SDCC 2013 - Salicrup on Marvel Toilet Paper

Start the day right with Marvel TP!

Well, I've decided to start my series of posts about events at this year's San Diego Comic-Con on a high note with a story about ... Marvel toilet paper.

Honestly, in the 1970's Marvel Comics printed comics on toilet paper. Might as well take advantage of a captive audience, right?  This story came to light at Scott Shaw's Oddball Comics panel, which was absolutely hysterical. Messed up by a glitch setting up the computer with his presentation, Shaw and his son managed to find random images from the Oddball web site on-line on a computer borrowed from an attendee and improvised an entire presentation (Oddball on Facebook).

At one point Marvel veteran Jim Salicrup got up and wowed the audience with this story, which I will summarize. In the 1970's, he explained, printing quality at Marvel was terrible. They were using plastic printing plates that wore down quickly and cheap newsprint paper, so the books were frequently smeared and blurry. "Artists often complained that it seemed like their work looked like it was printed on toilet paper," Salicrup said, "I can say mine really was."  Salicrup and Michael Higgins wrote the comic, which was then illustrated by Marie Severin. Here's part of the story reproduced on the Comics Alliance site for your reading pleasure.