It’s time to return to spaaaaaace!
Urolians and Urians:
The “Blast Bennett” feature is set far enough in the future (5940 CE, according to the caption on a single panel that I’m taking as gospel until contradicted) that I generally assume that all of the human-looking aliens that Blast and his pal Red encounter are representative of far-flung Earth colonies rather than of lack of alien design imagination, but I just had to point out the fact that the two planets in this comic are named Urol and Ur. It’s very annoying!
Anyway, Blast’s pal Red falls into the hands of the bearded and hostile peoples of Urol, then Blast shows up and frees both him and the princess of Ur, traditional enemies of the Urolians, and ultimately helps the Urians (never actually called that in-comic, but we must have a demonym) defeat the slow-but-powerful Urolian space fleet, ensuring peace at the barrel of a ray gun. (Weird Comics 008, 1940)
Dwarf Men of Mars:
Flick Falcon (famously later changed to Flip because “Flick” and “Fuck” look very similar in comic book lettering) is a character who does all of his adventuring by jumping into an interdimensional teleporter in his laboratory and tooling around the universe. The first time he does this he ends up blasted to Mars so hard that his organs end up on the opposite sides of his body.
Flick/Flip finds a Mars in conflict, with two native intelligent species under threat of conquest by invading aliens. He ends up allying with the so-called Dwarf-Men, who probably don’t call themselves that. They’re pretty standard humanoid aliens, with the obvious exception being their tininess. Plus they all wear hats with teacup handles on them for no stated reason. (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940)
Martian Slave-Giants:
The second of the Martian races are referred to as the Slave-Giants, as they have been subjugated by the invaders already. Their main duties seem to be wandering around looking for interesting things such as Flick Falcon to grab and throw toward the invaders’ headquarters. Please also note the wildly inconsistent scale.
As mentioned in the last Divine Round-Up, the giants are controlled by way of their religious devotion, with the invaders delivering orders in the form of commandments issued by a radio receiver concealed inside of the idol of their goddess. Flick and his gal pal Adele disrupt this by smashing the idol and substituting her as a living replacement, and so the Giants are theoretically no longer enslaved. (Fantastic Comics 001, 1939)
Three-Arm Invaders:
And what of the invaders themselves? These are appropriately known as the Three-Arm[ed] Invaders, and occasionally as the Three-Arm[ed] Ones, Tyrants, or at least once Swine. They are one or two steps more alien than the quite humanoid inhabitants of Mars, with little pig-trotter feet and tusks and that eponymous third arm emerging from their sternums. They also have the most distressing horns that I have ever seen, in that they are more akin to big hairy warts than anything else.
The Three-Arm Invaders possess similar dimension-hopping technology to that used by Flick Falcon, which they intend to use to both comprehend and conquer the universe. They are held back somewhat by their comparatively frail physical forms, but I suppose that’s what the Slave-Giants are for.
When the Three-Arm Invaders are last seen, they are reacting to the news of the Slave-Giants’ emancipation by raining hellacious destruction down on the Giants’ city in an attempt to destroy Flick and Adele. After escaping from this conflagration, the duo never bother to go back to Mars, so the struggle of the Martian peoples vs the Invaders is left unresolved. (Fantastic Comics 001, 1939)
One more thing about the Three-Arm Invaders: they seem to be yet another species in which the males look like gross weirdos and the females like cute human women (they do have little pig trotter feet, but that can be cute!). Unfortunately for the Three-Arm women (who only have two arms, sure, but how else do I refer to them?) the whole deal with the Slave-Giants and their goddess means that having a bunch of cute girls around would only confuse things and break the Three-Arms’ control. Thus, the Three-Arm women are sealed inside of big fruits until they are too old to be cute any more. Three-Armed Invaders: not just evil conquerors, but also misogynists!
The formerly fruit-bound Three-Arm woman in the above panels seems to be shaping up to be an ally to Flick Falcon, but somewhere in between issues 002 and 003 of Fantastic Comcis she disappears and Flick ends up allied with the formerly suspicious and hostile Dwarf-Men. Hopefully the unseen resolution to this whole invasion involves the liberation of the Three-Arm women, leading to an overthrow of Three-Arm society. (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940)
