Stupid Comics

You would think that any character by Jack Dole who also created Plastic Man would be somewhat lighthearted. MLJ's tragic superhero The Comet was instead someone endowed with great powers that doesn't really instill with him great responsibility. John Dickerson is a scientist working a new kind of gas when he inhales it gives him ability to fly, as well as laser vision. This made him one of the first comics characters to actually have that power with only a glass plate over his eyes to stop him from disintegrating everything in sight. He slaps together an outfit made of lucky charms and starts calling himself The Comet who had no problem offing bad guys by either blasting them to death or dropping them from the sky. Through his entire 17-issue run, Comet caused mass property damage, resentment from the police, and is even temporarily brainwashed into killing innocents as he racked up a ton of misdemeanors. In his last case, Comet tries to save his brother Bob from a mob hit, bu...

Another member of Great Comics' ridiculous roster of rescuers was Madame Strange. The caped bikini-clad crusader is a total mystery when it comes to her real name and origin, although she makes up for it with her bombastic adventures. Blessed with super-strength, Strange is an agent for the Allies in WWII who frequently distracted enemies with her beguiling looks by disguising herself as a stripper despite the fact that her identity as a spy was occasionally common knowledge. Her opening adventure is taking out the Japanese spymaster Bonza and his crew who plan to take over Hawaii after making a deal with a local crooked crime lord. She gets clobbered after confronting the deadly duo but uses her strength to escape captivity and foil a prison break. Still in a swimsuit for her second mission in Singapore where she's seen as a stripper whose knife-throwing skills help her take down more of the Japanese spy ring after her double agent named Sharkskin is assassinated, and she toss...

"Dope!" That's your response to figuring out you could gain social acceptance by getting a cheap flute. Lonesome Joe is the star of this half-page comic strip/ad from the late 1940s who felt left out from not being invited to the locals' bike ride, when it probably might have to do with him not having his own wheels. When a girl tells him they would've had a better time if they had some music, L.J. gets it into his head to read the very comic ad he is in to send away for Casper Garber's offer for a hot-lick slide flute and a clari-flute. Yes, you too can get lucky with the ladies if you learn how to master a pair of tone-deaf instruments! All you need is an estimated 15 minutes of training to become the Elvis of noisemakers. If the kids in your town are so cut off from the rest of the civilized world that your only chance at popularity is a cheap horn from a local party store, then maybe being popular among these brain-dead peons isn't worth the $1.98 you ...

I.W. Publishing was one of several small-time publishers trying to cash in on the Silver Age of Comics boom by reprinting several Golden Age characters like Phantom Lady. Before they folded in 1964, the company also known as Super Comics added an original character to last issue of their anthology title of Daring Adventures. Atlas was supposedly inspired by the old Charles Atlas comic book ads for how to be a he-man, but I.W. got a hold of the original artwork and reformatted it into their own creation. Instead of a skinny guy getting sand kicked in his face at the beach, the origin story for this supernatural strong man was meek glasses-wearing office employee Jim Randall who strikes out with asking out his hot co-worker after her brother is beat up by thugs. Jim is visited in his dreams by the actual Greek god Atlas who inspires him to spend the next few weeks doing Rocky training montages at his uncle's ranch, which not only molds him into a buff bodybuilder but for some reason ...

Prior to Ronco's Mr. Microphone, the Seyco Mik Co. had the Super Home Radio Mike. The unofficially named mike had ads running in several comics in the late 1940s for a mere $1.98 which back then was a steep amount. With this super mike, you could "fool your friends" by making your own radio shows. This kind of thing might have gotten creative types like Orson Welles into hot water for doing a pretend Martian invasion, but with post-war tensions running high at the time, the last thing your friends and family need is you doing your fake Russian a-bomb attacks through the living room radio as a legit news flash. Aside from the money back guarantee, it's unlikely that apartment tenants appreciated their noisy neighbors doing Golden Age karaoke of Perry Como at 2:30 AM.

More than a decade before DC Comics decided to come up with canine counterparts to the World's Finest, Fawcett Publications premiered the first ever superhero hound. Bulletman started off in a feature in Nickel Comics until getting his own title where police scientist Jim Barr created a formula that increased his strength and smarts. He used this new intelligence to invent a bullet-shaped helmet that gave him the ability of flight, and became the flying detective, Bulletman, along with his girlfriend Susan who got her own helmet as Bulletgirl. The gravity-defying duo fought a bizarre rogues gallery, including the anti-Joker known as The Weeper who once kicked Susan's dog Slug. Bulletman evened the playing field by making Slug his own special collar that allowed him to fly too as the newly dubbed Bulletdog. He whips Weeper back, as well as eventually helps save Christmas, duels with an evil robot dog, and saves rich dogs from jewel thieves. Fawcett really tried to pimp Bulletdog...

Another star from the aptly titled Choice Comics is featured in all three of the short-lived publication's run, Kangaroo Man! Officially, there is no character in it named Kangaroo Man as it is more title-bait, but instead it is Jack Brian, a standard explorer who returns to the States after a stay in Australia. While he was down under, Jack went through some unknown origin story involving him forming a bond with a highly intelligent kangaroo called Bingo. Jack can understand everything Bingo says, and the two coordinate with Professor Stanford to stop enemy agents from sabotaging an army train. They both parachute out of a crashing plane and begin smashing spies in a way that Adam West and Burt Ward never had the guts to try. Jack flies after the remaining agents with Bingo hanging on the wing and swats the bad guys out of the sky. They then travel to Canada to help round up some escaped Nazis in a chase where Bingo actually rides a motorcycle to catch them while getting his tail ...