Redartz: Our buddy (and my esteemed partner) Marti recently did a post about concert tees. That got me thinking, there were some of us who generally didn't spend their shekels on apparel. Could be we (I was, anyway) were more apt to use those funds to decorate our walls.
And we're not just talking concert posters. The only limit to posters in the Bronze Age (and now too) was what imagination could create, and what your wall could hold. For instance, in my pre-teens, my folks bought me a psychedelic black light poster (which was impressive, as they were not exactly counter-culture types). Within a couple years, my own tastes dictated the contents of my walls. Specifically, the FOOM poster- a prized part of the membership kit, featuring a Steranko-rendered array of Marvel's mightiest. Additionally, I had a fondness for vintage advertising posters. So Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper and other drink makers got free ad space on my walls. Then there were baseball posters, comic art posters, and so on. And later, in the ever exciting Eighties, I had the requisite Patrick Nagel poster. No bare surfaces in Redartz' digs...
Ok, so you've had a peek at some of my old prints. What posters, novelties, ads, and art graced your private spaces?
9 comments:
Lovely question:
- Farah Fawcett (courtesy of my younger brother and sister)
- Century-old Navy recruiting posters (repros) provided by the Navy at the annual Lake County, Indiana, Fair.
- Numerous beer signs! (Pabst, Falstaf, Miller, Heini...)
- And of course, several pages from Steranko's History of Comics Vol 1 and 2, featuring Treasury-sized pages by Kirby, Everett, Crandall, Fine of Timely, DC, Fawcett, and QUality heroes from the GOlden Age of Comics!
I used to cut out ads and photographs of paintings from Art News magazine. A cheap way to decorate your walls when you couldn't afford even a print of the real thing.
The ones I can remember are:
The Hildebrandt Star Wars poster.
A Bruce Pennington poster of the spaceship from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
A Harryhausen style confrontation between a T Rex and a triceratops.
The John Buscema 1975 Marvel Comicon poster (given away free with issue #1 of Marvel UK's Titans comic).
A poster of the cover of US Marvel's Planet of the Apes #1 (given away free with issue #1 of Marvel UK's POTA comic).
A NASA poster of the Earth, seen from the moon.
A map of the world, showing shipping routes. Granted, that wasn't a very interesting one but I got it free from some sort of trade exhibition at my local park. I knew to never look a gift horse in the mouth, not even when it's a dull gift horse.
THAT FOOM poster was core-center to my room for a few years, since it came in my mailbox back in 1974. Soooo beautiful.
Other notables...?
1) The Star Trek Poster Magazine.., what a clever concept, a magazine that folds out into a poster. Obviously SW, Galactica and other later franchises copied it. Just an excellent (and cheap) way to cover those dingy walls.
2) Dynamite, when they did comic posters, were pretty good as well. I had both their FF and Hulk posters up. I picked up the John Denver issue again (with a minty untouched FF poster inside) again just last year.
3) Yes the SW Hildebrandt poster rocks, always. Just as memorable were the Burger Chef SW set of four posters. Outstanding art and still relatively inexpensive to collect.
4) ...and the occasional Marvel (or DC) calendar picture, especially the '75 through '78 calendars.
I wish I could have framed them all, but that came later in the '90s.
Charlie- bet That Farrah poster was the famous one with the red background and big hair...
And some of those beer signs were cool too. Remember " Bud Man"?
Selenarch- very resourceful use of your available, er, resources!
Steve DC- wow, those UK edition giveaways must have been awesome. Great freebie posters? Effective enticement to a purchase in any era.
Oh, and I'd wager that quite a few kids from our generations had NASA photos on the wall. You can't go wrong with astronauts and space photography.
David_b- yes, the Marvel calendars were loaded with perfect wall decorations. They'd be worth hunting down on eBay, just for that purpose.
You also have a fine suggestion with those Dynamite mags. Never thought of looking for posters there...
None of my posters were framed. Many of them had multiple thumb tack holes in the corner. With that being said, the subject matter changed as I got older.
1) Very large poster of Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem from The Muppets.
2) Large map of the world (no shipping lanes indicated) from National Geographic Magazine.
3) Large poster of the Egyptian god Anubis from National Geographic Magazine.
4) Susan Anton in a lovely red one piece swimsuit.
5) Brooke Shields from the Blue Lagoon era.
I used to get a lot of posters out of music mags ... Hit Parader, Circus, etc. I also had the ubiquitous Star Wars posters.
I remember having a really cool Starsky & Hutch poster from some kind of fan magazine; I wish I still had that one.
When I think of comics and posters, I wish someone would reprint all those posters that were once offered by the infamous Marvelmania back in the late 60s/early 70s. All those 2ft x 3ft Steranko posters, the Kirby posters, the artist self-portraits.....Aaaarrggh!
I started reading comics just as all that was ending, and frankly even if I could have afforded them then (which I couldn't) the mysteries of overseas money orders would have boondoggled me.
Redartz, I've done just that. No need for special frames. Any 'Album cover' frame suits them just fine. I've had a few up at my cozy workspace for a few years now, switching them out every so often.
As for those 'really large posters'.., as most folks these days, my tastes (and both workcube and home den space dictates) have brought me down to the 11x17" size as most appropriate for me, or the next size up. They're gorgeous to matte/frame and look quite polished.
There was a LA company who reproduced that FOOM poster in several sizes and paper stock quality a few years back, so I sold my worn out original for a beautiful, slightly smaller reproduction on expensive, thick paper stock. The wife likes at home, too.
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