1969 - ASM #78 - "Super-Me" ME

Okay, fine "Get the biggest comic book cover you've ever seen... and YOU ARE ON IT!" is a cheesy idea, but it's just the kind of crap a clueless parent would think would make them the world's greatest in the eyes of their kid.

I remember my dad got me one of those books you buy at the mall that lets you enter your kid's name so it looks like it starred me. It involved dinosaurs and also featured a friend of mine named Paolo... apparently my dad just came up with this name off the top of his head, but I had a friend of two with names resembling "Paolo" enough that I was still impressed. At least I was when I was nine and had likely never seen my name in print. Also the book was about dinosaurs.

Another time in Disneyland I thought it would be cool to get a Return of the Jedi t-shirt with my face pasted onto Luke's and my mom's on Leia's. I don't think I ever actually wore that shirt.

This ad sells something in between that and trick newspapers you can get at theme parks and carnivals, which are usually good enough for a chuckle. After all, why do nerds love comic books like Spider-Man and Superman if not because they closely identified with nerdy student Peter Parker and mild-mannered reporter Superman? If a comic book says you're a super hero, that's as good as true.

EXCEPT... this ad doesn't even TRY to turn you into a superhero at all, or any comic book character. I think you can see how: all it seems to do is print your photo in a box! They couldn't hire one of those suckers that got roped into those home-comic-book-drawing-courses to just draw someone resembling you as some sort of He-man? I'm sure all it would've taken was a template drawing of a boy with the same skin color, hair color, and length, and the customer's imagination would've filled in the rest.

Instead you get a blow up poster (no personalized comic book contents inside or nothin') with your pimply face pasted on it. You would've had to wait another seven years before you could swap that thing out with Farrah Fawcett.

But seriously, though, if my dad had gotten me a fake comic book where my name replaced any instance of "Peter Parker" and even just colored Peter Parker's face brown, I would've thought I was freaking awesome.

From Amazing Spider Man #78, November 1969.