(Wow Comics 002, 1941) If a comic story opens on a description of a gem or art object like the Maharajah Jewel here the you can be sure that that item is about to be stolen by a nefarious individual. It’s just science! Sure enough, no sooner does Professor Cadiz finish his lecture on the gem and its provenance than rictus grin-sporting gang boss the Horned Hood is sending two of his top men into the Upstate Museum to grab…
(Wow Comics 002, 1941) After a particularly fraught meeting of the Orphan Society, at which the charity’s president Henry Suffridge accuses everyone present of potentially being responsible for some recent embezzlement, board member Jones is accosted by some spooky scary ghosts and skeletons while muttering to himself on his way home. They warn him in no uncertain terms to leave town – is he the embezzler, being punished for his misdeeds by the spirits of the dead? No he is…
(Wow Comics 002, 1941) We open as concert pianist Campani plays the “Symphony of Death,” a piece of music anonymously dedicated to him, only to die at its conclusion. What will eventually become clear is that the sheet music he was reading from was coated in poison and slightly stuck together so that Campani would need to lick his finger in order to turn the pages, thus poisoning himself in the process. This is a pretty good plan! If pulled…
(Spy Smasher 002, 1941) There are a few different kinds of evil opposites. There are your classic elemental opposites, like when a fire guy fights a water guy or an ice guy, and your thematic opposites, like when the Flash goes up against Turtle Man. Then there are your literal Bizarro-style mirror image opposites, which is the closest to what America Smasher is, but not quite. Instead, he is a declared opposing force to Spy Smasher: “if you are going to smash…
(Spy Smasher 002, 1941) Yet another not-quite Nazi spy for Spy Smasher to smash. I really like the Eye’s little “hey” pose in the splash panel, like even he knows that he’s not quite dynamic enough to be there. Like so many of his peers, the Eye is after Spy Smasher ally Admiral Corby (at least once mentioned as being chief of the US Secret Service but usually just generically Important), and ends up kidnapping his daughter (and Spy Smasher…
(Spy Smasher 002, 1941) After the heady times of having an actual Nazi agent in the person of the Red Death last time, we are back in the realms of plausible deniability and no-name fascism in the person of the Tigress. Though the Tigress does indulge in some activities relating to her chosen theme, including somewhat gruesomely using her two trained tigers for corpse-disposal duties, her main line is in murdering US officials such as Senator Whitney here and then…
(Spy Smasher 002, 1941) Spy Smasher occupies a niche in the crimefighting community: he smashes spies, and since he also stars in a comic book, the spies he smashes adopt increasingly baroque themes as time goes on. Take the Red Death, a master spy who also dresses like a skeleton man out of an Edgar Allen Poe story, and who also happens to be the only one of Spy Smasher’s 1941 foes to creep far enough over the line of…
(Spy Smasher 001, 1941) We’ve entered 1941 and the crypto-fascist spies are getting closer and closer to being just plain old Nazis. Case in point: the Dark Angel, a classic femme fatale spy with just enough plausible deniability to satisfy comics’ compulsion to stay just barely technically politically neutral. The Dark Angel’s name might be straight out of the mid-90s but her plans are 1941 all the way down. As the story opens she is sending two of her men to blow…
Oh my gosh this place has so many god options. the Sacred Leopard: The animal-worshipping tribe who all dress like the animal in question is a regular trope in jungle comics so of course Kalthar, lord of the jungle eventually encounters some of them. In this case it’s Leopard Men from the Leopard Village, who dress in leopard skins and worship Karno, the leopard (Karno seems to be the collective singular noun for the leopard, a thing that happens a…
(Zip Comics 009, 1940) Mr Nimbus is a simple kind of crook: he has developed or otherwise acquired a liquid that creates a corrosive green gas and he is going to use that to kill people and steal riches from them. No dreams of world domination, no grand designs, just good old fashioned murder and robbery. But also no especial care taken, as he leaves behind a very big clue to the location of his next crime for the Scarlet…