Stupid Comics

Basil Wolverton had his own vision of the world as shown in his comics, most notably in Stanley Morse's Weird Tales Of The Future back in the early days of the Silver Age. You literally never knew where you were going to end up with one of Basil's stories, even though you have a decent enough idea with the 4-page tale titled The Man From The Moon. Starting out in America just after the Civil War, Pete Warren is abducted by a ship of green moon men. The entire crew die from exposure to something on the trip, leaving this poor guy having to walk around the Moon with wearing a Darth Vader beathing device. Over the decades, Pete had most of his organic parts replaced with cybernetics so that he eventually gives off the appearance of a mechanical resident among the rest of the moon men. The Lunarites send Pete in his fully robotic body back to Earth a century after he first left, along with two other moon folk both of whom are killed by space radiation along the way. Pete tours his ...

Harvey Thrillers were a comics line that was put out in the mid-60's to tap into the campy superhero theme that Adam West's Batman was making a cold fortune at. Double-Dare Adventures lasted for 2-issues and was an astounding anthology of diversified characters, one of which was titled Magicmaster, although it is a little hazy about which one of the main duo is the definitive "Magicmaster". Jim Steranko penned the timeless story about a boy and his ancient pet mentor drawn by Jack Sparling. The first adventure is broken down into a quartet of 5-page chapters with Jimmy Apollo losing his father, a famous magician labeled The Incredible Apollo who dies in a mysterious auto accident. Jimmy suspects the rival magi Prince Infernus who vowed to get back at Mr. Apollo for exposing his fraudulent act years before as the fake fakir stupidly left his turban behind near the magician's corpse. The orphaned Jimmy looks through his deceased father's library as he finds a to...

While the fast-growing business of radio and television was on the rise in the 1950s, this particular comic book ad was sent out into the wild pond of mail order to see what hungry fish might bite. J.E. Smith was billed as being an expert in the field of radio-television for 40 years, which is very odd since television had only been around for a shorter time at this point in history. The National Radio Institute offered to teach people how to get a gig in radio and/or TV repair when you send away for a pair of free booklets that includes a sample lesson along with a copy of How To Be A Success In Radio-Television. Not exactly a bad deal for free kindling that might possibly lead to a career as a tech jockey for all the emerging TV sets which were honestly a much rarer thing to have at the time, even for the staggering pay of $10 a week. If you were to take J.E. Smith at his word, he would train you by sending you busted up electronic parts to try to repair on yourself at home while att...

Numerous superheroes have been spider-themed, even at the dawn of the Golden Age. Before a certain wall-crawler took the spotlight in the 60's, Ace Magazine's Super-Mystery Comics premiered its own arachnid avenger in 1940. Ralph Nelson is a DA who whenever he loses a case to criminals that he believes are guilty will take on the garb of the Black Spider consisting of a cape with a spider symbol on it and a special utility belt. What makes his belt so special is that he keeps a small colony of poisonous spiders inside it as he somehow has the sublime ability to control them. Whether this talent is something similar to Aquaman's aquatic telepathy is unknown, but instead of using his skills to put on a first-rate flea circus, Ralph has trained them to follow his commands. Where most pulp fiction masked men would just use the holster on their belt for an intimidating pistol, Black Spider weaponized his 8-legged pets to scare villains into submission. Aside from his own Batcave...