Stupid Comics

There was a whole ocean's worth of how-to books that were advertised in Golden Age comics, but the central node for most of these were published by Pickwick Company. They printed everything from books on martial arts, speaking foreign languages, and dancing. One of their most infamous ads tried enticing people by yelling, "don't be a left-over", urging the reader to teach themselves to dance or they'll end up as a sad single girl sullying on a giant dinner plate with chicken bones and unchewed peas. So, unless you get a book about tap dancing or swing steps, then your entire social life is doomed to be stranded in the tremendous aftermath of an unsuccessful Thanksgiving party. The amount of books they offer differs between each ad as you could get up to three for a buck, or later on an entire instruction course for about two bucks, so it varied over time and they weren't always specific with how many books you might get in separate promotions. Pickwick's a...

Rulah was probably the most recognized of Fox Features' lineup of jungle girls, mostly because of her wardrobe. Whereas most comic book jiggling jungle juggernauts would dawn the skins of large cats like tigers or cheetahs, Rulah went a step further. First premiering in the abnormally titled series of Zoot which first featured nothing but talking animals and cartoon frolics, the seventh issue switched gears for more action-driven adventures with the debut of Rulah. Jane Dodge was just an average rich orphan flying her plane over the African jungle, but because she was too plastered to pay attention to her fuel line, she crashed landed after parachuting with her clothes on fire. When she sobers up, she discovers the corpse of a poor giraffe that was killed in the crash, so Jane just ripped the flesh off the majestic creature and made herself a scantily ensemble with some parachute scraps. After she completes her spotty new outfit, Jane boots out an evil white lady named Nurla which ...

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...