MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 708: SOPHUS, THE MAD PHILOSOPHER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 708: SOPHUS, THE MAD PHILOSOPHER

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(Planet Comics 008, 1940) Once again an adventure begins that most classic sci-fi way: Buzz Crandall and his gal pal Sandra are noodling around in space when they run smack into something, in this case a crystal sphere that houses the secret headquarters of Sophus, the Mad Philosopher. I couldn’t tell you what school of philosophy Sophus subscribes to, but it’s one with an intellectual framework that encompasses a) turning other humanoids into mist and keeping them in bottles and…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 036

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 036

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Prize Comics time, bay-bee. Power Nelson: Power Nelson is from the far-off future year of 1982 CE, in which the world has been conquered by the Mongols, but the wink, wink, nudge, nudge kind of Mongols from 1940-1941 where they’re actually supposed to be the Japanese (and for some reason the nation of Mongolia is fair game as far as Explicit Villain Status goes while Japan is still off the table). He has been given super strength by some surprisingly…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 707: PRINCE BLAGA DARU

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 707: PRINCE BLAGA DARU

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(Planet Comics 005, 1940)  Gale Allen was a long-running feature of Planet Comics, which meant that she was a creation of many absent-minded hands. She is always an officer in a gendered space organization, but whether that is the Women’s Space Battalion, the Girl’s Patrol, the Girl’s Squadron and so forth varies from issue to issue. The story is set in the far-off year of 1990 but drifts farther into the future over time. She turns blonde eventually. You get…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 035

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 035

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Planet Comics how I love you, cobbled-together pile of scraps that you are. Torro: In an adventure that I can only assume was concocted in order to use up some extraneous art, Captain Nelson Cole of the Solar Force travels to the distant planet Zog and ends up taking up the mantle (and magic whip) of the hero Torro in order to help recover the planet’s treasures from an evil giant. As befits a personality that is probably just, again,…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 706: LEPUS-THE-FIEND

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 706: LEPUS-THE-FIEND

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(Planet Comics 007, 1940)  Lepus-the-Fiend has a lot of classic Fletcher Hanks villain qualities: the weirdly hyphenated name, the fact that he lives on a star (to be clear: not a poetic name for a planet. He lives on a five-pointed, flaming star) and of course his hatred of civilization, which is not given a particular motivation so I am left to assume is because he is a hairy and wild looking guy. He’s not the first Hanks character to…

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BULLSEYE BANNON MYSTERIES – THE STRANGE CASE OF EZRA ARK

BULLSEYE BANNON MYSTERIES – THE STRANGE CASE OF EZRA ARK

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The third and final instalment of the innovative marketing stunt. This case really makes a meal of setting up the various suspects over three of the four strips, but crucially does not give away any vital information in the title, which is a marked improvement. (Jumbo Comics 015, Fight Comics 005, Jungle Comics 005, Planet Comics 005, 1940) In a break from tradition and a major disappointment, the actual solution is not given along with the list of winners, so…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 705: ROCKO

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 705: ROCKO

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(Planet Comics 005, 1940) Rocko is a totally awesome alien (from a species called the Nethermen, a totally awesome name) who looks like a human with one great grandparent who was a toad and dresses in pulp sci-fi armour as he scours the spaceways for a star of sufficient heat to run all of his planet’s industry. Bad luck for humanity: the first adequate star that he manages to find while aimlessly noodling around in space (as opposed to picking…

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BULLSEYE BANNON MYSTERIES – THE CASE OF THE FRIGHTENED KILLER

BULLSEYE BANNON MYSTERIES – THE CASE OF THE FRIGHTENED KILLER

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Time for the second Bullseye Bannon mystery: everyone get ready to cut up some comics for a chance at a small cash prize. This time, Bullseye Bannon is for some reason reading the will of the late Dean Earl, who has carefully crafted the kind of situation that murder mysteries thrive on. By the terms of the will, son Titus Earl gets everything, unless he dies, and then someone else gets everything. Bullseye Bannon doesn’t exactly help things by pointing…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 704: ZIRGO

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 704: ZIRGO

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(Planet Comics 005, 1940) We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again: comic book plots spun out of the popular pre-Pearl Harbor US position that America should stay out of the burgeoning European conflict. This time, we’re treated to a political allegory in the far future, as planet Jupiter (Germany, presumably) attacks tiny planetoid Cato (Belgium, I guess) and draws the ire of the rest of the Solar System (the nascent Allied Forces). Many on Earth (America) want to…

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BULLSEYE BANNON MYSTERIES – THE CASE OF THE DIAMOND DEATH

BULLSEYE BANNON MYSTERIES – THE CASE OF THE DIAMOND DEATH

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In 1940, Fiction House tried an innovative new method to sell their comics: a serialized contest! Specifically, they printed a series of adventures by detective Bullseye Bannon across issues of Fight Comics, Jumbo Comics, Jungle Comics and Planet Comics, and to enter the contest you had to send in your solution to the mystery along with four little coupons clipped from the issues. I can only assume that the whole exercise was more trouble than it was worth, because they…

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