My point (and I do have one) is that you can buy a lot of different calendars for your wall these days to keep track of every sparklin' day of twenty-fourteen. But once upon a time, waaaaaaay back in the distant 1970s, when George Lucas still roamed the earth like some giant roaming thing and DC comics only cost two thin dimes (slightly more for 100-Page Giants), you paid yer money and you tooked your choices, which was exactly one: the single DC Comics calendar on sale each year. Like these as show in these find DC Calendar house ads! (There, finally back on subject!)
House ad for the 1977 Super DC Calendar; printed in Batman #282 (December 1976)
Just in case you can't immediately put your
According to DC's calendars, 1977 was super...but 1978 was a disaster! Super-Spectacular Disasters, that is! What's more, it featured a darn nifty gimmick: a monthly storyline of cataclysm and clues that allow you to detect the hero by December 31st!
House ad for the DC 1978 Calendar of Super-Spectacular Disasters; printed in Shazam! (1973 series) #34 (March 1978)
(There was a 1976 DC Calendar too; but there weren't any house ads for it, and I don't have it. So, um, here's the cover.)
I also remember vividly this ad, but I never got the calendar:
House ad for the DC DC Wall Calendar Poster; printed in Super Powers (1985 series) #5 (October 1985)
You can check out the '86 DC calendar-poster over at the Firestorm Fan blog! Tell 'em Bully sent you, and please: no making fun of Professor Stein while you're over there! (Seems to me that the calendar shipped folded, which mighta been a deal-breaker for me.)
There was another DC calendar/poster in 1988, but this one seemed to have been a promotional item and may not have been for sale to the general public. (I bet Mike Sterling has one in that bigger-on-the-inside back room he's always talkin' about!) Here's a photo from an eBay ad.
Has anybody ever compiled a checklist and history of DC (and Marvel) calendars? Well, until they do, you can always find a good selection of them on eBay. Here's a few of the past calendars you and I might want:
...calendars Mike Sterling would want...
...and calendars no one would want.
Of course, I know what DC calendar I have that I wish they'd bring back...
Until then, I'll just have to stick to these (Because they don't make Jane Wiedlin calendars).
Actually, 2014 uses the same calendar as 1986, so getting that calendar would be a great idea.
ReplyDeleteHopefully the insides don't match that 1986 ad, because every single month is shown starting on a Sunday.
ReplyDeleteJoecab: True! I hadn't thought of that. I've been saving scans of all those Superman and Batman calendars from the Annuals of the '60s so I can post them when they come around and are useful again. Unfortunately most of them seem to be slated to not work until the 2020s. Why, I'll be six by then!
ReplyDeleteDelta: All the time I've stared at that ad and I never noticed that! But check out the link under that image, and you'll see DC/s final poster calendar has the correct day placement fro each month. Whew!
I had that 1986 DC calendar poster. The size made it really unwieldy. I also had (and still have tucked away somewhere) that 1977 Super DC Calendar, one of the most beloved mementos of my childhood — due to being an early reader my own personal golden age of comics was 6. To prove how haphazard access to this kind of stuff was at that age and in that era, though, I'm not sure if I've ever even seen the 1978 edition. You prob'ly decided to forego pencil and ink credits since the signatures are readable, by the by, but if you wanna credit letters for those house ads the 1977 and 1978 ones are mos def the work of Gaspar.
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