Decisions — decisions! Do you go with the tapes or the LPs? You get the album cover and the inner sleeve with the album, but 8-track tapes are really cool. They’re sort of futuristic the way you just push them into a player, and the music plays. If you had a car, you could get an 8-track player and listen to your tunes as you cruise along.
…but you do get one more record for your 99¢! What to do? What to do?!
Now you have to decide which six albums or five tapes you want. Decisions — decisions!
This ad appeared as a two-page spread in Captain Marvel No. 30 published by Marvel Comics in 1973. This was the K-TANG Captain Marvel, and not the SHAZAM! Captain Marvel. Marvel Comics appropriated the Captain Marvel trademark from Fawcett Publications, original publishers of the golden age Captain Marvel.
Meanwhile, DC Comics started to run new adventures of the old Captain Marvel, but they called it SHAZAM! At the time, I was unfamiliar with either Captain Marvel. Fawcett’s Captain Marvel was long out of print, and this was before the sad Saturday Morning, live action TV show debuted. My only familiarity was through Gomer Pyle’s nauseating exclamation of “SHAZAM! SHAZAM! SHAZAM!”
I was introduced to the newer, Marvel Comics version of the character when my older brother picked up issue no. 30, read it and threw it to me. Jim Starlin’s art, the awesome fight scenes, cosmic awareness, and just the look of the character grabbed me immediately. I was SOLD!
It wasn’t until later that I realized that Marvel’s Captain was a brilliant re-imagining of the old Fawcett character. Similar to Billy Batson becoming Captain Marvel by speaking the magic word, Earthling Rick Jones would swap places with cosmic warrior Mar-vell by clashing together a pair of wrist bands. They remained two separate personalities! I was ten years old going on eleven, and my mind was blown!
Fans of the Avengers movie may be interested in the bad guy behind the bad guy in this comic. The villain on the cover is The Controller, but the villain behind the scenes was none other than Thanos!
Here Thanos uses the Cosmic Cube to make a person-to-person call to his lackey.
Does Thanos rhyme with anus? That’s how I pronounced it.
