Despite the ubiquity of supposedly free offers online, it’s no secret that most are at best email address harvesters and at worst identity-theft scams. Over time I have tried many of these programs, and a few have filtered out of the pack that have actually paid off for me, so I figured I might as well document these for posterity, since genuine reviews and recommendations of such services online are so few and far between as to be basically nonexistent.
Anyway, like many manufacturers whose business depends heavily on brand loyalty (like, say, cigarette manufactures) the Coca-Cola company places codes on many of their products which can be redeemed for points at mycokerewards.com. Most people tend not to participate in such programs since entering the codes is remarkably tedious and to get anything decent usually requires purchasing said product in Costco-sized bulk quantities, any until recently I was among them as regards the mycokerewards program. However, despite regular admonishments from my dentists, I regularly drink quite a bit of Diet Coke in cans, and I got in the habit of saving the cardboard can boxes because I found they make great shipping protection for the books, CDs, comics and such that I sell periodically on ebay (though far less often since their last nonsensical set of feedback rule changes). As a result, my hall closet began to fill with the empty boxes. Eventually, I began staring at the pile and wondering just how many mycokerewards points the stack constituted — hundreds? Thousands? Having never before bothered with the program, I had no frame of reference, but I figured it might be worth my time to find out.
Turns out they limit the number of codes one can enter in a day to ten, so it took awhile to whittle down the pile. Still, this was far better than painstakingly doing it one at a time, and soon I found I had built up a grand total of 1400 points from my now-empty closet despite the fact that the mycokerewards site is absolutely awful, filled with pointless flash interstitials, illogical categorization of rewards, no basic ’show all rewards’ option, and unnecessary animation.
Like all such programs, mycokerewards offers a variety of rewards, but some are just ridiculously out of range. Probably the most practical and useful reward offered by mycokerewards is actually a full 20-piece set of Rachael Ray-endorsed cookware, but to get said reward one would need to redeem 14400 points, or the equivalent of 1440 12-can packs of Coca-Cola products — 17280 cans. So yeah, while I thought my year-plus pile of empty Coke cases was substantial, it wasn’t anywhere near Rachael Ray territory.
After browsing through the entire catalog of rewards, and realizing that the earbuds that came with my ipod were in fact impossibly shitty-sounding as well as ill-fitting, I settled on a pair of black Skullcandy “Smokin’ Earbuds” which “cost” me a mere 731 points. And lo and behold, yesterday sitting at my door when I got home (thanks, DHL) was a package containing these:
Unfortunately, a quick perusal of the mycokerewards catalog shows that it looks like they’ve removed these earbuds from the possible rewards, so I may have gotten in just under the line on that one. Still, depending on how many Coca-Cola products you drink on a weekly basis it may just end up being worth your while to tear off and save up the codes in a drawer somewhere and enter the codes in whenever you feel you’ve built up enough for it to be worthwhile and you have nothing better to do. I myself have 749 points remaining in my account there and none of the rewards within that range really catch my eye at the moment. Though if necessary I could burn off those points on movie tickets or promotional t-shirts, for now I’m content to let them sit until, perhaps in a year or so, I have built up enough to bother foraging through the mycokerewards site to pick out something else.
Internet advertising can be a confusing labyrinth to navigate at the best of times, but here at aaronpoehler.com I like to keep things simple. Basically, you’ll notice that on nearly all posts and pages at aaronpoehler.com there is a single banner ad. That banner ad is managed through Project Wonderful, which allows advertisers to bid what they think the ad space is worth and what they’re willing to pay per day. The highest bidder at any given time has their ad displayed sitewide here, across both blog pages and static website pages such as the vault of music reviews, so if your ad is the winning one at any given time, your ad will be seen by visitors to virtually all pages on this site (the number of which is in the hundreds right now). Advertisers are charged only for the amount of time their ads are displayed and there are no per-click charges, so it generally ends up being a good deal for all concerned — unlike many internet ad schemes which are easily defrauded through false clicks, which is why I’ve stuck with Project Wonderful above AdBrite or Google Adsense. Plus, it’s nice for me that I generally find the ads placed through Project Wonderful are interesting links to cool stuff I haven’t heard of, rather than the untargeted spammy links I seemed to get with the other services.
So if you’ve got a website, product or service you’d like to advertise here, go to http://www.projectwonderful.com/advertisehere.php?id=15866&type=1 and sign up today. There are a bunch of interesting demographic data and site statistics there for your perusal as well, and of course, right below these words should be an ad banner by the current highest bidder. I wonder who it is right now?
I’ve been seeing Stan Lee getting a lot of flak for his writing lately, but really, anyone who thinks Stan is truly a terrible writer just really shouldn’t be reading Marvel comics, full stop. Mostly people seem to criticize his dialogue and execution, and relegate him to the nebulous and somewhat backhandedly complimentary role of mere “idea man.” I mean, if being an “idea man” was that easy then Stan’s original concepts which defined and still dominate the Marvel Universe and its various related media such as Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Hulk, and Iron Man would have been long ago supplanted by newer creations. Frankly, it’s arguable that the only true A-list Marvel properties from the post-Stan era are the Punisher and Wolverine, both of who date back to the 1970s. Besides those two, there’s a long line of semi-successful and failed B- and C-list properties like Cloak and Dagger, Longshot, Gravity, Power Pack, Dazzler…this could go on for pages and pages.
While some think execution of a story is more important than the idea behind it, I disagree entirely — they’re at least equally important. And regardless of what you think about Stan’s writing, the peaks of his accomplishments — his FF run with Kirby, especially — are far better than most of the overwrought, smug irony-ridden comics that today rehash those selfsame ideas ad nauseum and ad infinitum. Embellishing an idea is a skill. Coming up with idea after idea after idea (in conjuction with Kirby, Ditko, etc. of course) for the solid period between FF#1 and Amazing Fantasy #15 goes far, far beyond that. So you gotta give it up for Stan. FACE FRONT, TRUE BELIEVERS! I’m totally a DC guy but man, Stan back in the day gave the industry a kick in the ass that probably saved it. Plus the dude’s just got character and style. I know Stan’s a corny motherfucker and I know he’s written a pile of shitty comics since that golden period, but when I see ol’ Stan I can’t help but grin like a lunatic. I’m more than willing to forgive Stan’s excesses and enjoy his sporadic current work for what it is. Stan just makes me happy.
That said, one in awhile you’ve gotta wonder sometimes what was going through Stan’s head, especially when you see something like what’s in the boxed-off, highlighted portion of Stan’s Soapbox on this Bullpen Bulletins page:
What the hell? Marvel’s biography of HITLER? Evidently this did actually come out as HITLER: HORROR AND THE HOLOCAUST. Can’t figure what the angle here was, but hey, I guess if you throw out enough ideas sooner or later you’re bound a have a few of those ideas turn out to be really really bad ones.
Also, I bet thousands of people out there would totally buy t-shirts with softball-slugging funky ’70s headband Luke Cage on the front.
I always enjoy stumbling across easter eggs, cameo appearances, and messages hidden in the artwork of comics. It’s something about the fact that it’s something the artist didn’t have to draw, that they just put in there purely for the fun of it or to let you know something about them. Alex Ross is probably one of the best-known for this, putting the Beatles into Marvels, the Monkees into Kingdom Come, etc. etc. etc., but there are thousands of easter eggs, hidden messages, and unauthorized cameo appearances scattered throughout the pages of comics of all types. Sometimes they’re obvious, sometimes they’re subtle, sometimes you wouldn’t even know they were there unless someone pointed them out to you. Some are just cool little shoutouts, some have gotten people fired. Groo The Wanderer used to have a secret message in every issue, and back when I was a kid I used to spend hours poring over my Groos trying to find them. Some were really easy to spot but I’m sure I never found a lot of them. These days I don’t really have the time to go specifically looking for hidden messages, cameos, and easter eggs, but I try to note them when I spot them, and here I present a bunch that I don’t recall seeing documented elsewhere before.
Check out this panel in Marvel’s Strikeforce Morituri #7 (June 1987) drawn by Brent Anderson & Scott Williams:
“The Horde” is an alien race in the future that Strikeforce Morituri fights, and which has apparently managed to somehow collect not only Captain America’s shield, the Silver Surfer’s board, and a miniaturized Galactus helmet but also a bunch of Green Lantern power batteries, Batman’s giant penny, and even Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet!
What do the X-Men do on their day off? Hang out in the future at the same bar as Sun Boy from the Legion, apparently — that’s Kitty Pryde, Colossus, and a standing Professor X there chatting it up. Note this backup story from Tales of The Legion #320 was some of the first pro work of future name creators Dan Jurgens & Karl Kesel — even the letterer of this story is still working, on and off.
Shoutouts to comic creators of the past are pretty standard, especially in Batman comics where it’s always “Hey there’s a crime down on the corner of Sprang and Giordano”, but I liked this from Detective Comics #785 by Brubaker & Zircher:
Those are the full/real names of (top to bottom) Dick Dillin, Don Newton, Gene Day, and Gil Kane. I assume that would be Win Mortimer at the bottom.
From the fantastic Solo #7, Mike Allred’s love letter to classic Silver Age DC Comics: Captain Action, a licensed toy character that hasn’t been seen in the pages of DC Comics since 1968 (and that DC doesn’t have the rights to):
Unauthorized guests always seem to sneak into comic-book weddings (those crowd scenes must just be too tempting — or too boring to draw), but on this Elementals cover the unauthorized party-crashers far outnumber actual Elementals characters: among others are Cerebus, Casper, the Phantom, Space Ghost’s sidekicks, Prince Valiant, Snarf, Gumby, Doc Savage, the Lone Ranger, Superman’s lurking behind the Comico logo, and even Calvin & Hobbes snuck in.
Finally, this is a cameo of sorts but other than that I really don’t know what to say about it other than that it’s somehow sadly hilarious. From the letters page of Joe Matt’s Peepshow #10, Rivers Cuomo of Weezer:
What easter eggs, hidden messages, and cameo appearances have you found lurking in the pages of your favorite comics?
Below you may input your name and email address to receive announcements when there are new developments on AaronPoehler.com. I vow not to deluge you with forwarded chain letters and tasteless jokes.
Despite the ubiquity of supposedly free offers online, it’s no secret that most are at best email address harvesters and at worst identity-theft scams. Over time I have tried many of these programs, and a few have filtered out of the pack that have actually paid off for me, so I figured I might as well document these for posterity, since genuine reviews and recommendations of such services online are so few and far between as to be basically nonexistent.
Internet advertising can be a confusing labyrinth to navigate at the best of times, but here at aaronpoehler.com I like to keep things simple. Basically, you’ll notice that on nearly all posts and pages at aaronpoehler.com there is a single banner ad. That banner ad is managed through 
