Stupid Comics

As hypocritic as the Comics Code Authority was when it was first established in Oct. 1954, there was a series of comics that was actually titled Approved Comics. The strange thing is that it ceased publications just a few months before the Comics Code went into effect which was set up to cater to the panic that moral monarchs like Dr. Fredrick Wertham set up in the early 50s with his book Seduction Of The Innocent preaching that youth were being corrupted by horror and crime comics that went outside the accepted standards and would only allow approved comics to be circulated. Leading up to this was an imprint of Ziff-Davis Publishing called Approved Comics that started in 1950 which included titles like Crime Clinic, Weird Thrillers, Tops In Adventure, and the original Cloak And Dagger. Eventually, Ziff-Davis sold several of their titles to St. John Publications which were simply labeled Approved Comics, even though it wasn't titled that. Within the span of six months from Mar.-Aug...

Pickwick Books strikes again! After WWII they plastered dozens of issues with this 2-in-1 ad for two totally different lines. One of which was for self-taught language books including Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Polish with Pickwick claiming this would be the best way to plan a postwar campaign whether it would be for business or pleasure. Considering that they used a picture grab of a leggy samba dancer would indicate Pickwick intended this to sell more to lonely former soldiers, especially when it boasts that Spanish is only good for romance and opportunity, although you might want to dedicate more than just 10 minutes a day to it for a foreign language to sink in. The ad also boasts that it will offer a set of books to learn numerous fighting styles, one of which is plain old "scientific" boxing, while the others are for "police" wrestling and "police" jiu-jitsu. Now how police wrestling and jiu-jitsu are different from whatever type they were...

Supergirl creator Otto Binder got his inspiration for Superman's cousin from one of his earlier creations, Mary Marvel. Similar to She-Ra, she was the long-lost twin sister of an already established male hero, could transform into her super mode by saying the magic words, and had been considered to be the strongest mortal girl in each of their stories. Mary Marvel was Mary Bromfield after she was adopted by rich parents and was really Billy Batson's sister who she reunites with after revealing his secret identity as Captain Marvel. Mary says the word "Shazam" and becomes the first female member of the Marvel Family, and is revealed she could harness the powers of six mythical heroines whereas Capt. Marvel got his from six other heroes, the acronym for which spelled out Shazam. One of Mary's superpowers that were different from her brother was they replaced the courage of the Greek hero Achiles with the beauty of the Roman goddess of the dawn Aurora. Now, beauty is...

St. John Publications had plenty of original titles, but they did do reprints of existing characters from former comics publishers. Some of these were renamed like Lucky Coyne into Jinx Jordon, or Master Key into Rod Holmes, one however was extremely bizarre and that was the Blue Monk. Originally, the character was a short man conveniently named Shorty Wilson who was a former football player who led a crusade against crime fairly reminiscent of The Shadow but under the name of Black Dwarf in 1944 from Chesler Comics. Now how a person of his stature was able to get away with keeping a secret identity is a big question, especially since his outfit didn't cover his face at all, so unless there was a large population of short persons in his city then Black Dwarf didn't have a big crowd to hide in. Cut ahead to 1948, and St. John gave the Black Dwarf a fresh paint job and called him the Blue Monk, even though he was still a diminutive character. Originally, Black Dwarf had his own i...

Atlas/Seaboard founder Martin Goodman built his company to get back at his former company of Marvel Comics to create his own line of comics. Some of these were slightly original like The Cougar, Planet Of The Vampires, and Ironjaw. Other Atlas titles were blatant knockoffs of Marvel characters such as The Brute who was the Atlas version of Hulk, Wulf The Barbarian borrowing from Conan, and Hands Of The Dragon copied Master Of Kung Fu. Two other Atlas comics began as their own creation, but both of them eventually caved into the Marvel formula despite their limited run. One was John Targitt who was a secret agent that already had a mask and spandex duds and in the last issue of his run decides to go with the moniker of Man-Stalker after dealing with the villainous Prof. Death. The other Atlas character who got Marvelized was The Scorpion whose first two issues were written and drawn by Howard Chaykin and took place in the early 20th Century where a daring pilot named Moro Frost used the...

Sometimes thought of as the first comics superheroine, Fantomah was beaten out by the Magician From Mars by a few months when she premiered in the second issue of Fiction House's Jungle Comics in 1940. Fantomah was created by Fletcher Hanks, although he used the pen name Barclay Flagg while making her, and she was not your common jungle girl stereotype, or at least in the beginning. One of Hanks' other creations was Stardust the Space Wizard who could pretty much do anything the plot needed for him to do. Fantomah was equally overpowered as she was referred to as "Mystery Woman Of The Jungle", and not in a female Tarzan kind of way but more of a modern-day living goddess which the opening narration for nearly every episode claimed she was the most remarkable woman ever known. Fantomah appears to be a hot blonde in a revealing black negligee which is unusual as far as jungle girl attire is usually just a roadkill bikini, but when she needs to get aggressive Fantomah tu...