Monday PSA: Help Superman Smash the Menace of Infantile Paralysis

September 14th, 2009

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

Here’s an ad from Action Comics #70 (March 1944) where Superman exhorts his readers to send a dime to help win the fight against infantile paralysis (i.e. polio). This is back when the March of Dimes lived up to its name, and collected dimes to fund polio research.

Help Superman Smash the Menace of Infantile Paralysis! Click for the full page.
Click on the image for the full ad

As a added bonus, if you sent your dime in to Superman, you were automatically enrolled in the Supermen of America Club and scored some serious swag including a membership card, certificate, and secret decoder. Best of all, you received an autographed picture of Superman, signed “Clark Kent (Superman)” — which pretty much defeats the whole concept of the secret identity.

Giving credit where credit is due, endemic polio was eradicated from the United States starting with the introduction of the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines in the 1950s — research that was partially funded by the March of Dimes.

More PSAsMore PSAs

Tags:

7 Responses to “ Monday PSA: Help Superman Smash the Menace of Infantile Paralysis ”

  1. Xenobiologista
    September 16th, 2009 at 5:12 am

    Just curious, I don’t read comics very much – how often do modern superheroes appear in PSAs nowadays?

  2. Ascension
    September 17th, 2009 at 12:03 am

    Seldom. There was some stuff back around 9/11, when everybody and their cousin became super-patriots for a while (though not literally: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-Patriot_(Marvel_Comics) ) but as for PSAs under ordinary circumstances…

    …oh, wait, I almost completely forgot, I got both the original AND 2005 update versions of the Spider-Man/Storm/Luke Cage antismoking comic (http://www.comicvine.com/spider-man-storm-and-power-man-battle-smokescreen/49-21032/) given to me while in school. I’m not really sure how I got the ‘05 version, since that was my sophomore year of high school, and IIRC they mostly aimed at a middle school target audience with the comic, but I know I got both. Beautifully cheesy, IIRC, and they kept the original script even in the ‘05 look-we-have-good-artists version (http://www.comicvine.com/smokescreen/105-806050/).

    Actually, I’d love to see that thing featured on this site.

  3. Sean Duggan
    September 17th, 2009 at 8:04 am

    The last one I remember was the Power Pack one on sexual abuse which was in comics when I was a kid (back in the late 80s or so).

    Meh, of course, March of Dimes has moved from trying to eradicate postnatal diseases to campaigning to have the problem cut off at the source via eugenics. Baby has a genetic disorder? No problem. Get rid of him and try again.

  4. Scott
    September 17th, 2009 at 8:19 am
    Official Comment

    I reviewed the original Spider-Man/Storm/Power Man comic a while back.

  5. Joseph
    September 17th, 2009 at 9:47 am

    “Meh, of course, March of Dimes has moved from trying to eradicate postnatal diseases to campaigning to have the problem cut off at the source via eugenics. Baby has a genetic disorder? No problem. Get rid of him and try again.”

    More like, “About to inflict a genetic disorder on a baby? Stop it before you have and harm a baby.” March of Dimes is no more eugenic against disabled people than telling your son to not rape is eugenic against people conceived during rape.

  6. The Escalation Ladder « toxic culture
    September 17th, 2009 at 10:25 pm

    [...] 1 – Maximum force readiness. All systems are go. Threats are imminent. Biological weapons defenses are readied. Wagons are circled to prevent the possible destruction of [...]

  7. Ascension
    September 18th, 2009 at 1:44 am

    Gah! I thought I had read all the Monday PSA entries.

    Geeze, I feel like an especially bad blog reader right now.

Leave a Reply

« Death Leaves a Flower Health Plans of the Fifth Dimension »