(Champion Comics 010, 1940) There are a few things to like about Grundo the Great: his mustache, his name which sounds like it’s what Miss Grundy would be called in a 1960s Archie Comics fantasy series about the heroic students battling the teachers as evil warlords, the fact that he has a “crew of mad chemists and technicians” in his mountaintop castle somewhere in the Midwestern US… Lot of good stuff. His ultimate aim, to take over America, is a…
(Champion Comics 009, 1940) Nad Neurod is a gang boss with an ambitious and not-uncommon-in-comics scheme: knock out the power and other utilities so that you can take advantage of the resultant confusion and loot an entire city (NYC in this case) at once! Even more importantly, he and his gang provide the perfect test/demonstration of the Human Meteor’s powers in his first foray into the outside world. (Nad Neurod is also exactly the kind of moniker that makes my…
(Champion Comics 007, 1940) Someone is kidnapping foreign dignitaries and then hanging their skeletons in public spaces! Weird! Sinister! Diplomatically complicated! The culprit turns out to be gang boss Duke Daroldi, who is killing the diplomats as part of an attempt to involve the US in WWII and then step in and take over once the combatants are all sufficiently weakened. This is a stunningly hubristic plan, especially considering the maybe five other guys in Daroldi’s gang. I assume that…
You know how it is with these guys. Their science is mad and/or criminal! Felix Zurich, lab assistant to Professor Trent, has hidden the professor away in a castle improbably located in the middle of the jungle in Africa, all so that Zurich can force him to perfect his invention of the ever-popular engine-killing ray. This is a Blackstone the Magician story so of course Zurich is also an accomplished stage magician and there is a pivotal duel of illusions….
(Champion Comics 005, 1940) “Revenge of the Zombies” is a feature that ran in Champion Comics from issues 003-005 and reads kind like it was written in a free-jazz fugue state, like once the 10-12 characters were introduced by issue 003, page 2, events just proceeded on their own with no real input from the writer. A huge cast gathers at the home of Dr Karl Hartmann in Haiti for no reason that is ever given. Various people are kidnapped….
(Champion Comics 004, 1940) Champion Comics 003 featured the murder of the Champ’s mentor Dr Marlin and at the conclusion of that adventure the blame for Marlin’s death seemed to rest squarely on the shoulders of his assistant Dr Katsu. Champion Comics 004, however, introduces a further development: Katsu was in fact working for a greater mastermind, the Yellow Spider! (and here I’m going to contrast my usual delight at a villainous note signed with a little cartoon with my…
(Champion Comics 003, 1940) There’s a lot to like about ol’ Oo-Lhat. He appears in a gross-sounding mist after explorer Walt Worthington and his aide Snowball (did you know that there was a whole category of racist nicknames for African American characters that has largely been forgotten and that involves naming them after something very black or very white? Well now you do) discover a lost Egyptian tomb containing a blazing scarab (the gem cut, not the insect) that drew…
Management not responsible if some of the villains are not technically costumed. This fellow, known as the Boss, was the masked publisher of a newspaper known as the Weekly Tattler which functioned as a vehicle for his blackmail business: pay up or get your secrets printed in the next edition. He turned out to be the husband of one of the paper’s victims, which makes little enough sense that I reckon that they got to the end of the story…
(The Funnies 030, 1939) The Black Widow is a sinister femme fatale spy chief in the classic mode, complete with cigarette holder, tight red dress and imperious attitude. A few things that make her fun: -the vague European country she works on behalf of is Bosylvania, a country about which nothing is revealed aside from the fact that it has the best geographical suffix: -sylvania -the Black Widow is in fact Princess Maxine of Bosylvania so her activities have an…
(The Funnies 030, 1939) This fellow is from a story starring Gene Autry, singing cowboy. It’s printed in a comic put out by Dell that mostly features reprints of comic strips and that’s probably what this is? Even though online sources suggest that the first Gene Autry comic strip started in 1940 and this came out in 1939? Ultimately, these are mere details. The important fact is that this is my most favourite style of putting a film cowboy actor…