Stardust the Super Wizard / YMMV

Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Stardust himself practically runs on this. By all appearances, he's intended to be simply a superhero who fights villains and saves the world, but his extreme Good Is Not Nice attitude and general mystery mean that readers tend to have all kinds of theories about what his deal is. Is he truly good? A Knight Templar with a brutal attitude who's doing what needs to be done? A demon on the side of the angels acting out his own sadistic impulses? A Humanoid Abomination who vaguely understands the ideas of morality but hasn't fully internalized the concept? A monster worse than any of the creatures he fights, trying to clear the way for his own dominion?
- His League of Extraordinary Gentlemen cameo invoked the more villainous interpretations of the character. When he showed up he was an unambiguous villain who Captain Universe viewed as a sadistic monster for the punishments he tended to dish out, leading to him defeating Stardust and imprisoning him in a highly dense ice block, with the Captain watching over him to make sure he never escapes.
Complete Monster: Several villains go the extra mile to truly earn Stardust's creative brand of justice:
- "The Mad Giant Experimenter": The Mad Giant of the Gobi Desert is an evil experimenter seeking to destroy the world out of revenge for abolishing slavery. The Giant digs a hole to the center of the Earth where he pumps powerful chemicals in it so he could cause a volcanic eruption around the world. The Giant attempts to destroy Chicago as his first target before moving on to other locations.
- "The Anti-Solar Ray": "Gyp" Clipp, leader of the Gyp Clipp Gang, devises a scheme to chain himself and his cohorts to the surface of the Earth while using an Anti-Gravity device to cause the rest of Earth's population to float away into space, nearly having half-a-million people suffocate in the vacuum. Unsatisfied, Gyp murders his own minions to have all of Earth's wealth for himself.
- "Moloka's War on the Universe": Moloka, leader of a band of Space Pirates, attempts to seize control of the sun to dominate the solar system. Using his arsenal to utterly annihilate entire planets, Moloka tests out one of his superweapons by annihilating a planetoid and attempting to continue on to Neptune, only Stardust saving the populations of the planets he targets. Moloka even attempts to annihilate Earth when Stardust pretends to be his ally, gleefully taking Stardust's "advice" while monologuing he'll betray Stardust the first chance he gets.
- "The Super Fiend of the Lost Planet": The Super Fiend of the Lost Planet, proclaiming his intentions to destroy all civilization in the solar system, uses his weaponry to set the entire planet of Mars ablaze, horribly killing its entire populace. From there, the Fiend attempts to swing the remains of Mars into Earth to annihilate it as well, necessitating Stardust marooning him on the remains of Mars surrounded by the millions he's killed.
Creepy Awesome: Many people see Stardust as this because of his tendency of dishing out Cruel and Unusual Death.
Designated Hero: Stardust. While many of the villains are extremely evil and make it clear that he has the moral high ground compared to them, the comics are meant to represent a story with Black-and-White Morality, when most audiences would normally see Stardust as a very dark Anti-Hero only worth rooting for because many of the villains are far worse. He's still very needlessly brutal toward common criminals, which makes him hard to root for.
Fridge Horror: About half the stories in the comic fall into this. The villains inflict insanely brutal holocausts on a daily basis which Stardust then reverses instantaneously, later issues have him recruiting sidekicks that are framed uncomfortably close to Child Soldiers, and Stardust himself is very easy to read as a Humanoid Abomination.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- In one story, the villain is a munitions factory owner who is staging events to start another World War and make himself rich. Part of his plan is to kidnap the President of the USA using a plane disguised as a Japanese bomber, with the intent of starting war between the United States and Japan. This story was published in January of 1940, close to two years before the Pearl Harbor bombings that actually brought the USA into war with Japan.
- An ironic example would be "Gyp" Clipp's fate at Stardust's hands, being frozen in a block of ice. Fletcher Hanks himself would die in 1976 by freezing to death on a park bench. By then, he was a homeless drunk. Such is pointed out in a collection of "Stardust the Super Wizard" comics called "I'll Destroy all Civilized Planets!", in the bonus story at the end about cartoonist Paul Karasik's own quest to find out more info of the comic and the creator, where he juxtaposes the words announcing that fact over that panel from the comic.
Karmic Overkill: Nearly all the villains Stardust faces are purely evil monsters who either plan to kill people by the truckload or do so over the course of the story. However, Stardust's treatment of them borders on Body Horror and typically happens even after their scheme has been completely diffused and they no longer pose any threat (meaning it serves no purpose other than simple torture).
Memetic Psychopath: Thanks to his extremely violent and horrific punishments Stardust will forever be remembered as a downright Lovecraftian entity, even if Hanks intended him to be a true hero.
Narm: As one of the iconic works of Golden Age So Bad, It's Good material, there's a rich well of it to be found - the first story, for instance, ends with Stardust broadcasting BEWARE THE FIFTH COLUMN right after he's completely dismantled the entire organization in about ten minutes.
Narm Charm: Most certainly. With how over-the-top and unintentionally creepy half the stories are, it just wouldn't be Stardust without being able to laugh at most of it.
Nightmare Fuel: Stardust is an omnipotent, eldritch and impossible Humanoid Abomination of no known origin, who regularly dishes out punishment in the most horrible ways imaginable, while his opponents murder millions upon millions of innocents at random times for seemingly no reason. This is one hell of a Crapsack World.
Ron the Death Eater: Stardust is supposed to be a superhero. His victims tend to be vicious criminals which includes world-ending threats. However because of his Good Is Not Nice attitude and the comic is full of Accidental Nightmare Fuel, people tend to view Stardust as far more negatively than was intended.
So Bad, It's Good: Most of its popularity comes from its stiff, awkward artwork, bizarre plots and general weirdness.
Spiritual Antithesis: To the Ultraman series. To wit, both stories are about a world under the near-constant threat of attack by sinister aliens, giant monsters, and evil-doers, and must be defended by extraterrestrial Humanoid Abominations with near-limitless power. The difference is that Ultraman is a Messianic Archetype who genuinely wants to help humanity, leads a double-life by merging a human, and retains enough self-awareness to hold himself back. Stardust is, at best, a Good Is Not Nice Anti-Hero who pushes his skewed morality onto others with impunity and has no life outside of his job.
Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Much of the fame to the comic comes from its character art, which is decidedly off in a rather creepy way. Most of the villains are caricatured to the point that they barely look human, but Stardust himself really stands out: he's supposed to look like he simply has a Heroic Build, but ends up with long lanky limbs, a tiny head perched on a tree trunk neck, an incredibly unexpressive face, weird musculature, stiff and awkward poses, and constantly shifting proportions. At least one fanmade origin claimed that his current form is actually the result of him being a shapeshifter who's not all that familiar with humanity, attempting to assume an idealized form but significantly overdoing it.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: JESUS CHRIST. This stories were published in cheap children's comics in the 1930's, and feature the most inhumanly brutal examples of mass murder and genocide imaginable, with the villains being utter monsters, and the "hero" being a brutal Knight Templar who views justice as a game to find the most brutal way to punish someone for their sins.

YMMV / Stardust the Super Wizard

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