(Exciting Comics 003, 1940)
They may be an ordinary gang of Western Bandits but I can’t help but be impressed by just how many of them there are. Every time Texas Ranger Jim Hatfield meets up with the Masked Men he blows at least a couple of them away yet there are always more available to help top man Bull Jeffrey loot the boom town of Concho. They must’ve been planning a 72-man split of the loot originally!
They’re just these guys, you know?
the Solar Legion:
The Solar Legion is the brainchild of Adam Starr, a 23rd Century man about whom very little is ever revealed. Emerging from a concealed base on Io, he sets out to rid the Solar System of the scourge of space piracy via the most direct route possible: blowing up all of the space pirates.
Starr’s exploits have their intended effects: 1. many pirates are blown up and 2. the authorities are convinced of the need for an interplanetary peacekeeping force, aka the Solar Legion, with Starr as the head.
Despite his new position of authority, the remaining four Solar Legion stories feature Adam Starr as a solo operator, hunting down pirates and settling factional disputes with his ray gun and two-fisted attitude. (Crash Comics Adventures 001, 1940)
the Cat Man:
The Cat Man is David Merrywether, who is orphaned in India after his father William brings his entire family along on a scientific expedition to collect butterflies and they run afoul of a hostile tribe (no word on whether William did something to draw their ire or if they were universally hostile to intruders – in either case the question of just why he would have his wife and two young children along on such a dangerous endeavour remains unaddressed). David, the only survivor, ends up being adopted by a tiger and spends his youth with her in an expository caption.
(I really appreciate this “yadda yadda yadda” version of the Raised by Animals origin story. You’ve heard it all before, folks: he lived among the tigers and now he has tiger powers. He’s back in civilization because he saved a tiger’s life and that tiger’s mother owed him a favour. Now let’s get to the costumed antics!)
Cat Man has all of the expected cat-related superpowers – enhanced dexterity, strength, speed and jumping ability – plus a few less common ones like the ability to speak to tigers and the ability to fall any distance and land on his feet without harm. He also has a cat’s enhanced night vision, which takes the form of literal beams of light that emit from his eyes. Fun!
The Cat Man’s most striking power is that of having nine lives, bestowed on him by his adoptive tiger mama when he saved her cub. The problem with the “multiple lives” superpower has always been that it’s not interesting if it’s not used, with the result being that after two 1940 appearances Cat Man is down to seven lives. Surely this cannot be sustained going forward.
Speaking of going forward, we will be hearing more out of Cat Man, one of the minor successes of the Golden Age. Changes are afoot once he has his own title in 1941, starting with a revisions to his much-derided original costume (personally, I like this costume. It very much feels like the sort of thing that someone who had spent their youth alone in a jungle might put together). See you then! (Crash Comics Adventures 004, 1940)
Tornado Tom:
Like the word-box says: Tornado Tom is just some guy who was sucked up by a tornado one day and when he came down again he was inhumanly strong, fast and durable. He also had amnesia, so even though he shares the name Tom Kenny with the famous voice actor of such characters as Spongebob Squarepants, he himself did not know that.
Tornado Tom’s origin is never really explored and the two hints we get about the nature of his powers are a bit contradictory:
Possible Mystical Origin: in Cyclone Comics 002, Tom battles some thugs in a stuffy apartment and is drained of vitality by the lack of fresh breezes. In a moment of desperation he calls out to Boreas, “God of Wind” and is revived and re-energized by a gust of air that blasts through the window. Talking points: was it a mystic tornado sent by the gods? Is Tom Kenny a descendant of Boreas or another Greco-Roman figure?
Possible Biological Origin: In Cyclone Comics 005* Tornado Tom’s blood is asserted to have miraculous healing properties, possibly as a result of his being some sort of mutant or mutate. Talking points: was it a radioactive tornado?
This is all ultimately clutching at straws because Tornado Tom is a classic Golden Age cipher, much as I would like to know otherwise. (Cyclone Comics 001, 1940)
* his blood is reportedly transfused into a dying man in Cyclone Comics 004 but that issue is currently unavailable.
Mister Q:
Your typical master of disguise style hero, with a manservant named Ying and a dog named Satan. I quite like Mister Q because I’m pretty sure that his name is derived from the idea of wartime Q-Ships, ie, warships disguised as harmless merchant vessels. It’s a neat name for a disguise-based crimefighter! (Cyclone Comics 001, 1940)
(Wonderworld Comics 008, 1939)
As part of Yarko the Great’s second encounter with Death, he and the hapless Madame Punai journeyed to a sort of pastiche underworld (e.g., their journey took them through the Biblical Valley of Death but also involved this unnamed boatman ferrying them across the River Styx). And as with any good underworld pastiche there are some allegorical foes to get past before their goal is reached – the Harbingers of Death!
Like I said, these guys are allegorical demon guardians, so there isn’t much more to them than the expression of their allegory. First Pain, aka Burning Pain, appears to crush Yarko to his burning body. Good allegory! Pain can overwhelm you – though in a more in-depth work perhaps Yarko would be left with a burn or other lingering reminder of this battle rather than walking away unscathed after hurling pain into the abyss.
Fear appears next, and I really appreciate that he himself is a fearful creature rather than the more common monstrous fear-beasts that inflict fear by being big and spiky. Like Pain, Fear cannot stand up to Yarko’s overwhelming machismo and slinks back into the shadows from whence it came.
Finally, Horror is a master of the jump scare and as someone who is particularly vulnerable to that tool of the filmmaker’s art I really appreciate seeing him (them?) be flung off a cliff, probably not to their doom due to being a demon but at the very least to their major inconvenience.
And there you have it: three lil’ henchmen, three anthropomorphic personifications, three notches in Yarko the Great’s belt.
(Wonderworld Comics 004, 1939)
Firstly: re the first panel, I really struggled with whether to call these guys the Deadly Council of Vampires or just the Council of Vampires. Still doubting myself.
Secondly: I am going to lay out these guys’ whole deal up front in order to properly critique them in the manner I am compelled to: they are not, despite the name, vampires. Instead, they are what seems to be a cult devoted to a vampire named Anya and they are looking for an artifact called the Vampire Ruby that will allow her to live in “our world,” which contextually seems to mean that she will be able to remain awake and alive during the daytime.
The Vampire Ruby turns out to be in the possession of an agent of the London Museum and here’s where my critique comes in: the Singapore branch of the Council captures that agent and tortures him to death in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to give up the Ruby’s location (he had it between his toes! Very sloppy searching on the Council’s part). BUT!
THE CURATOR OF THE LONDON MUSEUM IS MARRIED TO ANYA! If they had just left the agent alone he would have taken it directly to their Queen! And then once protagonist Dr Fung and his pal Dan Barrister show up at the museum late on a Friday to say that they have Vampire Ruby, the curator invites them to his country estate for the weekend rather than (presumably) waiting until Monday office hours for them to come back with it!
If the curator (Luigi Bishop, btw) was just able to be cool for two and a half days he would have had the thing! Instead, he brings a famous detective to his mirror-filled home to meet his vampire bride.
But maybe I’m being unfair to the mortals in this story. After all, they’re all in thrall to a vampire who is dumb enough to tip off Fung and his pal Dan before doing a clumsy room invasion on them when, again, just waiting a couple of days would have delivered them the ruby on a silver platter. Presumably some of that dumb impulsiveness rubbed off on the ordinary cult members.
It all ends in a huge fire, like maybe a third of all vampire stories. Anya and her husband perish and the Singapore branch of the cult has to find something else to do on weekends.
(Smash Comics 004, 1939)
The real heyday of the capital-a Anarchist as societal boogeyman was in the 1920s by my reckoning and so you don’t get them in anything like the numbers of pseudo-Nazis and Yellow Perils in the comics of the 1930s, and then of course in the 1940s you get your Axis villains, followed by your dastardly Commies and this is all to say that I enjoy these fellows for their novelty if nothing else.
As for their specifics, well, they’re anarchists, aren’t they? Anarchists are devoted to the goals of blowing up infrastructure for no stated ideological reason other than unquestioning loyalty the their leader, right? Because that’s what these guys do and so they’re anarchists and they’re anarchists so that’s what they do. Simple.
Anyway, they manage to get themselves infiltrated by not one but two undercover operatives from Scotland Yard, because the anonymity of the hooded robe is a fickle mistress, particularly if you’re always gathered in a big clump in a previously-established location.
(Smash Comics 004, 1939)
The real heyday of the capital-a Anarchist as societal boogeyman was in the 1920s by my reckoning and so you don’t get them in anything like the numbers of pseudo-Nazis and Yellow Perils in the comics of the 1930s, and then of course in the 1940s you get your Axis villains, followed by your dastardly Commies and this is all to say that I enjoy these fellows for their novelty if nothing else.
As for their specifics, well, they’re anarchists, aren’t they? Anarchists are devoted to the goals of blowing up infrastructure for no stated ideological reason other than unquestioning loyalty the their leader, right? Because that’s what these guys do and so they’re anarchists and they’re anarchists so that’s what they do. Simple.
Anyway, they manage to get themselves infiltrated by not one but two undercover operatives from Scotland Yard, because the anonymity of the hooded robe is a fickle mistress, particularly if you’re always gathered in a big clump in a previously-established location.
(Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)
Just a regular group of modern-day masked rustlers notable for two things: their better-than-average name and…
… their insanely bad opsec. “Adventure-Hunter” Barry Lane waltzes into sight, makes up a fake toughguy name and backstory and before you can blink twice he has the entire lowdown on the gang’s operations and an invitation to join. And all this in a crowded bar. And the local sheriff had to specifically bring in help to hunt these guys down!
(Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)
Just a regular group of modern-day masked rustlers notable for two things: their better-than-average name and…
… their insanely bad opsec. “Adventure-Hunter” Barry Lane waltzes into sight, makes up a fake toughguy name and backstory and before you can blink twice he has the entire lowdown on the gang’s operations and an invitation to join. And all this in a crowded bar. And the local sheriff had to specifically bring in help to hunt these guys down!
(Blue Ribbon Comics 004, 1940)
There are plenty of Ku Klux Klan- inspired groups in comics and thusfar we’ve encountered a few: the Blue Devils, the Horned Masks, even the Purple‘s gang of idiots. All of those examples share one thing: they’re just gangs that operate in the country using the intimidation tactics of the KKK but without the goals of reinforcing white supremacy – they’re just regular comic book gangs, only in the country.
There’s a part of me that wants to say that the Night Riders are closer to being the KKK than the rest of these groups but if I’m honest that’s because they have no clear goals – they just go around the countryside abducting, beating and killing people for getting into their business without any clear indication of what that business is. It could just as easily be organized insurance fraud as domestic racial terrorism, because the real reason the Night Riders are doing all this is so that they can beat up newspaper photographer Paul Patton and inspire him to become the Fox.
All Novelty Press edition!
Dick Cole, Wonder-Boy:
Dick Cole was left on the front steps of scientist Professor Blair as a baby, and according to him there was an accompanying note requesting that he use his hitherto-untested experimental child-rearing techniques to bring the kid up to be superhuman. And it works! Dick Cole is stronger and faster and smarter than everyone else, and works to help those around him in whatever way he can.
Sadly for me the Dick Cole series is set at a military academy, a surprisingly popular location in early comics. I think that the weird pseudo-military class structure that such places had/have was popular for the easy drama inherent in the noble protagonists being forced to kowtow to undeserving upperclassmen but reading comics about teenagers being assholes to each other for imaginary reasons palls quickly. (ADDENDUM: I wrote this at the beginning of my Dick Cole reading and am pleased to say that the military academy stuff isn’t as bad as it is in other comics of the time) (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)
BONUS: here’s Dick Cole as a very cool baby.
Sub-Zero:
AKA Sub-Zero Man. Part of a Venusian expedition to Earth whose extremely awesome looking spaceship crashed through a frozen gas ball en route, killing everyone but Our Hero, who instead becomes uncontrollably and destructively super-cold.
After a couple of issues of misunderstood wandering and being hunted, Sub-Zero endears himself to the city of Centro… Oregon? by saving it from a volcano. (highway signs place Centro somewhere between Los Angeles and Topeka, so it’s probably either Oregon or Northern California, and Oregon is closer to volcano country). There, he settles down to a regular super-hero life, albeit one with no secret identity, Centro slowly becomes NYC like so many other comic book cities and people basically forget the fact that he’s an alien. (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)
the Phantom Sub:
A bunch of young men led by Jack Damon and Slim Dugan construct an advanced submarine in secret, as you do, and end up as wanted fugitives dispensing justice on the high seas via an electrified water cannon and some plucky attitudes. (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)
Near the end of 1941 the Phantom Sub added the power of flight to its many features, and shortly after that the Phantom Sub crew were able to come in from the cold and begin aiding the US war effort. (Blue Bolt v2 006, 1941)
the White Rider and Super Horse:
During a stagecoach holdup, a youngster named Peter (no last name given) is orphaned and flung into a river that eventually flows into the mysterious Lost Valley, where he befriends and is raised by an old hermit named Jeb and a cool horse named Cloud. Eventually, the hermit dies of puma and Peter and Cloud make their way to the outside world where it turns out that due to the valley’s depth it somehow had more gravity and thus the two are super strong. Anyhow, Peter immediately hunts down and kills the bandit who orphaned him and resolves to stamp out crime as the White Rider and Super Horse.
Despite the superpowers the White Rider is a bit of a dud, hero-wise and Super Horse does most of the heavy lifting, both literally and metaphorically. (Blue Bolt v1 001)