(Fantastic Comics 004, 1940) Kilgor is a roboticist with a simple 5-step plan for success and world domination: 1. develop a giant super-robot on an isolated Pacific island. 2. ally with generic fascist dictator Rigo in order to acquire the industrial might required to manufacture your robot en mass. 3. Once Rigo decides that you are surplus to requirements and tries to eliminate you and claim the robot army for himself, turn the tables on him and take the reins…
(Mystery Men Comics 004, 1939) Here we see Lord Marvel, a weird little creep who lives on the planet Ursis (as with many planets in the Rex Dexter comics, Ursis is ambiguously placed: Dexter and his companion/ lover Cynde are constantly sidetracked on the comparatively short voyage from Earth to Mars and always seem to end up on extra-solar planets. The writers of Golden Age sci-fi comics often seem to have a fairly fuzzy grasp of the positions and distances…
(Daring Mystery Comics 005, 1940) Poor Dr Narr. all he wanted was to make good robots, but all he could make were terrible robots (in comics terms. Even today, bipedal, semi-autonomous robots capable of running and throwing nets etc are wildly advanced. Be less hard on yourself, Narr). Too bad for Narr that he chose the villain’s path: rather than reevaluating his metrics for success in a robot he kidnaps Marvex the 5th dimensional super-robot in hopes of discerning his…
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 013, 1940) The history of spaceflight is of course very different in a super-hero universe. For example, Empress Nara of Ligra, featured in a previous post about Professor Zog being knighted, was actually an Earth-woman who arrived on Ligra as an infant because her father invented an interstellar spacecraft sometime around 1920 or so. This it is practically unremarkable that Professor Zog was invited on a trip to the Moon in 1940 by Dr Simon…
(More Fun 062, 1940) Look at this damn nerd. He’s got a lightning cannon and a robot army and he bothered Dr Fate for a whole afternoon. Good riddance to him, I say. Raymond Rall. Ridiculous.
(More Fun Comics 052-054, 1940) The Wizard is the kind of guy you get in comics who develops a robot army and a few different types of rays, destructive and otherwise, and immediately turns around and takes over (what I assume to be) his home town. I do appreciate that he looks like someone who has been sitting in a basement or a cave soldering robot faces for twenty years, but it’s no excuse for incivility.