Meat Loaf was, for music fans, especially those rooted in the 1970s, synonymous with a legacy of powerful rock ballads. His stardom was buttressed by an onscreen role in the 1975 movie musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which led to his 14x Platinum-selling 1977 vinyl magnum opus album, “Bat Out of Hell.” However, the singer—born Marvin Lee Aday, who passed away on January 20 at the age of 74—enjoyed a more obscure claim to fame with young comic book readers in the late-1980s from, of all the things, an illustrated Marvel Comics advertisement!
The time was early 1987, an era during which Meat Loaf’s discography was still consistently growing, but was hardly wreaking the kind of chart-topping havoc that “Bat Out of Hell” achieved, notably with “Dead Ringer for Love,” a 1981 duet with Cher, being his last proper hit at that point. Consequently, any advertising on the back of the singer’s stardom aimed at young comic book readers receiving a pop culture education during the ostentatious MTV era seemed odd. Nevertheless, Meat manifested as an illustrated comic book for a full-page advertisement boastfully titled: Meat Loaf: Humongous Rock Star of the Universe in “Heroes Helping Heroes.”
The colorful, eye-popping splash ad (seen just below), while briefly run, became widespread when it appeared with uniform prominence on the back cover of most Marvel Comic releases. Contextually, it arrived six years before Meat Loaf’s unlikely chart-topping comeback off his 1993 international smash hit, “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” meaning that most members of the younger demographic the ad wanted to reach were likely scratching their heads wondering if the singer’s entrée-evocative nomenclature indicated that he was even a real person. Indeed, sans the header and a guitar bearing Meat Loaf’s name, his pictures better resembled the explosively abrasive legendary comedian Sam Kinison. However, all that anyone needed to understand was that the singer was someone of note, who, by some sublime power, was able to instantly conjure a lineup of Marvel Comics’ A-list heroes—Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man and Hulk, with members of the Avengers, Fantastic Four and X-Men—who, joined by some Special Olympians, helped segue into the ad’s call to action.
The ad’s unbridled ubiquity on Marvel’s monthly milieu of print releases was justified by its philanthropic purpose since it promoted a mail-away offer for a Meat Loaf maxi-single (offered on cassette or vinyl) titled “A Time for Heroes,” which benefited the 1987 Summer Special Olympic Games. Indeed, a portion of the collected $5 (plus $2 shipping) per order was designated as proceeds for the event, for which the song served as the official theme. Thus, “A Time for Heroes” was one of several charity recordings that would be released during the 1980s, reflecting a trend practiced by famous artists kicked off by British supergroup Band Aid’s 1984 African relief record, “Do They Know it’s Christmas,” which would be mirrored stateside when Michael Jackson took point on USA for Africa’s 1985 hit, “We Are the World.” However, this (far more obscure) offering was only made available to order until September 30, 1987, so anyone still interested would be well-advised to save that “check or money order.”
Here, the Marvel-ad-offered release was a hard-driving rock ballad in which Meat Loaf powered through lyrics credited to Jon Lyons, Rik Emmett and M. Scott Sotebeer against the guitars of Queen’s Brian May. Additionally, in a delightful bit of randomness evocative of the ‘80s, the lyrically driven main song was accompanied by two separate synthesizer-centric, drum-machine-driven instrumental versions of “A Time for Heroes” (single and extended versions) performed by the pioneering German electronic group Tangerine Dream.
While the intrinsically 1980s intrigue offered by the “A Time for Heroes” maxi-single (one echoed by the style of its Marvel ad) would fail to blip the charts, the Special Olympics event it aimed to support would nevertheless come to fruition. It was held from July 31 through August 8 of 1987 at The University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana, where over 4,700 athletes competed. Perhaps, in that sense, Meat Loaf and his Marvel companions successfully accomplished the ad’s goal of giving “the real heroes” everything they had to offer.
