Brian Dreger, who sends in great questions, sent this great question regarding DC Comics of the sixties…
Is there some reason why Superman always appeared in ads for the New Jersey Palisades amusement park? Wouldn't they have had to pay a big advertising fee to have the character appear continuously in those ads? The ads were all over the place in the sixties. I could never figure out why Superman was advertising for an amusement park in New Jersey.
I wondered about that too, Brian. I'd buy comics and see ads like this one…
…and I'd think, first of all, what good is a discount ticket to an amusement park in New Jersey to a kid in Los Angeles? And I'd also wonder why that amusement park would spend all that money to buy ads in comic books when at least 80% of the kids who bought those comics — and maybe more — lived nowhere near New Jersey? I wanted to write in and demand discount tickets to something like Pacific Ocean Park out in Santa Monica or Marineland out here in Palos Verdes.
Then around 1968, I met a man named Whitney Ellsworth who had been at one point the editor-in-chief of DC Comics. He was now living in Los Angeles — Beverly Hills, actually — and supervising TV projects for DC. I wish I'd met him a few years later because in '68, I didn't know enough about the comic book industry to know what questions to ask. I did though ask him about those ads.
Mr. Ellsworth was a nervous man who I think feared that if he said the wrong thing to this 16-year-old kid visiting his office, it would somehow get back to the folks in charge of DC in New York and they'd use it as an excuse to fire him. He dodged every question I had about Siegel and Shuster or Bob Kane or even which DC comics sold best. When I queried him why an amusement park in New Jersey advertised in DC's books, he looked around nervously, thought for a second, then made me promise not to tell anyone.
Since it's been more than half a century and everyone involved is dead, I'll take a huge risk and break my promise. He told me, "The people who run DC…some of them invested money in that amusement park."
That was in 1968 and a mere three years later, Palisades Amusement Park was torn down and a high-rise luxury apartment complex was built on its that land. I swear it wasn't because of me. I didn't tell a soul.
