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Tried reading a golden age Detective Comics run and the ads blew my mind
I finally sat down with a collected edition of Detective Comics #27-50 from the late 1930s. I was expecting the stories to feel dated, which they did, but what really got me were the full page ads. There was one promising a real working x-ray machine for just $1.50 by mail order. Another ad said you could learn to be a detective in 6 weeks through a correspondence course. It made me realize how much the comic buying audience has shifted from curious kids to adult collectors over 80 years. Has anyone else learned more about history from old comic ads than the actual stories?
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blairm449d ago
That x-ray machine ad says more about 1930s America than any history textbook ever could.
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calebrivera9d ago
That one with the kid in the lead apron staring at the skeleton hand always gets me. Do you think people back then actually believed those machines were harmless, or was it more of a "well, the doctor says it's fine, so it must be" kind of thing?
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