A Comic Book About Nouns?!?

From the pages of Adventure Comics #395 (and presumably a number of their other cover date July 1970 comics), DC promotes a comic book about hockey:

Gretzky?

Seriously, and in hindsight, this is obviously an early promo for Jack Kirby coming to DC and kicking off the Fourth World, which would get underway in just three months in the pages of Jimmy Olsen.

But if you can put yourself in the frame of mind of a DC fan of early 1970, this might be the worst house ad ever!! In the pre-internet, pre-all but the most limited fanzines, pre-Diamond solicitations days, these house ads were the companies only real way (along with letters pages and Bullpen Bulletins) of communicating future plans to the fans.

But this ad? It says just about nothing if you don't already know who the New Gods were. A whole generation of DC fans must have been scratching their heads in puzzlement. Let's break it down:

Great One? Who dat?

Since at the time DC was not in the habit of even printing the creators credits in the comics, this sudden break from from artist anonymity to artist as attraction must have come as a total surprise to DC readers. And maybe DC really had no clue how to pitch it. But since DC house ads at the time were used exclusively to pitch stories, not creators, I'd be willing to bet that a great number of readers must have assumed that "the Great One" was a new character, rather than a comic creator coming over from Marvel.

I can only assume that there was some reason they didn't mention Jack Kirby at all. Perhaps because he was still being published at Marvel for the next couple of months, DC was contractually obligated not to pimp his forthcoming arrival...or perhaps they feared some sort of "poaching" or "tampering" legal difficulties with Marvel if they publicly announced it too early. Hell, maybe he hadn't told Stan yet, and didn't want to spoil the surprise.

Still, you'd think DC could have come up with a better way to tip readers that Kirby was coming on board. I've never heard him referred to as "the Great One" before, although I wasn't around back then, so maybe that was a nickname he was known by. But everyone knew him as "King," so why not that, instead of Gretzky the Great One?

OK, so someone at DC was trying to write like Stan...and failing. Anyway, I've always heard the phrase as "from ON high," not "from high," although there might be regional variations of this one. Unless, of course, marijuana use was responsible for bringing Kirby to DC...But again, why the obscurity?

OK...that's not terribly helpful, is it? We're more than halfway down the full page ad, and don't have the vaguest clue about what it's trying to sell us. Plus, it sounds like a rip-off of the Thunderball movie poster:

Can we please get down to content now?

No, we can't. Still hung up on directions (and sounding a lot like Aliens..."they're everywhere!") Seriously, "all around" me?" That drug use joke is starting to sound more and more real...

Finally, some actual content. But seriously...with everything Kirby had coming for the Fourth World, the Boom Tube is the only thing you mention in the ad? That's it? Gods? Anti-life? Mother Box? Forever People? Mister Miracle?? With all of that, all you see fit to mention is a teleportation device that makes a loud bang??

So, DC's going to publish a comic about nouns?

That's the best you've got?!? Can you get any less specific?? Is this an ad to promote comics, or the final round of $20,000 Pyramid: "People, places, things..." "What are nouns?"

Hmm, that might be true...if only you would tell us what the bloody concept was!!

So, we have an ad that wants to trumpet a famous comic creator coming to National, and the exciting things he's going to do...and yet it doesn't actually tell us that a famous comic creator is coming, and doesn't actually tell us any of the exciting things he is going to do, except it involves "People! Places! Things!" It doesn't tell us what comic book(s) this will be taking place in. It doesn't tell us what characters will be involved.

In fact, unless a fan was really keen on the phrase "Boom Tube," the ad gives her no particular reason to look forward to anything whatsoever. What a terrible ad...which was a bit of foreshadowing of how DC wouldn't have the vaguest clue about how to market Kirby's Fourth World to its readers.

Seriously: "People! Places! Things!" What, DC was going to publish a Grammar Rock comic??