Where are we going to put all of these aliens? Undergrounders: I want to call these guys mole men who invade the surface world in the year 3050 CE, but looking at the battle scene and the remainder of this adventure I reckon that Abovegrounders of that particular future also look all bald and gangly. It’s a whole world of mole men! Science adventurer Captain Daring kills the Undergrounders’ underground Fuehrer and installs his own ladyfriend as the new Queen…
To continue my recent trend, 3/4 of these characters are very unlikely to appear in a modern Marvel comic and the fourth is decently likely to. Mr Million: Mr Million is kind of what everyone yaps about wanting Bruce Wayne to be: a rich guy who uses his money to help people instead of beating people up, and while that might be better for society in this completely fictional version of New York City it’s pretty boring to read about….
Every once in a while I hit a particularly dense seam of aliens and so forth and this week is one of those times. Neptunii: The Neptunii (and that name is a guess based on the fact that one guy uses “Neptunus” as a singular version of the noun) live in Neptunia, an underground kingdom that could be described as “a big cave” at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. There, they seem to just kind of fly around shouting,…
If the last group of minor Marvel super-heroes had a tiny chance of appearing in a modern comic book I would say that this group’s chances are tiny-plus. Like a further 5% chance. Except for Dynaman. Dynaman: Dynaman, aka Lagaro, which means “Dynaman”, was born in the ancient super-advanced Kingdom of Korug, located somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Endowed with super strength, a photographic memory and enhanced intelligence, the ability to fly and a general superiority to even his peers in the…
Religions of the world: you are not being well-represented in fiction. the Dream Warner: While they never actually say the words “Tibetan Buddhism” in either of Thun-Dohr’s two appearances, he was brought up in a lamasery in Tibet and is personally mentored by the Dalai Lama (though not the one you’re thinking of), so I think that we can extrapolate and assign the Dream Warner to that religious tradition. Though it does not actually appear on-panel, the Dream Warner does give the…
(Daredevil Comics 005, 1941) Everything gonna be all right – the Claw hasn’t been seen for 10 days after he was set on fire and disappeared into the Hudson River. Psych, he’s back after maybe a month or two total, getting his huge fingerprints all over the skyscrapers and gassing on about taking over the US. And who will stop him this time, with the Daredevil out of the Claw-fighting game, Bill Hopkins understandably keeping a low profile and Jerry…
Oh boy! Minor super-heroes! 13: 13 (aka Thirteen, although the numerical version of the name is the official one) is the alias of Harold Higgins, whose life has been haunted by a series of misfortunes related to the number thirteen. A timeline of some of them: February 13, 1940: Harold’s brother Bob dies in a plane crash. March 13, 1940: Harold loses his life savings in the stock market. May 13, 1940: Harold’s sister Margy is paralyzed in a car…
(Daredevil Comics 006, 1941) New York’s dating scene is in trouble, as courting couples are being murdered at a blazing clip: six couples in two weeks as the story begins and a seventh just one page in – that’s fourteen people! That’s a person a day! On average! Nightro is on the case, but merely patrolling the parks and other canoodling spots is a bust as the killer knows to look out for costumed vigilantes and even leaves a taunting…
You just can’t keep ’em out of comics, those real people. Adolf Hitler: Dispatches super-spy Miss X to America. (Daredevil Comics 005, 1941) Raymond Stokes, the actor playing Hitler in a British propaganda film about London (the super-hero, not the city) inexplicably also turns out to be a Nazi agent who attempts to murder the Prime Minister when he makes a cameo appearance in the movie. (Daredevil Comics 005, 1941) Al Capone: No-first-name Perrone here is another classic example of…
(Daredevil Comics 006, 1941) Wolf Carson, gang boss, is in the hospital after being gunned down by his own traitorous associates. Faced with a choice between 1) dying of his wounds or 2) recovering so that the authorities can scoop him up and take him to jail, Carson takes the ever-popular option 3) take the nearby unethical doctor up on his offer to help cheat death via experimental science, in this case a total brain transplant! True to his word,…