(Blue Bolt v1 011, 1941) Dr Trask is himself not much to speak of: a scientist who has taken over a village in the South American jungle, forced its inhabitants to pan gold and fight for him and killed anyone from the outside world who got too close, including Dr Martin, a scientist whose colleague Dr Howard has hired Sub-Zero to investigate just what is going on. Like I said, pretty standard comic book villain stuff, but his methods, oh…
(Blue Bolt v1 010, 1941) Fargall is a scientist-cum-criminal operating out of Centro, Sub-Zero’s chosen home (well, it hasn’t actually been identified as Centro for about 7 issues or so and I’m afraid that it’s slowly transmogrifying into NYC like all unnamed comic book cities but until I’m told otherwise it’s Centro to me) who has taken up the challenge of operating out of a super-hero town by inventing heat ray guns that effectively counter Sub-Zero’s whole deal. If that…
(Blue Bolt v1 010, 1941) Some preamble: in Blue Bolt v1 007 the Green Sorceress managed to capture the Blue Bolt and thus in Blue Bolt v1 008 she was able to force Dr Bertoff to surrender to her forces. Her incompetent scientists subsequently triggered a series of devastating explosions while attempting to extract radium from Bertoff’s mineral fields, with the one positive effect of opening a passage to the surface world. The Green Sorceress then travelled to the surface…
(Blue Bolt v1 009-010, 1940) This is a simple one but there are a lot of Lore Implications so I had to use a lot of pictures. To start, Sergeant Spook and his pal Dr Sherlock notice that there are no North African ghosts in Ghost Town (aside from Cleopatra, who was mentioned a few issues earlier) and resolve to go solve that mystery. They get the permissions and passports necessary to enter the mortal realm and head out. Arriving…
(Blue Bolt v1 008, 1941) The Sergeant Spook writers, having exhausted the storytelling possibilities inherent in an ultra-powerful ghost taking on mere mortals and having established that ghost-on-ghost violence is essentially consequence free are now trying a new angle: ghost crooks preying on mortals and Sergeant Spook bringing them to justice. This time, it’s the Ghost of Captain Kidd – like Jesse James before him, Kidd is compelled to return to the patterns of his life, and having obtained a…
The kinds of character that are a part of comics history so it would be wrong to ignore them but are also pretty racist (usually – I’m sure that eventually I’ll find something else distasteful enough to put here) and unpleasant to dedicate a whole lot of time to. We’re going with a round-up! Our first culprit is George Harvard AKA Big Sun, a guy with a way too complicated plan to sell oil to the Axis out of the…
Ran out of tags again. Cops Shoot: The cops in whatever city Inferno lives in are trying to kill him because they think he did a robbery and is running away. (Blue Ribbon Comics 018, 1941) The cops try to kill Captain Flag twice in this issue! This time he’s breaking jail after being arrested for murder, but still. (Blue Ribbon Comics 019, 1941) Panel Fun: “Dixie Dugan” Comic, 1932
(Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940) The Green Sorceress! Possibly named Norzimo, absolutely the ruler of the underground kingdom of Voltor aka the Hidden Empire aka the Green Empire. Locked in a cold war with Dr Bertoff, leader of Deltos aka the Scientific City, as she wants the Deltosan radium fields in order to power her war machines and invade the surface while he wants to destroy her kingdom and everyone in it. According to Bertoff, the Green Sorceress is descended…
The thing is that they have some but not all of the attributes of a super-villain. A sea-raider who uses a stolen acid gun to build a psychically-controlled army of skeleton men? If only he had a name or had a bit more swagger! Alas for him the Shark puts him down before he could do enough to elevate himself out of this gathering of also-rans. (Amazing-Man Comics 021, 1941) This gang of guys dressed as mailmen don’t give the…
Minor super-heroes need to be rounded up now and then. Blackstone the Magician: There are a fair number of comic versions of real life people: movie cowboys by the dozen, big game tracker Clyde Beatty a couple of times, etc. Not too many of them quite cross over into the super-hero side of things, but here we have magician Harry Blackstone Sr, who absolutely did (Blackstone is also a great example of someone who was at one point wildly famous…