Stupid Comics

Shortly after The Archies established the first ongoing comic book love triangle, the idea found its way to of all things the mystery men of the Golden Age, or in this case two mystery women and a dork in a bird outfit. Spider Widow started out her career in the pages of Feature Comics with the preternatural ability to somehow control spiders, which was a semi-common ability among superheroes of the time, but she went the extra mile by wearing a scary mask making her look like a green-skinned old witch, so aside from the creepy crawlies she also used Scooby-Doo villain tactics. When she wasn't fighting Nazis, Spider Widow teamed up with the costumed vigilante known as The Raven who unlike numerous other bird-themed heroes could actually fly at least with the working wings he had on his back. Even though Raven was sometimes billed as Spider Widow's sidekick, he was really her partner in crimefighting, and they went on to fight Axis agents as well as the original Spider-Man, plus...

The Electronic Man has nothing on the bogus nature of the Monster Robot! This ad that plagued Bronze Age comics allowed some huge sucker of a kid fall for wasting a solid buck so you could get plans to make your own giant 7 ft. walking, as well as flashing, Monster Robot. Not just a robot, but a "Monster Robot"! What the difference between a regular robot and a Monster Robot is an unknown crapshoot, possibly because it's powered by the essence of dead vampires. This offer put out by the mysterious Melton Co. or Guarantee Co. which either had an office in Florida or Illinois allowed some real suckers with the high-tech specs of crafting together their own life-size robot costume that was billed as being terrifying. Anyone whose been to enough comic conventions has probably seen a cosplayer whose entire ensemble is a either a bunch of cereal boxes taped together to be low budget Iron Man, or an intricately crafted creation that makes them look like a living Lego figure, but...

In 1947, comic artist Jim Draut had contacted the legendary Jack Kirby and Joe Simon and gotten a job working for Harvey Comics with his original idea of a Hellish vigilante whose secret identity was a worker in the court of law took off decades before Marvel's Daredevil. The Red Demon who at first was just called The Demon was really Judge Straight that unlike a certain blind lawyer didn't trust even his own judgement as the state's youngest jurist when it came to dispensing his own personal brand of justice. The adventures of the satanic savior ran from Issues 4-7 of Black Cat, although they had the boneheaded decision to wait until Issue 6 to go over the character's secret origin. At a masquerade party, mob leader Bull Brewster is wearing a devil costume while he is killed by an unknown guest and the one blamed with is Joe Munsi. Judge Straight quickly sentences him to death in the electric chair in just two days, but the harsh words of Joe's wife make him think ...

During the tip of the "Baff! Pow!" campy crescendo that was the Silver Age, Harvey Comics had an entire anthology to uncanny superheroes titled Unearthly Spectaculars. One character featured in Issues #2-3 was a combination of 60s superheroes and 60s superspies, Jack Quick Frost, written by Captain Marvel creator Otto Binder and drawn by artists Jack Sparling and Bill Draut. The story starts out with the laziest villain ever, Lord Lazee, a morbidly obese nutjob dressed like a space viking plotting to take over the world from his secret hideout having his butler dunk food pellets into his mouth while the bloated bounder lounged around in his high-tech recliner. Cut to the Arctic where the navy is conducting atomic tests and thaw out secret agent James Flynn who for some reason was wearing a skintight outfit with a mask and his initials printed boldly on the front. James had been tossed out from a plane by some criminals and froze in the icy waters only to have get rescued by h...

Comics writer David Anthony Kraft and Deathlok creator/artist Rich Buckler pulled their talents to create a character for Atlas Comics in 1975 that only lasted a single issue before he was remade not once but twice during a span of less than five years. Long before Winnie The Pooh was a demon hunter, the Bronze Age saw the dawn of a different one actually called Demon Hunter. Atlas/Seaboard was a publisher that had broken off from Marvel and began their own brand of heroes mostly swiped from their previous boss' works, like The Brute based on Hulk, Grim Ghost from Ghost Rider, and The Scorpion from Spider-Man. Demon Hunter was a one-shot character meant to appeal to the wave of monster comics Marvel was successfully doing in the 70s based on Dracula and Frankenstein. Atlas' editor Larry Leiber(and Stan Lee's younger brother)helped found the company to get back at Marvel for hording all the glory, and he hired Kraft and Buckler to create their own occult superhero to rival D...