Old Magazines and Old Me

There are a few things knocking around the house that just chalked up a half-century of existence. I am one of them. I am vain enough to think I am rocking 50 pretty well. Here I am at my inky, aging best. I have collected extra weight, and lightness of spirit. I have gathered love and strength along with scars and wrinkles. I have collected more happiness and privilege in life than I have sadness and need. Lucky me.

I have also managed to collect a few magazines that would have been on the rack at the corner store on that cold December night in Winnipeg in 1964, back when Aprille brought me into the world.

Mad Magazine # 91 was a pretty standard offering. It had been running as a magazine (edited by Al Feldstein) for about 8 years. Its format had solidified. The mix of pop-culture and political satire was well-established. It had (and still retains) that element of adolescent fart-jokiness that makes it beloved of adolescent farters. I think this cover is a bit disappointing. Most Mad covers have great painted  artwork by one of the "usual gang of idiots." Alfred E. Neuman is usually gap-toothed and prominent. This one looks to me like someone missed a deadline, so a text gag was used.

Also... considering that Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington had happened just a year earlier, I'm pretty sure the Don Martin page with the brown-skinned voodoo family is politically incorrect, but it is kinda funny, and it has a baby in it, and I was a baby that month. So... here:

I was a Batman kid, so it is only fitting that I have a couple of Batman comics from my month of birth. Here we have Detective # 334 (marked Dec. 1964) and Detective # 336 (marked Feb. 1965). I include them both because comics were shipped 2 months earlier than the printed date, so the February one is the issue that would have hit the stands the same time I hit the bassinet.

Batman was first published back in 1939 in Detective Comics # 27. By then a lot of bat-water had gone under the bat-bridge. Looking at these, I'd have to say this was a pretty forgettable era for the Caped Crusader. On this cover I'm amused at how the legendary Dark Knight Detective is duped by a new-fangled tape recorder. You might think he'd have been ready for that. Must have been hi-fidelity stereo!

DC Comics was in the process of getting their asses kicked by Marvel Comics. Across the street Jack Kirby and Stan Lee were inventing little characters like the Fantastic Four, Spiderman, the Avengers and the X-Men. Batman Comics had been better before, and were about to get a lot better in a few years when new and young talent took it over. This was the beginning of that process. You can tell because Batman has a yellow oval around the bat-insignia on his chest. Before the early sixties he didn't have that. This was considered a major innovation. Yes. We nerds do care about these things.

Also... a few years later Batman would become a massive pop-culture event because of the campy and wonderful TV show. I am so old that it hadn't even happened yet. I predate Adam West and Burt Ward's global stardom... I was a toddler when the show started. I remember tying a blue towel around my neck (a little too tight) and running around the house. Apparently I once tried to commit toddler-suicide by tying the towel around my neck, then a rope, which I also tied to the patio railing. Mom found me standing on the railing with my "bat-rope" getting ready to jump. Pow and Bam, indeed. That's just one of many bullets dodged over the past 50 years.

Although these Bat-books are only so-so... The ads were awesome!

Universal Monster fads and merchandise were all the rage in 1964. Apparently the "Big Frankie" model kit didn't go into large scale production, so it is rare. I notice that, even though he's the friendliest monster in town, he still needs to be chained to a rock. I kinda want one of these...

This is what G.I. Joe was like in the very beginning. He started out in 1964, just like I did. The horrific shit-show of the Vietnam war hadn't quite started yet. By the time I was playing with Joe (around 1975) the war had ended. Joe had become an "action hero" and was de-miltarized. I guess too many families had dead sons from Vietnam on their minds, so the marketing shift was necessary. My G.I. Joe drove a jeep and uncovered lost mummies and stuff... He didn't napalm villages.













Finally, we have one of the most influential magazines of the 20th century... with bare boobies.

There is an old joke about Playboy magazine. It's where the respectable Dad-type guy gets caught buying his copy and is embarrassed about it, but then says, "Yes, but I only buy it for the articles." And, you know... Old-fashioned Playboy really is mostly text (and this issue clocks in at almost 300 pages!). This fat Christmas issue is a fantastic time-capsule into the month of my birth. It reveals a lot about the changing ideas of sexuality (there is actually a long "round-table" discussion called "The Playboy Philosophy", with experts, and they were dead serious). There is also lots of short literature, satire and a posthomusly-published interview with Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. It's fun to read the old lifestyle and advice columns.  ("My girlfriend, who is a prude, thinks it is scandalous that I don't wear any underwear. I say it's my business. Who's right?") If you judge by the advertising in this, any guy who wanted to be a "Playboy" had better wear cologne,  maintain a hi-fi record collection, drink  gallons of whiskey, and smoke a jaunty pipe.



I think it is interesting to consider the women who were celebrated (objectified?) in Playboy at this time. The playmate for Dec. 1964 was Jo Collins: a real girl-next-door  type. She's only gently naked, and not even in all the pictures. She is beautiful and young (19!) and natural. This was the era before rampant body surgery, photoshop, and our bizarre modern descent into what an attractive woman is supposed to look like in the media. The women who posed in Playboy at this time looked like real women, because they actually were real women, unaltered by cosmetic procedures and grotesque digital manipulations. We have come a million miles societally (with great distances yet to go), but that is one aspect where I would say the world may have been a better place back then. In many ways I think current media-driven body expectations and the sexualization of our young people is utterly unrealistic and poisonous. Is it wrong to think that it was better in 1964? Am I just old?

Hefner knew how to promote this Playboy brand. I like the Playboy Hand Puppet that you could order from the ad near the back (Just in case you needed to "add a bright touch to any gathering"). Or you could go with the Playboy golden charm if you wanted to be sophisticated. Also... I am not sure what is up with the guy with the moustache, but as I said before... he must be a Playboy, because he uses cologne.













There was also audacious sexual satire in the form of Little Annie Fanny. It may not have been terribly inspired to "sexify" Little Orphan Annie, but the guys who did it, Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder, were masters of the comic book medium. They had dominated EC comics in the 1950's and created the MAD comic book. Hefner had huge admiration for them. As such, although this stuff seems a bit puerile to me now, I consider it pretty innovative and accomplished in its day. When I was a kid sneaking peeks at Dad's Playboys I always read Annie Fanny at the back, but didn't really get the jokes.

But why am I going through a pile of old magazines with you? Well... It is my birthday and I am 50 years old today. I can indulge my nerdy interest in old comics and history if I want to. I'm now old enough that I can think of plenty of sentences that start with, "Back when I was a kid we didn't... "

Turning 50 makes me thoughtful. By looking at magazines that were on the newsstand the day I was born, back at the height of the Cold War, back before Canada changed its flag, back before the internet and electric cars, I may just get a glimpse of where I have come from. I'm now more than twice as old as my fresh-faced parents were the day they brought me home. I remember watching Jackie Gleason with them on TV, and Laugh-In. My son has no fucking idea what that is, but he can torrent the new Game of Thrones in 5 minutes.

I remember the moon landing. I remember watching Nixon resign on TV. I remember the 25-cent  spending-spree at the corner store. I remember Pierre Trudeau's red rose, and his messy divorce. I remember seeing the real Star Wars movie in the Vogue Theatre at the age of 12. I remember walking to school. I remember standing next to the Berlin Wall before they tore it down. I remember my wife and I sending our toddler away from the TV as the towers fell on 9/11. I remember that toddler as a toddler. He is now approaching manhood in a crazy new world that leaves the concerns and cultures of 1964 behind like ancient history.

I remember that life is hot and cold, complex and rich, arbitrary and meaningful and, if you're lucky like me, mostly joyous.

Lucky me, who gets to be 50.