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Return
with us now to those thrilling days of
yesteryear, when reading comics was a
real adventure. One month you might read
an epic masterpiece, the next, a stinkerooni
of staggering stupidity. I've already
devoted a section to the great
stuff, so in the interests of fair
play, here's what was weird, ill-advised
or just plain idiotic in the pages of
old Superman comics.
Silly or not, you just might find them
the most entertaining part of the whole
reading experience.
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|  The
Saga of the Super-Sons
Even if it wasn't the oddest concept in Superman's
history, the "Super-Sons" saga was easily
the longest-running. For several years in the pages
of World's Finest Comics, writer Bob Haney shoved
aside Superman and Batman in favor of their lookalike
sons, Superman Jr. and Batman Jr., apparently in an
attempt to attract a "hipper" audience.
A literal treasure-trove of hackneyed "generation
gap" plotlines, "Mod Squad" reject
dialog and cornball drama, this nonsensical
epic gleefully flew in the face of continuity,
logic or reason. And in a masterstroke of bald-faced
bravado, Haney dared readers to prove it wasn't all
true!
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 Superman
#330
In "The Master Mesmerizer
of Metropolis," writer Marty Pasko
deals with one of the great unanswered questions
of the Superman mythos; how could anyone
be fooled by a disguise that consists of a
pair of nonprescription glasses and a slightly
altered hairdo?
Pasko's "solution"
is carefully constructed but unappealing (literally)
for fans of Clark Kent, so after this story
it was never mentioned again.
Years ago I discarded many of
my least favorite Superman comics, but this
one was so lame it achieved a sort of perverse
greatness, so it stayed, and now I can share
some highlights
with you. Pardon the condition of some of
these pages, but the years have not been kind
to a book that didn't even look that good
brand new, thanks to DC's cheap and shoddy
printing practices in the the late 1970s.
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Not Brand Ecch #7
Talk about an oddity...here's a Superman story
printed in a Marvel comic! In the 1960's the
"House of Ideas" launched its own
humor mag, featuring parodies of its own comics
and those of various competitors. The seventh
issue saw this
rather pithy swipe at the Man of Steel.
Each era of Superman history is parodied, but
special attention is given to the tenure of
editor Mort Weisinger, wherein multiple colors
of Kryptonite, super-powered animals and long-lost
relatives appeared with alarming frequency.
Uncle Morty's face is never shown here, nor
his name mentioned, but his actions -- and his
thinly disguised Yes-Man assistant "Birdwell"
(then-junior editor E. Nelson Bridwell) leave
few doubts about his identity.
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| Back Page Oddities... |
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Half
the fun in the old days was stumbling across ads for
Sea Monkeys, backyard nuclear submarines or giant
inflatable Frankensteins, or "activity"
pages that ranged from being simple enough to insult
a 3-year-old to impossible even for a NASA scientist.
These days all you'll find is full-page ads for movies,
video games and CDs; in other words, all the things
that 90 percent of American kids are spending their
money on instead of comic books, anyway. But if you
haunt those back-issue bins, you just might get lucky
and find truly creepy little ads for joy buzzers,
black soap and that all-time champ, the X-ray specs.
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| Palisades
Park Advertisement |
Cartoon
Flip (circa 1950?)
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The "Modocrylic"
(1972)
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Daisy BB
Gun Advertisement (1965)
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DC House
Ad: Superman Annual (1967)
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Corgi Toy Ad (1978)
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