The Whip is an okay character aside from the brownface bit but one thing I absolutely love about him is that although he does a credible job at the Ineffectual Secret Identity act he also just travels from town to town with an enormous black horse. (Flash Comics v1 005, 1940) Names: This old dude shares his name with Kurt Busiek’s Astro City character Samaritan! The tally of comics characters named Asa Martin stands at 2! (Flash Comics v1 010,…
(Feature Comics 049, 1941) The Purple Monster is a pretty lacklustre super-villain. He ticks all the boxes: volcano lair on an island somewhere off BC, army of costumed henchmen, subjugated population of poor island yokels to exploit complete with fake human sacrifices and an unexplained sinister use for the sacrificial victims… it’s a complete checklist of features designed to qualify him for this list. He even draws his name from a local superstition, albeit one he started himself by projecting…
(Feature Comics 047, 1941)
(Feature Comics 046-055, 1941-1942) If you, like me, aren’t familiar with WWI-era espionage figures, then this one will require some explanation. Fraulein Doktor was the only name that German spy Elsbeth Schragmüller was known by, even after the war had ended and up until German records were seized in 1945, in fact. And once Captain Bruce Blackburn’s adventures had wrung all of the interest they could out of the German-American Bund, a sexy spy nemesis was just the ticket! Thus: Sonya…
(Feature Comics 046, 1941) An exciting development! Up until now our minor super-heroes have been of two flavours: the stars of minor super-hero strips or a new identity adopted by the stars of crime or adventure strips – the key word in either case is star – they are the focus and driving force of the strip. The Red Triangle is our first example of another type of super-hero: the single issue guest star. These are far more common in the…
(Feature Comics 045, 1941) It’s a tale as old as time, by which I mean about a year: noncostumed adventurers adopting costumed identities to keep up with the oncoming juggernaut that is the Golden Age super-hero boom. In this case, it’s Rusty Ryan and the other unusually muscular teens of the Boyville orphanage, who up until now were more of a high school sports type of bunch, dealing with the plague of unscrupulous gamblers betting on local hockey games and…
(Feature Comics 045-046, 1941) Golden Age crossovers were a pretty rare thing, other than in places like All-Star Comics where that was the whole idea, but one place you occasionally encounter them is in the kind of adventure strips that filled out the bulk of anthology comics before the super-heroes really got into full market domination mode, and especially if the same person was working on both characters and wanted to have them meet up and say what a good series…
(Feature Comics 043, 1941) Another example of the classic combination of someone posing as a spooky local legend-figure in order to scare folk away from a valuable area. In this case one Jean Dupre and his mother are trying to use the legend of the giant Black Bat (that they might have just made up) to scare their step sister/ daughter Marie away from the family ranch, which is just lousy with radium ore. It’s a good attempt, foiled by…
(Feature Comics 043, 1941) Another example of the classic combination of someone posing as a spooky local legend-figure in order to scare folk away from a valuable area. In this case one Jean Dupre and his mother are trying to use the legend of the giant Black Bat (that they might have just made up) to scare their step sister/ daughter Marie away from the family ranch, which is just lousy with radium ore. It’s a good attempt, foiled by…
(Feature Comics 042-048, 1941) USA, the Spirit of Old Glory might just be the most overtly patriotic super-hero concept ever, which is saying something. Especially as she is a Quality Comics character, a company that also featured Uncle Sam (the literal Spirit of America) and Miss America (literally given her powers by the Statue of Liberty) in their roster. USA was originally a little girl who saw Betsy Ross sew the first American flag and was just so friggin’ jazzed about…