Monday, August 28, 2023
Obscurity of the Day: ADventures
In the ever-popular quest to provide cartoons for every section of the newspaper, the classified ad section has always been a favorite target. We've already covered many of them here on Stripper's Guide, including Classie Addie, Ad Libs, and arguably the most popular of the form, Quickies. Today we have ADventures, a gag-a-day feature penned by Chuck Vadun and syndicated by United Feature Syndicate. While many of these features are specifically directed toward extolling the virtues of classified ads, ADventures sets its sights a little lower. It's purpose is merely to provide a little levity and graphical interest to those vast acres of itsy-bitsy type.
Well, I said it was gag-a-day feature, but that's not strictly true. No, I'm not casting aspersions on Vadun's gag-writing -- it's just fine. It's the frequency of the panel that I'm referring to, and it is quite the oddity. Although advertised as a daily feature throughout its 1982-1986* run, I have a few UFS syndicate weekly books from 1984-85 and they show the panels were produced in a quantity of TEN per week. Which actually makes a lot of sense when you think of the panels as hole-fillers as opposed to brighteners. If you look at a classified ad page (okay, if you did thirty years ago) you'd see lots of bits of stuff on the page just intended to take up odd patches of space. Typically they are just little boxes saying things like "The Classified Are Your Best Bet," "Phone 555-0110 To Place An Ad" and such. The evident point of ADventures was to take the place of some of those acne-like spots on the page with something people might actually enjoy.
* Source: E&P Syndicate Directories.
Labels: Obscurities
