HURry, HURry, Step Right Up! SEE A Marvel Masterwork!

(With a tip of the hat to Blue Magic)


While I can't say I'm a fan of cover art being peppered with promotional captions and/or word balloons, I must say that, back in the day, part of the fun of picking up new comics was in letting my eyes be inundated by all of the "must-see" promotional material that would be so creatively crafted to catch and hold the attention of the person ever so slowly spinning swiveling the spinner rack.

And since the cover was arguably the issue's method of selling itself, all you really had to do was to tune out the Marvel "mania"--i.e., train yourself to pick out only what was necessary to understand the gist of what was happening in the issue. Most of the time, though, all the sales blurbs were pretty successful at catching and holding our attention, so urgent did they seem at getting their message across; and in addition, Marvel was so adept at tucking away little nuggets of valid story information in their pitches that it was hard to see what harm it would do to read through it all. Truth to tell, it was fun.

And there were the hooks: "This Is It!" "This Is The Big One!" "At Last!" "If You Buy Only One Mag This Month, It Must Be This One!" "You Must Not Reveal This Issue's Shock Ending!" And in the finest tradition of carnival sideshows, there was also:

See?

Like its other "stock" captions, Marvel was careful not to let this one appear too often; for instance, there could only be one issue that could declare "This Is It!", after all--otherwise it would say, "This Is It This Month!".  And care was likely taken not to let it appear on different titles coming out the same month. If I recall correctly, its use even prompted a letter writer to chime in on it; and if you've assumed that someone wouldn't take the time to pen a letter to Marvel to compliment one of its captions, you're probably correct.

Here's a brief sampling of instances where this particular caption appeared, as it coaxed you into seeing much more to the story in question than what its cover was showing you.

You'll notice that our first two slip in a little Marvel self-promotion along with the story's events.

In some cases, the caption's intent was self-explanatory:

While one was a little baffling.

(Yes, we see Giant-Man--so does that android. And...?)

On two covers featuring Thor, the caption actually did its job nicely in terms of giving you just enough info to tempt you but not spilling the beans to any great degree.

On this Spider-Man cover, we could infer from the caption that Doc Ock now has the same power as the Invisible Girl:

While in the case of Iron Man and Thor, there is indeed a deeper story to tell.

And finally, this Avengers cover manages to have a little fun with its captions.

Let's even add one to it:

SEE: Reed and Sue go jogging!

(Or, rather, see it while you can. Let's just say that Reed didn't make a habit of it.)