Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Mid-Life Career Changes





Hey, at one point I was going to be Slappy the clown before getting my last job literally a day before my being fitted for a clown costume. Now I am again looking for work, and two things I found I might do would be to sketch nudes of Abe Vigoda and then sell them on eBay or make lamps out of dead squirrels, hey, the information is all right there, people. Maybe I'll become a radio technician and scowl and have wavy hair like the guy in the 1940 ad above. Its the back cover of my oldest comic, BLUE BEETLE#6. The back up features were Dynamite Thor and Sub Saunders, but nobody was fighting the Nazis or the Japanese because we weren't in WWII yet. No ads for war bonds or paper drives. Yet every other issue I have of the Golden Age Blue Beetle will have every story centered around fighting the real villains of the 1940s, except for a few issues when BB went to Saturn. I still love that ad, though. The guy was making more than twice his salary and looking like someone just made him sniff a dirty cold medina right before the flashbulb went off. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going out in the rain to look for squirrels...Wayne

7 comments:

James Robert Smith said...

Back when I owned a huge stinking pile of Golden Age comics, one of my favorites was a very old issue of the Human Torch (I think it was #2). In it the Sub-Mariner has a few words with Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler. The book was one that came out prior to Dec. 7, 1941.

As for the sketches...it's a buyer's market on Ebay right now. I recall in the early days I used to joke that I could scan a dead fly and put it on Ebay and sell it for $100. Not so, now. Selling anything there is a tough sled, these days.

Rather than the squirrel lamps, my thinking is that the little critters from Syria are where the real money is.

Charles Gramlich said...

The biggest money right now in critters that have been dead since before the days of the dinosaurs. You know, the ones that have turned into oil.

Sidney said...

Looks like the Squirrel Lamp people are an old established firm. I have friends in Omaha. I could make some inquiries.

Lana Gramlich said...

Gads...those old ads are so hysterical in retrospect!

Steve Malley said...

I'm still saving up for that two-man submarine!!

Capcom said...

There are tons of squirrels at my house, I've got bird feeders.

Where do you get those great old ads and stuff?!

Well, you could always sell stinky perfume door to door, that smells like baseball mitts, like Wally and Beaver Cleaver did! :-D

Bigmouth said...

And...where might I procure one of these sketches of Abe Vigoda? Come to think of it, is Fish still alive?