(Top-Notch Comics 008, 1940) After Harley Hudson perfects his muscular coordination technique and becomes the Firefly after two years of hard study, his first order of business is to move to New York City to find a job, because it’s hard to fight crime on an empty stomach. Plus NYC is the place to be for super-heroics and super-crime. Case in point: the very first job ad that Hudson follows up on turns out to be criminal scientist Dr Dread…
(Top-Notch Comics 009, 1940) The Skull is the recurring foe of the Golden Age Black Hood, and as is common for such characters he is a kind of generalist super-villain willing to dabble in everything from theft to kidnapping to espionage to murder as circumstances dictate. He even indulges in a little housebreaking on occasion, and it is while doing so that he is interrupted by police officer Kip Burland, who he frames for the crime and then eventually…
Guest stars from reality! Arthuriana: Galahad is an ongoing feature inthe 1940 issues of Top-Notch Comics, which always means that we’re going to have a variety of very on- and off-brand characters from Arthuriana in supporting roles. King Arthur here functions mainly as a questing hub for Galahad to report to between missions, for instance. (Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940) Sir Kay, meanwhile, is very comfortably fulfilling his role as a low-level knight who can be defeated as a demonstration of basic…
(Top-Notch Comics 009, 1940) It’s another version of Morgan le Fay, less than two weeks after the last one! Will le Fay end up being the mythic/fictional character with the greatest number of comic book interpretations? Possibly! This version of Morgan le Fay, Morgana le Fey, is after revenge on Galahad for the death of her husband the Knight of the Griffin and so sends out squads of knights to find him and bring him back to be tiger food. Unfortunately…
(Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940) The Mosconians, stand-ins for Nazi-allied Russia (or possibly just Russian-flavoured stand-ins for Nazi Germany) have a lot more stick-to-itiveness than your typical gang of foreign espionage agents, to the extent that they manage to not only bedevil the Wizard for three whole issues but also the Shield over in Pep Comics, leading to what is touted as the first super-hero crossover in comics (as previously seen here). The Master is the shadowy figure behind the Mosconian schemes…
Some hot Archie/MLJ super-hero action. **Hero Update** Bob Phantom: Perhaps in honour of his making the jump from Blue Ribbon Comics to Top-Notch Comics, Bob Phantom gets two hitherto-unseen powers: super-breath powerful enough to turn aside oncoming bullets and the ability to summon cyclones by flapping his cape. (Top-Notch Comics 003, 1940) Bob Phantom also demonstrates super strength sufficient to tear an airplane to pieces in mid air. (Top-Notch Comics 004, 1940) And not content with three new super powers, in Top-Notch 010, Bob…
(Thrilling Comics 010, 1940) Perry Knight has a problem: instead of starring as the titular costumed antagonist of stage production “The Black Death” he has been jailed for murder. He can’t remember doing it, but evidently he gunned down his costar Tinker in cold blood during the dress rehearsal. Enter Peggy Allen, the Woman in Red, who quickly discovers that there is a second Black Death running around when they have a confrontation in the wings. Is this a foolish…
(Thrilling Comics 010, 1940) Fifth column activities are wreaking havoc on the US! Why, it’s so bad that the new National Defense Building has been bombed! Doc Strange is called in along with a crack team of industrialists to help solve the problem, and is pointed toward fellow committee member Henry Dallas by yet another member, Robert W Marsh. Could this be so easy a problem to solve? Henry Dallas kills himself rather than own up to working with the…
None of these guys are ever going to be in a movie. It’s been a while since we’ve seen any masked cowboys, so here’s a particularly well-dressed bunch about to have a scrap with the Rio Kid. He doesn’t get the upper hand in this particular encounter, but by gum he eventually brings rancher John Wendel and his whole gang of rustlers to justice. (Thrilling Comics 002, 1940) Likewise, it’s been a while since we’ve seen a masked Nazi spy,…
Will we ever run out of fascist goons? the Green Shirts: The Green Shirts’ claim to fame is their army of the resurrected dead, which they employ in their attempted takeover of the US. Or it would be, that is, if the test run of the resurrection device hadn’t resulted in the death of its inventor and incidentally the creation of the super-mummy Mystico, who ultimately ends up destroying the Green Shirts in a very satisfyingly cyclical kind of way….