"Back in the day", as they say, I attended elementary school at South 78th St. School in Milwaukee. I was there for my 2nd-4th grade years. But it was during my final year there that the gems below landed in my hot little hands, courtesy of the folks who published Smash magazine. As I recall, each month there would be a 3-page spread spotlighting some denizens of the Marvel Universe. To rabid young Doug, this was gold. And, in several cases it was my introduction to the seminal years of Marvel Comics.
To the best that my wife and I can recollect from our childhoods, Smash and it's competition mag Dynamite (we'll check that out in a later installment) were available as part of a monthly book order from Scholastic and maybe another company whose name neither of us can remember. For ridiculously low prices, such as $1 or even less for a paperback book (Sharks: Attacks on Man scared the heck out of me in the summer of Jaws...), students could place orders and have a veritable care package dispensed within a couple of weeks. It was like Christmas, but throughout the school year.
So once I found out that Smash contained these comic book features I was hooked -- or, as hooked as I could be when Mom approved the orders. At some point, maybe during a family move or some such thing, I cut the comics-related pages from the magazine and discarded the rest. Consequently, I have very little to offer in regard to the other contents of a given issue, or even which issues contained the material depicted below. In fact, searching the Internet for information on Smash yields little. However, you can make the jump to Al Bigley's blog, where he has published posts similar to today's. Later, much later, as I was creating data pages for my comic collection (indexed, updated prices, separated by dividers, stored in a 2" binder) I decided to 3-hole punch the pages I'd saved from Smash and Dynamite and insert them within the corresponding sections of my notebook.
An annual rite of summer in our home is the garage sale. Just days after finishing the spring semester I was down in the comic room cleaning out the closet. Those of you who've been with us for some time know that I've sold off all of my comics and quite a few other items. When I opened the box that contained my collection binder I was of course swept with a wave of sentimentality. But I was also very pleasantly surprised to again see the pages we've been discussing. So although the binder went in the trash and its pages in the recycling bin, these gems were preserved for your perusal and amusement. Today I'm featuring the origin of Doc Ock and a Dr. Doom/Thing tussle. I'll leave it to you to provide the source information. Be prepared to be overwhelmed with some serious Silver and Bronze Age artistic majesty from the likes of Ditko, Romita, Andru, Kirby, Sinnott, and Buscema. What a visual tour de force!
21 comments:
Wow, this is an eye-opening post. I remember Dynamite - I had an issue or two - but I'd never even heard of Smash until this moment. And I'm a bit envious about that, as I would have been all over any magazine that reprinted pages from my favorite comics but also information on them. Those pages you posted look awesome!
Also, your reminiscences about ordering books at school brought a smile to my face. I so loved those days, only two or three times a year at my school, when the teacher would hand out those little newsprint pamphlets/catalogs offering cheap paperbacks (and yes, they were really cheap - I recall in my earlier elementary school years many of them sold for as little as 50 cents each; they climbed up to the $1 dollar or over mark by the time I was in 7th/8th grade). I loved poring over the offerings, and always made it a point to get anything that looked like SF or at least SF-esque, as well as stuff related to nature and/or biology (like that shark book you had), and also any that dealt with "unexplained phenomena," i.e., UFOs, bigfoot sightings, the Bermuda Triangle, etc.
The early Dynamites had the THE BEST Marvel posters and articles.., they seemed to get away from comic posters after the first half-dozen issues. I 'repurchased' the Dynamite issue with the John Denver cover (with a minty fabulous FF poster still intact) for about $20 2yrs again, have yet to frame it.
So happy they used great images of our villains here in these Smash issues, like Edo, I've never heard of it either.
Thanks for sharing these "buried treasures", Doug! Love to see and hear about the forgotten pleasures hiding in your (and Karen's) storage boxes. Those magazines would have surely grabbed my youthful attention. I remember Dynamite but not Smash. It is very cool to see that comic artwork used. One wonders, if Sergei Kravinoff would be a bit cheesed to be referred to as "Craven".
Edo- our youthful libraries were probably very similar. Those school book days ( from Scholastic Book Service, as I recall) were always something to get excited about. I probably drove my parents nuts checking off so many books each time, and they were good sports about it. No doubt they were just glad to support an interest in reading. And yes, any books about science and nature would get checked off. If there were any books about dinosaurs, that was even better. My first exposure to science fiction also came via this school book service: "A Wrinkle in Time"...great memories...
Oh boy oh boy oh boy did I love Smash and Dynamite when I was a kid. Those villain profiles were like a sugar rush to my brain.
I seem to remember one article featuring Thor's rogues gallery, and I remember thinking those guys, like Loki and the Destroyer, were actually kinda scary.
There was another one with Ego the Living Planet that gave me nightmares. They were really great magazines, and it was at a time when we kids didn't have video games, the internet or cable T.V., so we needed all the mental stimulation we could get!
A real pleasure to see this stuff. A nice bounce on a Monday. Thank you!
M.P.
Some of my greatest literary treasures came from school book "clubs" of the 1980s (Troll, Arrow, Scholastic) - My treasured box set of Bruno and Boots, for instance.
I remember those very same "clubs", Kent! With me it was more in the late '70's, which is why I am old and decrepit now.
Those deals were great. You could order cool books and magazines every month. Smash and Dynamite could be ordered, and another magazine, Bananas, which was kinda like the weird bastard cousin of Dynamite.
You just had to get your Mom sign off on the form, enclose a check, and fun reading was to be had. A really great program, if you think about it. It got kids reading, and distracted us from petty theft, vandalism, and sniffing magic markers.
Ah, the '70's.
M.P.
Great to see some love for this material. The next time we look in on these pages I'll post some from Dynamite so you can see the difference in lay-out and content.
Student book clubs seem as much a part of Bronze Age elementary school as Halloween costume parades and the little paper Valentine's cards.
And a welcome back to David B., who has noticeably scaled back his presence on this space. You were missed!
Doug
Like others I never saw Smash, but Dynamite was very popular at school. And Scholastic book buys were always great... From Encylopedia Brown to the Mad Scientist's Club to The Lemonade Trick, I think I got most of my paperback reading material from Scholastic.
Yeah, I've never heard of Smash either, but I loved Dynamite. I still have a few issues, though they're falling apart; remember the "How to Draw" articles by Joe Kubert? Great stuff.
And I'm another one who ordered tons of books through those Scholastic pamphlets. I still have a bunch of them: all 7 Narnia books (though I lost the slipcase they came in), Three Investigators, Encyclopedia Brown, and (like Kent Allard mentioned above) some great Gordon Korman books. Good memories!
Mike Wilson
I seem to remember this issue of Dynamite with King Kong on the cover, which one of my older sisters had got through Schoolastic or one of those deals.
I could be mistaken, but I seem to remember it coming with little plastic 3-D glasses, and 3-D pictures of King Kong swinging around the Empire State Building.
Oh, and my sister was a big fan of Count Morbida, which was a feature that included puzzles hosted by a weird vampire guy. The art was terrific.
M.P.
Nice to see David B. back in the fold. I too only recall seeing Dynamite. I got it mainly because of the comics-related features! M.P., I went nuts over that King Kong 3-D poster and had it up in my room for many years.
The Scholastic Club was a dream for a book-loving kid. I always filled out the little form. I recall getting The Mad Scientists Club books, Frankenstein (never finished it until I was an adult), and like many others, books on science and nature. It's interesting how we all seem to have had similar tastes. Like Edo, I also got books on Bigfoot and UFOs. Now I find it odd that they even offered such titles - surely they would have been considered tall tales at best and garbage at worst.
Martinex1 and Mike- yes, Encyclopedia Brown! Great fun reads. There were also a couple other Scholastic books I recall fondly: " Double Trouble for Rupert" and "A Peanuts Cookbook" (with recipes accompanying Charles Shulz' wonderful characters- Lucy's Lemon Squares was one...).
And Mike- Dynamite had drawing lessons from Kubert!?! Wowww......
Did anyone have Marvel's late entry to the field: Pizzazz? I had the first issue or two, but nothing stands out about them in my memory. Nor do I know if they were Marvel-centric or had lots of other celeb, music, etc. stories.
Say, Karen -- not only was everyone kung fu fighting in the 70s, thanks to shows like the $6 Million Man, we were 'squatchin' too!
Doug
Yep, Bigfoot was a big deal in the '70's, but he's apparently retired.
It's funny, but there was this book I had as a kid that I may well have gotten through Scholastic, which had articles (and pictures) about all the different types of Bigfoot-like creatures that lurked around the United States at that time. Each region of the country seemed to have one, each with it's own nickname.
The result of me reading this book about the rampant Sasquatch problem in the '70's is that I moved my bed as far away from my bedroom window as I could. I figured it would improve my chances of surviving if Bigfoot decided to stick his big hairy arm through my window.
M.P.
M.P. --
If I didn't have that same book, I had one just like it! Skunk Monster, etc. I recall a vignette from Murfreesboro, TN, and another of some campers in a cabin being pelted by Bigfoot-thrown boulders.
I would say that one of the downers of my childhood was when we found out (thanks to Steve Austin) that Bigfoot was a tool of aliens. The disappointment of that bait-and-switch would be repeated 40 years later with the Mandarin in Iron Man 3.
But I digress...
Doug
Pizzazz. Yes I remember that. My school had it in its little library. I remember a cover with Spider-Man stateboarding and I definitely remember a Star Wars issue with C3PO and R2 on the cover. Don't remember much inside, but there seemed to be a lot about TV and movies I remember Stan Lee actually on TV promoting it on a show called "Kids Are People Too".
Doug, re: Pizzaz. Yes, I had several issues of that - it came onto my radar because it was so heavily promoted in the house-ads in Marvel's comics. Aside from the flashy covers, though, I really don't recall much about the contents. As Martinex notes, there was a lot of TV and movie stuff in it.
Karen, on the scholastic offerings including all that paranormal garbage - I used to wonder about that, too. But then I remembered they also offered stuff like pictorial biographies of, say, Leif Garrett, Shaun Cassidy, Eric Estrada and Kristy and Jimmy McNichol, which had about the same educational value.
Thanks folks for the kind thoughts.., the last 6-8 months have really been ratcheted up at work, plus now I have nuptials to finish planning (next Friday the 17th.., nice luncheon planned), so it's soaked up most of my time of late.
I always loved Roger Daltrey's 'Without Your Love' from his McVicar film (1980), it was a minor hit for him, and I'm using it during the service. It's got that great joyful acoustic vibe to it, yet obscure enough for most not to be too hammy...:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RK3GoYXtyI
(there's another video with beautiful landscapes, but someone ruined it with superimposed the wrong words in for the lyrics...)
I still strive to check in with my warm cuppa java each morning, just haven't been taking in the movies reviewed (only marginal interest.., I didn't see the new Star Wars until I bought the Blu-ray..), so I haven't had much to add to what's already been wonderfully said, but enjoying Karen's Wednesday Trek review each week immensely.
Blessings..!!
That's great news, David - congrats and many best wishes!
Doug
As for the Bigfoot/Lochie mysteries, I recall always had a simple yet provocative answer as a wee lad..
Both were simply products of an alien race, where they were introducing animals from their world into our civilization to verify whether they could survive and/or breed on this world. Not so much for an eventual invasion.., but just for 'field experiments'.
Geez, if I had only gotten this theory to Jack Kirby in time.
That's a good reason to be absent, David B. Best wishes for your big day!
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