Monday, September 22, 2014

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--That's One Hell Of A Choclate Milk Mix!!

Ready for some space adventure?

Major Inapak? That's an odd name...

But first, from inside the front cover, how about a science quiz?

Well, those are all pretty good discoveries (although maybe you jumped the gun a bit on that atom bomb stuff...). Perhaps there is yet another discovery that can help us break this logjam?

Hey, wait a minute! Inapak? The same as our hero's name? Dammit, this is just one of those comic-book-length commercials, isn't it?

Well, yeah. Major Inapak The Space Ace #1 (1951) was one of those free promotional comics, this one dedicated to boosting a chocolate-flavored vitamin supplement that you mix with your milk.

"Steady nerves"?? What the hell is in this stuff, Prozac?

Anyway, yes, the book is replete with pitches for Inapak...

Hey, that's Doctor Strange's window!!

and...

...and...

I will say this, though...for a promotional comic, this one is pretty good, much better than you'd expect. It's 1984, and, well, you probably forgot that we lost a major U.S. city that year:

Yow!! I guess Denver wasn't selling a lot of Inapak!!

I don't want to oversell this story (drawn, and probably written, by Bob Powell). But it's a fun story, with aliens using the moon to launch attacks on Earth, and Major Inapak pulling a Reed Richards by taking off in an untested rocket (with a stowaway kid sidekick!!) to combat the menace. The tale is told with considerably more creativity and artistic merit than a free tie-in comic demanded. Check out this one-page fight scene...

Low gravity moon fights!!

So, thanks to this blog post, Major Inapak outlasted drink for which he got his name. Take that, capitalism!!

BONUS: Young David Bowie hasn't got the lyrics quite right yet:


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3 comments:

  1. OcSeptember 22, 2014 at 10:21 AM

    The Inapak were a Canadian First Nations tribe that are best known today for combining a paste made from cacao beans (similar to Mexican mole) with elk's milk, which was thought to have medicinal purposes.

    This concoction was shared with the nearby Takhomasak tribe of US Great Lakes Area, who instead combined the paste with bison's milk and, in a process still not understood, made it into a partially frozen drink. This was often served with a portion of seared bison meat on a bun.

    They are not to be confused with the Tokamak indian tribe of Russia who, of course, discovered the atom.

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  2. SallyPSeptember 22, 2014 at 5:14 PM

    That's the best explanation/History lesson I've ever heard.

    ReplyDelete
  3. OcSeptember 23, 2014 at 1:19 AM

    The More You Know...

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