Marvelous House Ads, part 2: Marvel Magazines

Karen: Howdy folks, we 're spending some more time taking at trip through the past via those fun Marvel house ads from the 70s. Our first time around, we did showed a variety of ads from 1970 to 1973. This time, we're going to focus on Marvel's ads for their magazine line, from about 1973 to 1975.

Karen: When most of us think of Marvel magazines, we probably think of the biggies, like Savage Sword of Conan or Hulk. But Marvel actually turned out a variety of magazines, from sword and sorcery to horror, science fiction, super-heroes, and even humor. Here's one of the goofier books, Monster Madness, which put humorous captions with old Universal monster and other movie stills. This kind of fumetti seemed to appeal to Stan Lee, who I believe had done some similar books. I'm pretty sure I had this magazine as a kid -one of the few Marvel mags I actually owned.

Doug: I always looked at these in the grocery store, in addition to Mad and Car-toons, but must confess that back in the day I never owned any. I was pretty much a four-color zombie and was generally put-off by the B&W art. In retrospect, what a dope I was! Today I really love to see that lush art in Savage Sword, and I enjoy the mythos that was being created in Planet of the Apes. I did have a few issues of the Hulk, but even those were after the magazine went to color.


Karen: Of course, Savage Tales was one of the most popular titles. Because there was no comics code on the magazines, Marvel could get away with more violence and nudity, although it was still pretty tame comparatively speaking. And this is the part that kills me: 76 pages for 75 cents! The ad here is a pretty nice one, with that awesome Barry Smith Conan art. I love John Buscema's work, but I have to say, I really enjoy Smith's interpretation of Conan.


Karen: From roughly the same time, we have these text-laden ads for Monsters Unleashed and Dracula Lives, two of several monster mags that Marvel was putting out. It's interesting to note that for most of the mags produced in this time period -1973 - the ads don't actually show the covers! I can only imagine that this was because they hadn't decided on a cover design yet? In any case, it strikes me as very peculiar.
















Karen: Here's an ad for Planet of the Apes. Doug has reviewed at least one issue of this magazine here. I recall owning several copies at one time but not any more. This mag combined adaptations of the movies with new, original stories, and also articles about the films and photos from the films. I'm not sure if this or Doc Savage was Marvel's first movie tie-in.


Karen: And who could forget Crazy? Well, I could actually -I was a Mad magazine fan. But I think Crazy was relatively successful for a number of years. In this ad we actually get a depiction of the cover.