Or there’s a secret message there only readable by comic fans under 10 years old.
Okay, this is probably the last time I’ll be linking this GoFundMe for raising money to finally (we hope!) fix my eyes, since, thanks to everyone’s kindness and generosity, we’re way past the goal. But I did put another update on the page, mostly thanking everyone again and describing how the money will be sued. And I can easily use nearly every cent for all my medical stuff.
But again, thanks to all of your support, whether you contributed financially, reposted the link, or thought good thoughts at me. It’s all quite welcome.
Okay, for today, here’s a weirdie I spotted in a 1971 issue of Sugar and Spike (#96, I believe) that I was processed at the shop on Thursday:
That’s…odd, right? Has DC ever left this much empty space on an ad page before (or since)? I mean, space clearly left for another house ad. Wonder why? I also wonder how whoever owned this comic originally fought the urge to fill that space with their own drawings. When I was a kid I absolutely would have. Hell, just looking at it now I want to draw something in there.
Have you tried putting that comic in a low oven? It’s possible there’s already a secret message written in lemon juice.
My best guess would be that this page was a last-minute substitute for a paid ad that fell through (maybe the check bounced), and there simply was not another third-page hand on hand (I am assuming here that this was done, say, fifteen minutes before the comic was due at the printer). There is a non-zero possibility that an ad WAS placed there, but it was badly glued, and it fell off on its way to the printer.
If I’m remembering correctly (from old fanzines and interviews, I was Sugar’s age when this came out), DC’s decision to go extra-sized and pad out the books with reprints was made fairly quickly, so I wouldn’t be surprised if someone miscounted the pages of a reprint, or they planned a reprint and when they pulled the film found it wasn’t usable, so they had a blank page that needed to be filled quick.
It would have been funny if they used the Kirby self portrait at his drawing desk which was used to introduce the reprints in some of the Fourth World books…
Perhaps Cap’s Hobby Hints boycotted this issue
Maybe they left some blank space for a Boom Tube to appear above the Jimmy Olsen cover?