If I could bring one aspect of '80s comics back to modern books, it was be the single-page Hostess ads. Actually running from the mid-seventies into the early eighties , the big two, Marvel and DC, and even some smaller houses like Harvey, had single page comics featuring their heroes stopping one-off supervillains or averting natural disasters using or in the name of delicious Hostess snack cakes or fruit pies. They also tended to be completely insane; even suspending enough disbelief to accept that snack cakes are the world's greatest crime deterrent these things make no sense. A group of extremists subdued by Fruit Pies is one thing, but then take into account that they're called the Phoomie Goonies (which manages to sound vaguely racist without actually meaning anything) and they attack a post office where Bruce Banner happens to be working as a mailman because why the fuck not.
You can find the ads collected on some sites like Seanbaby, who seems to have actually collected all of the Marvel/DC ads, and Tomorrow's Heroes, who have a great deal including the Harvey ads featuring Casper, Wendy et al (as well as a fine selection of other classic comic ads).
For the purposes of this post, I picked out what I think were the five strangest, most inexplicable ads Marvel had put out in their books. DC did had their share, including some featuring villains with names such as giant billboard monster Cooky La Moo and the dread Dr. Sorcery (who, with a monicker like that, I am shocked hasn't shown in up in one of Grant Morrison's nostalgia-heavy, reference-laden books yet). However, up against their famous Silver Age stories these almost felt par for the course. Marvel, on the other hand, had their share of strange tales and amazing fantasies but nothing quite like what was going down to shill for cupcakes.
Honorable Mention: Captain Marvel versus Nitro
As a Hostess ad, this was pretty tame. It is, however, one of the few that used an established villain to sell the goods. And not just any villain, but Nitro, the man who would go on to kill hundreds in the Stamford disaster and kick off Marvel's Civil War maxi-event. Imagine the tragedy that could have been averted (and the time that could have been saved) if the New Warriors had just happened to have a few Twinkies on hand that day.
5. Thor versus the Ding-A-Ling Family
There's no greater explanation offered for this beyond "Suddenly... hillbillies!" showing up in the middle of space where Thor, Sif, Volstagg and Heimdall(?) happen to be hanging out. They attack because, of course, they are not only hillbillies but also evil. Two of them seem to have a "cousin-power secret weapon", if only because it is explicitly stated and in no way explained (and I'm not sure I'd want to know even if it was). However, it is explained that to use said power, they need to maintain concentration, which Sif manages to break by whipping out some Fruit Pies she happened to have on hand. Sadly, that there is a direct correlation between the threat in the comic and how the snacks are used to solve it actually makes this one of the most sensible of all the Hostess ads in the collection.
4. Iron Man versus Kwirkegard
And then there was the time Iron Man fought an evil version of Kierkegaard who for some reason dresses like a cartoon wizard. I immediately fell in love with the idea of the existentialist supervillain having an "existential depression ray", that I didn't immediately notice it worked by poisoning the water supply with sadness by shooting it. That isn't probably the worst science in the strip, in which the city's children are immune because "they haven't forgotten how to play", or that the ray is somehow overcome by the power of children's laughter. The most mind-boggling part to me, though, is Iron Man's amazing ability to jump to conclusions. Immediately upon hearing the word "water", he seems to know where Kwirkegard is, and he shows up there. Now there may have been some logic involved there, but it sure as hell wasn't shown to us, and wherever it is, it's sure lucky that it's at ground level right next to some kids laughing about how awesome Twinkies are. That last bit actually makes the most sense to me, as I have spent like two years laughing at how my friend accidentally said "Twonkies" one time so there is some inherent humor in those things. And while this has the least inspired title of perhaps anything ever, despite two specific mentions that the titular city in crisis is New York City, Iron Man refers to it as "Fun City", which I am pretty sure is a colloquialism that has never been used before or since.
3. "The giant flea-market-eating flea!"
No, not any of those other giant fleas hopping around, specifically THE GIANT FLEA THAT EATS FLEA MARKETS. These people don't even seem that shocked about it; that one guy is way more concerned with getting paid for his giant Giant Flea That Eats Flea Markets net.
2. The Red Skull's Cosmic Cube
Now, sorry if this is a spoiler, but this has been confirmed as the plot for Captain America: The First Avenger. Seriously, though, this one actually makes more sense than it appears at first glance. The Cosmic Cube, which the top there handily recaps for us that it "can do anything", are technically sentient beings and it could just be a cube that really likes Twinkies. Although it is worth noting that, while the Cubes have been around since '66, these ads ran from '75 to '82 and it's probably safe to assume this one was out in '76 for the Bicentennial, this actually predates the comics establishing the Cubes' sentience in 1983.
Now where was I? Oh, right, Cap beat Red Skull by giving snack cakes to a magic box that probably doesn't even have a digestive system.
1. Spider-Man Versus The Chairman
There needs to be another page for this one just to make sense of what happens between panels four and five.
Now, the legacy of the Hostess ad lives on even today, with some parodies including Marvel Zombies meat pies and Preacher's "Pope Pie-us", and even worming their way into some more mainstream comics, with some of Marvel's cake-craving villains appearing in Gray and Langridge's Fin Fang Four Returns one-shot, including the above Chairman, still trapped in chair-form, though sadly, it did not mark the return of THE GIANT FLEA-MARKET-EATING FLEA. Tomorrow in part two, I'll talk about what could have been the greatest Marvel Hostess ad of all...
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