{"id":8819,"date":"2012-12-20T22:44:02","date_gmt":"2012-12-21T03:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=8819"},"modified":"2012-12-20T22:44:02","modified_gmt":"2012-12-21T03:44:02","slug":"dc-comics-wants-you-to-read-nutsy-squirrel-and-take-these-precautions-against-polio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2012\/12\/20\/dc-comics-wants-you-to-read-nutsy-squirrel-and-take-these-precautions-against-polio\/","title":{"rendered":"DC Comics wants you to read Nutsy Squirrel … and take these precautions against polio"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Irene spent part of her day poring through her comic book collection, which meant that when I stepped into her office late this afternoon, I saw the cover to Action Comics<\/em> #196<\/a>\u2014and with a cover like this, you know<\/em> I had to pick it up.<\/p>\n

\"ActionComics196\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t think I’d ever seen that issue, which would have gone on sale a couple of months earlier than its September 1954 cover date during the year before I was born. But far more interesting than the story that cover was touting was an ad advising kids how not to catch polio.<\/p>\n

To the right of a list of the company’s comics at the time—which included not just the expected Superman<\/em> and Batman<\/em>, but Flippity Flop<\/em>, Dodo and the Frog<\/em>, and Nutsy Squirrel<\/em> as well—was an ad telling kids that “a safe and promising vaccine is being tested now, but results will not be known until 1955.” That would be the Salk vaccine<\/a>, which was revealed to the world on April 12, 1955. (Luckily for me, only 12 days after I was born.)<\/p>\n

\"ActionComics196PolioAd\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But since that was still in the future for those who picked up Action Comics<\/em> #196, readers were advised to:<\/p>\n

1. Keep clean
\n2. Don’t get fatigued
\n3. Avoid new groups
\n4. Don’t get chilled<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t know whether that advice ever prevented anyone from getting polio, but it sure would have prevented me from getting to the candy store for more comic books!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Irene spent part of her day poring through her comic book collection, which meant that when I stepped into her office late this afternoon, I saw the cover to Action Comics #196\u2014and with a cover like this, you know I had to pick it up. I don’t think I’d ever seen that issue, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[273,46,36],"class_list":["post-8819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-action-comics","tag-dc-comics","tag-superman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}