Kung Fu Rodeo » Classic Comic Ads

Ads Of Marvel Past

Stephen Gerding — Mon, 18 May 2009 04:12:18 +0000

You have to give it to the boys at Marvel – they’re pulling out all the stops for their 70th Anniversary! By far, though, this new feature showcasing vintage ads that ran in old Marvel comics has to be my favorite.

Kind of looks like a familiar feature, though…

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Classic Comic Book Ads – Holo-Man!

Stephen Gerding — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:20:14 +0000

I love – LOVE – the fact that this futuristic super hero of the 70s comes with his adventures forever archived on a 45. Hopefully someone’s got this, has ripped it to mp3 and it’s online somewhere, just waiting to be listened to…

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Classic Comic Book Ads – Electroman!

Stephen Gerding — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:14:49 +0000

I’m pretty sure that this ad ran on and off for years in Marvel’s titles, but I never noticed until now just how borderline racist it is. Did the dude Jim meets on a street corner have to be a black guy with an afro with the greeting of “What’s happenin?” To top that off, Jim’s talking about being unable to “score” proper employment. I’m probably reading far too much into an ad that was produced in simpler times, but it’s kind of hard not to view it at least a little bit through modern eyes.

That said, it’s also important to note that it’s probably a good thing Electroman wasn’t in the Marvel or DC universes. Dude is so powerful, he’s able to break the dotted line of the sign up form!

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Classic Comic Book Ads – Karate!

Stephen Gerding — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:12:50 +0000

It’s been a while since we posted one of these, but when I stumbled across this vintage karate ad I knew immediately I had to share it. Even when it came out, you knew by looking at it that it was pretty much total crap – not even a 10 year old kid believed he’d achieve “complete self-defense mastery” in one day – that shit took at least a week! Still, that didn’t stop them from buying up ad space in every single Marvel comic created in the mid-seventies, though! The entire ad, in all it’s glory, is after the jump.

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CCA – Gobots, WTF?

Stephen Gerding — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 18:42:45 +0000

Just a friendly public reminder that, as awesome as the Transformers are, they really never had much in the way of direct competition. Hard to believe the Gobots were ever popular enough to warrant a movie, much less product endorsement tie-ins. Really, the “grand prize” was more of a booby prize, and look; even the Quik rabbit didn’t want to be seen in the same ad with these losers.

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X-Ray Specs, Mother F@*Â©er!

Stephen Gerding — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:35:11 +0000

The fun has definitely come back to Threadless the last few months, beating back the joyless indy-art mindset that seemed to dominate the entries and chosen designs for a while there. This new shirt struck me as particularly cool, especially in light of this recent KFR post.

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CCA – Super Spy Pen

Stephen Gerding — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:59:09 +0000

This cool little spy pen (just like they use in A Man Called U.N.C.L.E.!) supposedly let you see through walls and somehow also doubled as a mini telescope. I never understood exactly how this sort of x-ray spec technology was supposed to work, but like any other kid I was always intrigued by it – did anyone out there ever actually buy this pen or the glasses? What was their gimmick?

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CCA – What About Jack?

Stephen Gerding — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:32:42 +0000

From the venerable Murray Roach comes this classic ad that Marvel would likely prefer to never think of again. Y’see, kids, back in the day, comic book artists didn’t get their original art back. For years they were cool with it, since they didn’t see any intinsic value in the original pages, but Kirby kind of did. He asked Marvel for his art, they said no, and years of namecalling (from Marvel towards The King) ensued. Marvel eventually gave in and returned the art they still had in their posession, creating another cottage industry with comic book art dealers and the like as a result, but before that happened, Marvel was publically shamed by various comic book companies and professionals. The ad below ran on the back cover of Eclipse comics in “celebration” of Marvel’s 25th year of publishing.

For more on the history between Kirby and Marvel, click here.

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