Stupid Comics

During the Silver Age, youngsters were bombarded with ads offering a for real Polaris Nuclear Sub. This cardboard non-submersible craft would run buyers up to seven dollars, which back in the day would be like getting your own working pinball machine! The seven-ft. long lawn ornament was built for a pair of average-sized children and had detachable torpedoes that could probably be shot out if you blew in a pump good enough. There's also a periscope even though you can't put the darn thing in the water, as well as an electrically lit instrument panel would also not make for a pleasant voyage in the family pool. The fact that this overpriced piece of acrylic from the Honor House Production Co. duped kids into giving up their Christmas fund for a less than fulfilling outdoor experience that could have been achieved just by using their own cheaper imagination.

The early days must have been a more understanding era when superheroes could use the word "Purple" in their moniker, such as Purple Rider or Purple Zombie, especially if they didn't have much actually purple in their look, one of which was Purple Tigress. Only having two appearances from Fox Feature Syndicate, the maskless maiden wore what looks like a typical two-piece jungle girl getup and a purple cape. For some reason her outfit was fully purple in her first feature but she must have skinned a non-purple tiger for her second case. Purple Tigress herself is one of several Golden Age heroines that had the secret identity of being a darling debutante, Anita Morgan, who is constantly bombarded by a bevy of bachelors, but no one ever notices she looks similar to a certain scantily clad crimefighter, largely due to no one ever looking directly at her face as she prances around in what appears to be a striped bikini. There is even a photo of her in the local paper with its ...

While pirates were a slightly big genre in the Golden Age, the Shar-Lee Co. got it stuck in their head to advertise this Captain Kidd treasure chest bank. While the actual Captain Kidd did have a buried treasure that was later uncovered near Long Island and sent to England to use against the buccaneer during his trial, it probably wasn't 4"x3" used for only keeping loose change in. The bank came with a functioning padlock, but just labeling them as "Thrilling and New" probably wasn't a big enough incentive for any supposedly pirate-obsessed comics collector to spend that kind of money during a time when kids were probably more into spacemen or cowboys.

Some people are familiar with the original superhero Quicksilver which was decades later enveloped into the DC Universe as the speedster Max Mercury. However, eight years after that character, an altogether different costumed crimefighter had a 3-page story in the short-lived and appropriately titled British comic, The Roundup Budget Of Fun And Adventure. The Quicksilver that appears in this 1948 issue runs around in a bright red outfit and uses the nickname of The Wonder Man of the West. In this adventure, the crimson crusader confronts the outlaw Coffin Reilly and his gang of horse thieves. Quicksilver uses his "wonder powers" to lead a rogue stallion to safety. Later, his powers apparently include bullet immunity when Coffin finds his secret lair, which is empty cave with a weirdo in red tights all alone and shrugs off getting shot point blank in his sleep. Despite his unexplained abilities, true identity, or back story, Quicksilver is one of the few genuine costumed super...

Forgiving the fact that it's usually spelled bronco, this Broncho Buster Cowboy Outfit was from the Illinois Merchandise Mart which had ads in comics during 1952. The 15-piece ensemble was made of white vinyl, of which most children Halloween costumes would be later made from. You can either order a cowboy or cowgirl outfit, complete with repeating clicker toy gun, which is not a bad deal. You also get a pair of gun holsters, despite the fact that you only get a single gun per outfit. The parts of the package that makes your head tilt a little though is the fact that it comes with a vest-sporting a sheriff's badge, plus a "Western-style Ranger Eye Mask", which questions why a certified lawman in the old west would use a mask. The Lone Ranger wore one just to spook out bad guys, but your generic wild west sheriff wouldn't use it as they are a public figure. Supposedly, this is if you wanted your personal cowboy playtime to shift between law enforcer and part-time b...

So confident was Minoan Publishing Company in 1953 that they gave their new character his own title, The Purple Claw, which lasted for three whole issues. Dr. Johnathon Weir was an American in a plane crash in 1943 Africa where he befriends a mystic man by helping him cure nearby villagers from a sickness. For his efforts, Weir is given a spiffy metal glove known as the Purple Claw that endows its wearer with superstrength and heat rays. Weir decides to call himself from that now on, sort of like Green Lantern going by the name of his weapon. Weir spends the next decade fighting bad guys like Dr. Gool with his army of zombies, satanic gun moll Brima Stone, the spider-controlling Countess Arachni, giants, snake women, and a killer snowman. Most of Purple Claw's opponents were supernatural in nature, making Dr. Weir one of the first recurring monster hunters in comics. The part of Purple Claw's origin that is truly stupid though is it's another story of a white person gaining...

Despite having a single comic book appearance, Rocketman was the title character of his own product labeled the Televiewer. The item wasn't a projector, and more like what would eventually evolve into the View Master toy. The comic Rocketman came from was a one-shot printed by Ajax-Farrell about Rock Raymond in the year 25,000 zipping around in his rocketship, but is really just a reprinted collection of the questionably named Spurt Hammond from Fiction House's Planet Comics. Considering that Rocketman's comic came out a decade after Spurt's adventures, that didn't stop someone from trying to make a quick buck selling this cheap little filmstrip feeder as it appeared in numerous 1950s comic from several different publishers. It seems like it might have sold better if they just kept the original character, and simply called it the "Spurt Televiewer".

Great Comics Publications had an insane ensemble of superhero characters, the craziest of whom had a single but iconic appearance in Great Comics #3. Futuro leads a society of high-tech heroes called the U.S. Futurians with jetpacks that run on cosmic gas. Some of these rocketeers are named Faith, Freedom, Truth, Courage, and Justice. The U.S. Futurians have their flying dog Nimbus track down Adolf Hitler to his castle, who is shown wearing his royal gold/yellow duds. Futuro and his troops use invisibility devices to capture Der Fuehrer. They literally dropkick Hitler into Hell, where a mob of demons hand him over to a foppish Satan. The Devil tries to gain access to Futuro's futuristic powers, so he and Hitler then do a supervillain team up, although their scheme is foiled by Satan's lovesick witch girlfriend. Futuro teleports Hitler out of Hell to "face the justice of mankind", leaving the reader to believe Hitler was packaged off to the Allied Forces for war crimes...