(Silver Streak Comics 003, 1940) Like his super-heroic enemy the Silver Streak, the Doc’s story is complicated somewhat by the fact that it begins as an effort by Jack Binder and ends as one by Jack Cole. In the former, the Doc is a mysterious figure who is orchestrating the deaths of the drivers of Silver Streak race cars via giant fly attacks. The reason for this? Never made clear. Once the Swami and his race crew are seemingly out…
Lev Gleason’s finest! Lance Hale: Lance Hale is a soldier of fortune and jungle adventurer who is notable mainly for the fact that in his first appearance he is given super strength by a fellow with the pleasing name of Dr Grantland Grey so that he can help out on an expedition to the stars, and then after returning to Earth he just… stops using the armband that gives him his enhanced strength. He keeps on adventuring, don’t get me…
(Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940) The Professor sits right on that dividing line between “super-villain” and “gang boss with a cool nickname” and what pushed him over the line for me was the fact that he makes three absolutely classic comic book super-villain mistakes in this issue. MISTAKE #1: The Professor lures the Wasp and his aide Bill Barnes to an isolated area to eliminate them before they interfere with his plans as they have in the past, but they…
(Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940) Normally I try to put things in my own words and really work out the ins and outs of the motivations of the super-weirdos I write about, but I gotta be honest: I have so little idea of what the Little Men’s problem is (problems are?) that I’m just going to point to the intro caption: they’re trying to rid the world of all beautiful women. Simple as that. Why are they trying to rid…
We’re reading Shield-Wizard Comics, bay-bee, so here’s some stuff about the Shield and the Wizard. the Shield UPDATE: In our original write-up of the Shield, we noted that the origin of his powers shifted from being solely down to his super-suit to being more of an ingrained thing over time, and the time is now! Yes, Shield-Wizard Comics 001 provides a slightly tweaked version of the Shield’s origin, in which Joe Higgins’ father Tom was not just a US Army…
Get ready for a collection of MLJ’s finest racially-problematic villains. Yen Fat Sing: Yen Fat Sing’s deal is that he knows about a treasure buried on Fu Chang’s charity farm and, in an effort to grab that treasure for himself, has been murdering the workers using man-eating plants. He’s a pretty standard type of minor super-villain but because he is a Fu Chang foe he is of course a generic Yellow Peril character on top of that. A couple of…
(Science Comics 008, 1940) The Wrecker is a very good example of how a good name can elevate a project out from the ordinary. Comics books are full of corporate extortion schemes – it’s one of the classic scheme types for a reason. You can ramp the threat to life up or down with ease depending on just what is being sabotaged and likewise there are opportunities for big action setpieces as buildings or other corporate infrastructure are targeted. But…
(Science Comics 007, 1940) Perisphere Payne, futureman of the year 2000, has his work cut out for him when six Earth battle rockets go missing and then subsequently attack their home planet! And upon defeating their seemingly traitorous crews, Payne discovers that they are being remotely mind controlled via a chunky black box stuck to each of their backs in a place that looks like it would be pretty annoying to live with. Good thing they’re mind controlled and presumably…
(Science Comics 005, 1940) En route to the court of King Neptune to deliver a new invention to him, Navy Jones and Princess Coral find themselves the prisoner of a heinous-looking clarinet-playing mermaid who looks a lot like something out of a 19th Century political cartoon. I’ll be honest here: while the Sea-Witch is a notable-enough villain to cover here, the real attraction of this comic is that it all looks like an outsider art fever dream. The Grand Comics…
(Science Comics 003, 1940) Dynamo has been stirring up trouble in the Unspecified City underworld. He’s captured Rats Rako and a significant portion of his gang and now Rats’ lieutenant Gun Ramey must figure out just how to deal with a superhuman do-gooder. It’s lucky for him that Unspecified City has a resident criminal scientist, the Genius (ignore the fact that they’re calling him Electro, this is from his first adventure before he changes it). I’ll be honest, my first…