(Fantastic Comics 015, 1941) I’ve mentioned this in the past but it bears repeating: some Golden Age comics read like a fever dream, in which barely connected events just kind of float by as you read. This story is one of those, but also has a sort of exquisite corpse quality in that the connections between events almost make sense but when you step back and look at the whole it is astonishing. To whit: – Samson and David are just hanging…
Let’s spare a thought for all the mad lab assistants who do so much for so little credit. Rokula: Rokula’s plan is simple: kidnap inventors and then use his mind control machine to force them to work for him. Hey, it’s a classic for a reason, but it’s also a plan with a high chance of attracting super-heroic attention such as that of Zongar the Miracle Man. Rokula might be a fan of the classics but like so many of…
(Fantastic Comics 014, 1941) We open on a mysterious figure using backwards-talk magic to raise hundreds of spirits from their graves and shunt them into the Fourth Dimension. To what end? We shall learn that soon! Flip Falcon, expert in all things fourth dimensional. is contacted by Dr Thorne of the Institute of Science asking for help with this problem. You might have noticed that Dr Thorne is also the name of Minor Super Villain 965, and that is because…
Once again we bring you some aliens. the Tribe of Gurban: The Tribe of Gurban come down out of “the upper valley of the Nile” and clash with the ancient superhuman Dynaman in his one Golden Age adventure, and there’s a part of me questions whether it’s even worth noting groups like this who are just humans but bigger (about eight to ten feet tall if I’m any judge). But no: giants in caveman singlets who attempt to conquer Egypt…
Aliens! Aliens? Aliens. the Black-Light Men: Like the Emerald Men of Asperus, the Black-Light Men travel on a mobile planet (the Black-Light Planet, natch, so named because it is not visible using conventional light) and like so many Fletcher Hanks villains they are looking to take over the Earth, in this case by pulling the whole planet out of orbit and freezing it solid before selling it on to the Martians. Due to the Black-Light Planet’s perpetual cold, the Black-Light…
Aliens. Fifth Dimensional Beings: These big-headed fellows feature in the origin story of Marvex the Super-Robot, but since we only see Marvex’ creator Bolo and his associates, we can’t really say too much about the culture of these Fifth Dimensional creatures. They have big heads, certainly, and a high enough degree of technology that Bolo is able to whip up a sentient robot on a whim, but whether that’s the sort of thing the population at large is getting up…
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…
Cops Shooting at Fleeing Suspects: Here’s an intrepid officer trying to shoot the Black Terror and his (very young) sidekick Tim in the backs as they run away from the scene of a late-night disturbance. (Exciting Comics 015, 1941) Samson Does the Thing: Several new additions to the premiere Samson supercut: Marthas: A new addition to the League of Marthas: the Golden Knight’s mother, Queen Martha of the Tree People! (Fantastic Comics 015, 1941) Places and History: In a rare…
Damn their problematic hides! Rango: A former Vaudeville magician who employs a magical gem and some rubberoid mask blackface to establish himself as medicine man/bandit chief in Africa, Rango aka Harrigan is ultimately unmasked by Yarko the Great. (Wonderworld Comics 015, 1940) Unnamed Witch Doctor: This unnamed Haitian witch doctor has a very unusual scheme: blind entire American cities with a floating vision of some of his men and then loot those same cities of all of their diamonds. Why…
Luvverly aliens and so forth for ye today, guv. the Freaks: Silver Streak, investigating a series of mysterious murders, follows a lead to the aptly-named Fantasy Isle in the Pacific Ocean. The inhabitants of Fantasy Isle probably don’t refer to themselves as “the Freaks” but as that is the only thing that they are called in-story I suppose that we must go with it. They are a heterogeneous collection of humanoid who have isolated themselves from the world, presumably due to…