live, love, laugh better electrically

[davemerrill]

Originally posted by misterkitty at post

There's some weird mommy-daughter shit going on at this week's Stupid Comics!

Also, I guess I forgot to mention this on Tuesday but there's More Georgie Girls fun too!

Comments

[healyg.livejournal.com]

Geez, this is basically a parody of itself. I'm still not sure if the whole thing's a put-on.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

That's... really strange stuff. I know ELECTRICITY was a big deal, the Electric future and all (later co-opted into the Atomic Future) but by the '50s, I'm really kind of hard pressed to grok just what the market push was meant to be here. Maybe appliance stores to get people to dump their gas stoves et al?

And we have an all electric kitchen and brother, it sure doesn't cook everything automatically! When I cook pork chops and mashed potatoes for mom and myself, those potatoes sure don't peel themselves let alone mash themselves, and I have to watch that skillet like a hawk to not burn or dry out the chops. (I make excellent pork chops)

And what's this 'two weeks of food' in the fridge nonsense? Frozen meals, fine but not fresh meat or veggies!

Note in the 'cake icing scene' there's no hint of eggs, milk, sugar, anything. Just dump a can of 'insta-cake' into your blender and let it go, I guess.

bah. Where's my food pills?

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

The last one we did was pretty aggressive in advising people to not only buy the appliances, but make sure their house was wired correctly (and safely, older homes had terrible wiring). This one is mostly about prom dates. I feel like it's aimed more at moms than anyone else... help your daughter's social chances by keeping everything electric, or something. Not a very focused comic.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

There's a copyright notice on that first page I can't make out. I'm pretty sure the last word is 'initiative' but that's the best I can do.

So, I can't remember anything about an 'anti-electricity' movement in the U.S. in the '50s. At least there isn't a page of 'the threat and danger of GAS' showing some poor girl (who is just trying to make a nice meal for her man) passing out from uncontrolled heat and carbon dioxide generated by her old, busted gas oven (AND bonus points for shadow reference to Nazi death camps!)

But on thinking back, there WAS some kind of national 'push' on electricity. Remember 'Reddy Kilowatt'? He was all over the place in the early '60s.

Man, I don't even know anymore.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

the previous electricity comic we did is here:

http://misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics490.html

Also in there are some pages from a cookbook we picked up that was designed to sell consumers on electric kitchen appliances - pages designed to get the 1950s consumer not only buying electric appliances, but getting their house wired enough to handle it all. Hard to use the electric dishwasher and the fan and the TV when your fuses keep blowing.

It's corporate-driven, to be sure, but it has that extra sheen of actual public service going on that we used to get out of our utilities, back when they felt they had to sell themselves to us. Nowadays it's nothing but rate increases.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Once again Tesla gets the shaft.

Ya know, there's a whole 'food chain' that's just gone. The idea of utilities providing information such as these comics, which required 4-color printing presses, which meant the printers would actually solicit work from anybody who would want to publish so they could stay in business, which meant we got The Monster Times.

All dust.