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Tweak says, "Huzzah!"

queenanthai (queenanthai) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-08-29 15:55:00

Entry tags:

era: silver age, medium: advertisement, medium: letter columns, publisher: dc comics, title: action comics

The Glory Of Silver Age Filler Part 1
While the crack of the Silver Age stories is legendary, one of my favorite things about reading 30- to 40-year-old comics is the ads, the PSAs and the letter columns. It's like a little time warp, and you can actually get a hint of the culture and attitudes of those days.

Here're three to start you off:

And thus, a young Greg Land was struck with inspiration.

Johnny later died trying to use the hair dryer in the shower. Geoff Johns plans to reimagine him as a Black Lantern.

Joseph Katin's letter was one of a recurring theme in the ACTION lettercols back then. There was a huge divide between fans over whether DC should print several-issue arcs or stick with one-shots. I kind of wonder how fans back then would deal with continuity of today - not that we don't have posters here who were around back then, but you've had time to deal with it gradually. I'm talking about random time-jumping into our poor era.

ETA: I'm pretty sure the response to Eddie Ramirez's letter is the earliest use of that stupid word "frenemy."

Anyone else willing to share? I have more where this came from, of course.

(Post a new comment)

icon_uk
2009-08-29 09:21 pm UTC (link)

Fun captioning! :)

Johnny's story reminds me of an old Public Safety advert that used to be shown in the UK about the dangers of laying a rug on a polished wood floor (I kid you not, that's what it was about. Hey, it was the 1970's maybe there was a rash of fatalities...)

The most memorable line was "A rug? On a polished wooden floor? You might as well lay down a mantrap." and sure enough for a few second the rug WAS replaced by a massive beartrap that looked large and vicious enough to take down a rugby team in one go.

Trust me, that was real nightmare fuel for little icon_uk!

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	endis_ni 2009-08-30 11:08 am UTC (link)
	Oh my life, I haven't thought of that advert in years! I'm sure it must have been repeated into the early 80s, because I remember it as a very small girl. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	psychop_rex 2009-08-31 08:15 am UTC (link)
	Was this before the invention of those sticky net things that you put down on the floor first to anchor them? (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jkcarrier 2009-08-29 10:13 pm UTC (link)
	And they say modern comics fans complain and nit-pick too much. Those old-time letterhacks had it down to an art form! :P It's kind of cool how the editor would sometimes try to weasel out of it, but other times would just own up and say, "Yup, we goofed!" (Reply to this)

autolychus2
2009-08-29 10:28 pm UTC (link)

I remember the first ad vividly -- it's up there with Sea Monkeys, X-ray specs and a box of 500 army men, all of which disappointed me. The sea monkeys were brine shrimp, the 500 army men were nearly paper thin plastic, the x-ray specs did nothing for clothing, and finally the "Magic Art Reproducer" came without the bathing suit model. (Yep, I was a pervy six-year-old.)

Auto, now 40 and still kinda pervy

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	icon_uk 2009-08-29 11:00 pm UTC (link)
	If you weren't kind of pervy, you probably wouldn't be on S_D in the first place. (Reply to this) (Parent)

dr_hermes
2009-08-29 11:28 pm UTC (link)

Even as a kid, I suspected most of the letters in DC comics were bogus. They were so transparent. "Have you ever published a story where Superman meets one of the famous strongmen of history?" "You're in luck. In the October issue of ACTION COMICS, we present a new story, 'Lois Lane's Super-Suitors,' where the Man of Steel has to deal with Lois being wooed by not just Hercules but also Samson." It seems every column had a convenient letter asking about a story about to be published. The letters weren't signed I. M. Phony, but...

Stan Lee's answers to letters, on the other hand, were breezy and irreverent. To a statement that a fan bought DAREDEVIL only to see how many mistakes were in it, Stan might reply, "We don't care if you buy our comics so you can cut out paper dolls, as long as you keep buying them."

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	zordboy 2009-08-29 11:52 pm UTC (link)
	And then of course there were the letters asking to see Lois or Supergirl spanked (and I'm sure someone posted a page-scan of something like that on the old SD). Which were disturbing whether they were genuine or phony o_O. (Reply to this) (Parent)

galateus
2009-08-30 12:00 am UTC (link)

Well now we know who Mean Girls was ripping off all these years.</em>

My favorite letter-to-the-editor page is still the one from the World's Finest #153 post:

But there are some funny-haha one-page comics and not-so-cracky PSA's I wanna post now, too.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	queenanthai 2009-08-30 02:26 am UTC (link)
	Ooooh, go for it! I wanna see! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	volksjager 2009-08-30 01:02 am UTC (link)
	Some of the toy ads were excellent as well. Whenever I look at stuff from the 70's I love the Vincent Price shrunken heads kit. You made the heads from coating apples with something and they cook into faces and the kit had all these extras to pin on and such. Well before my time , did anyone actually have one of these treasures. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-08-31 08:14 am UTC (link)
	Well before my time, too, but I can tell you from experience that you don't need all that folderol to make an apple head. From what I remember, you just carve some basic features into an apple, stick it in the oven for a while, and it comes out looking like headhunters got ahold of it. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ashtoreth 2009-08-30 03:16 am UTC (link)
	Superman's costume. Indestructible. AND WRINKLE PROOF. But hey, that art thing? Actually works. Used one in art class to put a Monet on a t-shirt in no time flat. Note that a painted t-shirt lasts much longer than all those silk-screen jobs. (Reply to this)

	kingrockwell 2009-08-30 09:21 pm UTC (link)
	Could Khrushchev really not speak English, or was that Cold War fever? It seems suspect that a head of state wouldn't know another language when he might need it for diplomatic reasons. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-09-01 08:41 am UTC (link)
	Do you think heads of state just learn languages they might find handy? That's not going to happen. Khruschev might have found Spanish convenient when talking to Castro, or French for when he dealt with De Gaulle or Chinese for Mao. But he didn't speak those either. (Khruschev was poorly educated in the first place and had enough trouble being literate in Russian.) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	psychop_rex 2009-08-31 08:17 am UTC (link)
	Something tells me that that 'magic art reproducer' wasn't quite as advertised. (Reply to this)