thebitterguy

So, I was flipping through this week's haul from my FLCS and I noticed some odd things about the ads in my new books. Specifically, that the ads seem to concentrate mostly on marvel themed products. I have a theory on that, too, but I'll wait until later.

Anyway, because anecdotal observations carry more weight if you do a little research, I thought I'd grab something out of one of the boxes I brought home and do a comparison.

The first two books didn't quite qualify because they were big issues (the Captain America where Reagan gets turned into a snake with legs, and the Acts of Vengeance issue of Iron Man where he and Doom go to Camelot again, only this time it's in the future) and I wanted to compare a regular issue, so I got the next issue of IM out of the box.

Iron Man 251, published date Mid December 1989. Titled "Wrecked him? He nearly KILLED Him!" which indicates that even then Marvel was not above a little sophomoric humour.

Just a quick note from the "Iron Man is a dick" file: as he flies to save a family from a collapsing bridge, Tony thinks "All the blased taxes we pay and this country STILL doesn't spend enough money on maintaining its infrastructure!"

Probably because the cash goes into the military budget, and everytime someone wants to build a bridge they get dogpiled for pork barreling.

Anyway, this isn't to review the book, which is good, because Trimpe & Milgrom's art on this is not awesome.

Okay, let's start analyzing the ( ads in this book. )

Okay, so, breakdown. One ad for a boardgame. Two house ads. One ad for acne medication. One half page Con ad, an ad for sugary cereal (because why else would you need those Clearasil pads?), and seven ads for video games. That's an interesting breakdown. I don't know what the reader demographics were for Marvel comics back then, but I know that many merchants I speak to say that comics fans skew a lot older now. What's amusing is that so much of the ad revenue came from video games, when they were probably going to contribute to the loss of a lot of the future readership.

It's not surprising to see the number of video games advertised in the book. Even though this was the dawn of the second great wave of video game wars, with Nintendo and Sega facing off, and the SNES would be released the next year, video game manufacturers were finding gold in the hills. There were 350 million NES cartridges sold in its lifetime. That's a lot of games.

I noticed that this issue also seems to be after the period of classic comic ads for Charles Atlas Dynamic Tension system and Grit delivery and Civil War armies for 99 cents.

There's also a dearth of used comics ads. I remember seeing double spread and one page ads for Mile High Comics and East Coast comics.

Now, let's look through a current comic, Incredible Herc 113. I would like to say that I have totally marked out on Planet Hulk, World War Hulk, and now Aftersmash. So I'm glad I enjoyed this book. Things are a bit emo, with Hercules and Child Supergenius Amadeus Cho in a government refugee camp run by the Green Cross (they handle the aftermaths of Gamma Irradiated Monster attacks). Ares, the god of War and Hercules uncle, is bein' a dick.

( Never mind the emo and dickishness, here comes the ads )