Monday, April 8, 2013

With Genuine Combination Lock!

So, I came upon a copy of Space Adventures #33, which had the first appearance of Captain Atom, one of many Charlton characters who were revived by DC in the 1980's:



You know it's well worth reading when they have to bribe you with a shot at a trip to Disneyland.

It's pretty standard stuff, but I noticed there was a little communication breakdown somewhere between the coloring of the cover and the coloring of the story itself.  Thusly:



Your name is Captain Adam, but your code name shall be Captain Atom.  Yes, they phonetically sound almost exactly alike, but this way you can get two desserts on Cupcake Day.

I've never been a big Captain Atom fan.  The Question and the Blue Beetle were much more awesome Charlton characters.  But I prefer the yellow costume, which is considered the "classic" Captain Atom look.  Actually, I like it better than the shiny look he's had most of the time in DC.  Although the all-encompassing shiny look made more sense, because it seems like this costume gives a lot of opportunity for the radiation covering Captain Atom's body to leak out.

So, I thought it would be worth reading just to check out some early Captain Atom.  I didn't realize I'd also get treated to this:


You gotta be careful with what you put on the tip of a rocket.  Besides the aerodynamics of the whole situation, you also run the risk of drawing something that looks like a huge penis.  Hi, Googlers!

And here's an ad I couldn't let you miss out on:


So, just to review: You're a child, and you hang up some random picture of an old car (like that won't draw suspicion).  Then, you tell your friends you have this thing so that your buddies will let you hold onto their crap (like that's a selling point).  Finally, if you can install it to your wall without damaging the wall, I'm prepared to guess you can just yoink it off the wall and run off without meeting too much resistance.  I mean, I'm no safecracker or anything, but it just stands to reason, don't you think?

See you tomorrow!


6 comments:

MarvelX42 said...

The wall safe, if you could return it AFTER the 10 day free trial period, what would happen if you returned it before that trial period was up? You wouldn't get your money back? Than why would you return it before the 10 days? I mean usually it is the other way round, you have to return it quickly or you are stuck with it, but in this case you can keep it as long as you like, just don't return it until after you have had it for at least 10 days. Me am confused.

Adam Barnett said...

That's actually brilliant. You force someone to keep it for 10 days, they're more likely to just say "to heck with it" and keep the silly thing even if they would have been inclined to return it after the first day or so.

MarvelX42 said...

Hmmm, you could be right. I would probably forget that I could get my money back. BUT also though, I mean someone, if they still had it could return it now, years laters. Hmmm.

Railbus said...

I notice the ad has a thorough description of the "vault-like" door but nothing about the vault itself. I think you're on your own making a hole in the wall!

MarvelX42 said...

But it DID say that "You can attach the safe to the wall in seconds with screws provided and it will not harm or deface the wall" How does THAT work? How can you attach a safe to a wall with screws without "harm"ing or "deface"ing the wall? I wanna see onea these things. I bet that it has a sort of tiny built in box that is maybe a half inch deep or something. The whole thing was probably made of plastic anyways.

Buzz said...

yeah, i think maybe it would probably be good for keeping three or four poker cards... if you cut them in half.

but because the ad appears in a superhero comic, i have to wonder if alternate reality technology was used...?

wouldn't it be funny if you drove to their office to return the safe and found that all of their files were kept in picture safes all over the office walls? and everyone in the office was wearing mirror sunglasses with hidden cameras in them? and they all wrote memos with disappearing ink?

i misspelled "disappearing," and my spell checker suggested "disheartening"....