In 1978, I was a graduate student at Purdue University. I had a little studio apartment in Lafayette, Indiana, and there I used to drink beer, as grad students are wont to do. On the night in question, when I was sitting around listening to the radio and reading, as people used to do in the days before teh internets were invented, I had myself a snootful, accidental-like. (I recall that the brand of beer I was drinking that night was "Blatz", which may explain some of what follows.)
Anyway I was reading ish #17 or so, and in the middle of the book there are some photos of the band Kiss, who were fans of the book. In the photos, the members of the band are seen to have blood withdrawn from their arms, which is then taken to the place where the Howard the Duck books were printed, and the vials of Kiss blood are shown being poured into the ink, such that the very book I am reading, they would have me believe, is printed with the blood of members of Kiss.
Now for some reason, this deeply offended me. I guess I found it gratuitously violent or something. I can't say that I find it very offensive in retrospect. I find it a little offensive, but only in the sense that I'm a person who has donated about ten gallons of blood in my life, and I know that there is always a shortage of blood donors, and that lots of people who are medically able to donate, do not do so. So it's kind of wasteful. Also, I thought Kiss sucked, as a band, and I didn't like their schtick. But that has precious little do do with Kiss depositing their blood in an ink vat for a publicity goof. I mean, who cares, right?
Anyway, I wrote some kind of drunken rant about how deeply offensive this stunt was, the kind of rant that nowadays one would do in a Kuro5hin diary. But I did it with pen and ink, and what's worse, while drunk, I put the damn thing in the mail. The next day I felt kind of bad about it, and I think I may even have called the guys up to tell them to just throw my letter in the trash. I'm pretty sure I did that, actually. Call them up, I mean.
Anyway, their response came in Howard the Duck, issue 20, which I picked up at the newsstand a few months later. On the cover is Howard's new nemesis, an insane-uptight puritan character named Sudd, the Scrubbing Bubble that walks like a MAN! Sudd, who is comprised of water and harsh foaming abrasives, is on a mission to erase all impurities and bad thoughts from the earth, and more to the point, he wants to obliterate Howard the Duck, who embodies everything Sudd despises. To get the effect, look at the illo. Now, it helps to know that my last name is Sundman. All through the book there were references to SUDD (.....) MAN. In other words, SUDD the scrubbing bubble that walks like a MAN, is big giant "fuck you" from the creators of Howard the Duck to yours truly.
That's embarrassing enough, and quite enough punishment, I think, for one drunken letter, however ill-advised or incoherent.
But it gets worse.
A few years later, I was watching the tube, when to my utter astonishment I saw an animated TV advertisement for some kind of bathroom cleanser that featured the incredible new feature, "Scrubbing Bubbles", which were depicted zooming all over the bathroom. The scrubbing bubbles looked pretty much like Sudd and his minions from HTD, and I'm pretty much certain that's where they came from.
New products like bathroom cleansers come and go all the time; few of them last. But Scrubbing Bubbles had that special something. Years later, the name of the original product has been subsumed; Scrubbing Bubbles is itself the name of the product, which has grown into an entire family of products, nay, it has grown into an entire bathroom cult.
I think that's more embarrassing than buying Thriller. Especially since LM bought his album when he was a kid, and I wrote my letter when I was 25 or so. Ouch!
I hope somebody out there has a story that is more embarrassing so that I'll feel better.
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