COMEDY CHARACTER ROUND-UP 001

Comedy and parody super-hero strips are just as old as the more sincere kind, but they don't get very plentiful or very good until the MAD Magazine era (and even if I'm setting myself up for a fall by saying that, I would love to be proven wrong). Until we get to that far-off time this will be a round-up in name only - I have enough partially-completed entries clogging up my drafts as it is.

Stuporman:

As befits his status as one of the earliest comedy super-heroes, Stuporman, aka Marmaduke Snood Jr, is both a parody of Superman, the big guy, and also a clearing-house for every dumb joke that the writer (credited as Harry Douglas, who is also listed as the creator of the Blue Blaze) could come up with on the fly.

Stuporman has all of what is already the standard array of super powers: he is super fast and strong is invulnerable and can fly. Comedy super-heroes are generally either hyper-competent or ludicrously incompetent, and while Stuporman is the former this is balanced out by the fact that he is extremely lazy. A pretty basic super-hero parody over all, but I suppose that's to be expected when you're looking at what is quite possibly the first example of such. (Daring Mystery Comics 006, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 192: STUPORMAN

(Crack Comics 008, 1940) 

Kind of a weird and somewhat problematic case - Stuporman, like the Largest Man in the World before him, is a superhuman man of limited intelligence who is used as a living weapon by crooks until being killed by the hero of the piece, in this case the Clock. He comes from Mongolia, which is, like, the most remote and mysterious place that 1940s comics writers could think of.

Frankly, the only real reason I include Stuporman is his name, which is clearly a dig at Quality Comics' Distinguished Competition, particularly in an adventure of the Clock, occasionally advertised as the "oldest and best comic book character." And now he has defeated the big dumb strongman! He has won!