As mentioned last time, or next time if you're from the future and reading in reverse chronological order, Ziff-Davis published He-Man way back in 1952, long before that Masters Of The Universe guy showed up. I referenced the cover at right, saying that He-Man guy on the cover had his own book.
That was ... let's call it a "quantum truth", eh?
Has anyone tried covering their bullshit with that term yet? You see, that statement was both true and untrue - while He-Man did indeed have his own book, that's not him on the cover.
Well, it is and it isn't.
Here's the cover to He-Man #1:
Looks nothing like the other guy, right? That's because they are indeed different people. There is no "He-Man" character, only He-Man character types. The stories feature a Bullfighter...
...Gladiators...
...Fighters...
...and single page tales of Mountain Men...
...and Attila the Hun:
And, as promised last time, they also bring us the story of The He-est He-Man Of The All!
They couldn't darn his socks. That was the obvious reason they couldn't 'marry' with him.
Yeah. Brutally obvious.
Even the adverts were He-Man ads-
...well, maybe not this one-
But they've got a creepy cowboy ventriliquist dummy who smoke cigarettes.
I'm gonna give it a pass.
By the way - that Tops In Adventure at the top of the page reprints the entire issue, including ads (except covers), as well as three other comics The Hawk #3, Crusader From Mars #2 and Football Thrills. You can save yourself a bit of hunting by finding that one issue.
pages from He-Man #1 from Ziff-Davis (1952)
Why am I so sure that "darning socks" had to have been a euphemism? There must be a cut of "The Exorcist" somewhere that includes the line "Your mother darns socks in Hell"! Other than that, I'd always been under the impression that Johnny Inkslinger was normal sized, if still larger than life as a semi-legendary entity--was he a giant accountant anywhere besides this story?
ReplyDelete-Mindbender
"Your mother darns socks in Hell!" is my new curse.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that.
I don't believe i've seen Johnny oversized elsewhere. Of course, there may have been greater variety to the tales in the middle of the last century, before print stories and cartoons set a standard version for others to follow. It's not something i've looked into in great detail, though it might be an interesting cultural archeology dig at some point - go hunting for early iterations of our myths, Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, etc.,.