Bid High! Bid Often!

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I discovered by chance that full-page in-house Marvel ads are available on eBay--and at a pretty penny (for old ads, at least), which indicates some level of demand. I can't begin to imagine what there would be about a house ad that would generate enough interest for someone to make a bid for it. But you never can tell what someone will find to be of value, eh?

No matter how incredibly strange it may be.

Perhaps the value of the ad has to do with the fact that, in the days before the Internet, it was the "first look" at an upcoming character or series. For instance, this really odd ad for The Avengers also featured an outline of the new Captain Marvel, who would eventually become a member of the group:

Of course, the ad fails to give Iron Man one of those clever captions: "I'm not an active Avenger, so you won't see me in the book--but watch for me!" (For that matter, they could paste in the Hulk and get away with the same caption.) And why isn't the She-Hulk responding with, "Gosh, you should be up there, Wasp--you're the team leader!"

But at least we can make Hawkeye happy, since he does indeed get a promo for his limited series:

Mark Gruenwald, however, was likely unhappy at seeing his name partially occluded by Mockingbird's leg. On the other hand, isn't Hawkeye supposed to sell this book?

And speaking of marksmen, here's one who has Captain America in his crosshairs:

Some of those eBay offerings featured the original transparencies used for the house ads--and I must admit that reproducing the Deathlok ad in all its gorgeous color would be a beaut.

Finally, one of the cryptic ads for the New Universe line of books:

I haven't checked, but I can't help but wonder if these New Universe ads ended up fetching a higher price on eBay than the actual titles.