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Month: August 2025

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 010

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 010

Oh those rascally aliens. the Grey Hordes from the Center of the Earth:  The Grey Hordes from the Center of the Earth, aka the Grey Men, have been bombing London for unclear reasons using hard-to-see transparent planes. War correspondent Danny Dash and his associate Shamrock “Mac” McGlynn (!) stumble upon a group of them in the English countryside after their car is wrecked by a mysterious bomb-throwing glowing limousine, but since the “Danny Dash” feature never concluded we never really…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 842: THE STONE MAN

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 842: THE STONE MAN

(Weird Comics 001, 1940) Here’s the thing about the Stone Man: I have no idea what his deal is, aside from the fact that he’s a creep. See, the Bird Man is just flying around the desert one day, as is his wont, when he runs into some guys searching for one of the guys’ daughter. After flying around for a bit, he discovers her in an isolated canyon, being sexually menaced by a weirdo and his animal companions. Why…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 058

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 058

A number of minor Fox Features characters for your perusal and delight. the Bird Man:  The Bird Man, descendant of “an ancient Indian god” (no further detail provided) uses his weird demigod wing-flaps to fly around the American Southwest and render aid to people. (Weird Comics 001, 1940) In Bird Man’s final appearance, in Weird Comics 004, he has conformed to the heroic norm a bit more by moving to a penthouse apartment in what might be NYC (please note that he…

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ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 009

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 009

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…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 841: SIKANDUR, THE ROBOT MASTER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 841: SIKANDUR, THE ROBOT MASTER

(War Comics 001, 1940)  Sikandur, the Robot Master, is a villain-in-a-starring-role who sadly only appeared once. Any evil roboticist who, for example, makes his robots red-hot as a way of discouraging those who might grapple them is an evil roboticist I want to read about, and I only got the one opportunity to do so. Sikandur need gold in order to build more robots, though whether he needs it as a necessary component or as a handy source of cash…

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ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 008

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 008

Magical adventurer Kardak the Mystic is drawn into a series of adventures among the various nonhuman intelligences of the world when his new love interest is kidnapped by some of them and he sets off in pursuit. Here are the ones he meets in 1940: the Fishtails:  The Fishtails, inhabitants of “the lost continent, Anderras!” are the ones who start Kardak’s undersea adventure off when they kidnap Lorna to fulfil a prophecy that they require a “white, Earth Queen” to…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 840: THE CRAWLER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 840: THE CRAWLER

(Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940)  The antagonist of the Bob Phantom story in Top-Notch Comics 010 is Joe Chizzler, who uses his low-rent marriage agency to set scumbags up with wives then murder the wives for insurance payouts. It’s a mean, low-rent, misogynistic little scheme, and the only saving grace of/reason I’m talking about it is the fact that the actual murdering is done by this character, the Crawler. Is the Crawler a superhuman? Just a very talented human fly? We cannot know!…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 839: THE DOCTOR

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 839: THE DOCTOR

(Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940)  The Doctor operates a simple but brutal extortion racket: a network of crooked doctors refer workplace compensation cases to him at his fake hospital and he then charges them as much as they are being paid in compensation, and if anyone dares to complain, they suddenly require urgent surgery and die on the operating table.   For the second time in two days I must note: surgical scrubs are such a good super-villain costume. This is exactly…

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PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 005

PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 005

Some day we will hit Peak Problematic and I can’t decide if it will be soon or in a decade or so.  the White Leader:  Our last Problematic Round-Up featured a lot of white guys dressing up like Yellow Peril villains in order to lead Chinese gangs, something that we will unfortunately be seeing plenty more of. This here fellow follows a different path: not putting on yellowface in order to lead a Chinese gang and in fact leaning hard…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 838: DR DREAD

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 838: DR DREAD

(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…

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