Adscape: The Smith Brothers Play No Favourites
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This Christmas past, I was teaming up with my father to get the last few bits of our shopping done and I happened to espy the above package (well, not the exact same one - I don't have my scanner here and anyway it has been in my coat pocket for three months - it looks like it was in a car accident). I'd already spent the last of my cash on quail, so I forced my poor progenitor to buy them for me in exchange for my advice on what sort of candy to get for my brother's girlfriend.
But what could possibly have filled my normally-altruistic heart with such mercenary impulses, and in the very season that Pappy Solstice, Santa Claus, Grampy Tanglebeard and their ilk are examining the actions of humanity with such care?
The answer, as is so often the case when my motivations are opaque to those around me, lay with my obsession for antique media, in this case Silver Age Comics. Smith Brothers ads have been creeping into my brain for years but I'd honestly never thought to see the things in real life and so hadn't bothered to build a wall of cynicism and determination around the affected portion of my brain, like I do for, say, Swffers. As soon as I saw that little white box sitting on the shelf all of the Smith Brothers' virtues, beamed into my mind from the back pages of Batman and Mystery in Space, came crashing down on my consciousness. It was all I could do not to trample small children just to get my hands on them faster.
Compounding the problem is the fact that I love most of their ads. they tend to be adorable:
Oddly, though, they don't really feature any recurring characters other than Trade and Mark, the bearded bros. One ad might feature the ultra-cute singing children pictured above, while the next showcases the Brothers' ability to enter the dreams of sick children:
Actually, that one was a recurring theme:
Thing is, it's always a different kid, even if they kind of look like they were issued the same button nose and tousled hair at birth. Either the Smith Brothers were careful to spread their wisdom around - which makes sense, given that the average child should be capable of retaining the "take cough drops when you have a cough" wisdom - or I just haven't yet encountered the continuing adventures of Mickey Marvel, Boy Box Kite Enthusiast. I kind of suspect that I'm missing out on some further adventures of these next guys especially:
I'm actually kind of tormented by the thought that there might be more to this story. Do Nip and Tuck go on to have further adventures? Was there a prequel to this one or did it really start in media res? Will I ever learn of the origin of their ludicrous nicknames? Certainly there was at least some further mileage in the "buy our cough drops or people might kill you" plot, as evidenced by this ad by competing drop manufacturer Ludens:
I honestly though that Hatchet Hattie was just misunderstood and that this would turn out to be a comic about tolerance, but no, it's about cough drops preventing axe murder.
But I digress. The subject was the non-recurrence of characters in Smith Brothers ads. As I said, there may be many more of the pesky things than I have encountered over the years, but the only character who I have seen in the them more than once - aside from the Brothers themselves, of course - is the beanie kid from the first ad, above, and I'm pretty sure that he is the ultimate factor that led to my Christmastime fall-from-grace.
How could I resist his tuba-playing charms? HOW?
This is a fantastic comic, and it just keeps getting better. If you’re not already reading this series, well, I think that you should be. Here are the basics:
Superman 80-Page Giant No. 1 - You know what I like? Anthology comics that don’t have any stinkers in them. And this didn’t! Everything looked nice, all of the stories featured Superman being a really cool, really human guy and there were a fair number of fun ideas, like the story that was just a bunch of bank robbers talking about the relative downsides of being apprehended by various super-heroes, or the idea that a bored Superman might toss a piano out the window just for the fun of swooping in and rescuing it from destruction. And it lasted me through the bulk of my lunch break!
The Brave and the Bold No. 32 - Okay: Aquaman and the Demon is a pretty great teamup. It’s almost like this book and the cartoon of the same name got their casting mixed up. Maybe the sailor was originally Batman? More importantly, though, the plot concerns an evil extra-dimensional entity that invades our world and forms an army from the bodies of the dead, and it resolves in one issue. Did DC just kick its own ass?
Green Lantern Corps No. 46 - And speaking of the event du jour, do Guy Gardner and his ragtag band of misfits in this book seem way more competent than the all-star team over in Blackest Night? There just seems to be a lot less flailing around and screwing up and a lot more... good plans that actually work, especially as this comic seems to be happening in a much longer period of time (by which I mean that Hal Jordan and co. eff things up about seventy times in a half hour or so, from what I can tell). Also: fridgeform Black Lantern! 
This is the first time in a fairly long time that a series that I enjoy has manged to wrap up a long and at least moderately complex storyline in a way that has left me satisfied. All of the major plot-threads managed to come together for a finale without feeling extraneous, a lot happened without feeling rushed and the villain's defeat was both not easy and not only achievable by deus ex machina. I sure do hope that this thing continues, whether as R.E.B.E.L.S. or as L.E.G.I.O.N. '10.
The Secret Six, complete with new member Black Alice, go about their usual business in this issue as they raid a summer camp run by that Brother Blood cult from Teen Titans. 
