Hypnotize!

I had a good chuckle when I saw this ad in a comic that was published when Richard Nixon was still President.

“With the magic power of hypnosis you can hypnotize at a glance, make people obey your commands without subject’s knowledge.”

Ridiculous!
Then a thought occurred to me: What if it worked? Did some kid send off $1.35, master hypnotism and we are now all operating under a hypnotic suggestion and have been for years? Has this hypnotist been cozying up to world leaders and controlling them for decades? With the way things are going, it doesn’t seem like such a preposterous idea.

The hypnosis ad appeared in Worlds Unknown No. 8 published by Marvel Comics in 1974. It was an adaptation of Ray Harryhausen’s The Golden Voyage of Sinbad released that same year. The movie was terrific, and it was a perfect fit for comics. Sinbad could have been a continuing character in the tradition of Conan the Barbarian as the cover trumpets, but it was not to be. There was this adaptation and a single issue version of The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad published by Marvel in Marvel Spotlight about a year later and that was it for Sinbad at the company. Marvel did not bother with 1977’s Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. At that time they were busy with their own intellectual properties and an adaptation of a science fiction property called Star Wars.