This was an ad for Marvel’s short-lived venture into magazine publishing for kids called Pizzazz. The ad featured a ruggedly handsome, alternate reality version of Stan Lee via the Brawny Paper Towel man. It looks like a Marie Severin drawing.
I was having a conversation with Bill Cucinotta about the fond memories I had of Pizzazz magazine. In researching this post I realized that I wasn’t fondly remembering that particular magazine. I may have purchased an issue here or there during it’s brief run, but what I was really remembering was something called Smash.
Smash was a kids magazine I ordered when I was attending grade school in the early to mid-1970s. It was full color and slickly designed. It was filled with illustrations and photo essays on movies and TV shows like Emergency. Most interesting to me was the one to two-page encapsulations of the origins of various Marvel super-heroes. Pages or panels from the original inks looked as if they were re-colored and printed on a higher quality paper than was used on the average comic book. I think I bought the issues just for the origin stories. It got me fired up about comics and drove me to the racks at my local drug store and newsstand. Marvel must have had some relationship with the magazine because I remember super-hero posters being included inside. It was wonderful, and I can hardly find any thing about it on the Internet. I bought a number of the issues, and I can’t find a single one. Lost to the ages, I guess.
The Pizzazz ad appeared in The Invincible Iron Man No. 106 which hit the stands late in 1977.
