PALISADES PARK: The Grooviest DC COMICS Promotion of the Silver Age
HERO-A-GO-GO! “Last night, I took a walk after dark: a swingin’ place called Palisades Park…” — UPDATED 6/5/26: Summer’s not here yet, but the summer season is. Perfect time to reprint this piece, excerpted from Michael Eury’s superb book Hero-A-Go-Go! published by TwoMorrows. (We serialized the book when it came out in 2017.) Hero-A-Go-Go! is one of my personal faves and you can click here to order it, directly from TwoMorrows. Dig it. — Dan — Every Saturday for 13 weeks, we’re serializing Back Issue editor Michael Eury’s upcoming book Hero-A-Go-Go! — a ginchy exploration of the Silver Age and Swingin’ Sixties. For other installments, click here. And you can order the book here. — As a kid, sometimes the ads in comics were as captivating as the stories themselves, especially when you’d be reading through back issues — which for me generally meant the Batman comics of the ’60s. You’d come across things that were no longer available, making that desire to have that thing that much richer. Paging through those issues, I’d inevitably come across an ad for Palisades Park featuring Superman or Batman (or Wonder Woman). Come on, an amusement park featuring Batman and Superman? That’s a special corner of nirvana right there. Thing is, I didn’t really understand that it was less than an hour away from where we lived in New Jersey. Not that it mattered: By the time these ads pulled me under their sway, it had closed down anyway. Taking all that in, I’ve looked at those ads with a certain wistfulness. If I’d been born five years earlier, I almost certainly would have made it there. At least I like to think so, though maybe my Mom would argue that the Asbury Park boardwalk was a lot closer. Anyway, I was really pleased that Michael Eury decided to feature Palisades Park in Hero-A-Go-Go! and there was no way I wasn’t going to pick off an excerpt to share here. Here’s a truncated Q&A with Vince Gargiulo, the park’s most prominent historian and operator of PalisadesPark.com. Oh, and enjoy a couple of videos as well — including one that Batman collectibles maven Art Cloos found on YouTube. — By MICHAEL EURY Michael Eury: Since Superman was Palisades Park’s pitchman in DC Comics throughout the Sixties, did an actor dressed as Superman ever appear...
Read more
