As an adjunct to the typical photographs of comic books of the past being captured in photographs, either while being enjoyed or else while on sale, there’s an entire subset of images that have been captured in film and television productions. These examples are often a bit more staged, especially if the film in question is a period piece requiring era-appropriate mock-ups to be created. I’ve posted the occasional similar picture in prior Comics in the Wild segments, but I figure they deserve their own sub-category. But anyway, here are a bunch of images of vintage comic books that were captured in the media.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
There is a scene in Spike Lee’s film Jungle Fever of a spin rack of Marvel Comics in the candy store. In his previous film Do The Right Thing one of the characters mentions the Black Panther and if I recall correctly is reading the Marvel Comic while sitting on the stoop.
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In Jean-Luc Godard’s “One Plus One/Sympathy For The Devil” there’s a long scene in an “underground” bookshop, during which the camera makes several long, slow pans over the shop’s shelves, showing political pamphlets, semi-pornographic paperbacks and magazines… and issues of GREEN LANTERN and JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA – issue #57 of both titles, I think. (The JLA is “Man, Thy Name Is Brother,” a UN-themed story which has the look of being commissioned by or for the people who used to put those public message pages in DC’s books.)
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The scene of Radar with an issue The Avengers is one of the greatest examples of anachronism in TV.
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I ove this kind of things. One rather obscure I found a few years ago.
“Pitfall” is a Noir Film from 1948 about a man who meets a bad woman, and he is carried away by her. At one point of the movie his son breaks one of his alibis and to continue his lies the man says that the kid has just to much imagination and he blames that the pile of comics he is reading is rotting his brain.
So a lot of comics are throw to the trash, for a brief moment we can see that one of these is “Flash comics #77” with Hawkman at the cover 🙂
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That episode of MASH has bugged me for years! Radar O’Reilly in Korea in the 1950’s with an issue of Avengers from the 1960’s?!?
But wait! Is that Potsie from 1950’s set Happy Days with a 1970’s issue of Superman?
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MUGGY-DOO, BOY CAT!
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Funny how they chose that Avengers title for the M*A*S*H* show when the Korean War takes place between 1950 and 1953, when the Marvel Universe hadn’t even started yet, let alone an Avengers team with Vision and Black Panther…
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That’s Avengers #60. This is mentioned in the Issue Notes about it in the GCD entry:
https://www.comics.org/issue/22462/
“This issue is seen briefly in a 1974 episode of M*A*S*H under the hand of a sleeping Radar O’Reilly. #72 is also seen in the same position in this episode. (Note from Kirk Groeneveld via the GCD Error Tracker.) On-sale date from 1969 Periodicals, Copyright Office, Library of Congress.”
I guess the producers didn’t want to go through the hassle of getting a period-appropriate comic for the scene. That may have been the oldest comic anyone had just around their house.
I recall one episode where Radar promised “a Captain Marvel comic” to someone in return for a favor. That’s stuck in my mind since it was right for the time.
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Don’t know if it’s the same episode, but there’s also a nice scene with Major Winchester talking to a soldier who stutters and thinks himself dumb because of his stutter. They bond over their mutual fandom of Captain Marvel (and later learn Winchester’s sister is a stutterer). The Major helps convince the soldier that he’s smarter than he thinks he is.
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In Larry Clark’s infamous 1995 drama ‘Kids’, one of the kids reads an issue of Peter Bagge’s early-90s indie darling ‘Hate’ (a series recently revisited by Bagge). Kind of appropriate to have a comic about unpleasant youngsters show up in a movie about unpleasant youngsters.
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