Stupid Comics

Gerona Publishing excelled at one-shot anthology comics, some of which featured ongoing characters, but the character they created for the single issue of K-O Komics' cover is a cryptic mystery to this day. The one dubbed Captain K-O appears like an amalgam of the Golden Age versions of Captain America, Green Lantern, and The Flash. He has the clashing colors of green and red that would look okay during the Holiday season, but for any other time of the year looks very out of place, and certainly not for camouflage. Captain K-O's outfit bears a resemblance to Marvel Comics' Thor, but as K-O Komics came out in 1945 and the Norse God wouldn't appear until 1962, a good number of people believe that the artwork provided for this character was done by none other than Thor's original designer Jack Kirby, even though the actual artist still remains unknown. The cover was provided by a studio called Jason Comic Art who had art for everything from funny animals to presidentia...

Bernard Baily is mostly known for creating DC characters like Hourman and The Spectre, although one of his lesser-known creations was a one-off called Captain Combat. First premiering in the massive special Star-Studded Comics from Cambridge House Publishers in 1945, it also got a reprint a year later by Canadian publishing company Superior which led many comics historians to believe that he was originally a Canuck. The story is of an unnamed acrobat hired to part in a holiday parade as the comic book character Captain Combat who tries to pick up an actress dressed as Mother Goose on his float. After the parade, the faux Captain overhears a crook dressed as Santa Claus trying to woo a roomful of other Santas into going on a crime spree with bubble pipes filled with poison. The head Santa uses one of these tricky pipes to put Combat to sleep and dump his slumbering body in the frozen river, even though the Captain manages to pull himself out of the deep freeze. Combat takes out one of t...

Similar to the ignominious Galaxy Green 2-page preview that never saw a legit printing, Jack "The King" Kirby created a complete 4-page story titled The Astrals for a comic that failed to get published. Just after Star Wars IV came out, Glenn Kammen was a radio station promoter in Chicago who commissioned Kirby to do this short comic as a giveaway about an outer space rock band. Bill Wray provided the ink for this unproduced comic. Marc B. Ray wrote the quick script as he was also the writer for 70s movies like Scream Bloody Murder and The Severed Hand. It opens on the rock quartet finishing up their gig at Gorki's asteroid club. The Astrals' roadie was a half-baboon man named Kowalski who keeps arguing with the droid Micro-IV while packing up the band's instruments on their ship, The Bobsledder. Another space cruiser appears out of nowhere run by a space pirate named Kandor Jasperian who apparently was a big fan of Superman. Kandor kidnaps the band and sets Kowal...

Charlton Comics' Out Of This World features multiple stories dealing with science-fiction, fantasy, horror, and otherworldly antics. In Issue #6, Steve Ditko contributed the art for a 5-page tale simply titled Plague. With the world in the grip of COVID, this particular short story from 1957 is still timely especially today. An unnamed mad scientist creates a plague designed to petrify any living thing for an entire year, with the idea being after that much time off humanity might mellow out enough to consider world peace. The insane inventor tours the countryside a few weeks after releasing his plague finding everyone in suspended animation. Just then, the scientist gets attacked by aliens which picked this of all times to invade Earth which is now totally vulnerable since the entire population are living statues. Our abominable chemist wakes up to find the whole thing was just a nightmare, and heads to his laboratory to discover the plague had actually been released while he was ...

Star Pirate returns in Planet Comics #54 where he goes from space buccaneer to detective. On the planet Sero, nasty-looking Sato is accused of killing the father of the scantily clad victim Valda with a needle gun which is the only piece of evidence needed to convict the cad. Sato's legalist Rasca gets him off while Valda offers one grand in space credits which Star Pirate gets wind of. His robust partner Blackbeard also hears about this deal and leaves to get the reward for himself which SP has a special detectograph set to Blacky's frequency, so apparently everyone in the future naturally gives off their frequency. Sato stashed the incriminating gun inside the belly of a bronze dragon kept by a curio shop owner. Valda overhears Sato when he spills all this to his crooked lawyer Rasca which they get the drop on her for, along with Blacky who tried to save her. Space Pirate effortlessly saw all this happen on his handy space watch and disguises himself like a guilty mug looking...

In the Silver Age, the toy makers at Lucky Products had a decent thing going with their infamous 100-piece sets of 2-D soldiers they ran ads for in comics. Another notorious shakedown was their offer for seven inflatable dinosaurs, two of which were totally made up. A "tritasnapatus" is not a valid dino at all, and the "sea serpent" might as well be a generic sea monster. The other five listed are genuine but have been blanked out over time among your T-rexes and raptors. They were supposed to be about 4 ft. tall but were much shorter than that. The dinosaurs weren't like your average bath or pool toys where they are designed to be a certain shape, instead we're given a generic balloon with the black-and-white picture of the fat reptiles on them. The ad claims you can toss them in the air, and they will always land on their feet, howbeit a graphic of a dinosaur on an oblate object does not have any kind of feet whatsoever to land on. "Even the tiniest b...