Sunday 3 April 2011

Stuck up? Moi? Chance'd be a fine thing.

1970s Bronze Age Marvel stickers
First of all a big thank you to Terence Stewart of the Mighty World of Bronze Age Marvel for giving this site a plug and for posting a picture of Six-Armed Spider-Man. As we all know, Six-Armed Spider-Man was the best idea ever in the history of comics and I'll fight to the death anyone who says otherwise.

People who I won't be fighting to the death are the people on the left, who I'm sure you're aware have super-powers, while I don't.

I am of course referring to the super-heroes, not the kid who's touching Thor in a place I don't think Thor would like to be touched.

But, as for those super-heroes, why would I want to fight them when I can instead spend all my time sticking them to everything in sight?

I'll admit it, when I was a youth, there were certain things I couldn't see advertised in a comic without wanting, and super-hero stickers were top of that list.

At the time, both Marvel and DC ran ads for their stickers and, treacherous though it was of me - me being far more of a Marvelite than a DC fan - it was the DC stickers I wanted most. I'll be blathering on about the those DC stickers in my next post - providing I can find some pictures of the ones in question - but here's the Marvel ones I always wanted; in this case taken from the pages of Strange Tales #181.

It does always strike me that there are some items that are conceptually self-defeating.

Strange Tales #181, Jim Starlin's WarlockA cake is one of them.

A cake's only any use if you eat it but once you've eaten it, it's not a cake any more and its ability to give you pleasure's gone.

Erasers in the form of cute animals are another. You can't use them without destroying them but if you don't use them, they're not erasers.

Stickers too fall into this category. They're only stickers if you stick them to something but, once you've stuck them to something, you can never use them again, meaning that by using them you've ruined them.

Still, even though I knew this, it never put me off. And, as I roamed the streets of Sheffield, I always kept my eye out just in case a pack of Marvel stickers should hove into view.

Sadly, it wasn't meant to be. They simply weren't available in this country and, in order to send off for them, you had to pay with some weird thing called dollars. The only people in the UK who used dollars were the policemen in Z-Cars. Why the policemen in Z-Cars were always going on about paying for things in dollars, when they lived in Liverpool, I'll never understand. Then again I'll never understand why they never seemed to have Scouse accents or why they never noticed that one of them was Brian Blessed.

But, ultimately, none of that mattered. With them being fictional, I doubt they'd've supplied me with the dollars I needed anyway.

10 comments:

Boston Bill said...

I got them! My brother and I couldn't resist, and must have talked our mom into writing a check, or perhaps recklessly put the cash in an envelope. And they were beautiful! Great big stickers on a shiny white background. But of course, we couldn't bear to unpeel them and stick them anywhere - we just started at them! The only disappointment was Conan, who we kind of liked, but who just didn't seem to fit in with the others. Man-Thing, Shang Chi, Dracula - they were all Marvel, but they could potentially team up with (or fight) Spider-Man. Conan was clearly a different world. None the less, we never unreeled him either! All in all one of our more satisfying purchases from a comic book ad. We got months of pleasure out of the fact that we hadn't soiled our perfect stickers!

Steve said...

Even though the above comment should send paroxysms of envy coursing through me, instead it brings warmth and fuzziness to my heart. :)

Kid said...

Stevie-boy, you're wrong. Once you've eaten that cake, you have the joyous satisfaction derived from depositing it in the porcelain bowl some time later. Once you hear the splash, don't you just sigh in relief and contentment? I know I do.

Martin Gray said...

And in using the stickers, you are allowing them to reach their potential, to be what they were meant to be.

Me, I remember the ad well, but wouldn't have wished to wreck my wallpaper.

Terence Stewart said...

Ta for the plug Steve.
I never had the stickers, but I did have one of those life-size articulated cardboard cut-outs of Superman - he hung on the back of my bedroom door for yonks until a limb fell off.. I think the ad featured Supes, Spidey, and an, erm, Ape.

Steve said...

I remember those ads. I believe the ape was Cornelius from the Planet of the Apes movies. Or was it Galen from the Planet of the Apes TV show?

Terence Stewart said...

They all looked like Roddy McDowall to me.

R. W. Watkins said...

I preferred the DC stickers, too. I never actually had any, but I had DC characters on my bedroom curtains and bedspread during my latter years in elementary school. I preferred those Marvel coins, with Spider-Man, Hulk, Conan and...? Who was on the other one? Captain America? Has anyone ever actually come across any of those?

Steve said...

I think I've seen the odd one for sale on eBay for some extortionate fee. Whether they've sold or not, I'm not sure.

R. W. Watkins said...

I tracked down a few of them on eBay yesterday. Yes, 'extortionate' is a truly apt adjective to describe their price tags.