When we covered the Fourth Dimensional being called Lucifer, who might be the for-real Devil (if the Fourth Dimension is also the afterlife) and might just be a big weirdo (if it isn’t), I said that we would see him again. Well here he is! Flip Falcon next encounters Lucifer after he takes a woman named Nora into the Fourth Dimension in order to heal her face, which was scarred with acid by a vindictive man. This is a noble…
No matter how many comic book aliens we catalogue, there are always more to see! Fish-Men: While fish men are nothing new, these particular ones have a couple of points of distinction: firstly they just look kind of nice, a bit more gracile and svelte than your usual humanoid fish. Secondly, they are in fact Moon Fish-Men, as they serve demi-god(?) and would-be King of the Moon Bakalma. This also makes them Moon Fish-Men from the 12th Century, as Bakalma is an…
Comics Crossovers: In one of Golden Age comics’ rare but casual crossovers, Judy Jackson, rival of reporter-hero Scoop Mason, is attending the same Governor’s ball in the Bahamas as Newsreel cameraman Speed Martin. (The Funnies 051, 1941) Then in the very next issue, Scoop Mason himself shows up to take in a football game! (The Funnies 052, 1941) ADDENDUM: I just realized that the team that they’re watching is Elmhurst College featuring star player Wally Williams, from his own feature…
(Fantastic Comics 018, 1941) The Black Rider is a ruthless bandit chief who has not only terrorized the countryside but has had the audacity to kidnap Bill Carrol, Captain Kidd’s best friend, an unforgivable sin. While the Black Rider & Co. might look like they are straight out of a comic set in the American West, Captain Kidd’s 1941 adventures have taken place exclusively in Africa, and given the mention of a city called Tanga above, I think that we…
In today’s exploration of the divine, we delve into the extended lore of Sir Richard of Warwick, aka the Golden Knight, starting with his three magical brothers in-law. Mokon, King of the Moon: Mokon, King of the Moon, appears at Sir Richard’s window one night to claim the hand of his sister Marion in marriage, and though we the reader are hearing about this deal (and indeed about this or any of the Golden Knight’s sisters) for the first time,…
(Fantastic Comics 017, 1941) The Fang is a recurring villain in the mould of his Fox Features contemporaries the Rook and the Beast: you can knock him down and seemingly kill him as much as you want but he’s just going to keep on coming back to do more crimes. When he first appears, the Fang’s major goal is to acquire the Burma Emerald from its caretaker Princess Kava, in order to decipher the secret of invisibility that has been…
This is the stuff that my counterpart in a comic book universe is writing his little blogs about. Movies: Not only does this theatre feature an appearance by Lady Luck (an impostor, alas), but it has screenings of Boris Scarloff in Mummy Blood and Myrna Powell and William Loy in Thinner than the Thin Man! (Lady Luck, the Spirit Section 1940) The villainous Comrade Ratski might have founded Ratski Productions and filmed his opus The Great War as a cover for his espionage activities,…
Fox Features, you burned hot and bright and brought us so many minor super-heroes. the Black Fury: The Black Fury, like Bob Phantom before him, is a newspaper gossip columnist who moonlights as a costumed vigilante. What are the chances that we would have two of those? I enjoy his costume even if it is somewhat generic even for 1941, though I am a bit upset that the glowing gemstone on his and his sidekick’s foreheads is never addressed. For…
Aliens! Mostly Martians! Treemen: Richard of Warwick, aka the Golden Knight, having gone to the Crusades, won the Crusades and returned home from the Crusades, now enters a fourth period of adventuring that is all about family. First, he rescues his little brother from the evil Black Baron, he now sets out to explore his father’s gold mines including the boarded-up one where his mother disappeared twenty years earlier. Inside, in addition to a variety of hostile reptile life, Richard…
Who ever thunk that there could be quite so many minor super-heroes? Invisible Scarlet O’Neil: Young Scarlet O’Neil, being the kind of person who will touch an arc of mysterious energy in her scientist father’s lab, finds herself rendered invisible, a condition that she eventually learns is reversed by touching a certain nerve in her wrist.* She uses this power to fight mid-tier injustice eventually (I am assured) parleys it into a career as a newspaper reporter. Before that, she…