No, it's not Friday...but this was TOO important to wait!
For those looking for the Original Art Contest, y’all gotta scroll down about fifteen inches (past the stuff about Nazi dentistry, and it’s connection to Hoverboy), and look for the big red letters saying IMPORTANT HOVERBOY ANNOUNCEMENT!
For regular Hoverboy readers, my extended research about German Tooth Hygiene has finally paid off. It led me to discover what might be the most important photograph in the world of Hoverboy! It certainly suggests a possible origin for the familiar Battlin’ Bucket’s costume never before considered.
If this photo is genuine, it changes everything we know about our favorite Battlin' Bucket!
This is a photograph of Hermann Stark, father of Hoverboy co-creator BOB STARK, taken in 1929, when the elder Stark still lived in Germany, and worked for Auergesellschaft, a German company who marketed Doramad Radioactive Toothpaste to European customers throughout the thirties. “Es macht Ihre Zähne leuchten mit Weiß!” was their well known slogan, which roughly translated to: “We shall make your teeth glow with whiteness!”. Sales were brisk right up until the factory was destroyed by Allied bombers during the war.
A poster advertising Doramad Toothpaste, unscientifically blaming much of tooth decay on the Jews, and promising to chase their decadent influence from your mouth with military precision.
(As shocking as the concept of thorium toothpaste might be to our modern world, it was hardly the worst example of radioactive medical quackery in the first half of the 20th century. Radium enema treatments were quite the rage in the United States at the time, a practice that increased in popularity for years after Hiroshima changed people’s relationship to atomic power. The enticing slogans “Bop a bomb in your bowels”, and “Radiate health from the bottom up” was enough to keep the radium enema in the public imagination until the wave of rectum amputations that followed in the early fifties.)
How many Nazis got cancer of the lip from this tube alone? One can only hope....
But this photo of Stark, on his way to the PASTE ROOM at Auergesellschaft Works, shows the HAZARDOUS MATERIALS suit that factory workers wore to save their reproductive organs from decay while making the deadly dental cleanser. The mask bears an uncanny resemblance to later versions of the Hoverboy Helmet used in the comics, and the large black “H” on the chest (signifying that this outfit belonged to “Hermann”) is hard to chalk up to mere “co-incidence”.
Early Hover Boy appearances bear little resemblance to the startling photo at the top of this article. Which throws this entire theory "into the bin".
It’s interesting to note, that the first published versions of Hoverboy, seen in both the comic strips and the early pulp novels had a round faceplate instead
The first example of the "H" logo on his chest, from 1940. Click to enlarge
of eyeholes on his helmet, and there was no “H” on the chest until 1940. Like many of the pre-comic book appearances of the Hovering Hero, there is some confusion as to what was original to the character and what was clearly plagiarized.
The photo at the top of this article (if genuine), casts an enormous shadow of doubt over the widely accepted version of Hoverboy’s creation (often stated by Charles Nutt in interviews) that Nutt alone had created Hoverboy due to the fact that “….my dad worked at a hardware store that sold buckets.”
Now, I don’t know WHAT to believe about any of this stuff.
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IMPORTANT HOVERBOY ANNOUNCEMENT:
We’re having a membership drive for the HOVERBOY FACEBOOK PAGE, and we want YOU to join!
It's not just fun. IT'S YOUR PATRIOTIC DUTY, PUNKS!!
WHY YOU SHOULD JOIN:
Besides the swell of pride one feels knowing that they’re better than regular people, members of the FACEBOOK FAN PAGE get regular updates on Hoverboy Happenings around the web, alerts for new entries at The Hoverboy Museum, and Hoverboy Fridays! at Art Land, first dibs on auctions for old Hoverboy memorabilia, including DECODER RINGS, POSTERS, DVDs of old TV and Radio Shows, and a chance to upload their own Hoverboy memories to share with a heart pounding world! And it’s FREE! What else on the internet is free, huh? I think it’s just us.
AND right now we’re running A FUN CONTEST with a BIG BIG PRIZE!!
THE CONTEST:
(open only to members of the Facebook Fan Page, so ya gots to sign up…) Give us your favorite Hoverboy Villain from the past. Tickle that memory bone, and tell us your favorite issue of Hoverboy THAT WE HAVEN’T YET FEATURED ON THE WEBSITE GALLERY and name that Villain!! The winner
Don't send us "Legs Luthor" as a villain suggestion. We already have him, get it?
(chosen in a lottery draw conducted by eminent Hoverboy Actress SARAH SAMMS) gets the original artwork for the cover, painstakingly recreated by me, (Ty Templeton) with such line by line precision you’d think I drew it in the first place!! Which I totally didn’t, okay? These are old.
Don’t send us a scan of the cover from an existing copy, send us your description of it, as it’s easier for us to find the comic that way (wink wink wink—have I winked enough here?).
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HOW TO ENTER:
Go here
and sign up to join the club. Membership is free, and ya could win prizes, ya greedy comic fans.
CONTEST ENDS:
Well, according to Marcus Moore, curator of The Hoverboy Museum, the contest ends on the 21st of May, but I’m trying to talk him into letting it run until the 1st of June. Enter now and save the trouble of Marcus and myself squabbling over the whole thing.
Is it possible that this might be THE GREATEST HOVERBOY CONTEST OF ALL TIME?!?
It’s possible…
Ty the Guy
To share:
Ty Templeton's ART LAND!! 