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lol or I think this is what that “Mars Needs Moms” movie from last year was based on…..

Nah, this is a PSA for adults. The very obvious lesson here is “children are assholes, don’t have any.”

There are LOTS of things mom can do now that both kids are out of the house…

I wonder what the National Social Welfare Assembly was or what their goal was. Maybe if we knew more about this shadowy organization we could better understand what they were trying to accomplish in this PSA.

@Sonia, LOL.

I wonder if it was meant to end on a laugh, but the artist didn’t convey that in the final panel.

It’s an odd one, that’s for sure.

“Nah, this is a PSA for adults. The very obvious lesson here is “children are assholes, don’t have any.””

@ Sonia Harris: You’re absolutely perfect for me!!!! MARRY me!!!

Any idea what year this is from? A friend recently pointed out how many Hollywood movies portray children as asshole nuisances that the parents would be better off without…very interesting.

This is the best PSA I’ve seen in ages. Finally, a blow against the hegemony of reproduction/product-obsession. The Doom-Makers wish to line their pockets with the blood money made from the artificial continuance of an evolutionary dead-end. They would lie to us that the interaction of genitals is both good and natural! Say no to the destruction-profiteers! Say no the the proliferation of murderers and rapists! Say no to ongoing humanity!

Gosh, that page was more entertaining than about 90 percent of today’s comics. Better storytelling, better art.

But I’m perplexed at what “tools” a young boy might have which would stop a window from rattling. What kind of sadistic mother is that, to ask a child to fix a rattling window?

A more realistic (non-June Cleaver) mother would have just slapped the kids and yelled “Because I said so!” or “Don’t talk back to me!” or “As long as you’re living under my roof, you’ll do as I say!” or “Don’t give me any lip!” When I was kid, that’s how things worked in my house, anyway.

But I would love to learn how the child fixed the rattling window. Did he line the edges with chewing gum? Maybe the answer lies in one of Henry Boltinoff’s “Cappy’s Hobby HInts” strips later in the issue…

Couple of things:
First, I know everyone is having fun with this but I *think* the actual point is that this PSA is meant to be read by a kid with siblings and to get some insight into the side the reader doesn’t see about who seems to be getting preferential treatment.
Nigel Wolford, I think you’re earned the “Magnets – How the %*^@ do they work?” award this time out but given your abusive and terrifying upbringing, you get a pass.
Jimmy is *tired* from the exhausting activity of going to the movies. Harry can’t be taken away from the labor-intensive task of picking records. You got 99 problems, kids….
Who is mom talking to in the last panel….?

PS – To keep this all-ages, I won’t even ask about brown-haired mom and her blonde and red-headed sons and why there doesn’t seem to be a man around the house now (but plenty of disposable income.) I’m sure she’s just trying to keep the house nice for the next visit from an “uncle” Jimmy and Harry have never seen before and will never see again.

Yep, I think Sonia wins this thread, hands down.

It’s because of voters like Harry and Jimmy that Ray Patterson is no longer sanitation commissioner.

Okay, maybe I’m just missing something here but I thought that was a great PSA with a great message. It’s not depressing at all to me. It’s saying how sometimes all we look at it is how bad we have it and how good others have it without appreciating the ways in which we have it good or realizing the ways the people we envy have it bad. And how the people in charge we like to blame for being unfair are often being fairer than we think and are doing the best they can but we lack the perspective to see it.

It’s better and more mature than 90% of PSAs I usually see.

I’m with T.: this is a great PSA.

For my blog I sometimes show zany old comics images (who doesn’t?), and I spend an afternoon trying to raid DC’s 60s PSAs for embarrassing stuff… only to discover that they were almost all really wise and insightful. “Have more empathy for others” is a great message, told in a subtle way.

Matt Bird:
Just to play devil’s advocate (and I have an earlier post where I also said I don’t see what’s so confusing about this strip,) I have to wonder about the benefit of being subtle in a PSA. It’s blatantly a “life lesson” and not pretending to be anything else.
So I can see the argument that instead of the last panel where mom asks for my advice, there could have been a guy in a lab coat (He’s in all the educational films from the 50′s that kept MST3K in business) saying something like, “Do YOU ever take the time to put yourself in the shoes of others? Or are you too busy playing Negro music records at reefer parties and going to movies starring Communist pinkos and homosexuals?”

But I think the best PSAs _do_ pretend to be something else. This is a comic story in a comic book: isn’t the whole goal to treat it as just one more story, albeit one that teaches a little something?

Incidentally, I finally caught “X-Men: First Class” on DVD and my wife and I agreed that it officially has the worst special features menu ever: No docs, no commentary, not even a trailer… just the lone words: “Anti-Smoking PSA”. Say, that is special!

Matt, I’m not sure that is the goal. Many PSAs are made for television. They’re often a story told using video and sound, just like the television show that hosts the PSAs but I still think they’re meant to be distinct from the television show.
However, it’s just as true that some advertising, PSA or not, is presented like it *is* a 30-second story so there’s no question that there’s room for both approaches.
I think where we might disagree is more about the rewards of subtlety. There’s nothing subtle about the Indian with the one tear or Rachel Leigh Cook destroying her kitchen with a frying pan or crash test dummies getting thrown around but they make their point. In this case, I could certainly see why people might be a little confused about who they’re supposed to identify with and what they’re supposed to learn. (Patience? Understanding of others? Obedience?) I have a hard time believing that this is an example of the type of ad (Some of the anti-smoking “Truth” ads use this approach.) of making the point obscure so people will pay more attention and talk about it more. If so, this ad was *way* ahead of its time.

Oh and wandering off topic, how did you get your copy of “X-Men: First Class”? I’m seeing more and more DVD’s that come out in two editions: the rental copy, which has no extras, sent through Netflix, etc., and the sale copy.
But I’ve also learned to wait a year or two to buy a DVD. (Yeah, yeah, I know, many collectors say, “Just. Can’t. Wait!”) so I don’t have to buy the first release, the director’s cut, the anniversary edition with new footage and a lollipop, etc.

I have a hard time believing that this is an example of the type of ad (Some of the anti-smoking “Truth” ads use this approach.) of making the point obscure so people will pay more attention and talk about it more. If so, this ad was *way* ahead of its time.

Well the Truth ads have a much more modern hipsterish sensibility where it’s all about hip mocking and derisive irony, the Daily Show/Colbert style of stigmatizing where the wrong viewpoint is presented as square and uncool. The other PSA is from the era where the square and uncool side is the right viewpoint and the tone is incredible earnestness rather than detached irony. Both schools of PSA are attempting to be humorous. I’d argue that the PSA above is actually more subtle than the “Truth” ads though.

The problem is our current Internet and Daily Show and Adult Swim generation isn’t really trained to understand much less trust earnestness. That’s why this ad might as well be in a foreign language to them, and most of the readers here literally can’t get what this ad is saying. Their brains are literally wired to not get earnestness. The first instinct of the commenters is to lapse right back into hip mocking and detached irony rather than trying to understand the context of where the PSA is coming from.

I want to add, the “Truth” ads aren’t subtle. They’re just not immediately clear as to what their point is because they deliberately obscure the point in the early parts of the ads. Once it becomes clear after the “punchline” that it’s an antismoking ad, the point ends up driven home with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Instead of being as subtle as a jackhammer throughout the ad, they just wait until the punchline to become preachy and incredibly in-your-face about their message. The ad above, however, is actually subtle in a very real sense, all the way until the end of the strip.

T.: So you’re saying I should stop smoking?

T.: So you’re saying I should stop smoking?

No, I’m saying for better or worse people today can’t communicate straightforward and earnestly for very long without everything eventually getting reduced to detached, hip, ironic, mocking or sarcasm or other form of self-aware metacommentary. Your comment kind of proved that point

That’s why I think people can’t understand this PSA. It’s so straightforward and earnest it’s almost a foreign language. That and the values it expresses are very different than the individualistic values of today’s generation.

This is the original copy from the bottom of the page, before it was re-used to make a PSA:
“Say, Moms! Try new Blunts and Mini-Blunts for fast relief from the why-the-hell-did-I-have-two-kids blues! Relax, put your feet up, and let the dang windows rattle if they want to.”

I’m with T. and Matt Bird. I didn’t think this PSA was even all that subtle.

Look how harried and wrinkled the mom is in the 3rd and 6th panels. Damn!

I think what takes this one from a straightforward, pleasant enough PSA is that last panel. If that wasn’t quite so…. She’s literally throwing her hands up in the air, unable to figure out what to do. How about tell the kids, when they’re both together, that Harry has certain responsibilities and Jimmy has certain responsibilities? I suppose that IS what she tried to do….

I’m assuming that this, and some other of the PSAs that I’ve seen in old DCs (I assume this is from a DC, any idea who wrote or drew this? I’d guess a romance comic guy.) were some sort of way for DC to meet a certain guideline, or something (not unlike how the text pieces were done to meet postal standards, or like in the Duck comics where Gyro or whoever was in a “separate universe” from the rest so it seemed like there were different features, or whatever that Legend was). Maybe it was in the Wertham era and was a way to show that comics were edumacational? Or Mort Weisinger had some community service he had to work off

I certainly agree with T and Matt that this isn’t all that subtle, but consider that the (assumed? actual?) audience of comics at the time was the age of Jimmy here, and I marvel at how they DIDN’T talk down to the kids with a blunt “here’s what we’re telling you here” panel. The audience is expected to be able to make the cognitive leap that “hey, sometimes MY mom makes me do something I don’t wanna, or my sister “gets away” with not doing something, but other things she does have to do. Huh. Maybe I should stop whining so much.” (Particularly since these boys have to be the men of the house, as Dad, who SHOULD be the window rattle fixer, isn’t around.)

Hell, this is light years better than those crap “tobacco is whacko…if you’re a teen” PSAs that I’ve seen in comics. Or those “job opportunities for pot heads” ones. Or that Spider-Man Fast Lane (or whatever it was called) one where the intern at the Daily Bugle’s a pothead, like that thar movie star that he likes so much, so he HAS to be just like him!

The boys appear to change age in the story,the younger one has a growth spurt between the second snd third panels in the bottom row, the blonde aging gradually throughout (at the start he looks like a young teen and at the end he looks old enough to be the woman’s husband!). I’m blaming communists and rock music. Also reefer.

Travis, all those Silver Age PSA’s at DC were the product of editor Jack Schiff, who personally convinced Liebowitz and Donenfeld to publish them in all their comics. Neither Weisinger nor any other editor had anything to do with them.

Ah, so Jack Schiff was getting community service points! (I honestly didn’t know who might have been editor on these, I was just going for a lame joke. But I did learn something, so hey!)

Schiff not only edited the PSAs, he wrote them all. The artist on this one was Bernard Baily–the first Spectre artist two decades years earlier.