Stupid Comics

A few years after The Phantom became the purple protector of the jungle, the second issue of Fiction House's Jungle Comics introduced a new masked man in 1940, The Red Panther. Writer Tylor Martin had created a similar character in the previous issue named the White Panther who most fans think of as being the Red Panther's original incarnation, but it turns out they are two totally separate superheroes aside from the fact that they were both costumed men who acted as the "great white protector" of Africa because according to American comics writers of the Golden Age only white people were capable of maintaining peace in the jungle. Since both of these different color-themed heroes were the only characters that Taylor Martin was known to have made, it's more than likely that White Panther was just a prototype for Red Panther. The Red Panther made his outfit from the skin from a rare red panther which apparently gave him the powers of super-strength and teleportatio...

One of the first color-themed superheroes was Blue Beetle who went on to have a long legacy in comics, but debuting in the same first issue of Mystery Men Comics by Fox Features in 1939 was a similar character who spawned off a multitude of people using the same stage name called the Green Mask. Each one of these incarnations has someone wearing a green mask even though the rest of their outfits doesn't share the same color. The very first Green Mask was actually a villain who arched X the Phantom Fed, a government agent that was also a master of disguise, and he had his own council of green masked goons as he tries to sabotage relations between America and Malaysia, so X puts on some blackface to thwart Green Mask's scheme who turns out to be a rich sportsman that kills himself upon being captured. The next Green Mask was a genuine hero although his first appearances made his mask seem blue who didn't even have a secret identity and just read about crimes happening in the ...

Starting around 1948, Rubber-For-Molds Inc. decided to start advertising in various comics of different genres like westerns and funny animals to promote their hideous line of masks. Ranging from $3-5 each, these giant rubber head-socks were what Scooby-Doo villains would implement for their capers, even though they are not all of monsters as some of these were of licensed characters like Mickey Mouse and a yellow Donald Duck. Aside from cartoons, the ads would also feature a diverse selection of faces to choose from like clown, old man, old lady, monkey, idiot, and Satan himself, although the one of Santa Claus they bill is never shown in any of them. Some of these choices are purely racist such as their minstrel mask that looks like every blackface gag which wasn't as frowned upon back then as it should have been. Another example was the advertisement's rotating paint jobs they gave for each mask including a causasian Satan and clown. The monkey mask is also suspect as one lo...

Sol Brodsky set up Skywald Publications after leaving Marvel Comics at the dawn of the Bronze Age. Brodsky teamed up with Israel Waldman who founded Super Comics which specialized in reprinting Golden Age comics during the Silver Age such as Phantom Lady and Blue Beetle. Skywald began with doing a troika of black and white horror comic magazines which is an idea they basically lifted Warren Publishing best known for Vampirella, however one other magazine they did featured the mystery man named Hell Rider. This anthology had the title character being a super-strong Vietnam veteran who fought crime as a vigilante, plus as a well-meaning biker gang called The Wild Bunch, and the costumed superhero known as The Butterfly. She was significant as she was the first black superheroine ever printed in comics years before Marvel first introduced Storm. Weirdly enough, Gary Friedrich who was one of the creators behind Bumblebee went on to work for Marvel in creating their character of Ghost Rider...

A few years after the Justice Society had already gotten together, Harvey Comics decided to pull their own Avengers Assemble moment in Fall of 1942 less than a year after America had entered WWII. In the pages of Issue 23 of their Speed Comics anthology, the Black Cat segment had the ferocious feline in the middle of an all-star crossover drawn by Argentinian artist Arturo Cazeneuve who was simultaneously working for Harvey as well as DC Comics. Based slightly on actual events, this particular story was inspired by the Bombardment of Ellwood and the Great LA Air Raid, except this time the hype is real in the fictional Harvey Universe. Hollywood's own heroine Black Cat who in reality is starlet Linda Turner has to defend her home turf from invading Japanese forces. Now, this was in the thick of WWII, and American's were fiercely ticked at Japan for Pearl Harbor, so they did refer to them as Japs and drew them with yellow skin and buck teeth as was common among most Asian stereot...

A pair of wireless space phones for one buck sounds like a pretty good deal for 1954, but Consumer Mart's ad that ran in the dawn of the Silver Age gave off the impression that you were getting some kind of high-tech next generation communication device. Hell, all anyone need to do in the 50s to make their product appear like it was scientifically advance was just to label it as space-something. The Secret Code Vibra Planet Space Walkie-Talkies which are not only "fun and thrills for all" and "thrills and fun galore", both of which were used in the same comic book advertisement as if there was any difference between the two terms. Not only that but you can get a free top-secret space-o-gram code as an exclusive bonus feature which is the exact same thing that anyone else receive if they were daft enough to fall for this. How this particular space phone worked is a mystery because it's not one of those pair of cups tied together with a single string to carry ...