The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: slaver

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 895: THE GHOST OF THE DEEP

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 895: THE GHOST OF THE DEEP

    (America’s Greatest Comics 001, 1941)

    The Ghost of the Deep, a dastardly fellow indeed. As the comic opens, a captive scientist named Hugo has just completed a mysterious formula for him, only to be rewarded with murder.

    In the following days, the Ghost attacks US West Coast shipping, each time leaving behind a calling card in the form of a message in a bottle.

    The Ghost even tries to silence Billy Batson’s fairly routine reporting on the attacks (but why leave a calling card if you don’t want everyone to know you’re responsible?) by taking Billy and his boss Sterling Morris for a proverbial ride. When this is predictably foiled by Captain Marvel, the Ghost of the Deep shows up long enough to demonstrate that he is also a classic comic book Bad Boss by drowning his hapless Teutonic minions.

    There is a bit of radio-based taunting, since Billy is a radio guy. Again, this kind of thing brings into question just why the Ghost of the Deep wants to shut Billy up.

    So just what is the Ghost of the Deep’s plan? And what is this mysterious formula that poor Hugo died for? Why, it’s the recipe for making a transparent, invulnerable alloy called Z-Metal, and using a fleet of tank-submarines composed of the stuff, the Ghost intends on conquering the United States. First stop: blowing up the Panama Canal.

    As for the Ghost’s real identity, well, it’s not revealed until later, but any cagey comics reader will immediately peg this smarmy rival radio man named Spriggins as the top suspect the instant that he walks on-panel. Presumably his cover serves the same purpose as Billy Batson’s: as a way of gathering information and justifying a lot of globetrotting as being in pursuit of a story.

    Ultimately, Spriggins’ plan has one fatal flaw: it fails to account for the presence of a magically super-strong fellow like Captain Marvel, who succeeds where the might of the US Navy cannot and smashes the Z-Metal fleet to smithereens. And then does the same to the Ghost of the Deep’s cool Z-Metal chainmail.

    The captured Spriggins makes one last attempt at striking out at the US by stealing an MP’s gun and taking out a nearby General, only to be intercepted by Captain Marvel and suffer the oft-joked-about but seldom-seen fate of the person who fires a bullet into an invulnerable super-hero’s chest only to have it bounce back and kill them instead. 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 847: THE WIZARD OF ZORO

    (Weird Comics 004, 1940) 

    The Wizard of Zoro really takes the prize for the Most Charming Atrocity of 1940 when he swoops down on a small town and turns everyone into the kind of semi-anthropomorphic giant frogs that you get in Victorian greeting cards. Do I love that he then enslaves the frogs? No. Do I endorse the fact that he singles out an attractive young woman for special torment by turning her boyfriend into a snake? Of course not. Nevertheless, the frogs are charming and dear.

    Perhaps the Wizard of Zoro is riding a little too high on his great ranomancy (a word I just made up to describe frog-based magic) because when the Sorceress of Zoom proposes an alliance between the two of them he gets all high and mighty about how he doesn’t need anyone else to be a cool and powerful wizard. (sidebar: I think it shows a lot of maturity for the Sorceress to attempt this partnership with someone who looks nearly identical to her recent tormentor the Wizard. It’s a real shame that the Wizard of Zoro was too much of a jerk to join her)

    The Sorceress of Zoom is of course more than a match for some lousy frog wizard, which she proves by incinerating his lousy palace. 

    The Wizard’s only response being to further transform his subjects, from frogs into mice, is inadequate at best. And the frogs were the only thing he had going for him, so he’s really shooting himself in the foot here. 

    The Sorceress ultimately puts this sad excuse for a duel out of its misery by weaponizing the boyfriend-turned snake. Once the Wizard of Zoro is consumed by his former victim he is forced to restore him to human form lest he be digested, and it seems that the Wizard’s magic works like an old string of Xmas lights because undoing one spell turns out to also restore all of the mice as well.

    All that’s left is to smack the Wizard one before everyone goes home.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE SORCERESS OF ZOOM

    (Weird Comics 001, 1940)

    The Sorceress of Zoom is just what it says on the tin: a sorceress from Zoom, which is a magical flying city that she lives in and controls. She’s another of the Golden Age’s surprisingly large number of headlining super-villains, only instead of being a mad scientist or a more conventional crook she is a mercurial magic woman who just kind of flies around harassing people. Sometimes she’s almost okay and other times she’s one of history’s worst monsters – it’s over all fun!

    As has become the norm with these recurring villains, here is a litany of her crimes for 1940:

    In her first outing, the Sorceress takes over a small American city for unclear reasons (a page is missing from the only available scan of the issue and I reckon that the answer lies there), but the main conflict involves the Sorceress’ attempt to vamp a dude named Tom away from a lady named Janice. 

    Sorceress’ Motivation: caprice, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: This is the first appearance of the Sorceress of Zoom’s most frequent henchmen, a group of unnamed gobliny humanoids 

    In Weird Comics 002, the Sorceress really ups the stakes. This might be her most villainous appearance, as she first attempts to get the king of Bango, a… European city-state? to surrender 300 people so that she can kill them and turn their corpses into her goblin-men, and when he refuses to do so, she razes the entire city and turns the slaughtered population of Bango en masse.

    The only surviving Bangonian, Prince Paul, escapes to the nearby city-state of Zoda and when the Sorceress appears there, conceives of a plan to evaporate the cloud that Zoom sits upon – this marks the first of many times that Zoom is destroyed, but the Sorceress seems to be able to recreate it at will, so that’s not as consequential as it seems.

    I really enjoy the flying throne that the SoZ escapes on, so here it is.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The same gobliny humanoids, now revealed to be necromantically created out of human corpses.

    Weird Comics 003 really highlights the mercurial nature of the Sorceress’ character, as she is fully the blameless protagonist here. She and her friend Allan are just hanging out in Zoom when a nefarious character called the Wizard attacks them and makes off with the entire dang city, forcing the Sorceress and the tuxedo-clad Allan to quest in search of it. The Wizard is number 1 of 5 upcoming Minor Super-Villain entries dealing with foes of the Sorceress, so more on him later.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: vengeance, good times

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Seemingly just regular people, who are all slaughtered by the Wizard. The hazards of living in a magical city owned by a super-villain, I suppose. 

    In Weird Comics 004, the Sorceress attempts to ally with a fellow called the Wizard of Zoro to take over the US (? Possibly – a sense of place is not the strong suit of the Sorceress of Zoom comics), but he is too full of himself to work with someone else, making him the second of our future entries and giving the Sorceress a real opportunity to show off her flying, lion-driven carriage as she makes a brief tactical retreat.

    The Sorceress once again threatens to return and steal someone’s fairly generic man at the end of this one, and as far as is shown she never really follows up on these impulses.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: vengeance, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The coachmen above are the only ones shown, so presumably more regular people have decided to live on the edge by inhabiting a magical villain’s lair. 

     

    Weird Comics 005 sees the Sorceress kidnapping the magical men who live in Nagpur, India, both to beef up her forces and to prove that she is better than them.

    What the Sorceress doesn’t count on is the fact that one of the magical men might have a magical son, and that magical son might effect a magical rescue. The magical men, once released, are able to prevent the Sorceress from making any more attempts to deprive them of their freedom.

    This issue also attempts to inject some continuity and foreshadowing into the ongoing Sorceress of Zoom narrative with a bit of a cliffhanger about just what the general and the king in her cryo-chamber could be doing there. This is to my knowledge never revisited.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: pride, power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The gobliny humanoids are back!

    In Weird Comics 006, a somewhat off-model Sorceress of Zoom attempts to take over the Middle East with the help of some dragons. This attempt is foiled by young Prince Ja’afar, who is gifted a protective amulet and a flying carpet by a friendly desert mage and invades Zoom to rescue his love, the Princess Shahzarad.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: power, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Slaves and dragons.

    Weird Comics 007 sees the Sorceress transporting Zoom back in time to escape the chaos of the growing World War II. She ends up in Arthurian England, mixed up in a conflict between Sir Gareth of the Round Table (who she of course wants, carnally) and Morgana le Fay (upcoming minor super-villain 3/5), before being run out of town by Merlin.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Big beefy shirtless men, mostly. 

    The Weird Comics 008 story is the first of what I think will be a pattern of adventures going forward: the Sorceress rolls into some area and starts causing trouble, then gets into a scrap, then undoes some or all of the mischief that she caused and leaves. My theory is that this is what she does when she gets bored.

    In this case, the Sorceress annoys a young couple and attempts to seduce the man away from the woman (who has been turned into flowers, natch), then attempts to conquer a nearby city before having a real tussle with upcoming villain 4/5, the Super-Scientist, and leaving (after turning the flowers back into a lady).

    This issue also features the second time that Zoom is destroyed and recreated.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: lust, boredom, power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: the very cool-looking Vapor Men. 

    Weird Comics 009 is another of these boredom issues, in which the Sorceress is ostensibly transporting some treasure out of the North African desert but really seems to just be having fun torturing the poor people who she has enslaved to do so. Eventually, she gets into a conflict with out final upcoming super-villain, Gobi, the Super-Wizard of the Desert, who wants to use the Sorceress’ slaves as food for his vultures. Zoom is destroyed yet again this issue.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: wealth, boredom

    Inhabitants of Zoom: None shown. 

    That’s it for the Sorceress of Zoom in 1940: stay tuned for her 1941 adventures! 

     

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE SORCERESS OF ZOOM

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE SORCERESS OF ZOOM

    (Weird Comics 001, 1940)

    The Sorceress of Zoom is just what it says on the tin: a sorceress from Zoom, which is a magical flying city that she lives in and controls. She’s another of the Golden Age’s surprisingly large number of headlining super-villains, only instead of being a mad scientist or a more conventional crook she is a mercurial magic woman who just kind of flies around harassing people. Sometimes she’s almost okay and other times she’s one of history’s worst monsters – it’s over all fun!

    As has become the norm with these recurring villains, here is a litany of her crimes for 1940:

    In her first outing, the Sorceress takes over a small American city for unclear reasons (a page is missing from the only available scan of the issue and I reckon that the answer lies there), but the main conflict involves the Sorceress’ attempt to vamp a dude named Tom away from a lady named Janice. 

    Sorceress’ Motivation: caprice, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: This is the first appearance of the Sorceress of Zoom’s most frequent henchmen, a group of unnamed gobliny humanoids 

    In Weird Comics 002, the Sorceress really ups the stakes. This might be her most villainous appearance, as she first attempts to get the king of Bango, a… European city-state? to surrender 300 people so that she can kill them and turn their corpses into her goblin-men, and when he refuses to do so, she razes the entire city and turns the slaughtered population of Bango en masse.

    The only surviving Bangonian, Prince Paul, escapes to the nearby city-state of Zoda and when the Sorceress appears there, conceives of a plan to evaporate the cloud that Zoom sits upon – this marks the first of many times that Zoom is destroyed, but the Sorceress seems to be able to recreate it at will, so that’s not as consequential as it seems.

    I really enjoy the flying throne that the SoZ escapes on, so here it is.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The same gobliny humanoids, now revealed to be necromantically created out of human corpses.

    Weird Comics 003 really highlights the mercurial nature of the Sorceress’ character, as she is fully the blameless protagonist here. She and her friend Allan are just hanging out in Zoom when a nefarious character called the Wizard attacks them and makes off with the entire dang city, forcing the Sorceress and the tuxedo-clad Allan to quest in search of it. The Wizard is number 1 of 5 upcoming Minor Super-Villain entries dealing with foes of the Sorceress, so more on him later.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: vengeance, good times

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Seemingly just regular people, who are all slaughtered by the Wizard. The hazards of living in a magical city owned by a super-villain, I suppose. 

    In Weird Comics 004, the Sorceress attempts to ally with a fellow called the Wizard of Zoro to take over the US (? Possibly – a sense of place is not the strong suit of the Sorceress of Zoom comics), but he is too full of himself to work with someone else, making him the second of our future entries and giving the Sorceress a real opportunity to show off her flying, lion-driven carriage as she makes a brief tactical retreat.

    The Sorceress once again threatens to return and steal someone’s fairly generic man at the end of this one, and as far as is shown she never really follows up on these impulses.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: vengeance, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The coachmen above are the only ones shown, so presumably more regular people have decided to live on the edge by inhabiting a magical villain’s lair. 

     

    Weird Comics 005 sees the Sorceress kidnapping the magical men who live in Nagpur, India, both to beef up her forces and to prove that she is better than them.

    What the Sorceress doesn’t count on is the fact that one of the magical men might have a magical son, and that magical son might effect a magical rescue. The magical men, once released, are able to prevent the Sorceress from making any more attempts to deprive them of their freedom.

    This issue also attempts to inject some continuity and foreshadowing into the ongoing Sorceress of Zoom narrative with a bit of a cliffhanger about just what the general and the king in her cryo-chamber could be doing there. This is to my knowledge never revisited.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: pride, power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The gobliny humanoids are back!

    In Weird Comics 006, a somewhat off-model Sorceress of Zoom attempts to take over the Middle East with the help of some dragons. This attempt is foiled by young Prince Ja’afar, who is gifted a protective amulet and a flying carpet by a friendly desert mage and invades Zoom to rescue his love, the Princess Shahzarad.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: power, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Slaves and dragons.

    Weird Comics 007 sees the Sorceress transporting Zoom back in time to escape the chaos of the growing World War II. She ends up in Arthurian England, mixed up in a conflict between Sir Gareth of the Round Table (who she of course wants, carnally) and Morgana le Fay (upcoming minor super-villain 3/5), before being run out of town by Merlin.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Big beefy shirtless men, mostly. 

    The Weird Comics 008 story is the first of what I think will be a pattern of adventures going forward: the Sorceress rolls into some area and starts causing trouble, then gets into a scrap, then undoes some or all of the mischief that she caused and leaves. My theory is that this is what she does when she gets bored.

    In this case, the Sorceress annoys a young couple and attempts to seduce the man away from the woman (who has been turned into flowers, natch), then attempts to conquer a nearby city before having a real tussle with upcoming villain 4/5, the Super-Scientist, and leaving (after turning the flowers back into a lady).

    This issue also features the second time that Zoom is destroyed and recreated.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: lust, boredom, power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: the very cool-looking Vapor Men. 

    Weird Comics 009 is another of these boredom issues, in which the Sorceress is ostensibly transporting some treasure out of the North African desert but really seems to just be having fun torturing the poor people who she has enslaved to do so. Eventually, she gets into a conflict with out final upcoming super-villain, Gobi, the Super-Wizard of the Desert, who wants to use the Sorceress’ slaves as food for his vultures. Zoom is destroyed yet again this issue.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: wealth, boredom

    Inhabitants of Zoom: None shown. 

    That’s it for the Sorceress of Zoom in 1940: stay tuned for her 1941 adventures! 

     

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 835: KING QUANTUS

    (Top-Notch Comics 007, 1940)

    Streak Chandler’s adventures on Mars conclude with a space battle with Kalox, deposed king of the Gas Men, as he attempts to destroy the planet in retribution for losing his throne. Streak and his pals prevent this, but at the moment of their triumph they find themselves in the clutches of yet another villain, the pirate King Quantus, and spirited away to his secret headquarters on the Jovian moon Io.

    In addition to being a space pirate, King Quantus is big on slavery: he not only maintains a creepo harem of captured women but has a laboratory full of enslaved scientists. All this does nothing to save him from a good old American ass-kicking once Steak Chandler manages to sneak up on him, however.

    Quantus rallies his forces in an attempt to destroy Chandler and recapture his companions, but while he is doing so, Chandler’s erstwhile ally Lura leads a revolution of Quantus’ many slaves and captives.

    Lura, having been recently romantically rejected by Streak, turns on her former companions and announces herself as the new space pirate queen of Io. Between her and the still-at-large King Quantus, Streak’s space adventures appear to be just beginning but alas, we never get to see any of them as this is the final installment of his strip. 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 821: KONG

    (Thrilling Comics 003, 1940)

    I can’t really devote a lot of energy to Kong because he just kind of makes me tired, conceptually. He’s a Yellow Peril dictator who has devoted a fair amount of time and resources to stealing both military secrets and entire scientists from the US as a part of his bid for world domination, opposed only by Doc Strange and his companion Virginia Thompson. All very exciting stuff in theory, but it all resolves into a kind of mush – it’s not even as racist as it could be, which is good but not remarkable.

    In the spirit of writing something interesting, here are the good parts of Kong’s story: 

    1. Location: Kong is the dictator of the Asian kingdom of Kachukuo, which was pretty fun to recognize as a stand-in for Manchukuo, the Chinese puppet-state established by the Japanese in 1932. I’m always chuffed to see Manchukuo come up both because it doesn’t really do so very often and because I managed to get pretty far into adulthood before I learned about this entire country, and the joy of learning about it is still fresh in my mind. Not that the history of Manchukuo itself is particularly joy-inspiring, but learning is learning.

    2. Rays. I like Kong’s big chunky ray technology. He’s got a red ray that brings the scientists out of the suspended animation he put them in for transport, a blue mind control ray (blue and red seem to come from the same machine) and a green death ray. What can I say, I like a ray, and I like colours.

    3. Wild Hill Warriors. At one point Kong tries to get rid of Doc Strong by subjecting him to gladiatorial combat and I just really like the fact that he managed to scare up some Germanic warriors fresh from the sack of Rome for the task. They don’t do very well but they’re fun!

    That’s about it for Kong. Doc Strange inspires a revolution in Kachukuo, chucks the dictator into his own chemical soup and thaws out the scientists with a little Alosun, bish bash bosh, start the countdown to the next Fu Manchu knockoff showing up.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 785: THE PHOENIX

    (Sure-Fire Comics 001, 1940)

    Flash Lightning’s first stop after getting juiced up with brand-new electric powers is New York City, super-hero capital of the world, and it’s a good career move for him because he immediately gets mixed up in some super shenanigans. An explorer named Parker has gone missing in Central America and the agents of someone named the Phoenix are doing their damnedest to prevent his daughter Mary from looking for him. Lightning and Mary dodge fiery deathtraps, tommy gun-wielding gangsters and threatening coffin deliveries and set out regardless.

    Mary and Lightning travel to what is now the Parque Nacional Sierra De Las Minas in Guatemala (there are coordinates!) and dodge some fellows known variously as the Tzutuhiles, the Jewel Men and the Python Men, a bunch of snake worshippers who help the Phoenix advance his plans for world domination by using slave labour to create artificial gemstones that are then shipped around the world to be sold (and this is not the first nor the last time we will see the creation of artificial jewels, a victimless if not virtuous activity, treated as equivalent to counterfeiting currency).

    It is at this point that the Phoenix makes an actual appearance in the story, and just what does a guy named after a mythical firebird who makes and distributes gemstones with the aid of both hard-boiled gangsters and snake worshipping tribesmen look like?

    You guessed exactly right: he looks like a character from a 1930s sci-fi movie serial. Unfortunately for the Phoenix he is completely unprepared for a superhuman opponent and he appears in a whopping four panels before being sent to his doom at the bottom of his own volcanic crater by Flash Lightning.

    Special shout-out to this fellow, John Roan, aka the Reptile Man, who accompanied Parker Sr on his expedition and managed to escape and return to New York for help only be killed by the Phoenix’s men. Just what is his deal? Was he a reptile man when the expedition started or is this something that happened to him at the hands of the Python Men? I’m asking but nobody is telling me anything.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 763: QUEEN SHEBA

    (Speed Comics 008, 1940)

    Shock Gibson has been reading magazines, specifically an expose on slave trading in Africa, and being of a heroic turn of mind he decides to do something about it. Making his way across the Atlantic, Shock engages in various animal-related hijinks before finally ambushing a slave caravan and using some elephant-based enhanced interrogation to learn just what is going on with all the slaving.

    Turns out to be a pretty classic jungle adventure scenario: a hidden kingdom smack in the middle of Africa with ties to some historical people, in this case called the Secret Kingdom and ruled by a direct descendant of the biblical Queen of Sheba (who is traditionally placed somewhere in the vicinity of Yemen but who are we, the geography police?). And it’s a twofer, as Queen Sheba is served by an order of knights descended from a group of crusaders who somehow found themselves in the Secret Kingdom (okay, maybe we are the geography police because crusaders would also make more sense in the vicinity of Yemen and I’m having a hard time letting go of that fact).

    No mere knight is a match for the electrically-charged muscles of Shock Gibson, however, and by defeating the guard at the border of the kingdom Shock gains access to a one-on-one meeting with the Queen. I must say that this is a astonishingly bad precedent to set as far as security is concerned – this knight is just lucky that Shock wasn’t a particularly adept assassin.

    Here’s where I almost decided not to feature Queen Sheba as a super-villain, because once Shock manages to interrogate her it turns out that her motivations are depressingly banal. She isn’t buying slaves in order to feed them into a soul gem to power a world-conquering battle robot or using them as biological material to create an army of flesh beasts or even doing mass human sacrifice to appease her dark gods, she’s just building a pyramid and can’t see any way to do so that doesn’t involve exploiting her lessers. It’s frankly depressing.

    If this were any other style of Secret Kingdom Ruler (white-bearded man, withered old crone, American crook running a scam, etc) then Shock Gibson would pull their pyramid down around their ears, but Queen Sheba is a bodacious babe and so instead he offers to use his amazing gifts to complete the thing in a matter of hours so long as the Queen subsequently releases her slaves. And then he only goes and does it!

    And then! Queen Sheba has the audacity to add a caveat to the deal! Specifically she is not going to release her slaves unless Shock goes and frees her son from the Black Knights who have taken him hostage. The gall of it! Especially after all of this pyramid nonsense! You know what a… well, not a good reason to have a bunch of slaves, certainly, but a better one than mindlessly building your kingdom’s twentieth pyramid: using them as an army to storm the castle where your son is a hostage.

    The Black Knights (full review tomorrow!) prove just as ineffectual at stopping high-voltage super-heroes as their law-abiding counterparts and Shock recovers the very informative (“Help! I’m the prince!”) young royal from his prison.

    Queen Sheba makes the obligatory offer for Shock to stay and become her kings, and while ordinarily I’d roast a hero for fleeing in terror before the advances of a lady like this, honestly this time Shock has it right: this woman is a monster.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 724: BONTO OF DUOTANIA

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 724: BONTO OF DUOTANIA

    (Science Comics 004, 1940) 

    Perisphere Payne, a kind of outer space troubleshooter (whose name, by the way, was meant to sound cool and futuristic but because the Perisphere was one of the cool and futuristic building-mascots of the 1939 World’s Fair is in fact equivalent to someone today calling themselves Crystal Palace Collins, Parthenon Pete, or indeed Perisphere Payne) gets a wild alert on his televizo one day: the entire city of Freeton has been levitated off the surface of the Earth! Setting off in hot city-pursuit, Payne finds not only the city but he and his crew are captives in an enormous spaceship.

    All questions of  who exactly is responsible for this are cleared up by the appearance of Bonto of Duotania, a giant two-headed alien and generally jolly guy.

    Payne’s bluster earns him a place as one of Bonto’s pets, and en route he gets the lowdown from another pet, Janice of Venus: Bonto and his people come from the twin asteroids of Jutania (presumably aka Duotania) and are blessed not only with a second head and increased size but also an overabundance of cruelty and selfishness. He has captured Freeton as a source of slaves, with the slight implication that the rest of humanity will follow. (Please not also Bonto’s cool two-headed Jutanian pets)

    The real practical problem with using slave labour to run your high-tech society, of course, is that your slaves will inevitably have to learn how to use your high-tech equipment if you want everything to be done as efficiently as you are used to, which is how Perisphere Payne becomes proficient enough in the use of Bonto’s magnetic tractor beam that he is able not only to deposit Freeton back in the giant spaceship for transport back to Earth but also do a cheeky alien genocide on his way out the door. I’m shaking my finger at you, Perisphere Payne – this might be a standard heroic move in the 1940s but as an enlightened future-man you ought to know better.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 716: DEVALO

    (Rocket Comics 002, 1940)

    “Rocket Riley, Prince of the Planets” was the namesake strip of Rocket Comics, about lab assistant and pilot Rocket Riley, his boss and amazing hair-haver Professor Sterling and Sterling’s daughter/ Riley’s fiance Griselda. While preparing for an official unveiling of Professor Sterling’s new interplanetary rocket ship, the trio are accosted by spy Kurt von Stengle and his hireling and the whole bunch of them end up accidentally blasting off in the out-of control rocket.

    After a brief stop on an unnamed asteroid where von Stengle’s hireling is eaten by Octopus Men, Rocket and crew end up crash landing on Saturn, where things go even more pear-shaped as they are captured by the planet’s dictatorial ruler, Devalo.

    Devalo, also known as Divalo, has a real Satanic look going on and so I spent some time looking for a classical link between Saturn, Satan, the quality of being saturnine, etc., only to find very little. I’m sure that it’s something I’ve encountered before if only due to a general linking of the more evil-flavoured bits of Greek and Roman mythology and Christian underworld imagery, but there doesn’t seem to be an official-enough link to show up in places like Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, or indeed, Wikipedia.

    Nevertheless, Devalo is both Saturnian and Satanic and I would bet a small sum of money that he won’t be the last character we meet who fits both of those descriptions.

    The Saturnian Saturnite society ruled by Devalo is caste-based, with the military at the top, supported by the enslaved scientist caste. All manual labour is done by the Zeroes, whose bodies have been enhanced and intelligences stunted for maximum efficiency.

    Since von Stengle is the kind of villain who would, for instance, try to commandeer a spacecraft that is currently careening through space, he seizes the opportunity afforded him when everyone is rounded up by Devalo’s men to suggest that they might team up to invade the Earth. Stupidly opportunistic in his evil, that’s von Stengle for you.

    Our heroes manage to escape Devalo’s palace along with Saturnite scientist Xenox and his daughter Ladana, but after an encounter with some Sharkmen the group is scattered and only Rocket and Griselda manage to make it back to Professor Sterling’s ship. And that’s it! Rocket Comics ended with issue 3 and Devalo gets to remain not just uncaptured but firmly in charge. All we can do is rest assured that he would have been deposed in one to ten issues if the series had continued.