(Funny Pages v4 008, 1940) Betty Thomas is the recipient of the sort of inheritance that seems to be aimed at causing trouble: her uncle Henry has left her a fortune, provided that she is of sound mind thirty days after the will reading. If she isn’t, the money goes to a secondary inheritor. This is of course the cue for someone to employ a huge hook-handed goon and start a nightly campaign of terror designed to drive her out…
Once again I present the worst that comics has to offer. The Great Green Turtle: The Great Green Turtle is just your standard Yellow Peril Chinatown ganglord, albeit one with a fantastic name. He does try to throw Sub-Zero, a man with ice powers, into a shark tank so we can safely say that he is not a villain with fantastic intelligence. His gem-smuggling ring gets thoroughly kiboshed. (Blue Bolt v1 004, 1940) The Lama: The Lama is a bandit…
(Fight Comics 010, 1940) I wanted to do a fun title goof where “World” was crossed out in favour of “Space” but it seems that I don’t have that ability. But yes, it’s true! These Creeps of the World are not in fact on the world! Any world! They are in fact one of my favourite sci-fi tropes: living beings so large that they are mistaken for planets! These particular creeps show up in the solar system early in the…
More real people and their analogs. Lotta Hitlers in this one. Adolf Hitler: Hitler analogs c.1940 were often quite visually distinct from the actual man. Samson foe and dictator of Ratonia Dragor honestly looks more like a bald Stalin, and you might be excused for thinking that he was more of a pastiche of all extant dictators. The real clue is in the invasion of Belgium. (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940) Meanwhile this as-yet unnamed dictator of the future super-nation of…
(Fight Comics 008, 1940) The geopolitics of the future as represented in Spy Fighter stories sure is complicated! At first, the far future world of 1997 contained only three megacountries: Mongo, Russmany and Greater America, but soon enough Greater America was menaced by aggressor nations such as Grotonia, Prussany and Antarctica. Simultaneously, the timeline advanced from 1998 to a more ambiguous “early in the Twenty-First Century.” Is the unspoken background story the fracturing of these enormous countries back into something…
Just a great bunch of guys. David: I read the Samson stories in Big 3 before those in his home comic Fantastic, so while I knew about his sidekick David I didn’t really know what his whole deal was. I had read that Samson just found him sitting around somewhere and assumed that that was hyperbole but no, it’s not: Samson is investigating some mysterious plane crashes in the Rockies when he just finds a kid, who turns out to…
(Fight Comics 008, 1940) I like to criticize scientist-villains a lot for their limited vision, for their inability to see the legitimate money-making options they have after inventing say a super-efficient tunnel digging machine that they view solely as a way to rob banks easily. The Monk is the opposite of that kind of guy, I reckon. (brief aside about the name: this is not in reference to the religious calling but rather the old-school, now-defunct gangster nickname, where “Monk”…
(Fight Comics 008, 1940) No origin or motivation for the Termite Men is provided. They just burrow up through the basement of Rip Regan, Power-Man and declare their intent to destroy San Francisco via chewing. Probably San Francisco – that’s where Power-Man started out but the slow process of comic book urban alchemy might have already transferred him to New York. Anyway, he ends up gassing them all to death.
(Fight Comics 006, 1940) In terms of comic book creeps, a race of seven-foot tall barbarians with walrus tusks (and mustaches!) waylaying travellers in the mountains of Tibet are hardly remarkable, and yet I quite like them. I am charmed by their simplicity. Plus, they move things around the mountains on what can only be described as a giant toboggan, a very silly thing to do!
(Fight Comics 006, 1940) The Lizard was (will be?) the leader of a group of Grotonian spies working to sabotage the military of Greater America in the far-off future year of 1998 AD. He had (will have?) the pretty clever idea of being arrested as a petty thief and running his operation from inside a jail cell but unfortunately for his reputation as a smart guy he then fell for the most obvious trick in the world when Saber the…