Here we’ve got a collection of various toys. At first I thought it was odd that different, unrelated brands would share an ad, but then realized that this is actually for a store that sells these toys, so they probably just threw together their most popular stuff for this ad.
If I could pick anything from this ad, I think I’d have to go with the Mego dolls, and if I could only pick one, it would be Spider-Man. What about you?
Well, like most classifieds, we’ve got lots of comic lists and lots of stamps! And the award for least creative company name on this page goes to Comic Sales Company!
I know I’ve voiced my concern before about sending live animals through the mail, but I still find it kind of weird that you can order seahorses by mail order – seems like it would be pretty treacherous for them!
This has got to be the most bland subscription ad I’ve ever seen! No characters, no fancy graphics, not even an interesting font! Come on, Marvel – you can do so much better than this!
However, one thing that caught my eye on this page was “Blip” – I’d never heard of that title before. Upon looking it up, apparently since kids at this time were spending more of their money on video games and less on comic books, Marvel decided to try cashing in on the video game craze by publishing a magazine about it! It only lasted 7 issues, but it looks amazingly geeky, and I’d love to get my hands on it!
It’s another grab bag of classifieds! This time it’s mostly for comics retailers, with a few others mixed in.
I like how understated the ones for conventions are – these days conventions are so overblown and crazy that it’s kind of refreshing to see something so simple. Though I have to admit that I was a bit surprised by the location of the “Southwest Comic Show” – I assumed it would be somewhere like Phoenix, Las Vegas, or maybe Albuquerque, but definitely did not expect Tulsa! I’ve never thought of Oklahoma as part of the Southwest – how about you?
In honor of the release of Captain Marvel (I know, I’m a week late – but go see it! It’s awesome!), here’s another classic Marvel captain: Captain America! Here he’s offering you a Mighty Marvel Flying Shield (aka, a frisbee) for free when you subscribe to at least three titles!
Am I the only one who finds Cap’s use of “hip lingo” a little out of character? If they really felt the need to use that dialog, I think it would’ve gone better with Spider-Man.
Here we’ve got a classified page that’s (pretty much) full of comics. Here’s your chance to find all those back issues you’re looking for!
The single non-comic ad here is for Mazewarps – “24 Challenging Videomaze Games in a Book.” I’m a bit confused by this – how can they be video if they’re in a book? Maybe it’s a book on how to program games on a computer? Any of you out there know what the deal with Mazewarps is?
Yeah, I know ads like this aren’t super exciting, but I’m a historian and a completist, so I feel compelled to share all the ads from the books I’ve scanned.
Anyway, here we’re visiting East Coast Comics again, almost a decade after the last ad I published from them. And I thought I had a lot of tags last time – well, I think I broke my record again, because in addition to all the regular series, they also listed all sorts of limited series and special sets!
I’m sure a lot of these titles can be found in quarter bins today, but I wonder just how many of them have skyrocked in value.
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It’s another subscription page – this time from 1998. This one seemed to have far fewer titles than other subscription pages, but upon comparing it to one from 1997, I guess they’re actually pretty close.
X-Men aren’t quite as dominant in this one as they were in the previous year, and the number of Star Trek titles has been cut in half – and speaking of cutting Star Trek in half, here they have “Star Trek: Star Fleet Academy” listed as one of the titles – all good Trekkies should know that Starfleet is one word!
So at this point, we’ve got subscription prices ranging from $1.66 to $1.83 per issue (or $1.25 for Marvel Vision) at a time when cover price for comics was $1.99. While saving any money is always a good thing, that’s only a discount of 8% to 16%. Without doing any official research on this, I’d say that this is probably a low point (or close to it) for subscription savings.
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I guess back in the day I was still too busy with my Mortal Kombat 3 to realize that this game was around, because I certainly don’t remember it! Apparently this was a predecessor to all the Marvel vs Capcom games.
Something that’s pretty cool (and pretty timely) about this game is that it loosely follows the Infinity Gauntlet story line – all the characters are fighting to get the Infinity Stones, and eventually defeat Thanos. One thing that sounds pretty cool about this game is that once characters obtain an Infinity Stone, they also get a special move/power related to that stone.
So I guess this means there’s no need to wait for the next Avengers movie – just play this game to see how it all turns out!
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So, this seems like it’s supposed to be a two-page ad, since it lists all of the Marvel Comics but only gets to C in DC, but I swear this is all there is! I guess since this was in a Marvel comic, maybe that’s why they focus so heavily on Marvel titles, and just use DC as space filler.
In going through and adding tags for all the different titles, I was surprised by how many I’ve never heard of – I mean, I expected there to be quite a few, but not this many!
So these comics are only 50¢ each – not a bad price! However, there’s a minimum order of $20, which means you’d have to order 40 books in order to get anything! I guess for hardcore collectors that probably wouldn’t be a problem, but when I go digging thorough a bargain bin, I usually only pick up a few issues – a couple times when I’ve really gone nuts, I might’ve gotten up to 20, but I don’t think I’ve ever bought 40 comics at a time!
Do you enjoy reading Comic Book Ads? If so, please consider supporting me by clicking here for my Amazon link – I’ll get a percentage from everything you order! Thanks!
Comic Book Ads 