Monday, February 25, 2013

Marvel M-Ad-ness: Letters Page Teaser Ads

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! Remember those little teaser ads Marvel occasionally ran at the bottom of their letters pages back in the early-to-mid 70s? I really dug the way they used the cover art as the background, placing the logo to the side with those hand-drawn "pages" fanning out from the "comic book". For some reason those ads really, really grabbed me! Here are a few of Ol' Groove's faves. What are some of yours?




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6 comments:

  1. ComicsfanFebruary 25, 2013 at 6:11 AM

    This was a nice surprise! You certainly dug out a lot more of these wonderful promotional ads than I did. :) I never really found them effective as sales tools in terms of sending me back to the comics rack to sample other titles, though these splashy ads definitely tempted me--but they made the end-of-the-issue "post-story" experience more fun for me, and made me take a little more notice of those other titles for future reference.

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  2. Mike MikulovskyFebruary 25, 2013 at 7:51 AM

    The Groovy one makes my monday morning once again! I'm with you! I loved these ads! Especially the ones that seemed to pop out at us readers. My favorites were the Spider-Man vs Capt.A one & Ironman ones. I actually thought they were drawn just for the ads. So it was a pleasant surprise. To later see it was the cover! I always wished they had done this with IronFist & the New X-Men too. Rock On Groovster!

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  3. Mike MikulovskyFebruary 25, 2013 at 11:10 AM

    Loved the Headless Horseman by the cover king Gil Kane! The Vision vs the Silver Surfer was pretty cool too!

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  4. Brian BarnesFebruary 25, 2013 at 12:13 PM

    As big of a fan of marvel horror as I was, I never saw that Headless Horseman before, so I immediately searched and found myself right back here!

    So, in fact, this promotion DID work, just 30 or so years late!

    When I was a kid, I never understood some of the horror titles, but now that I know, I love how marvel would add things like "rides again" or "by night" or "tomb of" so they could re-copyright public domain entities. You can't blame them, but it's certainly interesting from a business vs creative standpoint.

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  5. david_bFebruary 26, 2013 at 8:45 AM

    These days, they STILL WORK..!! As I rekindle my passion for Marvel Comics circa the 1973 heyday, I'm still combing through old books for these ads, to again wonder what the comic really was like, then log on to eBay and buy 'em.

    It's AWESOME. That Avengers ish was one of the BEST ever. Another example was the ad of Spidey fighting Submariner on the cover of Subby's ish 69, so I had to buy that recently, recalling I'd have bought ANYTHING with Spidey or Captain America on the cover back in '73.

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  6. AnonymousFebruary 27, 2013 at 12:50 AM

    Loved the one promoting Iron Man #35....Iron Man and Daredevil trapped in a couple of giant test tubes, the Zodiac leering in the background, Nick Fury in the foreground trying not to reach for an odd-looking object....

    Iron Man: Don't do it, Fury! If you touch the Zodiac Key, you'll become the most dangerous menace on earth!!

    Fury: I--don't want to, Avenger....but--I can't help myself!

    Wow! How could you not want to know a) what the heck was going on, but also b) how the heck they were all going to get out of that mess!

    I was mighty annoyed I never saw that issue; I ought to be taking a leaf out of davidB's book, and start scanning eBay.



    cheers
    B Smith

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


Note to "The Man": All images are presumed copyright by the respective copyright holders and are presented here as fair use under applicable laws, man! If you hold the copyright to a work I've posted and would like me to remove it, just drop me an e-mail and it's gone, baby, gone.


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As for the rest of ya, the purpose of this blog is to (re)introduce you to the great comics of the 1970s. If you like what you see, do what I do--go to a comics shop, bookstore, e-Bay or whatever and BUY YOUR OWN!