As is usually the case, I was looking for something else when I came across an old stash of comics books. I immediately forgot about whatever I was originally looking for as I gleefully thumbed through my four-colored, battered beauties. I was leafing through a well worn copy of Conan the Barbarian No. 9 published by Marvel Comics in 1971 when I spied a familiar face.
It was an advertisement not for a body building regimen which were as common in the pages of comics as caped and cowled crimefighters and ass-kicking commandoes but for weighted bracelets that would eventually give the customer iron thews simply by wearing them. Within the body of the ad, this incredible claim was made:
Practical AND fashionable?! How could one possibly resist?
As I said before, the bracelet ad featuring the Austrian bodybuilder with the unpronounceable name appeared in an issue of Conan the Barbarian published by Marvel Comics.
Isn’t it funny that this muscleman would eventually play Mickey Hargitay opposite Loni Anderson in The Jayne Mansfield Story?
I kid.
Arnold Schwarzenegger would go on to play pulp author Robert E. Howard’s most famous character in the movie of Conan the Barbarian released about a decade after this comic hit the stands.
