Pizzazz #2 - Marvel

Nov. 1977 - "In this issue: Fun with Spider-Man!"

Every time I go to a comic con, one of the things I always do is pick up at least a couple of old magazines to talk about for new posts here on the blog, and my trip to the 2010 New York Comic Con was no exception!

Most of the dealers are the show didn't have any magazines for sale, so when I found one that did, I quickly rifled through the boxes looking for something interesting. Once I saw the above cover, I knew I had found the subject of my first new post.

I remember reading Pizzazz fairly regularly as a kid; its frequent comic book/sci-fi content always attracted my attention. I don't remember this seeing this issue before; how could anyone forget cover like that?

This issue opens with some standard TV, book, music, and movie reviews (Captains Courageous, Space Academy, the Bay City Rollers(!)) quickly getting to the interesting stuff: a feature called "The Dream Dimension" where comics artist Rudy Nebres illustrates dreams sent in by readers:

...weird, but definitely cool!

There's some short fiction, an article about parents, and then a sort of cynical gag strip called "I Hate Walt Disney", followed by some Spidey-centric puzzle pages, like this one:

Following this is an article about the Man From Atlantis TV show, a November calendar centerfold featuring The Beatles, a sports article, an advice column called "Write Wendy", some more gags, and then the really good stuff: two--two--separate comic book segments, the first being Young Tarzan by no less than Big John Buscema:

...following that, in a neat genre change-up, is Star Wars, featuring adventures of Luke and Co. post the first film:

Young Tarzan is only one page, while Star Wars is three. Both are too damn short, but man are they fun--I love that they had this kind of material in the mag.

There's some more gag strips, then this utterly charming puzzle page starring Marvel characters:

It takes a special kind of fan to spend your time searching for a hidden Volstagg.

Following this is "Dr. Doom Cracks Up", which features corny jokes and spot illustrations by the great Marie Severin, ending with some Marvel-centric recipes and a toys and games review section.

Part of the fun of looking through old mags like this is checking out the ads--sometimes they can be more fun than the magazine's original content. The ads here aren't all that memorable, although I did enjoy this one:

...this computer has over 6k of RAM, retails for $120, and weighs approximately twenty pounds.


While most of this magazine's content is instantly forgettable, its of course important to remember it was meant to be. In a pre-internet age, this was how you communicated--or at the very least read about--kids your own age in other parts of the world.

And those two comic book strip segments are just wonderful; it makes me want to find more old cheap issues of Pizzazz to follow the stories, just like I would have the first time around!