33⅓

We interrupt this blog for an advertisement...or rather, several advertisements! Let's all scoot back to the sweet, swingin' seventies, when platform shoes were high-heeled, trousers were tight, and your iPod played the Bee Gees, except it was called a record player and you couldn't carry it around with you unless you had a strong back and a really long power cord. Those were the sweet, sweet days when comics cost 15¢, and if you happened to have forty-five cents in the pocket of your Toughskin jeans when you walked into the Rexell, well, Stan Lee was gonna figger out a way to get all of your hard-earned, paper-route, sellin' Grit money. How was he gonna do that? Through the four-color magic of advertisements: compelling, intriguing, cliff-hanging banners which made you want, nay, need the issue in question. It's no doubt that the thing Marvel did best after making comics was selling comics, and all it took was one-third of a page, at the bottom of the letters column, to hawk and bark the newest ("on sale now!") ish of a book you might not be reading but by golly now you'd better pick it up. Let's take a look at some of these ads for classic Marvel comic titles of the early 1970s. They may be small in size, but they're big with juicy advertising flavor!



Ad for Amazing Spider-Man #91 in Fantastic Four #105 (December 1970)



Ad for Man-Thing #1 and Ka-Zar #1 in Amazing Spider-Man #128 (January 1974)



Ad for Tower of Shadows in Thor #185 (February 1971). Curiously, King Kull never appeared in Tower of Shadows...by the time that feature appeared, Tower had changed its title to Creatures on the Loose with #10 (March 1971)



Ad for Iron Man #39 in Fantastic Four #112 (July 1971)



Ad for Fantastic Four #104 in Incredible Hulk #133 (November 1970)



Ad for Conan the Barbarian #4 in Fantastic Four #109 (April 1971)



Ad for Thor #183 in Incredible Hulk #183 (December 1970)



Ad for Fantastic Four #109 in Incredible Hulk #138 (April 1971)



Ad for Thor #190 in Fantastic Four #113 (August 1971)



Ad for Sub-Mariner #37 in Incredible Hulk #139 (May 1971)



Ad for Amazing Adventures #6 in Avengers #87 (April 1971)



Ad for Conan the Barbarian #2 in INcredible Hulk #135 (January 1971)



Ad for Avengers #88 and Incredible Hulk #140 in Fantastic Four #111 (June 1971)