James Lileks, the chariots of the Blogosphere and the horses thereof, has added a new section to his Institute of Official Cheer, over at lileks.com. It’s called Comic Ads in Comics.

In the past James has made us wince through revealing the amazing awfulness of pictures of food in old recipe books, and interior decoration as practiced in the 1970s (apparently entirely by blind people). But I think this new section may be the most painful of them all. Ugly, mendacious and pathetic all at once, the old comic ads from comic books are like one of those hypnotherapy sessions on TV crime shows, where the traumatized victim screams “No! No!” as the police hypnotist tries to pull some horrible, suppressed memory out of his subconscious, like a dentist yanking a healthy tooth. Anybody who spent any time with comics in their childhood (and I read a few, though only when they were given to me. The folks wouldn’t let us spend money on the things. I see their point now) will recognize those ads. Post-traumatic stress ensues.

I think I’ve mentioned previously that, before I set my personal sights on immortality through literature, I dreamed of being an artist. I drew incessantly as a kid. I had no high-brow pretensions. I wanted to draw stuff that looked like stuff. I wanted to be another Norman Rockwell or Howard Pyle. I thought I might be a cartoonist, or a commercial artist.

So I can imagine myself snagging an entry-level job with Marvel or DC, and being assigned to draw these abominations as part of my apprenticeship. It reminds me of something I used to say, when I was contemplating (theoretically) what it would be like to try to be a professional actor—“If you’re really lucky, you get to prostitute yourself.”

All in all, I think I prefer being a failed novelist to being a failed artist.

(I mean, “Captain Tootsie.” Nothing could justify that. Nothing.)