Respect Authority

For years, advertisements in the back of comic books have taught America’s children an invaluable lesson: how to tell the truth and yet completely lie at the very same time. It’s unfortunate that none of the youths reading the ads will ever be in a relationship with an actual human female, because it’s a skill that could prove incredibly handy in situations other than Counterstrike LAN tournaments every Tuesday night.

This website has a large collection of vintage comic book ads, and they are classic examples of the art form. They promised everything from the predictable enough grappling hooks and cloaks of invisibility all the way to the downright bizarre, such as Evil Knievel towels, which I guess are supposed to dry you off, like, really fast, and collections of “Hitler heads,” a product I would hope would appeal to no one on earth, but undoubtedly does.

Often these amazing finds were offered at ridiculously low prices, prices so good it just couldn’t be true. And… well, it wasn’t. Considering a “Personal Monster Army” only cost as much as a pack of gum, does it really come as any surprise that all you got in the mail was a couple moldy potatoes with pipe cleaners stuck in them? Consider it an adventure in your blossoming imagination… or, you know, a demoralizing blow to your self-esteem. Both are loads of laughs!

The ads made misrepresentation a science, as they weren’t really outright lies, so much as near total reworkings of the truth… just like pretty much every college graduate’s resumé ever. And it’s true, a white balloon tucked inside a white garbage bag could be considered a “Monster Ghost” that “acts as though alive.” To think, all the unfortunate victims of these ads, left staring in disappointment at their deflated balloons, could have been saving their paper route money for psychedelic drugs that would liquefy their brains and make monster ghosts appear everywhere! I mean really, what are we teaching our kids?

The one thing these ads probably did manage to teach children, other than the fact that, largely, things that cost next to nothing generally reflect that value quite accurately, is that there are plenty of people out there who are very willing to lie in order to get your money. And some of these people happen to have weird names, like “McDonalds” and “the government.”

Indeed, just last week, a frail, quivering old lady came up to me asking for donations for Parkinson’s disease patients. But I was too sly for her — Noticing her hands shaking furiously, I realized she must have been nervous about lying so brazenly. I told her that it was disgusting of her to use a sensitive topic, such as a devastating, wasting illness like Parkinson’s, to con people out of their hard-earned money, and that even if she wasn’t lying I wouldn’t give her anything because I didn’t watch to catch that shit. Besides, it’s the bitch’s own fault anyway for not using protection.

Vintage comic book ads took advantage of the fact that all kids are dumb, and the kids scouring the pages of comic books, while their peers learned how to be good little soldiers playing after-school sports, were not only dumb but also utterly hopeless. Lured by the ads’ incredible claims, many a lonely longtime-virgin in the making was ultimately convinced that, surely, a pair of X-Ray goggles constructed by the long-forgotten Atlantians would solve all their bullying problems at school… never imagining the more likely scenario that the goggles would simply end up being a waste of the only two bucks they even had and possibly cause a lazy eye in the process. And despite the fact that today, eye patches have regained a certain level of cool, nobody deserves the cruelty inherent in being “the kid with the eye patch” at school, and this is even before the other students have figured out what jizz jokes are. You might as well be the Hunchback of Todd J. Jefferson Elementary.

[Super Marketing]