Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Fun & Games

Presenting another brief mini-GAF filler piece, originally appearing in your Humble Editor's off-site online journal for the amusement of whatever thirty or forty trained monkeys who've been hooked up to university computers have managed to access by picking corn pellets out of a chute. I bring you ...

Fun & Games! This is a Marvel Comics product released in 1979, and which not only (A) was a constant distraction and a part of my allowance-eating hobby at age eight, but (B) fills an important hole in my "First Issues of the 1970s" collection (Beowulf: Dragon Slayer, Starfire, Ms.Marvel and Hanna-Barbera Presents Scooby's Laff-A-Lympics welcome you!) and (C) I just recently found at my fave local comic shop, Charlie's.

As an aside, Charlie's business card and sign have this sort of austere, antiseptic-future style logo, with his face in the middle of the O in Comics. This bothers me, because when I say "Charlie's," I want it written in swoopy Cheers-like font, evoking the notion of a neighborhood hangout, where the beer is always cold, the music hot, and the twenty-five cent bin not kept on the floor so that my knees hurt when I rifle through it.

And speaking of typography, lookit that lowercase "a" in "and." That is a goddamn designer's nightmare, that's the kind of thing that you mean to fix before production, but you sort of forget until early the day the presses are running, and you wake up scared to death that you forgot to paste the correction over the damn thing, and then you write it off as being just your proclivity to worry, but then you see the cover and OH SHIT THEY REALLY USED THAT HORRIBLE LOWERCASE 'A!' And then you get fired.

Anyway, the magazine's aimed at the lesser intellect of your average juvenile comic reader, i.e. me in 1979. Or now, possibly. Most of the puzzles had to do with trivia brain teasers like "Match the secret identity to the Super-Hero" or "We've mixed up the costumes of fifteen Defenders! Can you tell which costume part comes from which hero?" and even I'd get lost, except that the guy would have Dr.Strange's cloak AND Nighthawk's wings and one of the Hulk's feet.

As an aside, there's a two-page spread in this first issue littered with ugly-ass pieces of typically poorly-designed Marvel super-hero costume accroutement, with instructions to cut them out and paste them to pieces of construction paper, then cut them out again and assemble them on a generic figure in long underwear in order to make your OWN Marvel Superhero! Who wantsta Shockwave code that thing once I get all the disparate pieces scanned in?

Personally, I'm surprised anyone could keep their quiz-taking cool when confronted by the ghostly, splotchy spectre of Stan Lee's grinning maw greeting them in garish, muddied yellow right on the splash panel. Jesus Christ, Stan!

Nu-u-u-u-u-uff Sa-a-a-a-aid!

Outside of the trivia questions, F.a.G (hahaha) also marshalled up a few word finds, crosswords, what's-different-in-this-picture pages (which was always difficult, because Marvel's then-sloppy on-newsprint printing process blurred so many of their pages to the point of unreadability - in fact, that was why I liked Daredevil, I think, cause I got the FEEL of being blind!) and some other traditional brain teasers and time wasters. And inside the trivia questions, it's too dark to read.

I used to subscribe to GAMES magazine, and I'll tell you, I feel I could sit through some of the world's most frustrating puzzlers without a problem. I'[m not sure how I ever found myself with the time to find the 34 iterations of "HULK" in this four-way-mini-wordfind. FINDING ONE SHOULD BE ENOUGH! Also, the real challenge should be finding how often KHULUH appears in this thing, for the cheap Lovecraftian giggle ... here, try for yourself.

I have GOT to get all of these things scanned ... and then we can form a league. And then, later, kill ourselves as retribution for wasting so much time in drawing lines through mazes made up of Dazzler's costume sequins or Nightcrawler's ass-fur or whatever. MAKE MINE MARVEL!