Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Mighty Marvel Mini Mania

Long before comic books discovered the mini-series, there was the mini-comic. In 1966, Marvel issued six "comic books" that, depending on the size of your monitor, may have been even smaller than they appear in the above photo. They actually varied a tiny bit in size but were generally under 7/8" in height and a bit less than 1/4" thick with black-and-white interiors. Each was bound along the left ledge with the kind of rubbery glue used to bind a pad of writing paper and featured jokes and an occasional smidgen of story. I dunno who wrote them but some of the art was stats from the comic books and some of the new art was by Marie Severin.

I first heard about them in the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page when they said...well, here. I'll let you read it for yourself:

Upon reading that, I immediately began checking out every vending machine I passed. As a more-or-less Marvel completist, I had to have them. For weeks, the search was fruitless but then one day, my father took us to a White Front department store down in the Crenshaw district...down where white folks never went in '66 unless they wanted to save money buying a washing machine. While my parents priced Maytags, I scoped out the vending machines and sure enough, there was one with with Marvel mini-books therein. Alas, it also had other stuff. You put in a nickel, turned the handle and you got a little plastic egg with a cheapo toy in it — a ring, a balloon, a little top, something of the sort. From what I could estimate as I peered in the glass, the odds were only about one in ten that you'd get a Marvel mini-book.

I ran off and found a nice snack bar lady who changed a dollar bill into ten nickels (all she had) and two quarters. Then I ran back to the machine and began feeding in those nickels. I got a Sgt. Fury mini-book, a Captain America mini-book and a lot of tin rings.

A cashier at the camera counter turned my two quarters into ten more nickels, which was all she had. Those nickels got me a Hulk mini-book and another Sgt. Fury and a bunch of tops and whistles, and there was a little inch-square jigsaw puzzle that consisted of four pieces.

I found my parents and relieved them of all their nickels. I think they had about eight between them but they only got me eight more crummy toys.

This went on for about an hour. In later years in Vegas, I would see grown men and women look almost hypnotized as they pumped quarters and silver dollars into slot machines. I experienced some of that at the White Front that day, plus I had to run about and find nickels. By the time my parents had picked out and ordered a washer, I had squandered every five-cent coin within three blocks of that department store and I was still without the Millie the Model mini-book. To make matters worse, I could see a dozen Millie mini-books in their little plastic modules inside the glass dome of the vending machine. They were distributed across the top of the pile and the machine picked from the bottom, so what I was seeking was perhaps unattainable without injecting a few hundred more nickels.

"Let's go," my father called. I fed in my last nickel — the last one I had, the last one I had time to feed — and got an insulting little sticker. I shoved it into a paper bag I was filling with my acquisitions and headed for the car, defeated. I knew full well I'd never see another vending machine that sold Marvel mini-books; that there would always be that aching void in my life...no Millie the Model Marvel Mini-Book. Sigh, weep, moan. But when I got home and sorted through all the unwanted prizes I'd amassed — things that would look chintzy in a CrackerJack box — a Millie mini-book fell out. I couldn't imagine how I managed to get one and not notice, but there it was.

Since then, I've had things go right in my life and things go wrong. When they go wrong, I occasionally think back and recall how I completed my collection of Marvel mini-books. And I remind myself that sometimes, things just plain work out for the best, and you don't always understand why.

• Posted at 5:54 PM · LINK

Big Help

Someone recently asked me what a publicist does for a client. Well, there are many ways in which a publicist can help you...but I think this is what you'd call going the extra mile.

• Posted at 12:32 PM · LINK

War Coverage

If you crave the most up-to-date info on the attempts to oust Michael Eisner from his post at Disney, Jim Hill Media is the place for you.

• Posted at 8:52 AM · LINK