Nova Scotia: As I always have to note when Nova Scotia pops up in a comic book: here’s Captain Aero taking in the sights on the featureless green plain that is the Halifax Airfield. (Captain Aero Comics 001, 1941) the Looming Spectre of War: Less popular than our old friend the Looming Spectre of Death, the Looming Spectre of War nonetheless deserves recognition as a potent allegorical image. (Cat-Man Comics 002, 1941) And speaking of the Looming Spectre of Death,…
(Wow Comics 003, 1941) Inventor Phineas Cox has created a mummy ray, which is a device that fires a beam that instantly mummifies living tissue, a horrible thing that could only be used ethically by the mortuary and possibly the jerky industries. Cox intends for the weapon to be used in the defense of the United States, and to that end takes it not to the military but to something called the Defend America League, where he is somewhat predictably…
(Wow Comics 002, 1940) The Scorpion is mostly a regular gang boss, but with just enough extra oomph to take him over the edge into super-villainy. First thing: he is a very Bad Boss in that particular “execute under-performing employees as an example to the others” kind of way that all corporate overlords wish that HR would let them be. Secondly, he is perhaps the closest thing to a super-villain was faced by Allan Lanier, aka the Hunchback, seen here in his civilian guise…
(Wow Comics 002, 1941) Once Atom Blake, Boy Wizard sets off on his interplanetary search for his father, his first stop is Mercury. Why? For no stated reason and seemingly just because it’s the first planet out from the Sun, and for that matter, Blake’s reason for starting his search in space rather than on Earth is simply because he can. Once he arrives on Mercury, he is almost immediately captured by an intelligent species of hive-dwelling insectoids. These Mercurians…
Something for everyone* in this one. *not really. Zambini the Miracle Man: Zambini the Miracle Man, aka Zambini the Great, is your fairly typical comic book magic man, albeit a bit more flamboyantly dressed than even that crowd normally are. Though Zambini has a lot of the regular magic abilities of his peer group his signature trick involves his magical Boomerang Amulet, which causes evil to rebound on its sender. This takes forms as diverse as a cobra returning to…
(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…