Monday, December 8, 2014

Manic Monday--The 3,377th Bowel-Emptying Post On Slay Monstrobot!

When issue #1 of Weird War Tales came out in 1971, it had a nice little banner across the top:

Fair enough. You're allowed to trumpet a first issue, right?

And then came #2...

OK, OK, you're trying too hard, perhaps.

And then came issue #3, and the adjectives:



Gut-Gripping? Scalp-Tingling? Mind-Boggling? I wish they had kept that up all the way through #124, the final issue, just to see all the eye-catching phrases they would come up with.

But they stopped that the next issue, in favor of a more generic DC booster...

...but our long national nightmare was not over, as a more sedate version appeared on the cover of #7...

..then vanished again, and then turned up one last time on #10...

...and then truly was gone, never to be seen again.

I'm not what the idea behind this was...did they really expect some kid at the newsstand to go, "Hey, Billy, look, it's the TENTH issue--let's grab it!!"?? Was it Joe Kuberts's idea--he was book editor for the first 7 issues, when Joe Orlando took over--abandoned after he left as editor?

Not a big thing, just one of the billion curious little things about comic books...

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