Super-Cool Site
The Marvel Comics Hostess Fruit Pie Homepage

Perhaps the greatest thing about the Internet is that there's room for every crazy obsession and interest that one can think of. As is shown elsewhere in this issue, the fact that you can type in "farts.com" and actually reach a website devoted to FARTS says a great deal about how the internet culture can expand to a near-infinite space, providing room for everything from naked women to the collected works of William Shakespeare.

Occupying its own wacky corner of the Internet is Jim and Mike Smith's Marvel Comics Hostess Fruit Pies Homepage. To the uninitiated, the connection between comic books and flaky pies with delicious fruit filling may seem odd. But to those in the know, the mere sight of the two entities together will bring back fond memories of the greatest heroes of the Marvel Universe opposing enemies cosmic, mystical and mundane through liberal doses of tasty Hostess Fruit Pies in ads appearing in Marvel comic books throughout the late seventies and early eighties. With titles like "The Phoomie Goonies," "The Ricochet Monster," and "Brains Over Brawn," these mini-adventures conjured a spirit of adventure and a corny absurdity at the same time. Any adversary, no matter how powerful or pathetic, could be stopped with a mere taste of a Hostess Fruit Pie, in any one of a number of flavors.

The Brothers Smith have devoted their site to collecting these campy ads in one convenient place. Each file is available for full viewing, and their archive currently holds 11 ads featuring such Marvel stalwarts as Captain America, Iron Man, and the Fantastic Four, with many more on the way. Also on the site is a list of handy Marvel and Hostess-related links as well as Jim Smith's report from the Chicago Comicon, where he and his brother delivered a copy of a parody fruit pie ad featuring the Thunderbolts to writer Kurt Busiek. This ad rocketed the Smiths to cult fame status with its inclusion in issue 9 of the actual THUNDERBOLTS series as a mock ad. To view the Thunderbolts ad, you have to buy the issue, a great comic that's only enhanced by the presence of great comedy. But to keep up with events in the Marvel alterniverse in which great comic heroes defeat every foe with Hostess Fruit Pies, look no further than the Marvel Comics Hostess Fruit Pies Homepage. There are crazier sights to be seen on the Internet, but few are as absurdly funny and enthusiastically packaged.