casper wants to suck your soul out through your nose!

I'm saving the really weird ads for tomorrow night. Here's a movie related one.
Can anyone tell me who the artist is that might have drawn this?:

I just know it's in the style of one of the usual gang of idiots from Mad, but I can't seem to recall which one!

And finally, something completely unrelated:

via videosift.com
Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors ever. He's had a huge impact on pop culture, but he always seems to get stiffed when it comes to film adaptations of his work. They tend to range from okay to freakin' terrible. This Russian short is pretty damn good, but it misses out on a lot of the subtle creepiness and aching sadness of the original story and instead goes for the throat with some pretty heavy handed imagery. The one scene that I think it does do right though is when the robot wakes up the family at the beginning. I would love to see an animated adaptation that would stick closer to the original story. Actually, I think a lot of his work would be amazing if handled by the right animation studio.

My computer is being a douche tonight and there's something else I need to work on, so I bid you all good night and many happy nightmares!

New Scanner, Comic Book Scans, and a Secret Project

So I finally bought a scanner. Actually it's a scanner/printer/fax machine/coffee maker. Just kidding about the last one, but it's spiffy to say the least.
And this past week a family member sent me a stack of old comics that she got from a flea market. I'll be posting up the covers for each all week as well as some weird ads.

Here's the first. Action Comics No. 415, Aug 1972:

It's a pretty silly filler comic, the kind thats amusing but doesn't add anything to the universe's continuity and introduces characters you'll never see again. It does have huge killer amoebas though.

And here we have what's possibly the most famous ad in comic book history, Charles Globe wants to make you a man! Er, I mean Charles Atlas:


And here's my remix:

I now invite you to make your own!

Related song:


Now that I have an honest to gosh printer, I'm going to be embarking on a little project this weekend. You can probably guess what it's going to be, but I still won't say exactly.

More comic stuff tomorrow!

Farewell Love

"Farewell my little darling
I can't stay any more
The night will be down soon
And I must leave from your door
Though it pains me to leave
Please don't grieve for me
On my long journey homeward
I'll will think but of thee

Farewell my lovely lady
Please do not cry
There's been harder goodbyes
Than between you and I
When time is spent so well
It's the reason it flies
Farewell my only true love
Please dry your eyes

Farewell my pretty Nancy
I must be off soon
To trek that long road
By the light of the moon
As soon as I am able
I will come back to you
From Hell I would come back
To keep my word true"

She watched as her true love
Went over the hill
It was days before he came back
One night when it was still
She heard a loud knock
And she ran to the door
When she saw who had made it
She fell to the floor
Her lover had come back
His promise was true
Except now he had no head
What was she to do?

Influences and mood setters for this piece:

Cool Music Stuff

Ian at We Flew Airplanes put up some cool music vids in a recent post and since I haven't written anything I've felt like posting lately, I thought I'd post up some of the musics that I've been listening to as of late.

I posted these previously on a blog I started (and ended up deleting) but I thought I'd post them again here since I've been immersing myself in 1940s music and culture lately:

Paper Doll is quickly becoming one of my favorite songs ever and the video is kind of wonderfully weird isn't it?

Of course you can't talk about the music of the 1940s without Glenn Miller can you?

Exploding out of almost nowhere with a string of massively popular hits songs, Miller is still what most people think of when you mention 1940s jazz and swing music.
Part of his enduring legacy might be the fact that he vanished without a trace at the height of his popularity but anyone with a good ear can probably pick out a few other reasons why. For one thing, his band is fucking tight. One reason I love listening to his orchestra is because of how well they interact and play off of each other. That and the songs are just classy all the way and class never goes out of style. Well, at least it shouldn't.
But anyways...goddamn those Nicholas Brothers could dance couldn't they? I've never seen anyone do the stuff the do. It's like they're puppets on strings sometimes.

And now for something a bit different:

It's obviously staged but still a fascinating glimpse into a whole different world. I don't have much else to say about it other than that it makes me happy and sad at the same time.

And finally, to finish off, Johnny Marvin sings and plays his uke:


Oh heck, one more:

Hooray for Andy Devine!

I wish you all a great weekend and a fun and interesting rest of the week!

Wormwood

Wormwood sits in his special place
Picking scabs from off his face
Chewing them silently he smiles
Rotten teeth that go on for miles
Wormwood thinks that you are cool
Would like to meet you after school
I hope you don't mind his ringworm head
Or the fact that he smells like something dead
Wormwood is cool, his style is hip
Wormwood will gladly take your shit
He'll smile as you rant and yell
And laugh as tell him to go to hell
Break his bones
Slam his face in a door
Wormwoods seen it all before
He claims that pain just ain't no thang
You just gotta roll with what life can brang
Wormwoods hip
Wormwoods cool
Wormwood knows he ain't no fool
Wormwood says you're his best friend
Together till the very end
Wormwood would like to cook you some food
Don't say no, it would be rude
Off in the kitchen he makes for you
A very special kind of stew
Is that a finger floating there?
Wormwood doesn't seem to care
Was that a groan coming from the next room?
You say you have to be leaving soon
Wormwood says your plate's not clean
You're the rudest person he's ever seen
He says that you are very bad
For making poor old Wormwood mad
You better make the door pretty quick
Wormwood is tired of all your shit

Stranded

Based on a story that used to freak me out when I was a kid, mixed with a recent personal experience.

I was dreaming that Kim and I were having sex. I had that dream a lot but this one was weird because we were having sex in our World History II class. I watched myself go down on her, kissing her breasts and stomach before diving into the forbidden area, where girls aren't supposed to go with other girls. It didn't really seem unnerving to me to see our professor watching us, maybe if he had looked excited or pervy, but he just looked bored. Suddenly Kim was gone and I was standing in front of him, still naked.
"Lydia, you need to wake up." He said in Kim's voice. I looked at him, puzzled at a woman's voice coming out of a 50 year old man.
"Lydia, you need to wake up right now, seriously!" Then everything faded away...

We were still on the bus. My sleep addled brain tried to figure out how that was possible. Maybe I hadn't slept as long as I had thought. Panicked, I lifted my head up from Kim's lap and looked out the window. Instead of the streets and buildings of a town or city, all I could see was trees.
"Kim, where..." I said started.
"We both fell asleep we missed out stop." Kim interrupted.
"How many stops did we miss?"
"The fuck if I know." Said Kim, pulling out the bus map from her backpack.
I looked around the bus while she ran her finger over the map. The bus was empty except for one dirty looking old man, probably homeless, sleeping hunched over with his head in his lap. I looked out the window again, just trees and more trees, and a full moon that just made it look lonelier than it would normally. Panic welled up inside me again. What if we did get lost out here and no one ever found us again?
I looked at Kim. She was bent over with the map on her legs, her head almost touching it. Her thick brown hair was matted and tangled from traveling for two days with no shower. When she looked up, she looked calm, like usual. The few times that I've seen her excited or angry were the times that I've really been scared. I calmed down a bit.
"I know where we are." She said. God did she looked tired. I bet I look worse though, I thought. She pointed at the map.
"We're four whole stops past Esquire."
"You think we can catch a bus back?"
"No, I think this is the last bus, the line stops running at 1 AM. Wherever this next stop is, I think we just need to get a hotel for the night and try to catch one in the morning."
I sighed. Not too bad of a situation, at least we could shower and sleep in an actual bed for once. This trip had been fun, but had taken a lot out of us too. I imagined our car sitting in the parking lot in Esquire, by the McDonald's where we had left it. The place would be closed by now, it's windows dark, the only light shining down from a street lamp and the moon. We could be in that car right now, I thought. For some reason this made me sad. I looked around the bus again, this time at the driver. All I could see was the shadow of his head behind the grating that cut him off from the rest of the bus. He probably has a home he wants to get to as well, I thought, poor guy.
Kim looked like she was going to fall asleep again. I shook her awake.
"I'm okay" She mumbled, "I was just resting my eyes."
I laughed. "That might work on Mrs. Mirra, but it's not..." I trailed off.
The bus had stopped. The driver turned around and yelled through the grating. His face was still a darkened shape that I couldn't see very well..
"LAST STOP, EVERYBODY OFF!" He yelled so loud that it made me jump. The dirty old man woke up and started to shamble off the bus. Kim calmly picked up her back pack and stood up. I did the same and we walked off the bus, into the freezing cold night. I tried to get a glimpse of the driver as I walked past but I still couldn't see him, just a strange dark shape hunched over the steering wheel...

"Did you bring your hoodie?" Kim asked as we stood on the bus station steps.
"Yeah, I'll put it on." I said, slipping my coat off. The old man took out a bundle of newspapers from under his coat and laid them on the ground. Then he laid down, covered himself with more, and then fell asleep.
Even with my hoodie and thick jacket on, I was still cold. The early March wind found every way possible to get at you and bite your skin.
"Of course we had to get dropped in the middle of nowhere. Just our fucking luck." Kim grumbled.
It really was nowhere. The road that lead away on both sides was lined with trees and that was all there was.
"There's got to be a town around here somewhere." I said, "It doesn't make sense for a bus to stop where there's no people."
"Well this one does apparently."
I sighed and turned to look into the darkened window of the bus station. It was a very small building. I could see a ticket counter and some seats and not much else. Kim tried the doors.
"It's fucking locked." She said and gave the doors a hard kick that echoed under the metal awning. The old man didn't move.
"There's got to be a town around here somewhere," I said again, looking down the road to the left. "And we can't stay here, or we'll freeze."
"Fuck" said Kim loudly. "I hate when shit like this happens!" She sounded mad, but like usual, her face didn't look it. She gave the station door another hard kick and sighed.
"Oh well, we might as well get going." She said and started to walk down the road. I followed. The dim light of the station receded into the distance and soon it was gone after we trecked up a large hill...

"So a dog walks into a bar.."
"Yeah."
"And he asks for a drink. The bartender says 'toilets around the corner.'"
Kim chuckled. "That was stupid." She paused. "Got anymore?"
"Why couldn't Bill Clinton blow out his birthday candles?"
She laughed again. "I don't know, why?"
"Because he doesn't inhale."
She snorted. "Where do you come up with these stupid jokes?"
"I used to read lots of them when I was a kid."
Kim didn't reply and I looked into the trees we were walking past. The still darkness underneath them unnerved me. I kept imagining things moving under there, waiting to spring out at us and drag us into their lairs to feed...
"Hey," I said, "Do you remember when we were in high school..."
"Yeah, I remember high school, don't you?"
I laughed. "Shut up. Do you remember when you put a tack on Mrs. Garcia's seat?"
Kim laughed louder. "Yeah, oh god..."
"And when she got up it was stuck in her ass and she didn't notice it?"
"You were the one that told me to do that, remember?" She said, laughing.
"Yeah but we didn't get in trouble for that one. Remember when you dared me to throw that chicken patty up in the vent and I did right as Mr. Dunbar walked into the lunch room?"
"And it fell right on his head? I almost died laughing!"
"I almost died too, but not from laughing!" I paused and waited for her to get quiet again. "I'll never forget what you did for me though."
"Well it was my idea and I didn't want to see you get in trouble."
"Can I tell you something?"
"Sure, of course."
"That was when I really fell in love with you for the first time."
Kim was quiet again.
"Oh Lydia. Why did it take you so long to tell me?" She asked after a bit.
"I...I...just..." Kim cut me off.
"Look, there's a light up ahead." She pointed down the road.
And there was, it was far off but there it was....

Kim looked puzzled.
"Why would there be a hotel all the way out here?" She asked.
"There's probably a town further down the road. And who cares why? It's freezing."
The light that we had seen was coming from the the hotel's neon sign.
"PINE WOOD'S HOTEL." It said. In smaller letters underneath was "able TV, no ool, no pets." And under that a darkened "VACANCY" sign. Kim walked up and knocked on the door. It seemed like forever before her knock was answered. The middle aged woman who opened the door looked mean.
"What do you want?" She barked and held her robe closed against the cold. "Don't you now what time it is?"
Kim looked puzzled again. "Um, we got stranded by the bus and need a room for the night. We have money to pay..."
"Stupid kids," said the old woman, "The damn thing only runs till 1 AM."
Now Kim looked annoyed. "Yeah we found that out, are you going to give us a room or not?"
The old lady stepped back. She looked shocked, and then annoyed, but she opened the door and let us into the small check-in area. We heard her mutter something about 'common decent folk's bed times' as she fumbled around behind the desk for a key, throwing it on the counter.
I reached for it and she grabbed my hand. I could feel her bony fingers digging into my skin.
"Money first!" She barked and let go. I quickly withdrew my hand. I went and sat in a worn out easy chair while Kim paid. The hotel owner had seriously given me the creeps and I didn't want to look at her again. I thought about how glad I was that Kim was with me. I don't know what I would have done without her...

The room was small but comfortable. And very warm. We stripped down for bed without saying anything. I fell asleep listening to Kim breathe next to me, tightening the cheap blankets down around my body...
When I woke up the bedside clock said 3 AM. Kim was singing quietly.
"And I'll be waiting on the far side banks of Jordan..."
I looked over at her but the room was pitch dark and I couldn't see anything.
"I'll be sitting drawing pictures in the sand..."
"Kim..." I whispered softly.
"And when I see you coming, I will rise up with a shout...."
"Kim what are you doing?"
"And wade in through the shallow waters, reaching for your hand..."
I elbowed her in the ribs but she kept singing.
"If it proves to be his will that I am first to go..."
I shoved the pillow over my head, but I could still hear her.
"And somehow I've a feeling it will be..."
I started to get mad.
"Kim, what the Hell? Shut up!" I yelled and slammed my head back down on the pillow. Everything was quiet, except the wind outside, which was howling now. I fell asleep again....

When I woke up the second time, the clock said 7:30. The room was still pitch dark. I looked over at kim, all I could see was the dark shape of her back. I got up and walked over to the bathroom. When I came back, she hadn't moved. I grabbed her shoulder and shook it to try and wake her. She didn't move. This was pretty normal, she was a hard sleeper. I flicked on the bed side light, which usually woke her up.
I didn't scream right away. I thought I might have been dreaming. But when I grabbed her and turned her over, it hit me full force and I shrieked until I couldn't anymore.
Her pillow was soaked in blood. And Kim didn't have a head.