LOOK WHAT’S HAPPENING

LOOK WHAT’S HAPPENING to this iron-thewed titan on the beaches of California that’s NOT HAPPENING TO YOU as you leaf through a comic-book at your dead-end job as a gas jockey. Don’t FORGET the windshield, genius!

Ah, if only…

Back when comics were printed on newsprint and sold for pocket change, advertisements for the means of bettering oneself proliferated. There was a path to adulthood through correspondence courses or body building or business opportunities. Yeah, many of the offers were shady, but there was that underlying nagging push that you were going to have to grow up some time. It was almost like the comic publishers knew that this was all temporary and at some time it was only right that their readers would one day “put away childish things.” It was ok as far as they were concerned. There always seemed to be fresh readers with pocket change to waste thanks to the baby boom.

The ad featuring the musclebound Adonis appeared in a battered copy of Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD No. 11 published by Marvel Comics in 1969. Back then, the runaway popularity of a certain British super-spy created a cottage industry of espionage adventures featuring suave secret agents working for mysterious government organizations battling nefarious organizations and everyone had anagrams and code names. In the Marvel universe Nick Fury who fought the Axis Powers during WWII alongside the Howlin’ Commandoes continued to serve his nation and save the world as the head and number one agent of SHIELD.

At this time, the notion of collecting comics was pretty much unknown. There may have been hippie head shops that carried comics, but shops dedicated to just selling comics did not really exist. They were still considered a disposable entertainment like last week’s newspaper, and the publishers knew that their readers were going to have to grow up some day. They agreed with the parents.

Go outside and blow the stink off of ya, kid!