Now THIS is news!

Prince William getting married?

The Beatles library on iTunes?

The new Bruce Springsteen boxed set?

Marvel killing off Ultimate Spiderman?

What EVER!

None of that news holds a candle to the reemergence
of one of my favorite advertising mascots:
Speedy Alka Selter!

After putting their toes in the water
(so to speak)
with a rather odd Lindsey Vonn ad featuring
what seems to be some sort of Speedy totem
on the tip of her ski,
Alka Seltzer's current corporate owners
have brought the little guy back.

This is big stuff for me.
Why?
Because I love advertising mascot characters.

They are as much part of my psyche as any comic book or cartoon character.

So I have to tell you folks,
I'm very pleased to see that Speedy Alka Seltzer
seems to be making a comeback in television advertising.

(Although the new commercial seems to be a bit of a story retread
of a current Frosted Mini-Wheats ad)

(And let's not even get into THIS!)

You can read my previous posts
singing the praises of Speedy
here and here.

"Down, down, down the stomach through,
Round, round, round the system too,
With Alka-Seltzer you're sure to say,
Relief is just a swallow away!"

From the Beanworld Archives!

8 1/2" x 11"

The cheapest bond paper imaginable
Black markers and color pencils
Late 1970s

At recent convention appearances, I've made it no secret that Beanworld Book Four: Something More has been slowly taken over by the Boom'r Band.

I set out telling one story and this other one, in a direction I hadn't foreseen, took over. Recently I've learned that this does fold back into the story I originally set out to tell.

The side track is the Origin of the Boom'r Band.
This tale of the Beanworld has been hinted at from time to time, most significantly in a frame of
Beanish Breaks Out! (TOTB #4 and/or page 112 of Wahoolazuma!).

While going through my accumulation of notes regarding the Boom'rs, I found the drawing above. This is part of the going-backwards process I often talk about.

Beanworld started out as a complicated entity and I kept simplifying it, parsing it down, narrowing its scope intil I discovered Gran'Ma'Pa (or maybe Gran'Ma'Pas discovered me...not quite sure!).Then I started moving forward with the comic that became Tales of the Beanworld #1.

I cant say with certainty what year this piece was drawn.
I think late 1970s.

If I recall correctly it an early attempt at a Beanworld story about a human being (it might have been me) who is transported to Beanworld (I've forgotten how) and finds himself (assuming it was me) in a Bean-body.

And in a (clumsy) Wizard of Oz-ish riff finds himself on a red and yellow boardwalk that he follows on his adventures until he...he...I'm not sure as I don't think I ever finished it.

That's The Visitor, surprised, in the lower left hand corner.
That's about all I can recollect.

By 1980 I had come up with the Boom'r Band trio.
They had a different look but they had their current instruments.

In the sky are the four symbols of the Beanworld Tarot.
Two of those symbols came down to the ground as Mystery Pods.
The other two came down even further and became two of the Four Realities.

I really like some of these Beanworld-ed of instruments.
The bass balalaika still works for me.
And the Bonging-thing with the hammers too.
The Harp-ish thing isn't so bad either.

What really jumps out at me though is wooden structure sure looks like something from Angry Birds doesn't it?