As many of you know, I’m in the process of revising Season Out of Time, a novella I wrote in graduate school. Since part of the novel is told through the eyes of an eleven/twelve-year-old boy (He turns twelve in the story.), I’ve been channeling my inner preteen. This is me when I was the age of my character. Wasn’t I cute?
We had some of the coolest magazines back in those days, and I’ve been digging them out of the archives to recapture the spirit of the time. These are a few classics from those days:
Yes, that really is a first issue of the Star Wars comic book, and no, it’s not in pristine condition because I read it instead of sealing it up. Who knew it would be a collectors edition one day?
Yes, many of these comics are available in hardback printed editions of in digital format, but those classily archived versions don’t include any of the advertisements, and those are fun to read. Now comic books have classy ads for video games, comic-based movies, and even Mercedes cars. Back in the seventies, we had ads for Sea Monkeys, Monster Ghosts, X-Ray glasses, bodybuilding instructions, and important things like that.
Aren’t those priceless? Stink loads. Exploding pens. Joy buzzers. And people used to accuse comic book publishers of corrupting the young!
I also included some magazines here. Here we have covers from Starlog, a science fiction magazine that started publishing that year (It was love at first sight for me.), Famous Monsters, and Marvel’s adaptation of Close Encounters of the Third Kind which released in summer of 1977.
Those had cool ads too, but one of the ones I remember the most is the ad for lifelike monster masks from Famous Monsters. Hand-painted, made in Hollywood, durable latex, and only $24.95. Actually, I thought that was hugely expensive back then, and remembered them being about $40.
My brothers and I loved Dynamite magazine. It used to come with our school book orders. It had Count Morbida’s puzzles, Bummers (Don’t you hate it when…), a psychological advice column by Dr. Pauline Kernberg, superhero origins, and articles about all the latest stars. This issue featured Hardy Boys star, Shaun Cassidy. Judging from this cover, my brothers and I weren’t very fond of Shaun then. Actually, we liked Shaun okay but got tired of all of the girls moaning over how cute he was. (“Oooh! He’s so cuuuute!”) Sorry I was jealous of you, Shaun. I did buy the DVDs of your old series.
To make up for my desecration of Shaun’s face, I’m going to include this clip of him from “The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula.” I’m pretty sure some of the monster masks worn by the extras in the audience are the same ones from Famous Monsters. The Mummy 3000 B.C. mask on the second row shows up in this clip. I saw the Old Vampire mask on this episode too.
“Keep on Truckin’,” as we said back then.