Stupid Comics

The tanks they had in Tiananmen Square ain't got nothing on this! This Silver Age comic book ad for an "authentic" replica of the General Sherman was promoted as being big enough for two kids, or at least a trio of smaller ones. Being over 6 ft. long, this would set your average comic nerd back about $4.95 in 1950's currency for what you could have just put together yourself out of your family's empty boxes in the attic. Cardboard replaced the standard military grade metals fitted with miniature slingshot missiles, a reflective periscope, and a large toilet paper roll for the cannon. The real mobile tank was mobile in the same way someone walking is considered mobile. You could get the same effect by just walking around with a wearing a thick sweater with a thermos taped to your chest. No idea if the 10-day free trial from Smith And Smith Import Co. was even valid for a refund. It featured none of the extra features like a 2-way radio or an intercom system, so the...

You know about the Silver Age Black Panther, but the Golden Age incarnation has been criminally underlooked aside from the fact that he had one printed adventure. Showing up in Stars & Stripes #3, the caucasian Black Panther was another masked man in an absurd outfit whose real identity is secret even from the narrator and only having his expert fighting skills to boast any superhero status. The story involves Professor Taft getting kidnapped for his petrification formula by the ugly spy Argo, minion to agent Erick Rogats who is of course evil by 1940's standards since he works for a foreign country. Fortunately for the pinheaded professor, Black Panther already knew he was going to be captured by a deformed villain as he catches a ride on Argo's car hood all the way to Rogat's hideout. The fearless feline pounces on the sneaky snoops as Rogat is chased into an easily available whirlpool, to which BP states is a better fate for a lousy foreigner than being behind bars. ...

Even though superhero doctors like Fate or Strange have little trouble finding cases for their sorcery, a non-super powered one going by Doctor Vampire only dealt with mere mortal threats. Standing around for one appearance in Chesler's Skyrocket Comics, Dr. John Rogers gives up his medical career to become the caped Doctor Vampire specializing in murder cases. Dr. V has no given connection to the hinted bloodsucker monsters, instead he used his knowhow as a physician and his personal brand of justice to do his Sherlock schtick. Vampire is buds with the city coroner who calls him when a dead woman is wheeled in with toothmarks on her neck. The victim attended a stage performance in a barn of all places, meaning the local theater was probably booked for another Rocky Horror screening. Vampire already has an established street cred in this story as Gorich, the show's producer, immediately recognizes him when he gets a dagger thrown at him. The killer turns out to be the orchestra...

Star Trek writer Theodore Sturgeon was the author of a short story titled Killdozer for a 1944 sci-fi pulp magazine that got its own cheesy made-for-television movie in 1974. However, the first adaptation was a segment in Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures comics by anonymous artists that spin the original idea of prehistoric radiation bringing a construction vehicle to life. An unnamed island in the middle of a lake sees scientist Mark Dane for some reason planning to gift a bulldozer with artificial intelligence. His fiance Wendy and assistant Ralph question Mark's sanity in a big spat which calls of the wedding. The bulldozer mysteriously switches itself on that Mark takes advantage of by coning the machine into bumping off his ex-girlfriend and her new beau. What follows is Wendy and Ralph spending the next four pages in their various attempts to escape the treaded terminator as it trashes a dump truck and wins a duel with a steam shovel. The young lovers make their way to the ...

When Chip Goodman didn't get the gig as publisher of Marvel after his father Martin stepped down, the family set up their own company labeled Atlas/Seaboard. They hired Jonah Hex writer Michael Fleisher along with artist Ernie Colon to create their first supernatural superhero. The Grim Ghost was a dandy highwayman in colonial America whose relationship with a debutante got him sent to Hell for his earthly deeds, but Satan takes a shine to the masked bandit and sends him back to the living world to increase the afterlife's population. The hiccup comes from the fact that Beelzebub warps him to modern day 1970s where he is several centuries out of date, meaning he needed to spend several months learning the latest disco moves in order to fit in. Grim Ghost rode around the city on a flying horse and used his powers to change bad guy bullets into confetti. When he is not out collecting more of Satan's little helpers, Grim Ghost gets teamed up with his ex-girlfriend that caused ...

The power of positive thinking can translate into getting actual supernatural abilities as Adolph Krimetz was mocked as a youngster for having wolfish features by teasing military schoolmates that caused him to commit manslaughter on one of them. Adolph ran away to live alone in the mountains for the next two decades where he somehow gained the actual gifts of a wolfman. Whether he was already a lycanthrope before going into hiding or he just got bit by one later on is never told, but Adolph now sets himself out as a bloodthirsty supervillain tagged as Were-Wolf. The Big Bad goes after his old tormentors now in positions of pre-WWII American army. This gets the attention of the patriotic Lash Lightning who is another white guy that got powers from ancient Egyptian magic. Lash's abilities to fly, shoot electricity, and enhanced strength leave him at an oddly even fighting chance against Mr. Wolf as his lightning can temporarily turn Adolph back into a human. Were-Wolf is super-stron...

As if the Sea Monkeys debacle wasn't a big enough scam, this comics ad from the 1960s not only got kids to pay for a large cutout of a Monster from Outer Space, but also tried to bamboozle those hip young mods out of a dollar by making them think that it could also talk. This 48" piece of latex apparently came with some sort of joints or stretchable parts that allowed its gullible owner to make it appear as if the 2-D marionette was moving on its own. The real gripe any potential buyer would have is that the rubbery rip off was somehow capable of speech by claiming it can talk on its own, meaning unless there was some kind of intrinsic audio wiring system threaded on the inside of its apparatus that it wouldn't work like that. Regency Mail Order hopefully refunded several dissatisfied customers for being gypped on this jive offering after shilling out a solid dollar bill.