The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: alien

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 030

    Luvverly aliens and so forth for ye today, guv.

    the Freaks: 

    Silver Streak, investigating a series of mysterious murders, follows a lead to the aptly-named Fantasy Isle in the Pacific Ocean. 

    The inhabitants of Fantasy Isle probably don’t refer to themselves as “the Freaks” but as that is the only thing that they are called in-story I suppose that we must go with it. They are a heterogeneous collection of humanoid who have isolated themselves from the world, presumably due to the threat of persecution, which would make them fairly sympathetic characters if a) they didn’t routinely sink passing ships and imprison their crew in deep dank dungeons, and b) their king didn’t respond to the threat of exposure by attempting to destroy the entirety of North America.

    As so often happens when a nonhuman group threatens the lives of a human one, the Silver Streak’s solution involves mass murder, in this case by dumping the entire population into the ocean. One can only hope that a few of them made it, for anti-genocide reasons.

    It’s hard to tell if the Freaks are supposed to be one species with several different morphologies or several different small populations banding together for mutual benefit. Either way, there are a few recurring types. From top to bottom we have: imp type, weird bird man type, tentacle man type and suction cup lizard man type. The king and that three-eyed guy seem to be unique, but maybe there are more of them lurking around in the shadows. (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941) 

    Gargantuans:

    The Gargantuans are military expansionists who you expect to be big but are in fact regular sized. Instead, they are at or close to the maximum number of facial affectations that an alien species can have, including green skin covered in little spines, antennae, big pointy ears, fangs, a skeleton nose, satanic eyebrows and in the case of their leader Lobar a matching goatee and mustache.

    The Gargantuans come very close to destroying Earth’s space fleet and turning the planet into a military base, until Lobar makes the mistake of bringing Cosmic Carson onto his flagship and getting within reach of his Earthman fists. (Big 3 001, 1940) 

    Mercurians:

    The Red Panther is helping his pal Toni Beltan test her orbital Stratoplane when it goes haywire and rockets them to Mercury. There, they encounter two types of Mercurians: the Giant Mercurians, who wear cool heat-resistant armour that kind of makes them look like beetles and are enslaved by the Surface Mercurians, big-headed imps who are led by a fellow named Kogh and are frankly assholes.

    Kogh has the Red Panther and Toni tossed in a hole to be devoured by the giant bats of Sub-Mercury, only to unexpectedly benefit when the bats all end up dead at the barrel of the Panther’s Atomic converter, thus opening the riches of the underground to exploitation by the resource-poor Surface Mercurians. To his credit, Kogh then has enough grace to allow the duo to return home. (Jungle Comics 010, 1940)

    Giants:

    One of the lost sci-fi tropes is that of the typical kind of humanoid life that you’d find on each planet of the Solar System. Mercury is hot so you get fire guys or other heat-adapted species there; Venus is either a giant swamp or a “primitive” planet so you get a lot of semi-aquatic lizard guys there etc etc. This is all to say that you don’t get ’em any more but because Jupiter is a great big planet one of the standard kinds of Jovians you would see in sci-fi is the giant humanoid, like these fellows, who are conveniently and simply called Giants.

    Golo, ruler of the Giants, has succumbed to arrogance and issued a challenge to the rest of the Solar System to meet his Giant army in personal combat, seemingly as a precursor to a campaign of wholesale conquest. His challenge is met by the Red Comet, who, despite Golo’s initial disbelief, is able to employ his nigh-limitless power to grow extra-huge and lay waste to the Giant forces.

    Golo himself gets away pretty lightly with a mere bop on the snoot for his hubris. Hopefully the hundreds of dead soldiers outside of his palace are enough of a lesson in humility to curb his warlike instincts in the future. (Planet Comics 003, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 030

    ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 030

    Luvverly aliens and so forth for ye today, guv.

    the Freaks: 

    Silver Streak, investigating a series of mysterious murders, follows a lead to the aptly-named Fantasy Isle in the Pacific Ocean. 

    The inhabitants of Fantasy Isle probably don’t refer to themselves as “the Freaks” but as that is the only thing that they are called in-story I suppose that we must go with it. They are a heterogeneous collection of humanoid who have isolated themselves from the world, presumably due to the threat of persecution, which would make them fairly sympathetic characters if a) they didn’t routinely sink passing ships and imprison their crew in deep dank dungeons, and b) their king didn’t respond to the threat of exposure by attempting to destroy the entirety of North America.

    As so often happens when a nonhuman group threatens the lives of a human one, the Silver Streak’s solution involves mass murder, in this case by dumping the entire population into the ocean. One can only hope that a few of them made it, for anti-genocide reasons.

    It’s hard to tell if the Freaks are supposed to be one species with several different morphologies or several different small populations banding together for mutual benefit. Either way, there are a few recurring types. From top to bottom we have: imp type, weird bird man type, tentacle man type and suction cup lizard man type. The king and that three-eyed guy seem to be unique, but maybe there are more of them lurking around in the shadows. (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941) 

    Gargantuans:

    The Gargantuans are military expansionists who you expect to be big but are in fact regular sized. Instead, they are at or close to the maximum number of facial affectations that an alien species can have, including green skin covered in little spines, antennae, big pointy ears, fangs, a skeleton nose, satanic eyebrows and in the case of their leader Lobar a matching goatee and mustache.

    The Gargantuans come very close to destroying Earth’s space fleet and turning the planet into a military base, until Lobar makes the mistake of bringing Cosmic Carson onto his flagship and getting within reach of his Earthman fists. (Big 3 001, 1940) 

    Mercurians:

    The Red Panther is helping his pal Toni Beltan test her orbital Stratoplane when it goes haywire and rockets them to Mercury. There, they encounter two types of Mercurians: the Giant Mercurians, who wear cool heat-resistant armour that kind of makes them look like beetles and are enslaved by the Surface Mercurians, big-headed imps who are led by a fellow named Kogh and are frankly assholes.

    Kogh has the Red Panther and Toni tossed in a hole to be devoured by the giant bats of Sub-Mercury, only to unexpectedly benefit when the bats all end up dead at the barrel of the Panther’s Atomic converter, thus opening the riches of the underground to exploitation by the resource-poor Surface Mercurians. To his credit, Kogh then has enough grace to allow the duo to return home. (Jungle Comics 010, 1940)

    Giants:

    One of the lost sci-fi tropes is that of the typical kind of humanoid life that you’d find on each planet of the Solar System. Mercury is hot so you get fire guys or other heat-adapted species there; Venus is either a giant swamp or a “primitive” planet so you get a lot of semi-aquatic lizard guys there etc etc. This is all to say that you don’t get ’em any more but because Jupiter is a great big planet one of the standard kinds of Jovians you would see in sci-fi is the giant humanoid, like these fellows, who are conveniently and simply called Giants.

    Golo, ruler of the Giants, has succumbed to arrogance and issued a challenge to the rest of the Solar System to meet his Giant army in personal combat, seemingly as a precursor to a campaign of wholesale conquest. His challenge is met by the Red Comet, who, despite Golo’s initial disbelief, is able to employ his nigh-limitless power to grow extra-huge and lay waste to the Giant forces.

    Golo himself gets away pretty lightly with a mere bop on the snoot for his hubris. Hopefully the hundreds of dead soldiers outside of his palace are enough of a lesson in humility to curb his warlike instincts in the future. (Planet Comics 003, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 029

    The wonders of the cosmos!

    Spiny Scalemen: 

    The Spiny Scalemen are yet another group of gross-looking underwater humanoids who threaten the mostly peaceful nation of Amloza, and what’s worse, they’re doing it as part of a Nazi plot to take over the city and use it as a naval base. Thankfully Mogg the Fish-Man and only competent citizen of Amloza realizes that city walls are a bit of a useless affectation in an underwater environment and destroys the Scalemen by collapsing Amloza’s onto them. (Champ Comics 016, 1941)

    Categorized in: Body (Nonhuman Parts), Generica (Men)

    Flat Heads: 

    “Og, Son of Fire” was a comic adapted from a Big Little Book that was based on a series of short stories and also a radio show about Og, a young caveman who is trying to make his way in a hostile world. And importantly for the purposes of this blog, one of the things making the world more hostile is this tribe of ape men led by a fellow named Long Tooth. Heaven knows I love an ape man, but I love ’em even more when they’re called something fun like “Flat Heads.” See also the Flat Heads’ Sun God here. (The Funnies 013, 1937)

    Categorized in: Body (Heads)

    the Flies:

    While the Barrangees of Planet Barrang have had a lot of problems with insects over the years – they famously grew giant and drove the Barangee population underground, while insect-worshipping Barrangee priests stymied any attempt to reclaim the surface – their most troublesome foes were always the giant flies. These creatures have adapted to their new size by becoming active hunters rather than scavengers, and the Barrangees are a favourite prey. Couple this with the fact that Earthman Captain Tornado and his cohort have encouraged the Barrangees to move above ground and you get situations like the above, in which a Fly abducts a Barrangee child in broad daylight.

    The Flies are the most intelligent and organized of the Barrang insect species featured in the “Captain Tornado” feature, and they make war on the Barrangee city under the direction of their Fly King until Tornado bring knowledge of both firearms and insecticide to the planet and effectively counters their offensive. (Popular Comics 054, 1940)

    Categorized in: Animals (Insects), Extrasolar (Planet Barrang)

    Fourth Dimensional Creatures:

    After foiling several of Satan Rex’s attempts to destroy humanity, scientific adventurer Jon Linton and his pals return to their first love: tinkering around with spaceships. And since Jon et al exist in an adventure comic, the first test flight of their new rocket turns into an out-of-control flight through space at never-before-seen speeds, careening directly through planets without touching an atom and ending up on a world where thought and reality intersect, kind of like that one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

    During their pell-mell flight through space, Linton and pals are briefly visited by these tentacle-legged lizard monsters, who appear to be kind of generically hostile for a few minutes before fading back into the ether. Just what the heck is going on?

    Jon hits upon the answer with his customary swiftness: these are inhabitants of the Fourth Dimension, and the ship briefly intersected with their space. Does this justify the seeming aggression that their show to the people on the spaceship? We cannot accurately judge, alas. (Amazing Mystery Funnies v3 007, 1940)

    Categorized in: Extradimensional (Fourth Dimension)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 028

    Dudes come in all kinds of shapes nowadays.

    Walrus Men:

    We first encounter the Walrus Men in Champ Comics 013 when the newly-reformed Neptina goes to them to ask for help in reclaiming the throne of Amloza from her sister Mhersa, only to discover that the friendly Prince Eon has been overthrown and that the Walrus Men are now ruled by the expansionist tyrant King Walro.

    Not that Walro is unopposed in his rule, as there are still Eon loyalists willing to help Neptina and her friends in their quest.

    Neptina, her friends and the loyalists rescue Eon from the hole that Walro has been keeping him in, upon which it becomes clear that, like the Fish-Man population of Amloza, the Walrus Man of Polaris are ruled by a very human-looking nobility. This isn’t such a huge contrast in the Walrus Men’s initial appearance, when their tusks are small and dainty, but…

     

    From Champ Comics 014 and onward they really put the walrus in Walrus Men. So no Neptina and Eon represent an ocean-wide ruling class? Did some sub-oceanic Queen Victoria seed the thrones of the Atlantic with her grandchildren? Should Neptina and Eon’s burgeoning romance be quashed for the sake of their children’s genetic health? 

    (this issue also establishes the signature piece of Walrus Man technology: “mole ships” that travel beneath the sea floor for surprise attacks) 

    Finally, Prince Eon is restored to the throne of Polaris in Champ Comics 015 after fatally(? it is under water, after all) punching Walro off of a balcony. 

    Categorized in: Aliens (Earth), Animals (Aquatic Mammals), Generica (Men)

    Fish-Men UPDATE: 

    Speaking of the Fish-Men of Amloza and the morphological differences between them and their ruling class, Neptina and her companions find themselves in the Kingdom of the Fishmen while fleeing from Walrus Men forces. The Fishmen, hyphenated or not, appear to be their own people who just happen to live in Amloza in significant number. Neptina’s chief scientist Mogg is welcomed to the Kingdom as a citizen, which introduces some interesting questions about how the nation-states of the Atlantic work.  (Champ Comics 014, 1941)

    Fernomacs:

    When space adventurer Spurt Hammond is appointed as Earth’s ambassador to the Mercury of the year 2520 CE, he quickly finds favour with Thermod, king of the Mercurian Fernomacs, a species of leather-skinned green humanoids. By contrast, Hammond and his rising influence makes him an enemy in the eyes of the sinister Baron Burno.

    Burno expresses his frustration by staging a coup and dumping Thermod and Hammond on the desolate dark side of Mercury (not how Mercury works). All seems lost until…

    Grubmen:

    … the Grubmen show up! These inhabitants of the dark side of Mercury don’t get a tremendous amount of characterization: they love light and worship the flashlight-wielding Spurt Hammond as a god and he’s happy to exploit their adulation for his own benefit. Pre-religious reformation under Hammond they appear to have been ruled by the largest member of their species but he sees the writing on the wall and joins up with Hammond without a fight.

    In a bit of good luck for the Grubmen, exposure to the light and heat of the light side of the planet causes them to grow powerful and so they are able to effectively combat Burno’s Fernomac forces rather than die en mass as Hammond had presumably assumed they would given the physical and technological gulf between the species initially.

    King Thermod is re-installed on the throne of Ferno and as the Grubmen are of no further use to Hammond he leaves them behind as citizens. A happy ending for everyone but Baron Burno and his co-conspirators! (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

    Categorized in: Aliens (Mercury), Animals (Insects), Generica (Men)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 028

    Dudes come in all kinds of shapes nowadays.

    Walrus Men:

    We first encounter the Walrus Men in Champ Comics 013 when the newly-reformed Neptina goes to them to ask for help in reclaiming the throne of Amloza from her sister Mhersa, only to discover that the friendly Prince Eon has been overthrown and that the Walrus Men are now ruled by the expansionist tyrant King Walro.

    Not that Walro is unopposed in his rule, as there are still Eon loyalists willing to help Neptina and her friends in their quest.

    Neptina, her friends and the loyalists rescue Eon from the hole that Walro has been keeping him in, upon which it becomes clear that, like the Fish-Man population of Amloza, the Walrus Man of Polaris are ruled by a very human-looking nobility. This isn’t such a huge contrast in the Walrus Men’s initial appearance, when their tusks are small and dainty, but…

     

    From Champ Comics 014 and onward they really put the walrus in Walrus Men. So no Neptina and Eon represent an ocean-wide ruling class? Did some sub-oceanic Queen Victoria seed the thrones of the Atlantic with her grandchildren? Should Neptina and Eon’s burgeoning romance be quashed for the sake of their children’s genetic health? 

    (this issue also establishes the signature piece of Walrus Man technology: “mole ships” that travel beneath the sea floor for surprise attacks) 

    Finally, Prince Eon is restored to the throne of Polaris in Champ Comics 015 after fatally(? it is under water, after all) punching Walro off of a balcony. 

    Categorized in: Aliens (Earth), Animals (Aquatic Mammals), Generica (Men)

    Fish-Men UPDATE: 

    Speaking of the Fish-Men of Amloza and the morphological differences between them and their ruling class, Neptina and her companions find themselves in the Kingdom of the Fishmen while fleeing from Walrus Men forces. The Fishmen, hyphenated or not, appear to be their own people who just happen to live in Amloza in significant number. Neptina’s chief scientist Mogg is welcomed to the Kingdom as a citizen, which introduces some interesting questions about how the nation-states of the Atlantic work.  (Champ Comics 014, 1941)

    Fernomacs:

    When space adventurer Spurt Hammond is appointed as Earth’s ambassador to the Mercury of the year 2520 CE, he quickly finds favour with Thermod, king of the Mercurian Fernomacs, a species of leather-skinned green humanoids. By contrast, Hammond and his rising influence makes him an enemy in the eyes of the sinister Baron Burno.

    Burno expresses his frustration by staging a coup and dumping Thermod and Hammond on the desolate dark side of Mercury (not how Mercury works). All seems lost until…

    Grubmen:

    … the Grubmen show up! These inhabitants of the dark side of Mercury don’t get a tremendous amount of characterization: they love light and worship the flashlight-wielding Spurt Hammond as a god and he’s happy to exploit their adulation for his own benefit. Pre-religious reformation under Hammond they appear to have been ruled by the largest member of their species but he sees the writing on the wall and joins up with Hammond without a fight.

    In a bit of good luck for the Grubmen, exposure to the light and heat of the light side of the planet causes them to grow powerful and so they are able to effectively combat Burno’s Fernomac forces rather than die en mass as Hammond had presumably assumed they would given the physical and technological gulf between the species initially.

    King Thermod is re-installed on the throne of Ferno and as the Grubmen are of no further use to Hammond he leaves them behind as citizens. A happy ending for everyone but Baron Burno and his co-conspirators! (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

    Categorized in: Aliens (Mercury), Animals (Insects), Generica (Men)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 025

    ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 025

    We got Fish-Men, we got Fishmen, we got other kinds of men.

    Fishmen:

    Adventurer Lance Rand has acquired a map showing the location of the sunken continent of Atlantis and so naturally he sets out to see if it’s accurate and more importantly to find out if there’s any ancient Atlantean treasure there for him to loot. Making his way to the ocean floor, Lance and his pal Tubby are almost immediately accosted by a Fishman riding on a sea monster. This is a good sign!

    The sunken city of Atlantis does indeed turn out to me right where the map said it was, complete with some monumental bare-assed statuary. Lance and Tubby are able to drive their submarine tractor right up to the base of what must have been an important Atlantean idol and pry the disco ball-sized diamond out of its forehead, upon which they have to deal with another squad of hostile Fishmen. Though the implication is of course that these fellows are the descendants of drowned Atlantis, the fact that they never say anything really makes it hard to confirm. Perhaps they are unrelated underwater humanoids who just disapprove of Lance and Tubby’s wanton looting. Whichever it is, I really dig the little wing-fins that grow out of their backs. (Cat-Man Comics 001, 1941)

    Fish-Men: 

    When oceanic adventurer Navy Jones’ submarine is lost at sea, he is rescued by an undersea race of aquatic humanoids who don’t really have an official name but who are more often than not called Fish-Men or something similar. Despite some early conflict engineered by the scheming Prime Minister, Jones soon becomes the Fish-Men’s champion.

    Fish-Men society is ruled over by a more humanoid nobility, represented here in the forms of their unnamed king and his daughter/ Navy Jones’ love interest, Princess Coral. As usual, the reasons for these morphological differences are not explained and likely boil down to “we didn’t want our hero to be romantically involved with a fish.”

    Like many Fiction House heroes, Navy Jones passed through a lot of hands over the course of his career, and the Fish-Men had a correspondingly large number of looks, each of them charming in its own way.(Science Comics 001, 1940)

    Fishmen:

    This Fishman is encountered by Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle in what is probably a prehistoric underground enclave that a group of explorers stumble across “far to the Southeast of the Congo”. I say probably because Tabu gasses on about how they have gone back in time, which might be meant literally and might just be a bit of excessively flowery exposition. 

    The above is virtually all of the on-panel time that the Fishmen get, as the narrative is much more focused on the drama of one of the explorers falling in love with a cave woman. (Jungle Comics 011, 1940) 

    Flame-Men: 

    Just as Rex Dexter of Mars and his companion Cynde are about to leave the planet Nexis and its friendly inhabitants, the Nexis as part of their never-ending attempt to reach Mars, the world is attacked by some sort of apocalyptic flame weapon.

    Rocketing into space to investigate, Rex and Cynde discover that the source of the attack is a fiery comet that is being directed by a massive spacecraft, by which they are swiftly captured. Inside they find the Flame-Men from Planet Emalf, who are attacking Nexis as the first move in their attempt to destroy the rest of the universe. Why are they doing this? No idea.

    The Flame-Men are unprepared for Rex’s freeze-ray gun, and shrivel up into little burnt matchstick men in a way that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is unsettling. (Mystery Men Comics 010, 1940) 

    Categorized under: Aliens, Animals (Fish), Elements (Fire), Generica (Men)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 026

    There is a never-ending supply of aliens (and so forth) in comics, and here are some of them. 

    Giants: 

    When Doctor Voodoo is flung into the past by an old wizard, his only instruction is to find something called the Golden Flask, located somewhere called the Valley of Giants. Astonishingly, it only takes him about two issues worth of privation to get there, whereupon he and his pal Nero are immediately taken captive and frogmarched to the castle of the Queen of the Giants.

    As can be seen in the above panel, these are the less extreme kind of giant, being only ten or so feet tall (based on their sizes compared to Doctor Voodoo – probably a standard length of hero at six feet – and Nero – extra big and tall so at least seven). Hardly as dramatic as a forty-foot titan might be but at least you don’t spend the whole time wondering how their bodies hold together under the strain.

    The Queen of the Giants (Anita to her friends), by contrast, is a regular-sized lady who comes across as quite nice until Doctor Voodoo rejects her romantic advances and she has him thrown to Achilles, who turns out to be a giant python. Despite this, when the Valley of the Giants is depopulated by pirate raids, Docotr Voodoo rescues her and takes her along on the remainder of his adventures in the past. And since he never actually makes it back to the present on-panel, perhaps romance does eventually blossom, who knows? (Whiz Comics 020, 1941)

    Camurians: 

    Space hero Captain Venture and his companion Zyra, aka the Planet Princess, spend a lot of their early adventures just wandering around space and seeing what the cosmos has to offer. On one of these jaunts, they land on Planet Camur, where they find the native Camurians enslaved by another species called the Valhoes, and being righteous hero types they resolve to liberate them from bondage. 

    After being captured and enslaved themselves, Venture and Zyra lead an uprising and free the Camurians from the tyranny of the Valhoes, who were unprepared to face any resistance from their seemingly cowed slaves.

    Just where the Valhoes come from is not expanded upon in the story but just by looking at them we must reasonably assume that they also come from Camur, right? Millions of years ago some sleepy-eyed alien ape species’ population split along nerd/jock lines and the Camuriand and Valhoes were the end results. Nature is grand, really. (Nickel Comics 006, 1940)

    Catskill Dwarfs: 

    Thanks to a plane crash in the Catskill Mountains, super magician El Carim and his assistant/ love interest Gladys find themselves in the underground realm of the Catskill Dwarfs, aka the Little Men of the Mountain of Rip van Winkle fame.  

    It’s all pretty goofy until Galdys swats the Dwarfs’ Scared Flea, at which point the Little Men of the Mountain try to murder both her and El Carim in a fit of righteous ire. All is forgiven, however, by the time they return to the comic two issues later – I suppose sacred fleas are easy to come by. (Master Comics 020, 1941)

    Djungas: 

    Captain Venture and the Planet Princess’ wandering ways come to an end eventually when they crash on the far-off Asteroid Djung and are captured by the local Djunga people on behalf of their tyrannical leader King Leon. 

    The Djungas are that ever-popular combination of a high-tech society with medieval trappings, and Leon is very much a medieval tyrant figure who spends much of his time attempting to wed Zyra against her will while pitting Venture and his Djunga companion Tazon up against a series of deadly situations. These often involve the wide array of other intelligent species endemic to Asteroid Djung and its local system, so more on them later.

    The series eventually had to end, and King Leon with it, with the flick of a giant’s finger. Tazon is installed as the new King of Djung, and peace presumably reigns among the Djungas. (Master Comics 009, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 025

    We’re going heavy on the ape-man content this time. 

    Ape-Men: 

    These Ape-Men, like most ape men, are some sort of human offshoot population or remnant of another species of homo living in the isolated depths of, in this case, the Amazon jungle. They come into conflict with Doctor Voodoo after breaking their long-held peace treaty with his allies the Blancas and abducting many of them for human sacrifice. Also they use silver arrows for some unexplained reason. (Whiz Comics 013, 1941)

    Ape-Men: 

    These particularly wooly-looking Ape-Men briefly vex adventurer Cotton Carver in one of the various lands beneath Antarctica before learning about firearms the hard way, as so many of their fellow sub-Antarcticans do during Carver’s travels. (Adventure Comics 048, 1940)

    Apemen:

    More cave- than ape-men in my estimation, these fellows ambush Bill Dale and his guide Dagoo as they traverse the cheerily-named River of Skulls in Africa on their way to find Bill’s long-lost twin Steve. Notably, these are the Apemen who worship the crocodile swam god the Creeping Death. (Nickel Comics 001, 1940)

    Link Men: 

    Encountered by Zatara while searching for a missing biologist in modern-day Tanzania, the Link (for Missing Link, natch) Men are the most ape-like in appearance of all of our entries today. They live in a small city atop a plateau and are generally hostile to strangers.

    For all that they are literal ape-men, the Link Men are just as weirdly obsessed with the nuances of human race as so many other nonhuman intelligences: their leader is the ever-popular Random Blonde Lady, in this case one named Kara whose presence on the plateau is never really explored. They are also weirdly invested not in human sacrifice but in the sacrifice of a white man to their deity, the Sun-God. Zatara’s aide Tong isn’t even considered as a sacrifice.

    The potential sacrifice above is coincidentally also missing biologist Raoul d’Armand, who Kara has fallen in love with and thus reconsidered being the leader of a society of religious apes. Thankfully Zatara is on hand to foster true love by turning an entire intelligent species into marble statues. One would hope that he would turn them back before leaving but as with so many of the occasions in which Zatara transforms someone into an inanimate object the final fate of the Link Men is left to the reader’s imagination. (Action Comics v1 027, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 024

    Today we journey into the far future! 

    Cave-Dwellers: 

    The hunt for Atom Blake’s father takes him from Earth to Mercury, to Mercury but millions of years in the future, where he encounters these little fellows. Driven out of their surface city by invaders, the Cave-Dwellers are understandably hostile to outsiders, but Atom manages to win them over eventually, free his father (the hunt, though long in distance and time, was short in terms of steps) and retake the city.

    What I really appreciate about these guys his how much they resemble a version of the sensory homunculus. (Wow Comics 003, 1941)

    Peoples of the Year 2 000 000 000: 

    Not to be outdone by some kid, in Detective Comics v1 023, Slam Bradley and Shorty Morgan travel two billion years into the future after meeting scientist Professor Kenton, fresh off of completing his time machine and not interested in any sort of half measures like trying to go to next week.

    Please note the “city rises and falls outside the window to mark the passage of time” bit, later used to much effect in Futurama. 

    Slam and Shorty are almost immediately separated from Kenton and captured by a big bird that flies them into a fantastic futuristic metropolis nearby. There. they are confronted and captured by three beings: a human, a bird-man and a plant-man, and this is our first inkling that this isn’t the lame kind of future where everything is just a reskin of the present, not only because Earth is populated by three distinct intelligent species but completely alien technology, such as the weaponized recorders used to paralyze our heroes.. 

    More alien weirdness follows, as it is revealed that these three fellows have been condemned to death for gambling on a holy day (the anniversary of their leader’s tonsillectomy, which is silly, yes, but culturally very interesting. They have a god-emperor of some kind!). They also do not speak English but communicate via a thought transmission device. 

    Despite their seeming reverence for their leader, these three fellows want to take advantage of the time machine to get out of town and avoid their fate. They eventually try to steal the device outright and are killed in a firefight with Slam, Shorty and Kenton but before that the plant-man gets to show off this cool and very thematic flower weapon.

    He’s not really an alien, but as long as I’m talking about this adventure I would like to mention Iron-Fingers, a giant cyborg pitted against Slam Bradley in gladiatorial combat as a form of execution after Slam refuses to grant the petulant god-king access to the time machine. Specifically, Slam is sentenced to be “plucked to pieces” by Iron-Fingers, which is an image that really sticks with you. (Detective Comics v1 023, 1939) 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 887. MIGHTY ADWAHL

    (Wow Comics 002, 1941)

    Once Atom Blake, Boy Wizard sets off on his interplanetary search for his father, his first stop is Mercury. Why? For no stated reason and seemingly just because it’s the first planet out from the Sun, and for that matter, Blake’s reason for starting his search in space rather than on Earth is simply because he can. Once he arrives on Mercury, he is almost immediately captured by an intelligent species of hive-dwelling insectoids. 

    These Mercurians come very close to killing Blake before using their innate gifts of telepathic communication to determine that he does not in fact work for Mighty Adwahl, the planet’s tyrannical leader, who has systematically enslaved them to work in his mines. Side note: I really like the size variance in these Mercurians. Very fun species trait.

    Atom Blake, determined to help anyone in need, travels to Adwahl’s capitol city, where he is captured again, this time by a second species of Mercurian who are a bit more enthusiastic about serving the tyrant and who look a bit like green humanoid camels. When Blake is marched into the throne room for judgment he is shocked to discover that the Mighty Adwahl is… another human?!

    Mighty Adwahl is in fact a former gang boss named Scarface Louie, and is presented as having been a pretty bit deal circa Prohibition before fleeing the planet on a spaceship he stole from an inventor. The wildest part of this is that it seems to be public knowledge, since sixteen year-old Atom knows about it. Like, just imagine that the story of Al Capone ends with him using a hijacked shrink ray to escape into a subatomic world. Wild stuff.

    Mighty Adwahl demonstrates a remarkable lack of curiosity and summarily sentences Blake to a life of slavery in his gold mines rather than inquire as to how a teen boy might have made his way to Mercury. Though Atom does manage to lead a slave revolt among the miners, the subsequent storming of Adwahl’s throne room is spoiled somewhat by the fact that the first group of Mercurians decided to follow Atom’s lead and had already stormed the palace and killed him.

    (for the curious: Atom was completely right to come to Mercury, as the same Mercurian who initially captured him not only knew his father personally but is able to guide Atom to the time portal that his father left the planet through)