National Informer offered readers sexual advice. Our advice—don’t listen. The cheapie newspaper National Informer, of which you see a September 1971 cover above, began as a rightward leaning tabloid of the post-pulp era that later increasingly tried to distinguish itself by posturing as a repository of sexual advice. In this issue its articles manage to confirm readers' suspicions about the new decade's loose morals and construct stimulating sexual fantasies. For example, the “deaf and dumb sexpot” in panel five is an archetype of the sexually available woman, but sadly she’s French, thus accessible only to those evil socialists across the sea. Just can’t win, right? But even as these and other articles offer up sex with a hint of political division, the photo captions suggest that the editors perhaps didn’t take their own content seriously. In panel three, a subhead reads: Some wives turn to lezzies when they’re turned off on hubbies. In panel eight, in the story Commies Oppose Sexy-Looking Frauleins, a caption under a nude photo of a blonde deadpans: Commies don’t like stuff like this. And in the report on How You Can Replace Sexual Ignorance with Sex Know-How, the caption under a nude couple explains: Breast sucking is great, with proper know-how. In our view, there’s no way the editors couldn’t have been chuckling when they wrote those lines. Certainly, the presence of the crackpot psychic The Amazing Criswell (in panel five) doesn’t lend any credibility to the proceedings, especially when he predicts that astronauts will find cockroaches living on the Moon. So was National Informer taken seriously by its readers, or was it all just low comedy? At this point we don’t know. But as we mentioned in an earlier post, we have a collection of Informers, so as we continue to share them, you can decide for yourselves.
|
|
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1939—Batman Debuts
In Detective Comics #27, DC Comics publishes its second major superhero, Batman, who becomes one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, and then a popular camp television series starring Adam West, and lastly a multi-million dollar movie franchise starring Michael Keaton, then George Clooney, and finally Christian Bale. 1953—Crick and Watson Publish DNA Results
British scientists James D Watson and Francis Crick publish an article detailing their discovery of the existence and structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, in Nature magazine. Their findings answer one of the oldest and most fundamental questions of biology, that of how living things reproduce themselves. 1967—First Space Program Casualty Occurs
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when, during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere after more than ten successful orbits, the capsule's main parachute fails to deploy properly, and the backup chute becomes entangled in the first. The capsule's descent is slowed, but it still hits the ground at about 90 mph, at which point it bursts into flames. Komarov is the first human to die during a space mission. 1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot.
|
|
|
It's easy. We have an uploader that makes it a snap. Use it to submit your art, text, header, and subhead. Your post can be funny, serious, or anything in between, as long as it's vintage pulp. You'll get a byline and experience the fleeting pride of free authorship. We'll edit your post for typos, but the rest is up to you. Click here to give us your best shot.
|
|