HONOURS – JOHNNY THUNDER
(Flash Comics v1 005, 1940) Johnny Thunder is made an FBI Agent. (fired in issue 7)
NOTES – FEBRUARY 2023
The Whip is an okay character aside from the brownface bit but one thing I absolutely love about him is that although he does a credible job at the Ineffectual Secret Identity act he also just travels from town to town with an enormous black horse. (Flash Comics v1 005, 1940) Names: This old dude shares his name with Kurt Busiek’s Astro City character Samaritan! The tally of comics characters named Asa Martin stands at 2! (Flash Comics v1 010,…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 235: THE ORDER OF ASSASSINS
(Flash Comics v1 005, 1940) It’s another version of the old Order of Assassins, this time as a revival founded by a supposed descendant of Hassan-i Sabbah, the original Assassin of yore, though since he died in 1124 AD there’s a decent chance that anybody is his descendant. Legitimacy aside, this buncha yahoos operates out of a city-fortress called Alamut (but somewhere in the vicinity of Egypt rather than Iran) and is engaged in a somewhat nebulous plot to conquer the…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 234: THE WITCH
(Flash Comics v1 005, 1940) Long-running foe/ally/love interest of Golden Age master of disguise the King (or King Standish, if you want to go by his full name), the Witch probably deserves a more thorough examination than I’m going to give her, but the fact is that though she is a good character and an admirable foil to the King, the King himself is a bit dull. Sorry, Witchie. I will say that the New Orleans-set King story in World’s…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 233: THE VANDAL
(Flash Comics v1 005, 1940) The Vandal is a wealthy art collector who kills artists to increase the value of their works and has a bunch of hired goons steal art for him. The best thing about him is his name/ concept, that his art collection would be as impactful to the art world as the ancient Vandals supposedly were in antiquity. Since he’s a Golden Age Flash villain, he mostly exists to be trolled at super-speed.
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 232: THE THOUGHT TERROR
(Flash Comics v1 004, 1940) I have complicated feelings about the Thought Terror! He has both good and bad traits! Off the bat, the basics. His costume choice is pretty entry level for the Golden Age, but suitable for a guy who employs eye-based super-powers (which he does) and wants to project a certain aura of fear. His name, by contrast, is both unusual and bad, and made all the worse for the fact that it’s almost good. Terror is usually a…
HONOURS – JOHNNY THUNDER
(Flash Comics v1 003, 1940) Johnny Thunder accidentally becomes heavyweight boxing champion of the world.
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 231: UNA CATHAY
(Flash Comics v1 003, 1940) Big fan of Una Cathay! The criminal scientist-type super-villains that you get in the Golden Age could get a little samey after a while – even if they all had their individual weirnesses, they were all of a common stripe – and it’s amazing how fresh a well put-together lady-villain makes the old tropes seem. Una’s main deal was extracting the secret of eternal life from a young scientist named Dick Blendon who, unfortunately for…
AESTHETICAL FUTURISM
(Flash Comics v1 002, 1940) This strip (Rod Rian of the Sky Police, natch) might just be the greatest stand-alone future in comics, if only for Earth Commandant Elmus’ uniform, which includes not only a belt covered in little stars but a helmet with a planet and star on top! (better look at that great helmet) Amazing uniforms aside, this strip has some top-notch sci-fi jargon: pilotar, telespaceship, terlurium ore, sensotar, earthons (that one’s a currency), alien races called…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 230: ALEXANDER THE GREAT
(Flash Comics v1 002, 1940) On the one hand, Alexander the Great is your standard criminal scientist with an ego as big as his great big head who tries to extort the city of New York just as soon as he has developed the technology necessary to do so, in this case a density increasing ray. On the other hand, I like him a whole lot more than most criminal scientists. He’s cool! he wears a tux and is kind of…