There's a new "most annoying comic book ad" in town

The above image is from a new promotion for the TBS series "King of the Nerds".  This has been running as the back cover ad for a number of comic books recently, and it's distinctive enough that it's something I notice every time around.  There are plenty of annoying comic book ads, but it take a special combination of pervasiveness, repetition and design to rise to the level that this new ad reaches.

A while ago, I posted some thoughts on what I consider to be the most annoying comic book ad of all time - the Gap ads of the late 1990s that featured kids in strange poses wearing bright Gap clothes: namely the one you see below:

There are a few similarities between the two ads beyond the physical look of the piece, but the thing they have most in common, to me, is that they both feature people with weird, forced expressions to the point that I want to punch the models.  That's right - I want to punch that kid in the face.  He's got to be like 25 at this point, so it's less illegal than it used to be.

With the "King of Nerds" ad, it's again the expression that rubs me the wrong way.  It's the drawn up mouth, the crooked smirk, the shifty eyes...pretty much everything that's going on here.

I don't even care that much about the tedium that is the 'crown-made-from-game-controllers' joke to the image.  I just don't like the guy, even though I have no idea who he is and I've never watched a minute of the show he's apparently on.  I suppose that this post is a look into some of my psychoses.

I doubt that I ever would have watched the show, regardless of the type of ad they ran for it.  TBS seems to be trying to capitalize on the success of shows like "The Big Bang Theory", which I'm not a fan of at any rate, and maybe there's a market for something like this, though it doesn't seem to be for me.  The show is hosted by some of the actors from the "Revenge of the Nerds" movies, which I enjoyed for what they were, and that's nice.  But even if the show was a fantastic piece of art, I'd have a hard time tuning in because of this ad.  It just drives me crazy, and since it's crept into the realm of "memorable comic book ads" for me, I'll remember it forever.  FOREVER!  This is my curse.