Stupid Comics

Having one supervillain picking up the world domination gig after a previous one was ultimately defeated is a rare occurrence in comics, but this was almost unheard of in 1945 with Planet Comics Issue #36. The previous few dozen issues had the actual god of war Mars in his own segment in the comic where he would possess people and cause discord throughout the galaxy. His last scheme had nearly succeeded as he had caused all the universities on Earth to be destroyed, but the clever heroine Mysta Of The Moon was able to use her accumulated knowledge and handy robot partner to thwart Mars once and for all. In Mysta's first solo adventure we see her match wits with a totally different villain who was featured in Fiction House's other title of Rangers Comics. Super-Brain was the adversary of the Rangers Of Freedom, a special military group put together in WWII to fight this bizarre telepath who had actually set up the Axis Powers to start the whole war in the first place. Super-Brai...

Racism was unfortunately not something that Great Comics Publishing in the early 1940s could keep out of their pages what with WWII going on and anti-Asian propaganda playing a huge part during this time. One such character was created by someone going by the name “Char-Lee“. Shanghai Shea is an American pilot in China referred to as an Ace of the Orient who with his thick glasses-wearing Chinese partner Wing Low is asked to lead the Purple Dragon Squadron against the opposing Japanese forces. Shanghai has a plan to get captured by the Japanese navy, but Wing Low stows away on his plane and helps free him. The whole Shanghai Shea adventure is deep in nationalism and dehumanizes the Japanese with our Ace character referring to them as yellow gangsters, but since he’s the shining white knight in a foreign land he gets away with the occasional xenophobia. Other incidents of racism run throughout both Great and Choice Comics, one of which was the less-than-heroic efforts Andrew Jackson use...

Fiction House's Planet Comics had various stories involving the planet Mars, but the actual Roman god of war that the planet was named after got his own recurring segment in the pages of this sci-fi anthology. Starting in Issue #15, the nasty deity went around possessing various people in a non-disclosed future in his spiritual form and caused them to do anything from telecar accidents to petty squabbles all in the effort to raise social discord and civil unrest. This nearly caused world wars if it weren't for the strength of certain mortals who could resist his powers of possession. In this new space age, the Solar System has been colonized by humans, so the god Mars had several planets to play around with as he strives to flame the fires of war which were the source of his power. He was constantly hopping from one world after the other like Jupiter and Saturn. This led to several noteworthy situations where an army of female soldiers take on a battalion of beast-men, gladiato...

We've talked about the Rangers Of Freedom whose nemesis was the mysterious villain called Super-Brain. The highly domed big-brained boy first hypnotized an army of people to go crazy and cause chaos in the streets of America. The Rangers stopped him, but Mr. Brain got away. After his first caper in Issue #1 of Fiction House's Rangers Comics in 1941 he continued in the following issue, but for some reason the narration says the story takes place in 1948, so whether this was a typo or a hypothetical look into the future is never explained. Super-Brain zips back to his hideout in the Rockies where he contacts none other than Adolf Hitler who the villain refers to as Schickelgruber(which is supposed to be his real name). Over the radio, Super-Brain reveals he's the one who got Hitler in his position of power and that he wants him to invade the United States. The Rangers join the fight against the unstoppable Nazis soldiers who are totally immune to death. The U.S. Army captures...

Starting in the Silver Age, this peculiar comic ad endured the market for at least three generations. Billed as Sea Monkeys, these little suckers were really Saskatchewan brine shrimp put together by notorious swindler Harold von Braunhut who also made the outrageous x-ray glasses. Your special "Sea Circus" was provided by the Honor House Prod. Corporation who helped solidify the scam that consumed comic book readers. Some of the initial Sea Circuses were really just paper cutout of a layered stand of a cardboard audience marveling at a fake tank with weird water monsters. Honor House took it up a notch by advertising them as actual living creatures. Just add water, but not in the cartoon way where you just put a single drop on it and ta-da, instant pets! The ad only mentions providing you with the dried-up doodads, so you have to go out and get your own expensive tank or fishbowl. After getting the buggers in the mail for the low price of a single buck, you can hatch them wi...

To start out their new Rangers Comics title which was supposed to show the "positive" side of colonialism, Fiction House had the first few issues of their pioneer-themed anthology starring the Rangers Of Freedom, so much so that the genuine title of the first seven issues was Rangers Of Freedom until they changed it to simply Rangers Comics in Issue #8. This was enterprising for a comics publisher to introduce an entire team of heroes during the fall of 1941 just before America joined in WWII. Biff Barkley, Peter Cabot, and Tex Russell were showing off their physiques at a public demonstration just as lunatics were busting out of asylums and radicals are using the chaos to protest American democracy. After getting a thanks from the recently crowned Miss America, the boys are hired by the FBI to become a special squadron called the Rangers of Freedom to fight this madness solely based on the fact that they're all physically fit and thus somehow immune to the mental waves o...