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Madonna '80s HIV infocomic: Who's that girl? On AIDS?

Ethan Persoff collects and scans ultraweird vintage comics, and hosts them on his ep.tc archive site.

He’s just uploaded four new gems, including an AIDS prevention infocomic starring Madonna. The booklet was distributed on one night only, during a 1987 Madison Square Gardens concert (holy crap, that was twenty years ago!). Link.

While you’re on Ethan’s site, check out new archive addition Johnny Gets the Word. Ethan describes it as a “Grim but wonderfully realized 1965 VD comic. Of particular note, this is by the same people who made the anti-heroin 1966 HOOKED comic. Dates suggest they made this VD one first. Who knew that to be able to win a government contract to draw a comic on drugs you have to earn it by drawing one on syphilis first.”

He’s also posted two freshly-unearthed 1950s bomb scare comics. Ethan describes If an A-Bomb Falls (1951) as, “a blast on every page. I love the faces. Some of the saddest sulking ever shown in a comic. Shelters, worry, etc.”

And about the civil defense HOWTO, “H-Bomb and YOU” (1954). Ethan ‘splains: “Includes instructions for children to spy on overhead planes – and do also note the armbands.”

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