Today, learn about how a future Oscar-winning filmmaker helped to create an unusual licensing partnership with Marvel in the 1990s that led to the creation of short-lived literal "Dirt bags" with Marvel comics in them.

Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

THE LAUNCH OF DIRT MAGAZINE

One of the interesting aspects of the magazine industry is that if you can find a dedicated audience, you can survive with some relatively niche concepts for magazines. This was a lot easier to do back before the internet was around, but even today, there are magazines out there like Teddy Bears and Friends magazine and Emu Today and Tomorrow. With that in mind, you can only imagine how tempting it is when someone pitches the idea of appealing to a much larger group of people that has somehow been an untapped market. That's what happened in 1988 when Matilda Publications launched Sassy, a magazine pitched at young women who wanted something edgier than Seventeen or YM. It started out well and did even better when purchased by Lang Publications in 1989, with its circulation breaking 400,000 an issue (and soon was over 2 million).

The success of Sassy led to a similar idea, only for young men, called Dirt, which launched in 1992, subtitled "The son of Sassy." The team behind the magazine was an unusual group of young men. Adam Spiegel, who took on the name Spike Jonze, was 16 when he went to work at a BMX bike shop in Maryland. He soon started taking photographs and making videos of BMX bikers in action and he was really good. He struck up a friendship with a couple of editors at Freestylin' Magazine. Mark Lewman and Andy Jenkins weren't much older than Jonze at the time, but they convinced him he could make a career as a professional photographer, so Jonze moved out to California. The three young men became entrepreneurs in the bike scene of the era, forming a BMX club called Club Homeboy and launching an independent magazine of their own called Homeboy.

RELATED: Captain America: One Idea Inspired John Walker & the Avenger's '80s Enemies

This caught Lang Publications' attention and they were hired to create Dirt. Lewman was in charge of the written content, Jenkins as the art director and Jonze was in charge of photos. Jonze, just 22 at the time, described Dirt as, "Guys wanna know about that stuff, even if they're not ready to talk about it. There's a big difference between intaking information and outputting personal information. Guys do want to be educated. There's a definite demand for information." That same Seattle Times article about the magazine described some of what Jonze was referring to when he said a "demand for information" by noting some of the information Dirt was giving out, like "'10 Ways to Sneak Into Shows,' interviews with Ministry's Al Jourgensen and junior welterweight Charles 'The Natural' Murray, and a step-by-step guide to kissing girls ('Don't suck that kiss. . . and carry gum for your breath')." Lewman, who was the Editor-in-Chief, described the magazine like this, "We're all about sports, music, movies, girls and junk food. We combine these topics with current events, celebrity quotes and true-life stories like our current profile of a Los Angeles gang member recently released from prison. We're mostly about a boy's basic concerns-with hard-edged pieces mixed in. ... Most of the stereotypes about guys are just wrong. I don't know any Bills and Teds."

CREATION OF "DIRT BAGS"

Lang Publications used a bold promotional plan for the initial issues of Dirt magazine. The magazines would be offered by themselves, naturally, but they would also be sold in two different polybagged products. One was polybagged with an issue of Sassy as a supplement to Sassy, but the more notable "Dirt bags" were a deal the company made with Marvel Comics to create a combination program to use Marvel issues to promote not only Dirt, but also music from Capitol/EMI records!

In the mid-1980s, cartoonist Steve Purcell was a freelance comic book artist, working for Marvel and also on Steve Moncuse's independent comic book series, Fish Police. Moncouse suggested to Purcell that it'd be good to have another series that could be paired with Fish Police and so Purcell created Sam and Max, two anthropomorphic animal private investigators (and I guess vigilantes, too, really). Sam and Max became popular and had a lot of indie cred and eventually, Purcell ended up at Marvel's creator-owned line of books, Epic, with a new series launching in 1992. That first issue was paired with the first issue of Dirt magazine in the very first "Dirt bag."

However, the much more famous "Dirt bag," by virtue of it being a more popular comic book, was the second one. This time, Dirt got Spider-Man involved!

In 1992, Spectacular Spider-Man #195 was released on its own, part of J.M. DeMatteis and Sal Buscema's excellent run on Spectacular Spider-Man together, with this being the second part of "The Death of Vermin" (Vermin had been a major character for DeMatteis since his iconic "Kraven's Last Hunt" storyline a few years earlier.

The issue, though, was also released as part of a "Dirt Bag," with the second issue of Dirt and a promotional cassette tape from Capitol Records/EMI called Down to Earth: Music You'll Dig.

Here are the songs on the cassette tape, which is an impressively eclectic mix of music. Beastie Boys and Tom Cochrane?

A1 –Sky Cries Mary Moon Dream - Meadow Allegory 4:52

A2 –The Cavedogs - Love Grenade 3:36

A3 –Beastie Boys - Pass The Mic 4:16

A4 –Levitation -  Smile 5:31

A5 –Tom Cochrane - Life Is A Highway 4:24

B1 –Wildside - How Many Lies 5:06

B2 –Mellow Man Ace - What's It Take TO Pull A Hottie (Like You)? 4:17

B3 –The Smithereens - Get A Hold Of My Heart 4:22

B4 –Slik Toxik - White Lies/Black Truth 4:54

B5 –Little Shawn - Funky, Funky Rhymes 3:40

RELATED: Falcon and Winter Soldier: How Contessa Originally Tested Marvel’s Limits

These "Dirt Bags" were difficult to display at comic book stores, so they definitely stood out at the time. While this one was the most famous, there was another Spider-Man one involving Web of Spider-Man #106 and there was also one for Mighty Thor #468, Fantastic Four #376 and Captain America #420 before Dirt went under in 1994.

POST-DIRT SUCCESS

As noted, Jonze was doing BMX videos during this time and that moved on to doing skateboarding videos, as well. Soon, he was asked to see if he could do a music video featuring skateboarding and he did so for Sonic Youth's "100%" in 1992. That led to him getting more offers for music videos and soon, Jonze was one of the most popular music video directors of the 1990s, with his most famous videos being Weezer's "Buddy Holly" and "Undone (The Sweater Song)," The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" and "Sure Shot" and Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" and "Weapon of Choice," not to mention videos for Puff Daddy, Notorious B.I.G. and Björk. He was at the top of the music video field and soon moved into directing, snaring a Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards for his very first feature film, Being John Malkovich, in 2000. In 2013, his film, Her, won Jonze a Best Original Screenplay Oscar (he was nominated for Best Original Song and the film was nominated for Best Picture).

Nowadays, Jonze is the Creative Director of Vice Media.

If anyone has an idea for an interesting piece of comic book history, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!

KEEP READING: Captain America: How One Theory Reshaped the Avenger's Villains