Archive for January 27th, 2008

Buster Brown Easter Parade

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

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Smilin’ Ed’s Buster Brown Comics Book was a publication by Nillsen’s from Oklahoma, and featured all the characters from Smilin’ Ed McConnell’s weekly radio show. That show, a major hit on the NBC roster in the 1930’s and 40’s, was sponsored by Buster Brown, by that time long forgotten as a seminal comics character, but rather a trademark of a particular brand of children’s shoes (which, it turns out, is still in business).

Which only goes to show that the wheel goes round and round : you start as a comic book hero, and end up giving your name to a comic book that you don’t appear in. Or almost - these pages come from issue 23, and feature Buster Brown alongside Smilin’ Ed and his menagerie. The rest of the book contains exotic adventure stories, and one Smilin’ Ed story.

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Product placement

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

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Here’s a nice piece of ephemera that I found on Usenet this weekend. CMO Comics was published in 1942 for the Chicago Mail Order Company by the very pompously called Comic Corporation Of America (it’s also listed as one of the latest titles published by Centaur). It ran for only two issues, and contained short stories about cowboys, movie stars, plain-clothes policemen and superheroes, none of which were signed, and none of which featured big name characters.

In fact, the stories aren’t that inventive or even intersting themselves, but rather seem to have only one raison d’être : showcasing the CMO products. On almost every page at least one panel is dedicated to items of clothing that feature in the story on that page (read on for examples). It’s so blatant, it’s baffling. And it predates all the click-through schemes you see in presentations about interactive TV nowadays. Nothing’s ever new, it would seem.

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