Stupid Comics

Created initially for a cancelled Bronze Age anthology, The Swordsman Of Sarn was printed by the anything goes crew at Skywald Publishing for Issue 12 of their Psycho comics magazine, which had nothing to do with Norman Bates. The "sword and planet" genre that Edgar Rice Burroughs perfected with his Warlords Of Mars books were the inspiration for this tale of an athletic man from Earth doing his best Conan impression on another world. Set in an atompunk future, Steve Grimm is a space jockey that crashes on the uncharted planet of Sarn where he finds an abandoned city and is attacked by a savage giant. Grimm fortunately has gained the same kind of enhanced strength that John Carter got since this smaller planet has lower gravity and he was able to gut punch the gargantuan. The Earthman rescues the metal bikini-wearing Suanna of Thankor who fills the role of Slave Leia that Grimm learns the local lingo from over the course of a week. The Thankorians show up looking for Suanna a...

An overused plot in early comics ads were set up to snooker kids into their magazine selling service by convincing them to be a young G-Man. Whether they were connected to the comedy troupes of the Dead End Kids or the Bowery Boys, the "Junior G-Men" was almost a cult for boys set up by former FBI agent Melvin Purvis in the 1930s as a sort of volunteer neighborhood watch. Since Purvis was in charge of bringing down John Dillinger, he had already gained a celebrity status that went into creating comics characters like Dick Tracy. The concept of a G-Man wasn't part of any established copyright, so it was easy for some slick advertisers to get hungry kids who wanted in on the craze into becoming their magazine salesmen. It was a scheme by Crowell-Collier Publishing to hook boys into being paperboys for their Grit-wannabe publications that instead of getting paid money for their services, these gullible tikes would receive prizes that were supposed to water their mouths. You ...

The house of unintentionally hysterical heroes that was Great Comics Publications had their own strongman good guy referred to only as Atlas the Mighty, no relation to I.W. Publishing's recycled Charles Atlas character of Atlas: Man of Might who wouldn't be seen until two decades later. Claiming a solo appearance in the first issue of Choice Comics, an ironically named Paul Powers, this OG Atlas was a standard muscle man with super strength that only wore blue briefs with a monogram belt along with a matching pair of boots who had his own helpline for people to contact him through telegram. Where exactly he lived and how he got set up as a hero for hire doesn't get shown as this was only a 5-page story, even though it is hinted in the opening narrative that he sprung from the pages of history. Thie means he could be the original Atlas of myth shrunken down to human height and gained access to a time machine. Atlas gets a ring from a CCC camp as their water was poisoned, so ...

Ace Magazines' horror anthology The Hand Of Fate had none other than the living embodiment of Fate acting as its nail-biting narrator. After all, who is better qualified to tell kiddies his case files on deciding fate out to foolish mortals than the Big F himself. In issue #21 during the Silver Age, Fate goes over his followings of monster hunter Biff Stone, the name of which was oddly enough later reused for a totally different monster hunter written for modern horror hounds by Barry Gregory. Fate's story paints Biff Stone into being a creature catcher that would take his terrifying targets and sell them to circus for big bucks. Not only is this a world where monsters are recognized by the general public as being real but also where someone could make a career tracking down these half-human horrors. Some of his prior trophies include a werewolf that he subdued with a special serum and tricking a trio of vampires into fighting each other off when he made fun of them for being t...

One of the hassles Golden Age publishers had was making a significant character that made real impact in an anthology. Fox Features started a new jungle girl series with Tegra: Jungle Empress that was retitled Zegra: Jungle Empress where the title character was renamed and now blonde. A backup feature in the comic was a mere 2-pages premiering the Living Goddess known as Phara. Set in Egypt, a trio of post-WWII Germans are in town hunting for uranium to restore their country's glory. The three stooges somehow discover that there is a large uranium deposit lying in a temple in the land of Kait, so they enslave the village with just the rifles they brought. Kait is bizarrely inhabited entirely by white people, and those who managed to escape the German crooks head to the Sphinx where their Goddess/Queen Phara had been working on her tan while her subjects were being pushed around by ex-Nazis. Phara calls on the spirit of her "brother" the Sphinx to summon up an army of lion...

Getting billed in his premiere in Hit Comics #25 as the "most sensational hero ever to appear in print", Kid Eternity is a superhero who started his career after he died. Quality Comics already had offbeat characters like Red Bee and Plastic Man, but this prototype for Danny Phantom was created by Shazam founder Otto Binder along with Hawkman artist Sheldon Moldoff already giving him a more whimsical background as opposed to the gruff mystery men of the time. During WWII, the unnamed boy referred to only as Kid is working on his grandpa's merchant boat when it gets torpedoed by Nazis sending our youth to a premature death. Once at the heavenly gates, the doorman can't let Kid in since he wasn't due for another 75 years. The stout spirit Mr. Keeper was in charge of writing down when people die which he finally screwed up after two million years of a spotless record by accidently writing down Kid in his book. To make up for this, Keeper takes Kid back to the world o...