Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinAlone, unmourned, and unloved since 1969

Why isn’t “Smile…Doctor Doom Loves You” still in print?

§ February 6th, 2019 § Filed under marvel, merchandise § 5 Comments

So please let me know if you’d like me to put in orders to Pacific Coast Distributors for you on any of these items from their August 1984 catalog (click to expand):

“Any room,” you say? I say every room! Redecorate the interior of your house solely with mighty Marvel banners!

I remember seeing these banners around the old shop back when I was but a mere customr, and then eventually selling the last two or three still languishing about the backroom when I was doing the eBay thing for that same shop a couple of decades later. The one I remember specifically is that Alpha Flight pennant. I bet that Spider-Man one will still sell great today.

Now these things:

…Sure, it’s a little more common knowledge nowadays who the “X-Men” are* but I can only imagine how the mundanes reacted to the whole “Mutant Maniac” thing. …By the way, do people still refer to non-nerdy folk as “mundanes” or is everybody too infected with nerdiness now to be separated out? Gobble gobble one of us, and all that.

When discussing these on the Twitters pal Andrew noted that his younger brother still had a “Follow Me to the Secret Wars” bumper sticker on this car. As I said to Andrew, given its current non-awareness by the general public, I can imagine the uninitiated seeing that and thinking it’s some kind of political statement or somesuch. Or, like, some conspiracy-minded talk radio thing. It can serve multiple purposes!

And I was serious about the subject line. That Doctor Doom sticker needs to make its comeback, especially if this image of ol’ Vic were used on it:

 
 

* A story I’ve told before, but worth repeating: one of my earliest experiences in comics retail was, sometime in the late 1980s, someone calling the shop alarmed that these X-Men books she just heard about were “X-rated,” hence the name. “No, lady,” I replied, “the 1990s aren’t here yet.”