Ads from THE SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN Vol.1 No.2 March 1996

Gonna try something different here. I mean like really different - we're gonna dive into Marvel Comics! (And by "dive" I mean sit by the pool and drink and maybe fall asleep until lunch.)

Newsflash for you: I'm not a comic book guy. I suppose I'm "Team DC" because I like Batman and the old Wonder Woman TV show, but most everything else (particularly Marvel) falls way outside my circle of interests (Howard The Duck notwithstanding). One of the greater upsides to this is that my colossal apathy regarding this hulking pop culture conglomerate has kept me free & clear from any educated debate or confrontation; I've no opinion on it. What I do have an opinion on are comic book ads; it might actually be more of a kink if I'm being totally honest. And there's nothing too cerebral going on here: they're just colorful artworks depicting snacks and toys - which is pretty par for the course, but I chose this particular comic because I was so tickled by the way they managed to sling every single Spidey spinoff available at the time.

Just a shade away from "Spider-Man The Flamethrower!" am I right? I haven't been too in the market for Fruit Roll-Ups or Chef Boyardee as of late, but that Little Caesar's Batman Pizza was the first and last thing in a long-ass while that really felt worthwhile in terms of tie-ins. I'm sure if I flipped through a comic that wasn't a quarter century old I'd have a better idea of what's out there. But that's not all: The Mask (who apparently had a successful enough cartoon to get a home video release) and X-Men have shit they want you to buy too!

This was a good time for cereal; they started adding faux "berries" to the mix over the infinite trend of godawful chalky marshmallows. Mercifully, the berries were round and "berry-colored" but typically tasted like the rest of the cereal - so they're more of an aesthetic upgrade. But the biggest push of this era was from the Cap'n. 

Crunch Berries had actually been around for decades, but they were given new life ca. the Clinton years, when Red Dye was going stronger than Nike Air and colors seemed to have relevance to our way of life. But I digress... I've not read the comic book - though if I had to pick I'd say Spidey is my favorite Marvel hero (Howard The Duck notwithstanding) - but it doesn't matter, because the greatest literature in this rag is depicted here in this short anecdote involving a youth trying to make new friends and enlisting the help of Cap'n Crunch w/ Crunch Berries to summon the courage and stamina to shed his inhibitions and dance his "brains out." A more cynical reader would analogize this entire story to hard drug use, but us more enlightened folk understand and appreciate the power of Quaker Oates breakfast cereals.

Thank you, Marvel Comics! That was a helluva theme park ride!

- Paul