Stupid Comics

Frankenstein already had his own Marvel comic in the Bronze Age, but also had several separate stories throughout the various titles of Skywald Publications. One of them was titled Frankenstein II that continues the original story well into the year 2073, but a secondary tale completely retold his origins with a new twist in The Saga Of The Frankenstein's Monster. Running in issues of Psycho and Scream magazines, this 3-part remake was written by Al Hewetson and drawn by Cezar Lopez. Each chapter has a more eloquent take on the monster with an opening monologue. The first part has Dr. Victor Frankenstein making a totally alternate version of his infamous creation, this time as a blonde beefcake and not a jigsaw of corpses. His buffed experiment awakens very ticked off causing a big mess in Victor's lab, so the Doctor hacks his prototype to pieces and then tries bringing him in the way we're familiar with as a sewed-up creation with a flat-top and bolts in his neck. The mons...

A decade after Universal Pictures established their connected monster universe in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, there wasn't a gathering of ghouls like this until Comic Media's Horrific comics in 1953. The first seven issues of Horrific were a standard anthology of terror tales, but Issue #8 took a major turn when they introduced not one, but a full set of five horror hosts. The main one was the charismatic Teller of Tales who was an average chemist named Walker that was in the usual comic book lab accident which after he awakens from a coma learns he has the power to read minds and foresee the future. The next is Victor Vampire who recalls his origin as John Doe with his wife Jane trying to survive on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. The placeholder couple rescue a drowning man named Lance Bloodman who turns out to be a vampire that passes his curse on to John which gets so bad for him that once they reach civilization, he leaves his wife to go feed of homeless people...

Rex is a common name for a dog, but Great Publication's Rex The Seeing-Eye Dog was a cut above the rest since he is also a service animal as well as a comic book canine companion. Starring only in Issues 2-3 of Choice Comics, Rex was drawn by Pagsilang "Rey" Isip who also provided art for Wings Bordon and Shangra, but the author is absent from getting any credit, possibly to remain anonymous, even though whoever it was clearly intended for the comic to draw attention to the visually impaired. Both stories ended with an epilogue urging readers to help anyone with a white stick by crossing the street or getting on a bus, a noble effort to establish in young minds. Our main human character is Dan Baxter, a veteran circus owner who is helped around by his seeing-eye dog Rex. His daughter Laura is a trapeze artist that keeps getting hit on by the aerialist Karl, of which Rex is usually there to scare off. Laura reads a letter from the circus' animal dealer Jeffries who wan...

Steve Ditko was the perfect artist to draw this off-kilter story from Charlton Comics' Out Of This World, Issue #5 in 1957. The sci-fi anthology series usually rotated chronicles of humans meeting aliens, but The Man Who Stepped Out Of The Cloud has deep significance as it hints to homosexuality which at this point in history people weren't so socially enlightened upon. The story has an alien man arriving out of a cloud that just puttered in from space, which is subtext for someone coming out of the closet. The man is blonde with a somewhat flamboyant mustache who is witnessed by a teenage boy that saw the alien's "coming out". The cloud-traveler makes psychic contact with his planet who instruct him to bring the boy back in his space cloud. The boy gets swooshed away in the cloud back to the alien's planet which is supposedly populated all by men. The alien agent still on Earth has to explain to the boy's adopted parents that he didn't see him at all,...

Hillman Periodicals had a several comics running throughout the Golden Age, much of which dealt with crime such as Clue Comics, although unlike many other publishers in this era, they were almost completely void of containing any horror titles. However, one of their few one-shots labeled Monster Crime Comics might have made your average comic buyer in 1952 think that they were getting a crime/horror crossover. The cover takes place outside the reputable Bat Cafe with a purse snatcher running away from feisty redhead dressed like an erotic witch who raises her whip to catch the thief, all while the vamp's deformed servant literally sicks a hungry dog after him with the thug running for his life. First of all, you would think the average pickpocket would be a more selective about who they tried to rob, least of all a dominatrix in a purple cape clearly already shown brandishing a whip. That, and the angry victim was accompanied by her own personal Igor with a large canine being held ...

Miss Masque was an appealing character in her day that seemed to get more notice later on when she was being used by companies like Dynamite Entertainment as part of their teams of public domain superheroes, sometimes being renamed Masquerade. She began in 1946 under Visual Editions/Better Publications as part of their Nedor Comics line in the pages of Exciting Comics #51 where she followed in the steps of Phantom Lady as she was a rich debutante named Diana Adams with a double life as a costumed crimefighter. Miss Masque went on to appear in other Nedor titles like Black Terror, Fighting Yank, and America's Best Comics, sometimes shown with other various Nedor superheroes on the cover but wearing totally different duds inside the issue, even if she was fighting a dinosaur. That was the cryptic thing about Miss Masque is that she had several redesigns in her three-year run, like she had a crack team of wardrobe specialists redoing her look after nearly every case. Diana Adams had n...

The very first character to use the name of Ghost Rider wasn't a Silver Age motorcyclist, but in fact a genuine cowboy that started out in 1949. Magazine Enterprises had a comic starring real life western star Tim Holt who in the pages of his own comic went on to become a secret vigilante called Red Mask, but another story running in the same series was about another gunslinger named Rex Fury. He would travel from town to town as a bespectacled salesman along with his Chinese stereotype assistant Sing Song. Whenever trouble popped up he would lose the Clark Kent getup and becomes the sharpshooting Calico Kid, a wandering do-gooder who only took off his glasses to fight outlaws. Rex started this in Issue 6 of the Tim Holt comic, but the character was steered down a different path. Writer Raymond Krank and artist Dick Ayers were convinced by head publisher Vin Sullivan to change Rex Fury's identity into the Ghost Rider based on the popularity of the song, Riders In The Sky. In Is...

"Wow! This Is What I Want" claims this comic book ad from the mid-1940's about how boys can have all the fun they could ever need from a single book. Fun For Boys was a guide for kids who seem to have trouble doing something as simplistic as actually having fun, or at least taking the natural act of finding any sort of joy in everyday life requires an instruction book. Knickerbocker Publishing ran this not only several youngster comics like the original G.I. Joe, but also some mature cheesecake magazines like Hello Buddiesl, so the publisher was circulating it mainly in military themed titles. The nitpicky nature the book has makes it look like it's an overbearing parent who criticizes every little thing their child does while taking time out of their busy day to teach them something basic. Fun For Boys seems to give trivial directions when wanting to learn low level magic tricks, or how to lasso like a cowboy, as well as learning sports like wrestling or playing ping...

The force of farce that was Great Comics Publications had a real original in their other jungle character that ran in the first two issues of Choice Comics. Zomba: Jungle Fighter was your standard white man with a white savior complex who thinks that only a white man's perspective can bring order to the African grasslands. He's even called a "dynamic fearless white man" in the opening narration. The big dumb caucasian gets word from his partner Dr. Henderson that a feud between the Huda and Wazi tribes has been heating up, so he works out a treaty where he will teach the best warrior from each tribe the art of boxing to settle the fight in a match. A week later, Zomba is training Buono of the Huda who dies from a poisoned Wazi dart, leaving Zomba to take Buono's place in the match. The Wazi try every cheap trick in the book to rub out Zomba before the fight by siccing snakes on him, leaving a loose noose for him to walk into, and random arrow barrages, all of whic...

>Maurice del Bourgo did the cover for Issue #2 of Narrative Publisher's Power Comics, although the character he created does not actually appear in the comic book. This "International Man" had an outfit comprised of the flags of several different nations of the Allied Forces while performing a Three Stooges act on a certain Hitler and Hirohito. Considering this issue came out in 1945 just before the United Nations was organized, it might have been an effort by Narrative to pitch a mascot for them to use. The artist worked on Golden Age characters like Airboy, Crimson Avenger, and Green Arrow, but it is seriously hard to make out what he had in mind with International Man's outfit. There is way more detail going in this character's attire than you normally would have found at the time making it louder than a sonic boom, so you wouldn't see super duds this clashing until the 1990s. It's nearly impossible to see this hero as a regular character in the comi...

Before branching out to Orbit-Wanted in 1945, Orbit Publications had a line of one-shot comics under the label of Baily Publishing Company. The one horror anthology of these was Spook Comics which also featured various comedic monster tales. The first segment starred the subtle-named Mister Lucifer in a story titled "Up Pops The Devil" drawn by John Giunta who went on to do art for Frank Frazetta's first comic book publication of Snowman. The tale starts off with two bank robbers coming from their latest heist as they bury their booty in a cemetery. They open an old coffin releasing a demonic spirit calling himself Mr. Lucifer who sicks his ghosts and ghouls after his unintended rescuers. The monocled Mr. L had been sealed off in this tomb for 2000 years, which makes you wonder if he was imprisoned by Native Americans. Now he wants to take over the world so he could kill all the people in it which he claims will make him happy. How one reasons global domination followed b...