Comic Book Images In Magazines
The Leader sells pre 1980 girlie pinup magazines and motion picture fan magazines and has examined thousands of them over the years. As a hobby he saves those magazines which have comic book images or photos. Such photos are very rare in old magazines but what the Leader has found so far is presented below for you comic book fans to enjoy. If you have similar photos before 1980 and can identify the magazine send them to the Leader and he will include them hear and attribute them to you.
Images Used In Advertisements or Photo Features
Amazing Spider-Man poster
Unknown model with a Marvel poster featuring Spider-Man. This appears to be the 3 foot version done by Personality Posters circa 1966, not the 6 foot version by Steve Ditko sold directly by Marvel Comics in 1965. From Escapade April 1969.
Incredible Hulk poster
Michele Angelo posing with Hulk poster with art by Jack Kirby. This is the 3 foot Hulk poster released by Personality Posters circa 1966. It was the companion piece to the Spider-Man poster. Michelle Angelo was a famous 1960s and early 1970 nude figure model who appeared in hundreds of magazine pictorials. From Adam V.11 #7, 1967.
Two 1960s Marvel comics
Here’s a clothing ad with cover photos of Amazing Spider-Man #18 and Fantastic Four Annual #2. From our vantage point in the year 2013 I’ll be darned if I can figure out what comic books have to do with an advertisement for clothes; I guess the copywriter from 1965 thought he was being clever somehow. From Cavalier April, 1965.
Amazing Spider-Man #31
Cavalier was a hipster magazine in the 1960s whose target audience were the sophisticated urban males courted by Playboy. This advertisement for Christmas gifts which includes the comic book Amazing Spider-Man #31 shows that the mainstream magazines of the day were starting to recognize comic books as not just disposable entertainment for children. The caption at right notes this Spidey comic as “a year’s subscription to Spiderman comics, Marvel Comics Group. N.Y., N.Y., $2.25.” From Cavalier January, 1966.
Batgirl stripper
The ABC TV series Batman 1966 – 1968 set of a wave of parodies and imitations in American pop culture. The Batmania hysteria even penetrated into America’s girlie strip clubs. Here’s stripper Kit Barnett of the Bat Cave club in Los Angeles as Bat Girl. Several girlie magazines ran pictorials on the different Batgirl strippers at this club. From Carnival Feb, 1968.
Movie fan magazines like Photoplay and Motion Picture all of whom were targeted to women paid even less attention to comic books than the men’s girlie magazines. Here is the only feature I’ve found with comic book images so far in the hundreds of movie fan magazines I’ve seen. It’s titled “Barbara Hershey’s Marvelous Mods” and features this actress posing with cardboard posters of Marvel comic characters used as props by male actors. From Photoplay June 1967.
Roger Ewing as Iron Man
Dennis Cole as Spider-Man
Richard Deacon as Thor Yale Summers as Hulk
Andrew Prine as Sub-Mariner
Comic Book Images Used In Girlie Magazine Parody Features
The men’s girlie magazines did sometimes run parody or satire articles or features which featured comic book characters, especially if the characters could be tied into some type of sexual angle like those shown below.
Supgergal Annual
Here’s an imaginative parody cover of DC Comics Supergirl using the cover designs of the DC comic book annuals in the 1960s. There’s also a sexy comic strip story to go with the cover. From Rogue June 1963.
"Clark Ghent's School Days"
Parody article on Clark Kent’s boyhood in Smallville, showing what any red blooded American boy could do if he had X-ray vision. Art by Neal Adams. From Playboy May 1975.
"Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex"
Parody article written by science fiction writer Larry Niven on Superman’s wedding night with Lois Lane. From Knight V.7 #8, 1969.
In addition to using comic book images in ads or parody features men’s oriented magazines and other magazines of all types sometimes ran articles about the growing popularity of comic books. These type of articles started in the mid 1960s, largely due to Marvel Comics revolutionizing the comic book industry. But these types of articles were few and far between in the 1960s; for most of the 1960s mainstream American society still considered comic books to be mindless junk for the kiddies. However by the 1970s and 1980s magazine articles about comic books became more frequent. I’ve written an aritlce on several of these comic book articles that appeared in men’s magazines from the 1960s up to the early 1980s. Please click here if you want to read it.n ad