(Fantastic Comics 009, 1940) We open on a very exciting scene! Professor Simm has unleashed giant monsters on an unnamed US city! Chaos reigns! I unironically love these monsters. They have that half-baked quality that you get in generic kids toys – the kind of thing you got as a cheap way for your parents to occupy you on a trip and because they have no built-in lore you end up inventing a whole backstory for them. That picture of…
(Fantastic Comics 008, 1940) Prince Fernando Diablo, scion of an unnamed European royal family (though given his name, style of dress and headquarters in the Pyrenees I think it’s safe to say that he’s heavily implied to be Spanish), has a plan: take advantage of the wars raging in 1940 to violently reinstate monarchy across the continent! Specifically, he and his scientists have developed a horrible plague that they plan on releasing throughout Europe to reduce the population to manageable…
(Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) The Great White Chief is a chubby scientist who wears stirrup pants with no shoes or socks and lives in a dormant volcano (that he makes look non-dormant using special effects) where he makes animal-headed monstrosities like Cinu the Unicorn Man here. This is all very good classic villain stuff. The name is pretty annoying. It implies a lot about his relationship with the native peoples of wherever his volcano is located (probably Africa as he…
(Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) Like so many Space Smith adventures do, this one begins with Space and his ladyfriend Dianna being waylaid as they make their way around the Solar System. In this case a mysterious gas disables their spaceship and causes them to land on the moon Ganymede. From whence did this gas come? Why, it was the sinister laboratory of Morosio, not just a mad and/or criminal scientist but a mad and/or criminal scientist who has already been…
(Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) We rejoin the European version of the Golden Knight as he and his ladyfriend Alice are having a bad time in Blackamoor Forest: both Alice and Sir Richard’s horse Whitey have broken their legs in a fall and so Richard and Alice are forced to hole up in a cave for the night (Whitey, sadly, did not make it). But who is this ominous form? It’s the Hag of Blackamoor and she isn’t messing around! In…
(Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) Sanglor starts out strong. He immediately charms me with his aesthetic sense: his ‘Automatic Subplane’ spy drones are delightful, his ‘Flying Castle’ is simultaneously one of the most ridiculous and great-looking mobile bases I have ever seen and his costume manages to evoke the dress sense of a 1940s comic book movie villain in a way I have not seen since the Vampire, almost exactly 300 entries ago. He manages to mess things up almost immediately,…
(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940) Once again the nations of he world of the year 10 000 CE are faced with an oceanic menace. Twenty ships have been sunk – seems like a case for Sub Saunders! Could we be faced with yet another jerk ruler from the population of undersea humans? It seems likely! (aside: gotta give a shoutout to Thog here: having a name like that in a comic from 1940 is absolutely an early indicator that you are…
(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940) Dr Martinious holds a few distinctions. First, he is an Earth scientist who travelled to Mars on a rocket ship of his own design, an impressive feat and one that seems to have endeared him to the Brain Men of Mars sufficiently to make him their leader. Secondly, he is an early cosplayer. Note his pseudo-Roman outfit (better view below). This is the outfit of a person who showed up on Mars after reading a lot…
Incorrigible scamps the lot of them. This unnamed scientist uses fake spirits, death traps and so forth to drive adventurer Ted Crane and his companions away from the jungle temple he is looting. BUT! He has made a classic mistake: they weren’t planning on entering the temple in the first place and based on their action in earlier issues they certainly don’t object to white people hauling off as much ancient African swag as possible. He gets punched out a…
(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940) It happened again. Space Smith and Dianna were just noodling along through space when they found themselves captured and transported to the surface of a strange world by strange aliens. In this case the world is the annoyingly named Vacuum Meteor and the aliens are the extremely cool Vacuumites. Like the Robot Scientists before them, the Vacuumites don’t seem quite sure what to do with their new prisoners – it seems to be an opportunistic kidnapping….