Opening with a line from a nursery rhyme written in 1590 is a once in a lifetime email opener, because Holy Cringe, Batman! Otherwise, Heroes For Sale is a based shop run by fun people.

An iamb is a fundamental metrical unit in poetry consisting of two syllables: an unstressed (or short) syllable followed by a stressed (or long) syllable, creating a “da-DUM” rhythm.

You may be familiar with these words:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you.

That would be the modern standard version to a rhyme found in a 1784 chapbook of foundational English nursery rhymes titled, Gammer Gurton’s Garland: or, The Nursery Parnassus, edited by literary antiquary Joseph Ritson.

The rose is red, the violet’s blue,
The honey’s sweet, and so are you.
Thou are my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,
And Fortune said it shou’d be you.

The popular rhyme builds on poetic conventions that are traceable as far back as 1590 in Edmund Spenser‘s epic The Faerie Queene:

It was upon a Sommers shynie day,
When Titan faire his beames did display,
In a fresh fountaine, farre from all mens vew,
She bath’d her brest, the boyling heat t’allay;
She bath’d with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.

So, how about that, aye? Write something sweet and popular and the parodic variants will never cease!

LIT-B must play devil’s advocate now because it should be noted, Heroes for Sale also used A.I. to create an advertisement for the same sale, which one astute comic artist and reader, @leighapparently pointedly commented on; “Hey, can you not use AI-generated art please? It kind of flies in the face of supporting independent comic artists.”

An agreeable statement. I’ll take dredged up centuries-old poetry over AI slop any time.