So, you want to get hep to the amazing new craze that's sweeping the nation - roller skating. Well, that's admirable. Perhaps some roller skate manufacturer will engage a comic book company to produce a factual and informative guide that covers the basics of both roller skating and how it can be of benefit to individuals and the community at large! But surely, that's too much to ask.
...or is it?
Yes! Learn the secrets of roller skating and men will service you on bended knee! Maybe that's not quite what Chicago Roller Skates had in mind, but hey, here it is.
Gosh, what kind of exhibition could THIS be? As a high school student in a medium-sized midwestern city I haven't learned how to assemble words into meaningful sentences, apparently! Wait a minute - I think they're talking about skating - but on ROLLERS? Well I never. Come on, Tubby Jimmy Olsen, let's check it out!
Expert roller skaters must dress the part - tuxedo and cummerbund for the men, teeny tiny skating dress for the ladies. This medium-sized midwestern city won't see this much leg again until 1971's Great Bikini, Miniskirt & Hot Pants Freakout!
Strange words like "Choctaw" and "Bracket" mystify the students as actual human beings scoot over a high school gym while wearing roller skates. I wouldn't have thought it possible, says one easily impressed student.
Ice skating? PSHAW. This new "roller" skating is MUCH more beautiful and versatile! It's better to watch, too! Sure, it's KIND of like ice skating, but the Chicago Roller Skate Company wants to assure us that roller skating is superior in every way.
I guess you've all been a bunch of squares. And let me point out that AFTER you go into the skating rink you will STILL be a bunch of squares.
These Chicago brand rental skates feel so comfortable! Which is good, because the roller rink will be renting out that same pair of skates for the next twenty or thirty years.
But who will instruct our eager teens into the ways of the skating world? The rink instructor, a genial, dapper fellow who apparently makes a decent living as a roller skate instructor, is able to give them the full history of roller skating right up to today, where it has become one of the most popular sports in the world. Please just take my word on that last part.
Skating is just the reverse of walking, except you go in the same direction, and sometimes apparently you have an intimate moment with yourself, as we see in the bottom two panels.
Planking, owling, duckfacing, and now Bill is shoving his body up against the wall and pretending to roller skate. I can't keep track of these new teenage crazes!
I believe this is the first time a comic book used the phrase 'the eager quartet had completely mastered starting and stroking.' Later iterations of this phrase would appear in slightly more adult-oriented comic book material.
Fatigued from your frenzied skating activity? Why not visit the rink's appealing refreshment center and have a Pepsi (tm)? Also I think they have popcorn, and that pizza has been under the heat lamps for at least four hours so it should be just about right.
True skating fans like nothing better than giving tips to total strangers. It says so right here! That rude guy who told you to get lost obviously was NOT a real skating fan.
The kids need their own skates because let's face it, somebody else's feet have been in those rental skates. Whereas if you buy your own pair of Chicago Skates - the greatest name in roller skates - your particular phobic disorder will never be triggered by the thought of the smelly, sweaty, dirty, unwashed feet of strangers, moist with feet-stink, lint and gunk between the toes, befouling the.... oh. Sorry.
Taking care of your new skates is important! Use a little oil on the clamp screw, clean bearings with gasoline and repack with grease, have your points lubricated every 15,000 miles, pull the operating slide back with the forefinger until it has engaged the bolt and a round has been chambered, and keep the action lock nut tight against the plate! There. Now get out on the rink and fall flat on your face.
"The rink's real (NOTE TO WRITER; INSERT TEENAGE SLANG DESCRIPTOR HERE), isn't it Bill?"
"Of course, Ann! Think I'd bring you here so often if it wasn't... such a cheap date?"
"Wait, did I say that last part out loud?"
One of the mysterious unexplained facts of nature is how roller skating can help you to learn ice skating, but ice skating CANNOT help you learn roller skating. In fact, science has proven if you take up ice skating first you are only WASTING YOUR TIME. You don't want to waste your time, do you?
Remember the roller rink is no place for clowns! Their giant clown shoes simply cannot be adapted for roller skate use!
And soon the entire community is jamming roller skating into every possible aspect of life. School, church, boys clubs - even the gravely ill are strapped into a pair of skates and shoved onto the rink to shamble and stumble around and around and around until the dull rolling roar of thousands of skate wheels burrows into your brain and it's all you can do to make your way to the shag-carpeted retaining wall and cling to the remnants of your sanity. And don't even get me started on the music; it's as if all the guy in the booth has is the Eagles 'Heartache Tonight' and 'The Hokey Pokey'. How many times must we hear 'The Hokey Pokey'? I can't take it any more, I tell you! Enough!
Sorry, having a mid-70s skating party flashback there. GONNA BE A HEARTACHE TONIGHT, HEARTACHE TONIGHT I KNOW
And as the brain-washed, reportedly rabies-afflicted townspeople file into the compulsory roller skating exhibition, we see our four teenagers, once aimless and without purpose, now dazzling the crowd with their super awesomeness, and their tuxedos and teeny skating dresses. Don't you want to be super awesome too?
If YOU want to have a wonderful time and maybe fall down a few times, buy CHICAGO Roller Skates. The choice of champions! Not responsible for head injuries or mental illness after too many repeats of 'The Hokey Pokey'. Okay now. This next one is an 'all-skate'...
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