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…
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…
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?…
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…
It’s time to return to spaaaaaace! Urolians and Urians: The “Blast Bennett” feature is set far enough in the future (5940 CE, according to the caption on a single panel that I’m taking as gospel until contradicted) that I generally assume that all of the human-looking aliens that Blast and his pal Red encounter are representative of far-flung Earth colonies rather than of lack of alien design imagination, but I just had to point out the fact that the two…
Two shorts and two longs. Bajah: Minor Golden Age Marvel magician Dakor has to travel all the way to the fictional Indian kingdom of Nordu to rescue his friend’s daughter from one of those cults where they worship a random blonde white lady (one of the more embarrassing stupid pulp fiction concepts to make the jump to comics, in my opinion). All that is to set up the fact that the devil figure in this cult is the oft-invoked, never-seen…
We’ve hit a rich seam of aliums this month. Mermaid/ Reptile-Men: This city of Reptile-Men is ruled over by a Mermaid queen, and I am forced to contemplate, and not for the first time, whether this is an instance of a member or group of one species ruling over another or if it’s one of extreme sexual dimorphism. Whichever one it is, I do appreciate that the Reptile-Men have that really goofy wide stance going on with their lizard legs….
What ho! Aliens! Martians: These Martians attack Earth for reasons that will remain unclear forever, because the story they appear in never actually gets an ending. In fact, they never even show their faces, instead attacking from their very cool-looking ships and sending their very cool-looking robots to act as ground troops. The initial invasion is driven off by superhuman scientist Greg Gilday and his associate Joan and then the Martians just never bother to return for another shot. (War…
When deep-sea diving off of the Marquesas Islands, explorers/lovers Chuck Hardy and Jerry Peterson are caught in a volcanic upheaval and sucked through a rift in the ocean floor. They find themselves in one of the many underground lands that dot any comic book version of the Earth – this one being lit and heated by an enormous volcano called Roara. Chuck and Jerry’s time in the underground land (never actually named as a whole, so I have been calling…
Some more dubious theology for you. the Stone Tablet: The pompous jackasses at the British Archaeological Club really get Mr Mystic’s goat when they treat the theories of his friend Doctor Gadasky like trash, so he does the only sensible thing and uses his magic to travel back to 1 000 000 CE to see for himself. Gadasky claims that Cro-Magnons had a religion based around the worship of a stone tablet, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s right! Mr…