Gods aplenty! Tyalpo: The god worshipped by Ibis the Invincible villain Piang the Terrible. Probably real, in that Piang has real magical power that he calls upon Tyalpo to activate, even if the god himself shows up only in idol form. God Style: Idol (Real?) (Whiz Comics 009, 1940) Goddess of the Jungle: Sandor is a jungle hero who doesn’t so much adventure as get into one long series of scrapes and situations in Northern India, the second most popular location…
How fitting and extremely predictable that Dr Sivana, our inaugural full-fledged Super-Villain, is also our first villain to receive a Super-Villain Update! In Whiz Comics 003a, Sivana attempts to conquer the US, first via simple extortion, followed by full-fledged invasion = please note that he even goes to the trouble to declare war before mobilizing his forces. Captain Marvel of course is more than a match for any conventional army, and Dr Sivana seemingly meets his end when a deathtrap meant…
Hate and deception abound in this batch of deities. Wangwa, God of Hate: Wangwa, God of Hate is the personal god of Okoro, medicine man of the Blancas and enemy of Doctor Voodoo. I’ve never decided if the Evil Medicine Man trope is mere condescension toward native spiritual practices or a porting over of the Evil Vizier archetype to jungle comics, and in all honesty it’s probably both. Anyway, Okoro fits the mould to a T and he worships the…
Scoundrels! Mid-tier scoundrels! Simon Rudd loves games and gambling and taking chances, and somehow that has led him to a South Pacific island where he wears a full tuxedo and bosses around a local tribe all day. When ocean adventurer Lance O’Casey and his companions wash up on his shores, Rudd engages in a little Most Dangerous Game action with them, presumably out of sheer boredom. This being a Lance O’Casey story, his ultimate fate is to be socked in…
A motley crew of mostly cavemen await ye. Pleistocene Men: When rich jerk Rodney Stark wants to take over the world, he know just where to go: the Arctic, where he can use his heat ray to thaw out a frozen tribe of prehistoric men to act as his personal army. Did he already know that they were there or was he just assuming that he could dig up a few guys just by sinking a hole any old place?…
(Whiz Comics 003b, 1940) Captain Marvel first encounters Beautia after being tricked into taking a trip to Venus with a disguised Dr Sivana. There, she rules over a kingdom of wonderful frog aliens called Glompers If you’ve read any supplemental material about Dr Sivana then you probably know that Beautia is actually one of his four children, but this is not established since 1941, and honestly the Beautia/Sivana interactions in her first handful of appearances do not support the relationship…
Once again I present to you some deities. Pelenona: South Pacific adventurer Lance O’Casey almost gets sacrificed to the volcano goddess Pelenona on the of the same name because a different, more evil adventurer had made off with the island’s sacred temple jewels. The people of the same island also worship a shipwrecked circus gorilla as god-monster the Eepa, God Style: Animist (Whiz Comics 008, 1940) the Creeping Death: The Jungle Twins were a pair of brothers who were separated…
Lots of college hijinks for our lad: Less than one year into Captain Marvel’s career, the local college has an elite football squad named Captain Marvel’s Men who dress in replicas of his uniform. As part of an investigation into illegal sports betting, Marvel infiltrates the team and ends up winning a game single-handed. Plus, this all takes place at Marvel College, which has to be a coincidence. Billy Batson also uses the Wisdom of Solomon get into Marvel College at what……
You won’t believe the aliens and alien-adjacent societies we got in here. Scorpians and Subterrines: When crack reporter Scoop Smith and his photographer pal Blimp Black fly to Mexico to investigate reports of an “invisible revolutionary army” they get the story in a very direct way when they are shot down and taken captive by the Scorpians, who dwell in the underground kingdom of Scorpia and are extremely on-theme about the scorpion thing at all times, as can be seen in…
Rascals the lot of ’em. L-17 is a spy from an extremely unspecified foreign power who vexes pilot Wings Bordon throughout his three appearances. He is remarkable both for his longevity – three whole appearances for a simple letters-and-numbers spy is astonishing – and for the fact that he managed to get a promotion between his first appearance and his last, from field agent reporting to a shadowy Chief to being the shadowy figure whom other report to. It’s possible…