(More Fun Comics 066, 1941) Out of nowhere one day, giant monsters attack Cliffland, New Jersey! After driving them off a couple of times, the Spectre manages to follow them back to their base of operations, a weird painting of unknown provenance hanging in a Cliffland museum. There he finds that the monsters reside in a metal city ruled over by a man referred to only as the Man. The Man is clearly modeled after the fascist dictators of the…
More goons. Fascist goons? Yes. The Anti-American Party operated in the South American country of Santa Palos, home of the Red Gaucho, and got up to a lot of malarky at a fancy dress ball. Crucially, they disguised one of their agents as the Red Gaucho, leading to a lot of mixups between the agent, the Gaucho and a clueless dope who also came dressed as the hero (Nickel Comics 006, 1940) The Black Guard, agents of the Germany-analog country…
More fascist chodes for your edification: The American Freedom Club AKA the Movement AKA the New Order were propagandists looking to corrupt the youth of the nation, starting with the Boyville Orphanage and ending with a beating from the Boyville Brigadiers (Feature Comics 047, 1941) The Anti-American Bund, a standard outsized play on the weenies that were the German-American Bund (remember them as the ones who ran away before Jack Kirby could ride the elevator down to beat them up)….
(More Fun Comics 065, 1941) It’s another version of a revival of the Assassins! These Assassins are very into the accuracy of it all and have their own Alamut HQ and their own top guy named Hassan (presumably followed by Ibn Sabbah but it’s never said in full). Commitment to the bit is not quite enough to save them once second-rate Lawrence of Arabia Lance Larkin gets on the case, however. This group were based out of Iran, unlike the…
(More Fun Comics 065, 1941) A fairly simple one, this. The Blue Flame is an eerie cloaked figure sheathed in, yes, blue flame, that embarks on a crime spree in Cliffland, New Jersey. His crimes are not quite but almost exclusively aimed at the attendees of shows by stage magician Dr Mephisto and there is even some indication that the Blue Flame is attempting to frame Mephisto. Unfortunately for the Blue Flame, Cliffland is home to the Spectre, and he…
The hits keep on coming: This Fellow’s name is Becker and he and his wife run a gang while pretending to be among its victims. An okay scheme, but not really up to foiling Bulletman and Bulletgirl. (Master Comics 014, 1941) This guy here is why I have such a hard time relegating masked Western bandits to the dregs of the generic costumed villains: he’s as by-the-numbers a bandit as they come, he robs one stagecoach total, he ends up…
(More Fun Comics 064, 1941) This is not a complicated one: Congo Bill is asked for help by his friend Jack Brent. Brent is trying to sell his plantation, one of the assets of which is his good relationship with the local labour pool. Just as he had found a buyer, a skull-headed goon called the Thing started murdering workers. It’s about par for course re: jungle comics portrayal of nonwhite folks and fairly standard otherwise and of course the…
(More Fun Comics 064, 1941) The Shadow is in reality the vengeful ghost of Elmer Watson, a bumped-off witness in a big corruption case. Slightly more reasonable reason for revenge than some murderous ghosts, certainly, but Watson’s vengeance eventually becomes so all-consuming that he attempts to derail an entire passenger train to get at one target and he ends up banished to whatever nether realm the Spectre sends bad ghosts to. This is two Vengeance Ghosts in a row for…
(More Fun Comics 063, 1941) I’m just as guilty as I was with the Jungle Scientist of being immediately seduced by the subject’s name as presented in the title of the story. The Man Who Was Dead – a terrific name if I’ve ever seen one. Pure bonus points to the guy for being a weird little imp about it. The Man Who Was Dead of course escapes from police custody and so the Radio Squad here are forced to…
(More Fun Comics 063, 1941) I won’t lie to you: this initial panel really did all the work in guaranteeing the Jungle Scientist some time in the spotlight rather than a place in a mad science roundup with three other randos. There are exactly two reasons for that: 1) that he was supplied with a name in the very title of the piece and 2) that wretched little outfit that he has assembled for himself. This man was divorced just…