Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s what would soon be known as "Marvel Comics" busied itself with a lurid line of fantasy and monster comics. Stan "The Man" Lee cranked out science fictional epics at a furious rate, all starring goofy monsters, space aliens, robots, scientists, anything he could convince Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Don Heck to draw. In fact the only common denominator these stories share are their terrible hackneyed cliche-ridden twist endings.
WARNING: DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WANT THE THRILLING UNEXPECTED CLIMAXES OF THESE STORIES RUINED FOREVER!! I MEAN, RUINED MORE THAN THEY ARE TO BEGIN WITH!!

So; Martian disguised as human prepares to launch Earth invasion but is foiled by intrepid reporter type. Where's the twist??


That's right - he was actually a Venusian all along! Bet you didn't see that one coming!!


Ooh, flying saucer landing in the city! Army called out! Funny how we never see anybody's face...


Wow! So, this is MARS and the flying saucer is from EARTH!!! I haven't been this surprised since that Twilight Zone episode where it turned out that all the doctors were ugly and the patient was beautiful!!!


So we've landed on Mercury or somewhere and our astronauts are trying to impress the Mercurians, or whoever, with all our awesome technological innovations. But they could care less and in fact are going to destroy us because our shit is weak! Which begs the question of why we want these jerks to be our friends to begin with.


But what's this? TEACH US MORE OF THIS EARTH CUSTOM YOU CALL LOVE!! Those two guys in the last panel seem a little too eager to start schooling the aliens in the ways of Earth love.


The trick to defeating Pildoor The Plunderer From Outer Space is to blow him up with a giant bomb delivered by your A-1 astronaut troubleshooter - who - SHOCK - IS A ROBOT!!!! Because I... really didn't know or care, since it had no bearing on the story whatsoever.


Ooh, scary Ditko artwork of the department store where the wax mannequins COME TO LIFE AND WALK AROUND!! What amazing twist will they come up with to explain this amazing occurance??


Why, EVERYBODY'S made of wax on the planet Xaccus!! Didn't you know? Aren't you amazed? Doesn't this story seem condescendingly lame?


A horrifying two-headed creature from the depths of the earth menacing some jailbird? I bet this one has an ending that will shock us!!


Oh, ha ha, I get it, a lightning bolt. Because when you can't figure out how to end your story, just have a lightning bolt come out of nowhere and solve everybody's problems. Yeah, I'm shocked, all right. Shocked somebody was drawing a paycheck for this mess.

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