Tag Archives: The Flintstones

The Saturday Comics: Ben Casey by Neal Adams

10 Sep

September 10, 2011

Ben Casey was a TV medical drama that ran from 1961 to 1966. It was one of the most popular shows of the time and was referenced or parodied everywhere from popular music (“Callin’ Dr. Casey” by John D. Loudermilk) to The Flintstones. (“Monster Fred” from season five with Doctor Len Frankenstone, who switched Fred’s brain for Dino’s. Gotta love The Flintstones.)

When I was young I saw a couple of episodes and today it is, as far as I can tell, not broadcast anywhere. It is just another old TV show. But this is The Saturday Comics, not The Saturday Old TV Shows. So why am I talking about Ben Casey?

That’s why.

That’s a great piece of Neal Adams art, and he did it daily on the Ben Casey comic strip.

If you don’t know Neal Adams, feel free to turn in your pop culture badge now and walk away.

Some bits of his wikipedia bio:

Neal Adams is an American comic book and commercial artist known for helping to create some of the definitive modern imagery of the DC Comics characters Superman, Batman, and Green Arrow; as the co-founder of the graphic design studio Continuity Associates; and as a creators-rights advocate who helped secure a pension and recognition for Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Adams was inducted into the Eisner Award’s Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1998, and the Harvey Awards’ Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1999.

Green Lantern/Green Arrow and “relevant comics”

Continuing to work for DC Comics during this sojourn, while also contributing the occasional story to Warren Publishing’s black-and-white horror-comics magazines (including the Don Glut-scripted “Goddess from the Sea” in Vampirella #1, Sept. 1969), Adams had his first collaboration on Batman with writer Dennis O’Neil. The duo would later revitalize the character with a series of noteworthy stories reestablishing Batman’s dark, brooding nature and taking the books away from the campy look and feel of the 1966-68 ABC TV series. For now, however, they would do only two stories, “The Secret of the Waiting Graves” in Detective Comics #395 (Jan. 1970) and “Paint a Picture of Peril” in issue #397 (March 1970), with a short Batman backup story, written by Mike Friedrich, coming in-between, in Batman #219 (Feb. 1970). Batman’s enduring makeover would come later, after Adams and O’Neil’s celebrated and, for the time, controversial revamping of the longstanding DC characters Green Lantern and Green Arrow.

Rechristening Green Lantern vol. 2 as Green Lantern/Green Arrow with issue #76 (April 1970), O’Neil and Adams teamed these two very different superheroes in a long story arc in which the characters undertook a social-commentary journey across America. A major exemplar of what the industry and the public at the time called “relevant comics”, the landmark run began with the 23-page story “No Evil Shall Escape My Sight” and continued to ” …And through Him Save a World” in the series’ finale, #89 (May 1972). Wrote historian Ron Goulart. These angry issues deal with racism, overpopulation, pollution, and drug addiction.

Here is a sample of his amazing Batman covers, featuring issues from my own collection.

He didn’t take the easy way out with Ben Casey either.

Comics historian Maurice Horn said the strip “did not shrink from tackling controversial problems, such as heroin addiction, illegitimate pregnancy, and attempted suicide. These were usually treated in soap opera fashion … but there was also a touch of toughness to the proceedings, well rendered by Adams in a forceful, direct style that exuded realism and tension and accorded well with the overall tone of the strip”.

So feast on Neal Adams’ craft on the Ben Casey strip, a craft which is almost too good for a daily newspaper comic.

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The Saturday Comics: Cigarette Ads

2 Jul

July 2, 2011

Got your attention?

For those who don’t know, when The Flintstones was first broadcast in 1960 it was a prime-time show aimed at adults, like The Simpsons is today. As was typical of the time, the show had one main sponsor and the characters would plug the sponsor’s product, in this case Winston cigarettes.

While you could argue that it was an adult show so the ads were not aimed at children, the fact remains that children were a huge target of cigarette ads and using cartoon characters to push cigarettes was a broadside fired squarely at kids.

Cartoons were not the only children’s medium used to sell tobacco to kids. Comics were big areas of interest to Big Tobacco.


Baseball, a sports hero, and a comic strip. That pitch is aimed straight at the meaty part of the plate. I find that reprehensible, though I grudgingly admit the genius of that ad. Read it again but pay attention to what it doesn’t say, only what it implies. Nowhere does it say that smoking Camels made Joe DiMaggio a super athlete, but look at the actual photograph, with Joe talking about how he has smoked them for eight years, with his MVP award mentioned very conspicuously right below the smoking cigarette. What conclusion is a young kid reading a comic book supposed to reach? And notice the big “5 extra smokes in every pack.” You must get five more cigarettes in each pack, right? No, not really, read the fine print. And what kid does that?

What about the claim of 28% less nicotine? According to that ad, it is the smoke that contains less nicotine! That’s the part you exhale, not inhale. “Well, I’m no scientist, but I know” that claim says nothing about the nicotine in the cigarette itself and nothing about what you are inhaling.
 

Camels strike again. A comic, a test pilot, a fighter plane, and a woman. Camel pulled out all the stops for this one, and tops it all off with the implied approval of the armed forces.

Did you catch the blatant sexism too? “WHAT? A woman flying a Hellcat fighter?” I know these have to be judged by the standards of the era, but there is a stunning lack of subtlety in these ads.

Lack of subtlety? Look at this: 

If you can’t read the teeny tiny disclaimer at the bottom, it says “We do not say that smoking Luckies reduces flesh. we do say when tempted to overindulge, ‘Reach for a Lucky instead.'” No, they don’t say it, but “face the facts!” In all but words, that is what the ad is saying.

I’ll end this as I began, with a pair of popular celebrities shilling smokes. These two were the focus of a Saturday Comics several weeks ago.

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