The Devil's Food Made Them Do It: DC and Marvel's Hostess Ads

Last week Marvel announced that they would be releasing Tron: Legacy inspired variant covers of ten popular comic books. Captain America, Wolverine, and The Amazing Spider-Man were among the titles that received the Tron-ified cover treatments. Is this selling out?  Disney owns Marvel now and there are some who believe the Mouse House has crossed the line. Is this an act that is less about corporate synergy and more about whoring out some beloved characters?

There's a much worse example of comic book companies selling out.

Think back to the 70's when DC and Marvel would regularly allow Hostess to take their top-tier characters to shill baked goods using horrendous single page adventures revolving around criminals who fancy Hostess Fruit Pies, Cupcakes, and Twinkies.

Batman, Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Superman, and Wonder Woman were seen regularly in the pages of our favorite books thwarting lame villains hell bent on stealing a truck (or handful) of various Hostess desserts.

"Sorry Commisioner Gordon," Batman might have said, "I know the Joker is terrorizing Gotham, but if we don't bring down a made-up villain you'll never hear of again, he may succeed in his plot to steal worthless Hostess desserts that have an obscene amount of calories and questionable nutritional value."

Take a look at these dark pages in comic history and breathe a sigh of relief that our comic book reading is not interrupted by "Wonder Woman and the Maltese Cupcake" or "Aquaman in 'Twinkies and Kelp'".