(Master Comics 007, 1940)
Once more we find ourselves with a cult on our hands, and it’s my favourite kind of cult: a) completely fictional and b) just a bunch of bored rich people taking what probably started as an excuse for some light swinging or BDSM way too seriously. It’ the Cult of Jama the Devil-God, folks! Officially broken up by the US government in 1919, they have in fact been lurking in the shadows of the probably-New York upper crust since then, with a particular focus on molding wealthy orphan Imelda Loree (born on the Feast Day of Jama, parents possibly murdered by the cult) into a living goddess figure. This process seems to require either virginity or some sort of spiritual isolation because the main thing tat they do to prepare her is to murder any man who even seems like he might be interested in her.
And of course this is where my favourite Golden Age adventurer Zoro the Mystery Man comes in, because if there’s a society event where people are trying to hook up, it’s a fair bet that he’ll be there. He witnesses the fourth “keep Imelda Loree from getting any” murder and it’s at that point that the cult is finished.
But what of this Master character, you ask? Why he’s Murdock Daw, leader of the cult and huge creep. In classic cult leader fashion, Daw has been duping the Jama cultists for decades in order to enrich himself, and in true creep fashion he seems to have been angling to marry Imelda Loree since she was roughly two years old, and even if I’m reading things wrong he has absolutely been having her suitors murdered in order to make her desperate enough to marry him – real creep behaviour, if you ask me.
