MAD AD : BLACK LIGHT MAGIC!

Huge Gernsback's Komos Publications and its four-color offering Superworld Comics certainly knew what branding was for. Presented here is an ad for the Superworld Black Light Outfit, which sounds like a superheroic accouterment but which is actually a black light and some rocks, paints and probably some mysterious stains you can only witness in an otherwise-quotidian situation which has recently turned terrifying.

While the ad claims that "science has made it possible  for you to transform your home into an actual Superworld," what it actually means is that you can see how many items of furniture someone has recently jizzed on, right in the comfort of your own home. It's comforting that the ad insists that the black light outfit is harmless to eyes and skin, particularly as the accompanying illustration portrays said organs emitting painful needles of white-hot radiation.

Still, what other mail-order device could simultaneously be so essential to both a successful party and to law enforcement? Handcuffs, for one.

For the equivalent of $50 cash in contemporary prices, recipients of the black light outfit can transform their homes into veritable "Superworlds" or, as the places I have most often seen black lights employed are frequently titled, veritable "Shimmie's," "Spearmint Rhinos" and "Hustler Clubs."

Your Superworld party will be the talk of the town, primarily as every neighbor will gossip for months about whose hands, pants and shirtfronts displayed incriminating fluorescent stains after they returned from "getting more ice" halfway through the evening. Look, black lights make semen fluoresce and if you don't find that inherently funny, then I don't know what to do with you.

Things which also fluoresce under blacklight: Detergent, tonic, toothpaste, clever forgeries and rave kids from 90's cop procedurals. This IS a great party trick!