No, I don’t know him either.
This happy fellow figured prominently on one of many home-study course ads that ran in comics for practically as long as there have been comics. The same schools splashed a lot of ink around hot rod, detective and manly, he-man adventure magazines. They were trying to reach out to the same young, underemployed, male readership who may have grown tired of pushing a broom or found the third shift security guard job not as glamorous as originally thought. This grinning guy would be leering at them during a lunch break, goading them on to something better than pumping gas. That toothy smile was challenging the reader to imagine himself working in one of these exciting fields:
I often wonder how some of these courses worked in a home study setting.
This ad appeared in an issue of Captain America and The Falcon No. 164 published by Marvel Comics in 1973. The happy fellow seemed a little behind the times for the Me Decade. I guess he didn’t get the memo that The Wet Head Was Dead or that his JFK era tie was considerably narrower than the curtain-sized ties fashionable with the hip, happening and hairy men of the 1970s. The school was probably perfectly happy with this ad, and there was no need to spend money fixing something that wasn’t broken as far as they were concerned.
Prolly paid him once for the shot and he figured that was that because they never called him back, or he was a student or grad from the school of (fill in the blank) and they said, “You wanna be in an ad?”
Being that I was one, I’ll bet he was a draftsman.
I dunno, he looks like a motel manager to me.
hmmmmmm …..