The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Hale Battle

  • PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 008

    Once again I must regretfully inform you that some comic books are problematic. Like, racially.

    the Laughing Hyenas: 

    Hey, it’s our first racial hate group, and I think I’m just going to preemptively file these under “problematic” because they’re a) not fun to talk about and b) necessitate talking about hate-crimes even if I, for example, choose not to use the panels with lynchings in them.

    The Laughing Hyenas are actually kind of a hate group by proxy, as they have been hired to keep the Black residents of the geographically-nonspecific town of Souda “in line” by murdering one of them every once in a while, and have been doing so frequently enough and/or long enough that even the local folks willing to volunteer for such a task have gotten sick of it, so boss Bull Karson had to import some Chicago toughguys to do his dirty work for him.

    Oddly, given the sheer volume of murder that the Laughing Hyenas were perpetrating, the Silver Streak doesn’t actually bring them in to the authorities ore even extra-judiciously kill them. Instead, he just dumps them on a slow boat to Rangoon. (Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941)

    the Modern Thief of Bagdad:

    Ali Hassan, aka the Modern Thief of Bagdad, is an Iraqi thief who comes to NYC to steal the Konoor Diamond, and as a result comes into conflict with Captain Battle and his young protege Hale Battle. A simple story that would ordinarily wrap up quite quickly, but this is a book-length yarn, which means that there is an extended chase sequence that occupies the 28 pages between the theft and Hassan’s arrival back in Baghdad. Some highlights:

    Chapter 1, “The Modern Thief of Bagdad!”: Hassan steals the gem, then give Battle and Hale the slip in Chinatown. Olyra, the mysterious guardian of the Konoor Diamond, is kidnapped.

    Chapter 2, “Perils of the Sargasso Sea!”: Hassan’s submarine becomes mired in sargassum and is attacked by a sea monster. Battle and Hale kill the beast. Hassan and his men dress up like ghost pirates. Olyra is rescued and then kidnapped again.

    Chapter 3, “Lost in the Underground World!”: Hassan’s plane crashes in Africa and he and Olyra are captured by cannibals (lil’ bonus racism for you there). Battle and Hale rescue them before being betrayed and dumped in a pit of quicksand. There is a brief interlude in an cave system full of monsters before it suddenly blows up. Hassan and his men dress up like ghosts. Olyra is rescued.

    Chapter 4, “House of Giants”: Battle & co track Hassan to a castle in Tibet, where they are captured and subjected to a shrink ray. They have various adventures as tiny men before resuming their original size. Olyra is kidnapped.

    I would call Hassan himself… an average amount of racist. He’s depicted in much the same generically foreign vein as I’ve seen in a South American president or a Basque fisherman (or indeed a Cape Breton fisherman at least once). As a villain, he’s pretty great: bombastic, treacherous, fond of leaving boastful notes for his enemies. If it was just him I might have skipped making this a Problematic Round-Up entry.

    It’s not just him, however, and once the story hits Chapter 5, “Magic Spell of the Arabian Nights” we get a real dose of Orientalism full in the face, as our heroes touch down in a Baghdad straight out of the Arabian Nights, complete with a wicked ruler (confusingly named Emperor Pasha Golu) who Hassan has been working for the whole time.

    It’s such a pastiche of a city, in fact, that Hale and Olyra just kind of stumble across Aladdin’s lamp and flying carpet while they are escaping from a dungeon. I suppose that all this is at least a little thematically appropriate, as Ali Hassan, the Modern Thief of Bagdad, is a reference to a movie that is a remake of a different movie that is itself a pastiche of the Arabian Nights.

    The Modern Thief of Bagdad meets his end in a pretty underwhelming manner: Captain Battle ducks as he swings a sword at him and he falls off of a balcony. A pretty terrible way to go for a villain who clearly thought that he was very cool, to be honest. The evil Pash Golu also meets his end in the process, leaving Olyra free to reveal that she is actually Olyria, Princess and true ruler of Bagdad. A truly impenetrable alias! 

    Finally, such is Hale Battle’s hunger for souvenirs that he uses his third genie with to acquire a replica of the diamond for his collection, even though for my money the real deal Lamp of Aladdin with one wish left on it would be the ultimate keepsake. (Captain Battle Comics 002, 1941)

    the King:

    The King is a fellow who gains control over a Romani group by showing them a… birthmark? tattoo? that proves his right to rule and that looks so intensely falsifiable that I am shocked there isn’t some sort two-factor authentication, or even a code phrase. And just what is is reason for exerting this control? Why, so that he can turn his new subjects into a child kidnapping ring. You can see how I would consider this problematic.

    The King is of course not the real ruler, that is not a real skull birthmark and he is no match for Dynamic Man. He turns out to be a crooked newspaper publisher named Brower who loves money more than making good plans to acquire it. (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

    the Dragon:

    The Dragon is a very ordinary Yellow Peril villain who is after some top secret bomber plans on behalf of an unspecified Asian nation. There are exactly four interesting things about him: 1) he is the first villain faced by Samson and David in their brief New Look era before they disappear along with most of Fox Features’ other characters during their financial trouble. 2) he is a classic calling card leaver in the form of a claw mark on the chests of men he has killed

     3) he works alongside his sister Orchid, which isn’t the rarest arrangement but is always fun to note

     4) he has these stone lions outside of his HQ that grab intruders as they come through. It’s a fun trap but never actually explained: are they some sort of mechanism, or demonic magic like the caption box suggests?

    Much of the issue in questioned is concerned with Samson chasing the Dragon and Orchid around. Once he catches up to them it’s all over. (Fantastic Comics 022, 1941)

  • PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 008

    Once again I must regretfully inform you that some comic books are problematic. Like, racially.

    the Laughing Hyenas: 

    Hey, it’s our first racial hate group, and I think I’m just going to preemptively file these under “problematic” because they’re a) not fun to talk about and b) necessitate talking about hate-crimes even if I, for example, choose not to use the panels with lynchings in them.

    The Laughing Hyenas are actually kind of a hate group by proxy, as they have been hired to keep the Black residents of the geographically-nonspecific town of Souda “in line” by murdering one of them every once in a while, and have been doing so frequently enough and/or long enough that even the local folks willing to volunteer for such a task have gotten sick of it, so boss Bull Karson had to import some Chicago toughguys to do his dirty work for him.

    Oddly, given the sheer volume of murder that the Laughing Hyenas were perpetrating, the Silver Streak doesn’t actually bring them in to the authorities ore even extra-judiciously kill them. Instead, he just dumps them on a slow boat to Rangoon. (Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941)

    the Modern Thief of Bagdad:

    Ali Hassan, aka the Modern Thief of Bagdad, is an Iraqi thief who comes to NYC to steal the Konoor Diamond, and as a result comes into conflict with Captain Battle and his young protege Hale Battle. A simple story that would ordinarily wrap up quite quickly, but this is a book-length yarn, which means that there is an extended chase sequence that occupies the 28 pages between the theft and Hassan’s arrival back in Baghdad. Some highlights:

    Chapter 1, “The Modern Thief of Bagdad!”: Hassan steals the gem, then give Battle and Hale the slip in Chinatown. Olyra, the mysterious guardian of the Konoor Diamond, is kidnapped.

    Chapter 2, “Perils of the Sargasso Sea!”: Hassan’s submarine becomes mired in sargassum and is attacked by a sea monster. Battle and Hale kill the beast. Hassan and his men dress up like ghost pirates. Olyra is rescued and then kidnapped again.

    Chapter 3, “Lost in the Underground World!”: Hassan’s plane crashes in Africa and he and Olyra are captured by cannibals (lil’ bonus racism for you there). Battle and Hale rescue them before being betrayed and dumped in a pit of quicksand. There is a brief interlude in an cave system full of monsters before it suddenly blows up. Hassan and his men dress up like ghosts. Olyra is rescued.

    Chapter 4, “House of Giants”: Battle & co track Hassan to a castle in Tibet, where they are captured and subjected to a shrink ray. They have various adventures as tiny men before resuming their original size. Olyra is kidnapped.

    I would call Hassan himself… an average amount of racist. He’s depicted in much the same generically foreign vein as I’ve seen in a South American president or a Basque fisherman (or indeed a Cape Breton fisherman at least once). As a villain, he’s pretty great: bombastic, treacherous, fond of leaving boastful notes for his enemies. If it was just him I might have skipped making this a Problematic Round-Up entry.

    It’s not just him, however, and once the story hits Chapter 5, “Magic Spell of the Arabian Nights” we get a real dose of Orientalism full in the face, as our heroes touch down in a Baghdad straight out of the Arabian Nights, complete with a wicked ruler (confusingly named Emperor Pasha Golu) who Hassan has been working for the whole time.

    It’s such a pastiche of a city, in fact, that Hale and Olyra just kind of stumble across Aladdin’s lamp and flying carpet while they are escaping from a dungeon. I suppose that all this is at least a little thematically appropriate, as Ali Hassan, the Modern Thief of Bagdad, is a reference to a movie that is a remake of a different movie that is itself a pastiche of the Arabian Nights.

    The Modern Thief of Bagdad meets his end in a pretty underwhelming manner: Captain Battle ducks as he swings a sword at him and he falls off of a balcony. A pretty terrible way to go for a villain who clearly thought that he was very cool, to be honest. The evil Pash Golu also meets his end in the process, leaving Olyra free to reveal that she is actually Olyria, Princess and true ruler of Bagdad. A truly impenetrable alias! 

    Finally, such is Hale Battle’s hunger for souvenirs that he uses his third genie with to acquire a replica of the diamond for his collection, even though for my money the real deal Lamp of Aladdin with one wish left on it would be the ultimate keepsake. (Captain Battle Comics 002, 1941)

    the King:

    The King is a fellow who gains control over a Romani group by showing them a… birthmark? tattoo? that proves his right to rule and that looks so intensely falsifiable that I am shocked there isn’t some sort two-factor authentication, or even a code phrase. And just what is is reason for exerting this control? Why, so that he can turn his new subjects into a child kidnapping ring. You can see how I would consider this problematic.

    The King is of course not the real ruler, that is not a real skull birthmark and he is no match for Dynamic Man. He turns out to be a crooked newspaper publisher named Brower who loves money more than making good plans to acquire it. (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

    the Dragon:

    The Dragon is a very ordinary Yellow Peril villain who is after some top secret bomber plans on behalf of an unspecified Asian nation. There are exactly four interesting things about him: 1) he is the first villain faced by Samson and David in their brief New Look era before they disappear along with most of Fox Features’ other characters during their financial trouble. 2) he is a classic calling card leaver in the form of a claw mark on the chests of men he has killed

     3) he works alongside his sister Orchid, which isn’t the rarest arrangement but is always fun to note

     4) he has these stone lions outside of his HQ that grab intruders as they come through. It’s a fun trap but never actually explained: are they some sort of mechanism, or demonic magic like the caption box suggests?

    Much of the issue in questioned is concerned with Samson chasing the Dragon and Orchid around. Once he catches up to them it’s all over. (Fantastic Comics 022, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 945: DR DRACULA

    (Silver Streak Comics 017, 1941) 

    With Dr Dracula, Captain Battle has now faced four Nazi or Nazi-adjacent villains in a row whose plans involve gathering up a bunch of guys and pretending to be monsters, in this case vampires. Was there a meeting about this at the regional Nazi spy headquarters or is this one of those things like when Hollywood makes two volcano movies at the same time? Maybe one guy had a good idea and the other three stole it. 

    I’d have to say that Dr Dracula has the best name and possibly the best look out of the four, but the Mummy Master’s Mummy Gang might take the gold in terms of best henchmen. 

    As a supplement to the power of fake vampirism, Dr Dracula steals a new death ray from the hapless Professor Fosdick, who then serves as the first (human) target of its instant skeletonization effect. Horrifying! And visually striking!

    (please note the fourth panel above, when Fosdick exclaims “Vampires! Vampires as large as men!” I believe him to be referring to vampire bats, which doesn’t make a huge amount of sense given what he is looking at at the time but which is the only interpretation to make much sense. It is the kind of thing that comic book people shout when vampire bats are about, after all)

    This is about the time that Captain Battle shows up to put a stop to Dr Dracula’s plans, which gives he and his men the opportunity to demonstrate that they can all fly as they engage in thrilling aerial combat vs Captain Battle and his luceflyer (Hale Battle is lagging behind and can’t be there for this fight). 

    These wing suits are very cool and more importantly… way more strategically valuable than the death ray that they just stole? Like, yes: the death ray can instantly kill any target, but so can a good sniper, and you certainly could deploy more good snipers easily if you had flying infantry, right?

    Having made his getaway, Dr Dracula gets down to the serious business of sabotaging American war production by turning people into goofy skeletons. Prof Fosdick must have had a sense of humour, because while the ray dissolves clothing it selectively leaves props such as cigarettes or blankets behind so that every tragic ray-gun death looks just a little bit funny.

    Dr Dracula meets his end when Captain Battle throws a steel net over him and the death ray explodes. This is what happens when you steal an experimental piece of technology and kill the inventor, folks. 

    Hale Battle must of course have his souvenir, and what better or more striking object is there than one of the false vampires’ wing suits?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 945: DR DRACULA

    (Silver Streak Comics 017, 1941) 

    With Dr Dracula, Captain Battle has now faced four Nazi or Nazi-adjacent villains in a row whose plans involve gathering up a bunch of guys and pretending to be monsters, in this case vampires. Was there a meeting about this at the regional Nazi spy headquarters or is this one of those things like when Hollywood makes two volcano movies at the same time? Maybe one guy had a good idea and the other three stole it. 

    I’d have to say that Dr Dracula has the best name and possibly the best look out of the four, but the Mummy Master’s Mummy Gang might take the gold in terms of best henchmen. 

    As a supplement to the power of fake vampirism, Dr Dracula steals a new death ray from the hapless Professor Fosdick, who then serves as the first (human) target of its instant skeletonization effect. Horrifying! And visually striking!

    (please note the fourth panel above, when Fosdick exclaims “Vampires! Vampires as large as men!” I believe him to be referring to vampire bats, which doesn’t make a huge amount of sense given what he is looking at at the time but which is the only interpretation to make much sense. It is the kind of thing that comic book people shout when vampire bats are about, after all)

    This is about the time that Captain Battle shows up to put a stop to Dr Dracula’s plans, which gives he and his men the opportunity to demonstrate that they can all fly as they engage in thrilling aerial combat vs Captain Battle and his luceflyer (Hale Battle is lagging behind and can’t be there for this fight). 

    These wing suits are very cool and more importantly… way more strategically valuable than the death ray that they just stole? Like, yes: the death ray can instantly kill any target, but so can a good sniper, and you certainly could deploy more good snipers easily if you had flying infantry, right?

    Having made his getaway, Dr Dracula gets down to the serious business of sabotaging American war production by turning people into goofy skeletons. Prof Fosdick must have had a sense of humour, because while the ray dissolves clothing it selectively leaves props such as cigarettes or blankets behind so that every tragic ray-gun death looks just a little bit funny.

    Dr Dracula meets his end when Captain Battle throws a steel net over him and the death ray explodes. This is what happens when you steal an experimental piece of technology and kill the inventor, folks. 

    Hale Battle must of course have his souvenir, and what better or more striking object is there than one of the false vampires’ wing suits?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 943: HERR DEATH

    (Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

    This issue continues the trend of Captain Battle foes being fascist spies who are weaponizing fear by dressing up as the undead. In this case Herr Death is, as the name implies, a desiccated corpse version of Death, accompanied by a horde of the walking dead (not, I must stress, zombies. This is more “the dead have come out of their graves” kind of thing which, yes, would be classified as zombie behaviour now but which used to be its own spooky thing).

    Herr Death has improved on the formula employed by Herr Skull and the Mummy Master before him in a couple of ways. Firstly, his men are not just spooky looking but fitted with bulletproof vests in order to showcase their supernatural fortitude (lucky for them the “destroy the brain” aspect of fighting the undead doesn’t enter the public consciousness for a little while yet). Secondly, Herr Death is far more proactive than his contemporaries and he is very willing to mix it up with his scythe.

    Herr Death also has a very thematic cemetery lair featuring a sick-ass corpse whirlpool for disposing of interlopers such as Captain and Hale Battle. I can’t imagine that it’s too much fun to hang around in between missions but oooh, the atmosphere!

    On the negative side, Herr Death and his men are particularly bad at concealing the fact that they are Nazis, from the fact that his name includes the telltale Herr to his minions yelling “himmel!” and so forth the whole time. This really gives the game away to anyone who is paying attention, such as Captain Battle for instance.

    Once they’re no longer actively drowning in a skeleton whirlpool, Captain Battle and Hale are able to round up Herr Death with little difficulty. Bulletproof vests aren’t too effective against four good ol’ American fists.

    Hale Battle must of course grab his souvenir, and he of course chooses Herr Death’s scythe as the coolest possible option. I don’t think that it’s applicable here since Herr Death did so very many crimes, but this may just be the first time that we’ve seen someone take a murder weapon as a trophy, which makes me wonder just how many super-villain trials have been ruined because a key piece of evidence is sitting in a cave somewhere?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 941: THE MUMMY MASTER

    (Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

    In a very comic book series of events, a rash of mummy thefts at the City Museum in NYC is followed by the emergence of a Nazi super-crook calling himself the Mummy Master.

    While my normal modus operandi is to lay out the story of the villains I cover in an abridged but linear fashion, here I must jump ahead to the reveal that the Mummy Master is in fact City Museum director Dr Kolb, because I need to talk about just what the heck is going on with this guy and what exactly he was thinking. 

    So: Kolb is a Nazi and he is either officially or unofficially working to hinder US defense production by targeting so-called “Dollar-a-Year Men” (a type of altruistic/patriotic rich guy explored recently in our discussion of the Death Battalion). On the surface his decision to become the Mummy Master is… not a good one, but one with a lot of thematic resonance and which uses a lot of close-at-hand resources: he has access to mummies and a ready-made HQ in the depths of the museum. He never really states it outright, but by stealing a bunch of mummies and then dressing his henchmen up like them he seems to be going for the same sort of shock factor as Herr Skull got with his Skull Men.

    The first Dollar-a-Year Man on the Mummy Master’s list is even kidnapped with the same mummy DIY philosophy: he receives a mummy case in the mail, is disturbingly cavalier about going to bed with it sitting about five feet away and is then captured by the very alive mummy inside and taken away in its former home.

    I would say that the first indication that Kolb/the Mummy Master is not a criminal genius comes at the culmination of the Henderson kidnapping. Surely the move is to dress up like movers and stick the mummy case in a truck, but the Mummy Master and his Mummy Gang just schlep the thing through the city streets. It’s like the idea of maintaining the theme is interfering with Kolb’s ability to do risk management.

    The abduction of the second man, Billings, is comparatively simple: just a bunch of fake mummies storming the guy’s office and grabbing him. It’s a dumb meathead plan, but it’s less dumb than the first, ostensibly clever plan so I must give it some credit.

    By this point, the Mummy Master’s haphazard approach to super-espionage has caught up to him and not only Captain Battle but Hale Battle and Battle associate Jane Lorrain are wandering around inside his lair – his capture is a foregone conclusion.

    Hale Battle of course takes a souvenir of the battle with the Mummy Master, in the form of a little mummy doll made out of some of his wrappings. Of note is the fact that Hale’s collection contains only the souvenirs that we have seen him collect, in contrast to other trophy displays like Green Arrow’s that are already stuffed full of trash upon their first appearance.

    Categorized in: Day Jobs (Museum Director), Fraud (Fake Mummy), Supranormal Beings (Mummies)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 941: THE MUMMY MASTER

    (Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

    In a very comic book series of events, a rash of mummy thefts at the City Museum in NYC is followed by the emergence of a Nazi super-crook calling himself the Mummy Master.

    While my normal modus operandi is to lay out the story of the villains I cover in an abridged but linear fashion, here I must jump ahead to the reveal that the Mummy Master is in fact City Museum director Dr Kolb, because I need to talk about just what the heck is going on with this guy and what exactly he was thinking. 

    So: Kolb is a Nazi and he is either officially or unofficially working to hinder US defense production by targeting so-called “Dollar-a-Year Men” (a type of altruistic/patriotic rich guy explored recently in our discussion of the Death Battalion). On the surface his decision to become the Mummy Master is… not a good one, but one with a lot of thematic resonance and which uses a lot of close-at-hand resources: he has access to mummies and a ready-made HQ in the depths of the museum. He never really states it outright, but by stealing a bunch of mummies and then dressing his henchmen up like them he seems to be going for the same sort of shock factor as Herr Skull got with his Skull Men.

    The first Dollar-a-Year Man on the Mummy Master’s list is even kidnapped with the same mummy DIY philosophy: he receives a mummy case in the mail, is disturbingly cavalier about going to bed with it sitting about five feet away and is then captured by the very alive mummy inside and taken away in its former home.

    I would say that the first indication that Kolb/the Mummy Master is not a criminal genius comes at the culmination of the Henderson kidnapping. Surely the move is to dress up like movers and stick the mummy case in a truck, but the Mummy Master and his Mummy Gang just schlep the thing through the city streets. It’s like the idea of maintaining the theme is interfering with Kolb’s ability to do risk management.

    The abduction of the second man, Billings, is comparatively simple: just a bunch of fake mummies storming the guy’s office and grabbing him. It’s a dumb meathead plan, but it’s less dumb than the first, ostensibly clever plan so I must give it some credit.

    By this point, the Mummy Master’s haphazard approach to super-espionage has caught up to him and not only Captain Battle but Hale Battle and Battle associate Jane Lorrain are wandering around inside his lair – his capture is a foregone conclusion.

    Hale Battle of course takes a souvenir of the battle with the Mummy Master, in the form of a little mummy doll made out of some of his wrappings. Of note is the fact that Hale’s collection contains only the souvenirs that we have seen him collect, in contrast to other trophy displays like Green Arrow’s that are already stuffed full of trash upon their first appearance.

    Categorized in: Day Jobs (Museum Director), Fraud (Fake Mummy), Supranormal Beings (Mummies)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 938: HERR SKULL

    (Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941)

    Herr Skull is the leader of the Skull Men, a band of fascist saboteurs who dress up like ghoulish skeletons in order to facilitate their crimes. Why do they have spikes on top of their heads? I do not know the answer to that. Perhaps Herr Skull just thought the look needed a bit more to really pop.

    Spike aside, the plan works! The Skull Men are terrifying enough that their victims are caught completely off guard, as these unfortunate armoured truck guards demonstrate, and those who do not manage to flee are ruthlessly killed.

    Using the defense money stolen from the armoured truck job, Herr Skull and his men embark on a campaign of death and destruction around NYC, striking at aircraft, naval and ammunition production.

    The flaw in the Skull Men’s operation is exposed by Captain Battle and sidekick Hale Battle, who almost capture them during the armoured car job but are knocked out by a gas grenade long enough for the gang to make their escape. Simply put, Herr Skull’s whole plan hinges on the Skull Men’s victims being too frightened to fight back with no apparent backup plan for if they do. When the Battle duo infiltrate their sewer lair it’s all over.

    SKULL SCORE: visible eyes make it a 4, dropping to 3 because it’s just a mask.

    Categorized in: Body (Skulls), Generica (Herrs), Ideology (Crypto-Fascists)

    Silver Streak Comics 014 is the issue in which Hale Battle starts his ongoing souvenir collection. He adds one of the Skull Men masks to it at the end of the issue…

    … but the real start of his obsession is in the cliffhanger from their previous adventure which involved sinking a u-boat and from which he retained a torpedo propeller.

  • DIVINE ROUND-UP 027

    I wonder if we’ll ever synthesize a unified theory of comic book religion out of this stuff.

    Isis:

    While attempting to thwart the magical con man Ahman-Ka-Lukor, Doctor Miracle calls upon the power of the Egyptian goddess Isis, who aids him by summoning the shade of the man whose reincarnated soul is now Ka-Lukor’s, and all so that Doctor Miracle can compare the two and make sure that he has the right man – it’s the most elaborate alternative to acquiring a photograph of the guy that I can imagine.

    Isis is depicted with a horns/sun disc/vulture headdress that is reasonably accurate to at least one era’s iconography, which is impressive enough for a just-wing-it medium like comics, but even more impressively for 1941 she is also totally topless, though also completely nipple-less.

    It’s not really anything to do with Isis, but Ka-Lukor has a cat familiar named Oasi who can turn into a lady who looks weirdly like the depiction of Isis and who caused me some confusion when I skimmed the story. I think that sh might just have represented another chance to draw a topless woman. (Champ Comics 013, 1941)

    the God of Hate: 

    The God of Hate is worshipped by the Claw’s followers at his skull castle in Tibet, and might just have the biggest head to body ratio that we have seen thusfar.

    Given the way that the God of Hate descends into the fiery pit and is then replaced with the Claw, it is possible that they are seen as aspects of the same being, that the Claw is the Earthly representative of the GoH, or even that the God works for the Claw, given the fanatical devotion that he elicits from his minions.

    Also: check out these guys. I’m sure that they came straight out of a National Geographic photo shoot but they also look quite cool. (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)

    the Great One: 

    This happens all the time when you’re a jungle adventurer: you rock up to an ancient temple to a near-forgotten god that is still worshipped with grisly rites and human sacrifice, and it turns out that there’s a big snake or other monster in there, just living it up. In this case, god of death the Great One has been played by Kadu, the Man-Eating Rat, who adventurer Lance Hale has personal beef with from a prior encounter, it seems. 

    God Style: Animist (Silver Streak Comics 011 1941)

    Moko:

    Moko is the god of a group of Tibetan bandits referred to as the Hoods, who I initially thought just had that weird yellow skin tone that comics used to render Asians with, but are later revealed or revised to be wearing cape and cowl getups. The actual worship of Moko is not detailed but does involve human sacrifice via a pit-and-pendulum style swinging blade.

    God Style: Idol (Silver Streak Comics 012, 1941)

  • DIVINE ROUND-UP 027

    I wonder if we’ll ever synthesize a unified theory of comic book religion out of this stuff.

    Isis:

    While attempting to thwart the magical con man Ahman-Ka-Lukor, Doctor Miracle calls upon the power of the Egyptian goddess Isis, who aids him by summoning the shade of the man whose reincarnated soul is now Ka-Lukor’s, and all so that Doctor Miracle can compare the two and make sure that he has the right man – it’s the most elaborate alternative to acquiring a photograph of the guy that I can imagine.

    Isis is depicted with a horns/sun disc/vulture headdress that is reasonably accurate to at least one era’s iconography, which is impressive enough for a just-wing-it medium like comics, but even more impressively for 1941 she is also totally topless, though also completely nipple-less.

    It’s not really anything to do with Isis, but Ka-Lukor has a cat familiar named Oasi who can turn into a lady who looks weirdly like the depiction of Isis and who caused me some confusion when I skimmed the story. I think that sh might just have represented another chance to draw a topless woman. (Champ Comics 013, 1941)

    the God of Hate: 

    The God of Hate is worshipped by the Claw’s followers at his skull castle in Tibet, and might just have the biggest head to body ratio that we have seen thusfar.

    Given the way that the God of Hate descends into the fiery pit and is then replaced with the Claw, it is possible that they are seen as aspects of the same being, that the Claw is the Earthly representative of the GoH, or even that the God works for the Claw, given the fanatical devotion that he elicits from his minions.

    Also: check out these guys. I’m sure that they came straight out of a National Geographic photo shoot but they also look quite cool. (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)

    the Great One: 

    This happens all the time when you’re a jungle adventurer: you rock up to an ancient temple to a near-forgotten god that is still worshipped with grisly rites and human sacrifice, and it turns out that there’s a big snake or other monster in there, just living it up. In this case, god of death the Great One has been played by Kadu, the Man-Eating Rat, who adventurer Lance Hale has personal beef with from a prior encounter, it seems. 

    God Style: Animist (Silver Streak Comics 011 1941)

    Moko:

    Moko is the god of a group of Tibetan bandits referred to as the Hoods, who I initially thought just had that weird yellow skin tone that comics used to render Asians with, but are later revealed or revised to be wearing cape and cowl getups. The actual worship of Moko is not detailed but does involve human sacrifice via a pit-and-pendulum style swinging blade.

    God Style: Idol (Silver Streak Comics 012, 1941)