(Zip Comics 006, 1940) As Nevada Jones and his pal Little Joe are passing through the town of Copper Bluffs one day, they find themselves smack in the middle of a criminal conspiracy: someone is murdering people as part of a scheme to buy up key portions of the town’s land before the railroad comes through town, and the sign that someone is about to be killed is that a red circle is painted on the shaving mug when they…
Human sacrifice is the order of the day with this bunch of deific bad-boys. Shem: Shem, the Sun God, is worshipped in the Land of Shem by the Shemmites, aka the Men of Shem. It’s a very well-branded religion. The Shemmites capture and attempt to sacrifice Kalthar, king of the jungle, but fail to reckon with his tendency to grow to fifteen feet tall and be invulnerable to harm, and are ultimately driven from their lands. God Style: Invoked (Zip…
(Zip Comics 004, 1940) The villain for today is called Magi, and is the chief magic-user to a race of Mermen and Mermaids. Magi and his pal Torno have come to the surface world on a mission to retrieve the last descendant of the Mer-folk on land. Some notes: -Magi gets no small amount of points for recognizing Zambini as his greatest threat among the surface world people and moving to neutralize him in advance of the mission. -These points…
Top-quality aliens, fresh-baked! Unnamed Species: This unnamed species has that most delightful and implausible of features, an organic wheel that they use to locomote around! Other than that they’re your typical underground dwelling species: they live far enough under the surface or have an extensive enough range that one can enter their kingdom in the Himalayas and exit in Iran; they have a captured surface woman named Rina as their queen but the real power lies with “He”, who is…
(Zip Comics 003, 1940) Zambini (the Miracle Man) is on his first vacation in years and Satan, presuming that his guard will be down or that he left his magic amulet at home I guess, decides that this is the perfect time to attack and murder him for being such a thorn in the side of Evil. (Please note the near-identical guy kind of capering behind Satan’s throne up there, as he represents my favourite thing about this adventure, that…
For various definitions of the word real. Adolf Hitler: Just why this nonsense-language-speaking pilot henchman of the Mask is named Reltih is a mystery, but it’s also a fact. BONUS VERY ANNOYING THING: I can decipher the nonsense in that second panel as “I’ll murder the bum” but this makes me think that I should be able to do the same with the rest of his half-dozen or so lines of dialogue but I can’t. Utterly vexing! The Mask also…
(Zip Comics 003, 1940) The Scarlet Avenger looks out his window one sunny day and sees “DEATH TO THE SCARLET AVENGER” in skywriting. This, it turns out is a very effective ploy, as when he flies up to check it out he is swarmed and captured by some very off-model pterodactyls. The beasts take him to a dirigible, where he is is introduced to Texa, an eight foot tall woman and self-proclaimed “Queen of Crime,” who is looking to rob…
These pantheons are going to fill up if we’re not careful. Ammon-Ra: Worshipped by a secret sect in the hidden underground city-state of Ruxor in Egypt, Ammon-Ra, contrary to the above image, is probably just an idol that Yarko the Great is making speak so that he doesn’t have to keep magically duelling High Priest Ramma-Tep. God style: Idol (Wonderworld Comics 018, 1940) Kila: Kila, the supposed Hindu God of Destruction, is represented here by a ruby idol. There’s not…
(Zip Comics 002, 1940) Mr Satan is summoned to the charmingly-named Shadow Pond to solve a series of disappearances among a group of scientists who have secluded themselves there. Upon arriving he immediately finds himself in the middle of an attack by a humanoid monster (the Monster, of course. Annoyingly, it is never once referred to as the Monster of Shadow Pond, which would be a pretty great name). He manages to pull a young woman away from the attack…
They’re just doing their best over here. Nevada Jones: Nevada Jones starts out as a detective working for the Cattleman’s Association in what is probably meant to be the Old West (though at this point my trust in that fact is fragile) but in his second appearance is framed for murder and so adopts a masked alter ego. He also acquired a sidekick named Little Joe, who speaks with the cadence of a guy who was orphaned in the jungle…