Learn the Secret Powers of the Deadliest Killers in the Orient (Comic Book Ad, 1975)

 

Remember all of the bizarro, too-good-to-be-true items that were advertised in comic books back in the day? You may recall some of the famous ones:  the purported 7-Foot Polaris Submarine, X-Ray Specs, 6-foot Moon Monsters, Sea Monkeys, and heck, even real monkeys.  All of these were offered in the pages of comics.  And, don't forget GRIT, or the promise that I could become rich enough to buy my own Atari games, just by selling seed packets.

The other day, I was enjoying a classic slab of primo 1975 Jack Kirby goodness, when I ran across this full-page ad.  I'd seen it before, but I had never stopped to take it all in.  It's quite a read.  

Try to remember the kung-fu craze that had taken hold of the world and had reached its peak by the early 1970's.  By the time this ad was run, Bruce Lee hadn't even been dead but probably a year and a half; maybe less.  Ninjas would become, for the 1980's, what kung-fu fighters were to the 1970's.  By the time you got to the byline of THE PHYSIO-MENTAL POWERS OF THE NINJA, you had the attention of most kids...although admittedly, this ad was too wordy to have interrupted my comic book reading...and in 1975, I was too little anyway.

So, right away, under the headline, we bandy the term "invisibility" about twice, and we aren't even into the ad proper yet.  But, you have my attention!

Right away, we are launched into a whirlwind of capital letters and incredible claims.  You would expect an ad like this to make lots of cringey mistakes, but despite the hugely-entertaining hyperbole, it really doesn't.  (In lots of American fiction, ninjas are wrongly associated with China, for example, but they don't make that mistake here, and even use the name of the discipline of Ninjutsu correctly.)  All of the secrets discussed here are in a manual they will be glad to sell us--and, we are told that revealing the secrets of Ninjutsu meant "a gruesome death," implying that, well, somebody bit it big time in order for us to have this knowledge.  So, shouldn't we honor that?

Generously, they also make a point to offer discounts to law enforcement agencies...although to this day I have never seen the Ninja Task Force of my local police department...but, you say, that's because they are obviously invisible.  I know.

We are also promised that we will learn "the all important time-lag factor...instrumental to the art of disappearing."  Yes, please!  That would be handy at work.  They also tell us that "NINJA were the deadliest of fighters who were unbeatable in unarmed combat."  (Wikipedia tells me that ninja actually used lots of weapons.) The text then immediately discusses an "incredible array of weapons" (huh?) such as "Stars of Death, or their deadly Retrievable Stone."  "Stars of Death" I think is a breakfast cereal, but this "Retrievable Stone" perplexed me.  From some mild yet lazy Googling, it looks like it is some sort of weight on the end of a rope, probably used for climbing.  

The farther you get in the text, the more subtle bombshells they keep flinging:  "These fighters were unsurpassed in their ability to overcome all of their enemies.  They employed magic and stealth, and--" hang on, how did magic get into this? Somebody's 20-sided die just fell out of their pocket in public.  I mean, you had me at ninja, and now we are talking about magical ninja.  "You can protect yourself and your loved ones against ANY ATTACKER under ANY CONDITIONS.  Even while sleeping."  Wait, what? Suddenly I have questions about somnambulist fisticuffs...in the later bullet points, they mention "The NINJA'S special techniques of invulnerability--Even While Sleeping," so which is it? My takeaway from these factoids is that if you hire a ninja, you should let them sleep at work, like Google does.  After all, you're getting them at their best.

Another random bit that they just drop in is when they promise us the "Closely Guarded Secrets of Atemi-Waza," without even giving us a remote clue as to what that is (I looked it up; Atemi-Waza is a series of body-striking techniques adopted into judo in 1882...what this has to do with ninja stuff at all, I have no idea).

And then we get to the mail-away coupon, and discover that this manual will cost $5.00, with 80 cents postage.  For those of you who don't know, five dollars in 1975 was a week's wages.  You could buy an entire personal computer for five bucks back then.  Of course, I am kidding, but my point is, $5.80 was very steep for what was probably just a pamphlet.  

When you submit the order form, they force you to promise "to use the deadly SECRETS OF NINJUTSU only for defense and that I'll never use it as an aggressor," during which I would have firmly had my fingers crossed the entire time.  If I get this power, I am definitely messing some people up.

Now I come to the point in this discussion where I wish I could find somebody who ordered this "manual," so we could see what it really contained.  Then again, maybe that person became a super hero and is far too busy...then again, maybe that person just used it to disappear!