Pad out your pantheon with some of these: Death: This version of Death may lack the social graces necessary to welcome Kardak the Mystic and his pal Lorna rather than attempt to murder them for entering his domain, but he does have a very good version of the classic “robed skeleton” look. And his house is charmingly coffin-themed, to boot! God Style: Anthropomorphic Personification (Top-Notch Comics 008, 1940) Ramu, God of Fire: Ramu, God of Fire is another one of…
(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…
I came across Jumbo Comics 031 while filling in gods from my backlog in another Divine Round-Up entry and realized that the array of entities represented in the Stuart Taylor story in that issue should be presented as a block. Mercury: This story begins as most Stuart Taylor stories do, with reckless use of time travel technology. Specifically, Taylor’s love interest Laura Hayward has travelled back to Ancient Greece to buy a new hat, because as we know: women be…
(Top-Notch Comics 007, 1940) Streak Chandler’s adventures on Mars conclude with a space battle with Kalox, deposed king of the Gas Men, as he attempts to destroy the planet in retribution for losing his throne. Streak and his pals prevent this, but at the moment of their triumph they find themselves in the clutches of yet another villain, the pirate King Quantus, and spirited away to his secret headquarters on the Jovian moon Io. In addition to being a space…
(Top-Notch Comics 007, 1940) Tasked with finding the two-days-overdue Sir Gawain, Galahad discovers him being set upon by ruffians in the employ of the Knight of the Griffin, a dastardly character who hates King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Galahad proceeds to confront the Knight himself, where we find that he is based on Sir Turquine, a villainous knight who had both the knight-summoning bell and tree full of defeated knights’ shields as seen above, but who…
(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…
(Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940) Sir Gilbert is the evil knight who Galahad sets out to vanquish on his first official Knights of the Round Table mission. He’s got all the requisite qualities of an evil Arthurian knight: a cool name, a rakish attitude toward kidnapping and menacing women, and designs on the lands near his castle. And like most if not all non-Mordred evil knights in comic book Arthuriana, he’s a completely original character, which is always a bit confusing…
Two MLJ Round-Ups in a row! They’re just churning out the heroes! Galahad: Hey, it’s Galahad! Or rather a version of Galahad who is standing in for a pretty wide array of different Knights of the Round Table with lesser name brand recognition. It’s some clean-cut knightly action. (Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940) Shanghai Sheridan: Jack “Shanghai” Sheridan, aside from having a sounding like a cheeky nickname for a POW camp, is notable mostly for the fact that he is one…