Stupid Comics

Astound your friends by spellbinding voluptuous girls into going to the prom with you. This little ad ran in comics which was one of several that tried to tempt dull-witted youngsters into tossing their milk money. They get extra points for combining the unpatented x-ray specs with the totally ineffective hypno coin into a single product. But the bogus claim of brainwashing cuties in cocktail dresses into your unwilling thrall will only leave your average single boy with serious blue balls, not to mention probably a restraining order from their would-be girlfriend.

Canadian publisher Bell Features had its own myriad of superheroes during the Golden Age, one of which was a scantily clad heroine called the Polka-Dot Pirate. Created by Ross Mendes, this buxom swashbuckler is said to have the powers of strength and flight, but really was just a fit fighter in an unforgettable outfit. She either had her own feature in titles like Dime Comics or was the main star of a segment labeled under the Harbor Police. Taking place in Queen City, Polka-Dot would confound murderers by joining a boat race, baffled blackmailers, and teaming up with her hunky police friend Ricky. The vigilante vixen's main claim was her naval-revealing outfit that one villain referred to her as a fugitive from a costume fire sale. Despite her clashing getup, the fashionably challenged crimefighter tried to make the Great White North a slightly less boring place to live.

Like lots of popular superheroes during the 40s, Captain Marvel was no exception in having his own official fan club, but the Man of Shazam's fame spreads all the way to Mars. The Big Red Cheese gets residents from the Big Red Planet who want to join his Fawcett Comics endorsed club. Even though he's supposed to have the wisdom of Solomon, Capt. Marvel figures it would be a better idea to ask some of his random fanboys if they don't mind having aliens as part of the gang. All you get for joining is a membership card, but this comic ad makes it look like the Galactic Federation from Star Trek first got started when whole planets of Shazam geeks realized that universal harmony is achievable by being comic book nerds.

Before Jack Kirby created Kamandi, the King made an installment for the first issue of Harvey Comics' genre-bending Alarming Tales. The Last Enemy has a 20th Century scientist creating a time machine, and fast forwards to the non-existent town of Montford, CT in 2514, He discovers that the entire world has been inherited by anthropomorphic animals after humans fought themselves to extinction. The scientist gets captured by rodent soldiers that want him to build them a-bombs to take out the warring armies of dogs and cats. He is rescued by the dog army who also have part-time bears working with them, and the canine corps convince him to give them the tech specs for a nuke instead. The scientist reasons that the dogs are better at organizing other species together, leaving with the lame joke that the world is better off "going to the dogs than the rats" as he heads back to his own doomed timeline. How a time traveler who has already gone forward centuries to witness that hu...

Once again, Captain Lazybones Marvel decided to leave all the fighting the Nazis to you, the commonfolk with no superpowers. As patriotic as Americans can get, they're not going to enlist and cross the ocean just to get back at one German litterbug. This comic ad shows a single Nazi spy somehow easily infiltrating US soil with the sole purpose of climbing up a building, writing "victory" on an 8.5x11, rip it to pieces, and throwing out of a window just to jeer random passersby. Captain Marvel happens to show up to bust his nose, as opposed to using the Speed of Mercury to run to the other side of the planet and arrest Hitler within a few minutes, which is totally in his powerset. The main message behind this 1941 ad was to talk kids into recycling, making Captain Marvel the original Captain Planet. As good an idea it might be, the ad pretty much fails using a godlike entity as a spokesman meant to promote a mundane effort.

TNT Todd was a federal agent whose first handful of cases had him as a two-fisted gumshoe during his appearances in 1939's Keen Detective Funnies. Entering into 1940, the overlords at Centaur Publishing decided to transform him into a costumed superhero when Todd is revealed to also be a scientific genius who during an experiment mixing TNT with Magnetic X-19, resulting in an explosion of purple gas that gave him the power to shoot death rays from his hands, along with the ability to fly. He then takes a leave from the FBI to be a masked figure in a steel suit zooming around town and blowing stuff up just to prove his how much how badass he is. He uses his new mutant powers to stop a gang of thugs from using bombers in an attempt to rob the US Mint where Todd absorbs electricity making him a living dynamo. In his next caper, Todd somehow increases his powers to include telescopic vision in helping him defeat the nefarious Baron Gore, mostly just by zapping all the baddies into dust...

Prompt shipping? Whoopee! During the Golden Age of spies, comic ads tried to employ adolescents into their underground by creating a junior division of G-Men, here labeled as a G-Boy. A repeating cap pistol which would probably bring about nightmares for parents from A Christmas Story. Army officers didn't carry firearms with that kind of handle. Dunno how "keen" red blooded American boys were on shooting foreign invaders back then, but they probably would rather save their cash for a year's worth of Jumbo Comics instead of this.

Line of sight doesn't seem to apply to the makers of the amazing invention known as the Magic Art Reproducer. In case you hadn't guessed, this is merely an overhead lamp where you could just draw over the projected image. But comic ads in the 1950s made it seem like you could be Carmine Infantino just by spending the equivalent of a whole month's allowance back then. Even someone with no artistic talent could see this is just a scheme cooked up by an unlicensed desk lamp manufacturer, least of all getting hot blondes to pose for art in your bedroom.

Cartoon Art was a British publisher of comics in the mid-1940s, most of which were modeled after American superheroes. One such hero was the Batman-themed masked man, Speed Gale, who also sported a cowl with pointy ears. He and his sidekick Garry(if that's an alias is unknown)use a special elixir Speed created that gave them both super-strength along with some flight ability. Speed's adventures included getting repeatedly captured by villains like the Atomic Gang, and then finally defeating them in crotch locks. The most glaring piece of copyright violation was using a modified Batman logo for the cover of their own title.

In 1941, the Golden Age of comics was in full swing, and more than a few companies tried their hand at creating their own line of titles. One was Great Comics Publications, which only created two titles, the titular Great Comics, and Choice Comics. Both series lasted three issues each, with their best effort to appeal to readers was to have them join the Great Zarro Victory Club. Aside from a club pin featuring Zarro the Great(a superhero with only the power of flight), there wasn't much else enticing youngsters to draft into the Great Comics army. Imagine, you're a kid in 1940’s where everyone at the school playground has either their Superman button or the infamous Captain Midnight decoder badge and you’re stuck with this crummy looking pin of a hero nobody ever heard of. There's supporting the underdog, and then there's just giving into a quick cash grab.

So, you've got not just one, but three caped do-gooders all with powers and abilities that actually outmatch Superman at the time. With WWII in full swing by late 1943, Fawcett Publications figured that the better strategy instead of having the Marvel Family fly over the Atlantic to bring Hitler to justice was to enlist kids into buying U.S. war bonds. The Shazam clan weren't the only cartoon characters roped into pimping the war effort, but when you have a trio of superpowered teenagers that could probably end the war itself within a matter of days, it sort of takes away from getting children hyped to bug their parents to donate money, as opposed to having Marvel Comics' Superhero Registration Act a few decades early.

Oops! Your bay window is showing! Apparently, men in the 1950s were suffering from severe symptoms of beer gut. For a free trial offer, you too could have ordered a Chevalier health supporter belt, otherwise known as a man-girdle. This was during the Golden Age of the doughy guys, at least according to MST3K, so maybe all the "Fat Elmers" of the world might have need of something to tighten up after their ninth trip to the buffet. Unusual for something aimed at middle-aged men's vanity to show up in a comic for kiddies.

Canadian comic artist Ross Saakel figured no one would notice in 1942 that he was doing a rip off of Superman and Captain Marvel. A guru living in the Himalayans summons Norse gods to give orphan Bob Victor powers like flight, super-strength, and bullet-immunity. Bob then leads a double life as the superhero Capt. Wonder, rarely referred to as "Captain", possibly to differentiate between the Timely Comics character of the same name. His first adventure sees him fighting the mad scientist named none other than Frank N. Stein, and then concluding it with a war bonds ad. Capt. Wonder doesn't have the transforming power like Shazam, so he has to change clothes quickly like Superman, and spends most of the rest of his run protecting Canada from Nazis who were always trying to invade Canada. Saakel was often accused of tracing American comic panels from Batman and Marvel Boy, but this didn't stop him from having a crossover with fellow Canuck hero White Mask, aka: Speed Sav...

Hey kids! Wanna praise the Nazis? Really?! Hope not. Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel, also known as the Desert Fox, was a Nazi commander in WWII. So, Monogram decided it would not only be great idea to make a desert military vehicle part of their quality hobby kits but have several of their Nazi merchandise promoted in comic books with this ad asking you to praise Rommel's "rod". Wonder how this went over with the kids reading them and longing for some Nazi swag.

While Hanna-Barbera created a 60s cartoon featuring Sinbad Jr., the titular Son Of Sinbad had his own one-shot special by the iconic Joe Kubert from St. Johns. The comic came out in 1950, five years before the live-action film of the same name which was in no way related, although both comic and movie title characters are also referred to as Sinbad. Why not have it be the original sailor instead of Sinbad II is never explained. It's just "Sinbad" for both father and son. The one-shot has a trio of comic stories of S.O.S.(one drawn by Carmine Infantino)along with a short text story. St. Johns later included another Kubert-drawn Sinbad short in an issue of the Abbott and Costello comic which showed how little the publisher cared about the legacy character.

The 1950s were lousy with romance comics after the Golden Age superhero bubble burst. Teen-Age Romance dealt with adolescent love, even though most of the characters were drawn as young adults. African-American comic icon Matt Baker did the cover for the Did I Give My Lips Too Freely? story in the 9th issue. The BIG slipup was where the cover dialogue mentions a hot blonde in a bikini who will do anything to "hold Dick"! In the actual comic story, there is a character named Dick who briefly appears, but obviously the mistake was making it seem like the bikini babe wanted to hold something else.

Decades before Kick-Ass took the concept of someone just becoming a superhero for the hell of it, smartass Jim Travis decides to give up his white bread life to become a colorful crusader called The Rainbow! He had no powers, no special training, no gadgets, and no real tragic background. He was just bored with being another 1940's yuppie, so he shifts gears after reading some comics and transforms into what is called "the best he-man the comics ever saw"! Fortunately for Jim, there just happen to be plenty of dangling ropes between buildings to crash in on a mafia hit by the evil Black Rufus(apparently adding "black" to your name is good enough for labeling a villain). Aside from having one of the most clashing crimefighter costumes, The Rainbow only seems to get through his Year One adventure by sheer luck and little help from the victims he's trying to save.

Since video games wouldn't be made for at least another few decades, Lionel Trains declared that 1953 was the year that EVERY boy would want their toy trains. Granted, the burst of the baby boomer tried to give the post-war generation a more peaceful and innocent age, but treating train sets that are something you as a boy should wrangle your father into instead of just going the heck outside and get some sunshine shows how far back the concept of grinding culture went. Just because your product has "magne-traction" doesn't mean children are going to have an expression on their face like it was the Second Coming.