The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Kalthar

  • DIVINE ROUND-UP 022

    DIVINE ROUND-UP 022

    Oh my gosh this place has so many god options.

    the Sacred Leopard: 

    The animal-worshipping tribe who all dress like the animal in question is a regular trope in jungle comics so of course Kalthar, lord of the jungle eventually encounters some of them. In this case it’s Leopard Men from the Leopard Village, who dress in leopard skins and worship Karno, the leopard (Karno seems to be the collective singular noun for the leopard, a thing that happens a lot in jungle adventure books. I’m sure that it happens in real-world language as well, just as I’m sure that most of the examples in comics are just arbitrarily made up). The Leopard Men attack Kalthar and his people because they are being manipulated by a slaver who has a vendetta against them, and end up minus a lot of leopards for their trouble.

    God Style: Animist (Zip Comics 005, 1940)

    Roor the Octopus God: 

    After former Zatara foe Setap achieves her goal of regaining her youth, she reforms and starts looking to reconnect with her Atlantean roots by the simplest way possible: enlisting Zatara’s help in finding the sunken city of Atlantis.

    Everything is going great – Setap is welcomed with open arms, she and Zatara are learning why Atlantis sank (hit by a lost second moon, natch), etc – when one of the sailors they brought with them starts trouble while stealing everything not nailed down, as so often happens when an ancient civilization is discovered by sea. Specifically, the sailor enters the temple of Roor, the Octopus God, within which the giant and insatiable immortal octopoid was not so much worshipped as imprisoned.

    Roor is free to lay waste to Atlantis, and not even the power of Zatara can touch him. The Atlanteans are justifiably upset by this.

    Thankfully, the one magic that Zatara has that can affect Roor is that of illusion, by which means he fools the ancient/powerful/gullible god into eating a whole heap of sponge and salt and then exploding himself by drinking more water than he can contain. Atlantis is saved!

    God Style: Real (Action Comics v1 018, 1939) 

    the Sacred Oak: 

    One of the earliest DC books, New Comics (which eventually becomes New Adventure and then just Adventure Comics) had among its many features an adventure strip called ‘Vikings’ which was kind of slow and dour like a lot of early comics but did feature these doily-hatted Druids and their Sacred Oak that communicates to them via stiff breezes.

    God Style: Animist (New Comics v1 010, 1936) 

    Shin-Giva: 

    Shin-Giva is the god of the Dwarf People of Matto Grosso in Brazil, and his solid platinum idol is the focus of the attention of crooked explorer Frank Hart, who wants to steal it, and his former partner Henri Rinaldo along with Zatara, who want to return it to Shin-Giva’s worshippers and do so thanks to Zatrara’s mighty magicks (please note that the idol is not returned out of any sense that you shouldn’t just waltz in and take valuables from less technologically-advanced societies but rather out of a desire to not crash the world platinum market. So noble!).

    God Style: Idol (Action Comics v1 033, 1941) 

  • DIVINE ROUND-UP 020

    Human sacrifice is the order of the day with this bunch of deific bad-boys. 

    Shem: 

    Shem, the Sun God, is worshipped in the Land of Shem by the Shemmites, aka the Men of Shem. It’s a very well-branded religion. 

    The Shemmites capture and attempt to sacrifice Kalthar, king of the jungle, but fail to reckon with his tendency to grow to fifteen feet tall and be invulnerable to harm, and are ultimately driven from their lands. 

    God Style: Invoked (Zip Comics 004, 1940) 

    Marro: 

    When the Three Aces set out into the Amazon jungle to investigate rumours of an ancient flying machine they end up discovering a lost colony of Atlantis for the second time in their careers – an astonishing hit rate (though their memories were wiped after leaving the first one and a language barrier probably prevented them from knowing about the Atlantis connection this time, if we’re going to be scrupulously accurate). Upon arriving, they are immediately captured and prepared for sacrifice to the Atlanteans’ god Marro. 

    Luckily for the three aviators, Marro turns out to be the very ancient aircraft they seek, sealed against the ravages of time in a glass dome. They manage to convince the Atlanteans to not sacrifice them if they can make the god fly again as it did in their legends, and being the expert fliers that they are, the Aces pull it off without a hitch. 

    God Style: Animist (Action Comics v1 043, 1941)

    Moloch: 

    The set up for this is a bit convoluted, but here goes: an anthropologist named Dr Chadwick is showing Zero, the Ghost Detective a weird skull that he dug up in Egypt one day when the ghost of the skull’s former owner shows up to take it back, and makes off with Chadwick’s daughter, to boot. Zero pursues the ghost back to Egypt and through a portal to Ancient Egypt, where he finds himself in a temple to Moloch and learns that the skull had been stuffed full of jewels sacred to the god. Zero manages to escape back to the 20th Century with the girl but wisely leaves the jewels behind.

    There is of course a lot of business involving human sacrifice to Moloch via the white hot hands of his idol, and while Moloch himself only shows up in the form of the idol the question remains: just who is raising all these ghosts and powering this time portal?

    God Style: Idol (Real?) (Feature Comics 041, 1941)

    the “Monster-God”: 

    The Monster-God is not this fellow’s name. We never learn what, in fact, it is, because the adventure he appears in is another boilerplate heroic-white-explorers-versus-evil-native-heathens adventure, handled with all of Fawcett Comics’ trademark cultural sensitivity. I include him only for completions’ sake and to point out that I like how gangly he is.

    God Style: Idol (Whiz Comics 006, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 066

    They’re just doing their best over here.

    Nevada Jones: 

    Nevada Jones starts out as a detective working for the Cattleman’s Association in what is probably meant to be the Old West (though at this point my trust in that fact is fragile) but in his second appearance is framed for murder and so adopts a masked alter ego. He also acquired a sidekick named Little Joe, who speaks with the cadence of a guy who was orphaned in the jungle and raised by apes rather than just being Mexican.

    The only really distinct thing about Nevada is that he never seems to actually adopt a new name for himself, he just doesn’t offer a name at all. This means that everyone calls him “masked man” or “stranger” the whole time. There’s an argument to be made that his masked identity is called “Quick-Trigger Man” but the aesthetic part of my soul won’t let me acknowledge it. (Zip Comics 001, 1940) 

    Kalthar: 

    Kalthar, aka God-Son, the Giant Man, King of the Jungle, is the son of an unnamed man who saved the Ugarnas (possibly Urgana? They are only ever referred to in the plural, alas) tribe from slavers but lost his life in the process. Raised by the grateful Urganas, Kalthar of course becomes much cooler than any of them and can speak the language of jungle animals. 

    Kalthar also has the support of Ta-Lo, possibly the only non-evil witch doctor in comics, who brews up a big batch of magic grains that allow him to grow into a fifteen foot tall, bulletproof giant. This is, as you might imagine, a pretty decisive advantage in jungle combat (he can for example punch out a bull elephant), so a large portion of each Kalthar story is spent with him tied up or otherwise unable to reach the magic grains in their hiding place in his hair. (Zip Comics 001, 1940)

    In Zip Comics 009, Kalthar marries Kate Goodwill, an explorer who he had been getting serious with over the prior few issues, but though the Next Issue blurb promises us further adventures of Kalthar and Kate, King and Queen of the Jungle this would be their final appearance. That’s a real shame, because if nothing else this arrangement would be a change from the usual chaste, long-term courtships you see in most jungle comics, where the jungle adventurer hooks up with the first white person they meet in their life but then constantly defers actually doing anything with the relationship. 

    the Devil’s Twins: 

    I just can’t resist a fighter pilot with a cool name, in this case brothers Tom and Tim Shane, aka the Devil’s Twins, aka the Devil’s Flying Twins (or should that be the Devil’s flying Twins), possibly aka the War Eagles unless that’s just the name of the strip. In addition to a great name, the twins have a totally stupid reason for being in the RAF: the German Ace Schultz once fouled them both in a polo match and now they want revenge on him. 

    The brothers earn their main nickname for being such colossal pains in the ass of their immediate superior, Captain Rex: they adopt unsanctioned but very effective tactics supposedly derived from polo, they constantly take off on self-ordained missions that draw unwanted attention to the airfield, they fall in love with the same woman and are huge babies about it, etc, etc. Just a couple of ding dongs. (Zip Comics 001, 1940)

    Mr Satan: 

    Mr Satan is really Dudley Bradshaw, “international detective and soldier of fortune,” who is so bored with the ins and outs of everyday life that he advertises for excitement in his local paper (and then later on he just follows the trouble-prone Doris O’Day around, despite the fact that she hates Dudley for not being as dynamic as Mr Satan). 

    Mr Satan’s purple bodysuit and horned cowl mask are both very charming and not a little reminiscent of the later Daredevil, and he has the distinction (along with most of the other heroes of Zip Comics) of never having been resurrected in any of the various revivals of the Archie/MLJ characters, a perhaps understandable decision in the case of a guy named Mr Satan, but a sad one. (Zip Comics 001, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 066

    They’re just doing their best over here.

    Nevada Jones: 

    Nevada Jones starts out as a detective working for the Cattleman’s Association in what is probably meant to be the Old West (though at this point my trust in that fact is fragile) but in his second appearance is framed for murder and so adopts a masked alter ego. He also acquired a sidekick named Little Joe, who speaks with the cadence of a guy who was orphaned in the jungle and raised by apes rather than just being Mexican.

    The only really distinct thing about Nevada is that he never seems to actually adopt a new name for himself, he just doesn’t offer a name at all. This means that everyone calls him “masked man” or “stranger” the whole time. There’s an argument to be made that his masked identity is called “Quick-Trigger Man” but the aesthetic part of my soul won’t let me acknowledge it. (Zip Comics 001, 1940) 

    Kalthar: 

    Kalthar, aka God-Son, the Giant Man, King of the Jungle, is the son of an unnamed man who saved the Ugarnas (possibly Urgana? They are only ever referred to in the plural, alas) tribe from slavers but lost his life in the process. Raised by the grateful Urganas, Kalthar of course becomes much cooler than any of them and can speak the language of jungle animals. 

    Kalthar also has the support of Ta-Lo, possibly the only non-evil witch doctor in comics, who brews up a big batch of magic grains that allow him to grow into a fifteen foot tall, bulletproof giant. This is, as you might imagine, a pretty decisive advantage in jungle combat (he can for example punch out a bull elephant), so a large portion of each Kalthar story is spent with him tied up or otherwise unable to reach the magic grains in their hiding place in his hair. (Zip Comics 001, 1940)

    In Zip Comics 009, Kalthar marries Kate Goodwill, an explorer who he had been getting serious with over the prior few issues, but though the Next Issue blurb promises us further adventures of Kalthar and Kate, King and Queen of the Jungle this would be their final appearance. That’s a real shame, because if nothing else this arrangement would be a change from the usual chaste, long-term courtships you see in most jungle comics, where the jungle adventurer hooks up with the first white person they meet in their life but then constantly defers actually doing anything with the relationship. 

    the Devil’s Twins: 

    I just can’t resist a fighter pilot with a cool name, in this case brothers Tom and Tim Shane, aka the Devil’s Twins, aka the Devil’s Flying Twins (or should that be the Devil’s flying Twins), possibly aka the War Eagles unless that’s just the name of the strip. In addition to a great name, the twins have a totally stupid reason for being in the RAF: the German Ace Schultz once fouled them both in a polo match and now they want revenge on him. 

    The brothers earn their main nickname for being such colossal pains in the ass of their immediate superior, Captain Rex: they adopt unsanctioned but very effective tactics supposedly derived from polo, they constantly take off on self-ordained missions that draw unwanted attention to the airfield, they fall in love with the same woman and are huge babies about it, etc, etc. Just a couple of ding dongs. (Zip Comics 001, 1940)

    Mr Satan: 

    Mr Satan is really Dudley Bradshaw, “international detective and soldier of fortune,” who is so bored with the ins and outs of everyday life that he advertises for excitement in his local paper (and then later on he just follows the trouble-prone Doris O’Day around, despite the fact that she hates Dudley for not being as dynamic as Mr Satan). 

    Mr Satan’s purple bodysuit and horned cowl mask are both very charming and not a little reminiscent of the later Daredevil, and he has the distinction (along with most of the other heroes of Zip Comics) of never having been resurrected in any of the various revivals of the Archie/MLJ characters, a perhaps understandable decision in the case of a guy named Mr Satan, but a sad one. (Zip Comics 001, 1940)