(Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941) This issue continues the trend of Captain Battle foes being fascist spies who are weaponizing fear by dressing up as the undead. In this case Herr Death is, as the name implies, a desiccated corpse version of Death, accompanied by a horde of the walking dead (not, I must stress, zombies. This is more “the dead have come out of their graves” kind of thing which, yes, would be classified as zombie behaviour now but which…
Why of why do they keep on hurting our boys? Meteor: Silver Streak’s partner Meteor is shot in the back by a Nazi, but it’s okay: the bullet only “nicked” his back. (Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941) Electro: Professor Zog, the brains behind Electro, is shot in the left arm. (Marvel Mystery Comics 016, 1941) the Sandman: The Sandman has a very rough 1940, starting with a shot to the right shoulder… (Adventure Comics 047, 1940) … then a shot…
(Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941) The Serpent, a well-established and powerful crimelord, has been laying low due to the threat posed by the Daredevil, but all that is at an end now because as far as she can tell the Daredevil isn’t around any longer. She puts in a call to her men, and I really like the sequence that follows. Nothing can stop these guys from getting to work, not prison, not pool, not partying with babes. The Serpent’s…
(Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941) In a very comic book series of events, a rash of mummy thefts at the City Museum in NYC is followed by the emergence of a Nazi super-crook calling himself the Mummy Master. While my normal modus operandi is to lay out the story of the villains I cover in an abridged but linear fashion, here I must jump ahead to the reveal that the Mummy Master is in fact City Museum director Dr Kolb, because I…
(Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941) The Parson is a weird little dude who takes over a gang of opportunistic London-based looters who have been taking advantage of the ongoing Blitz to make big bucks off of the misfortune of their fellows. Though the gang is initially against the notion of, again, a little weird dude muscling in on their racket, the Parson presses the issue with his powers of hypnotic domination, the source of which is as mysterious and unexplained…
Great value for your alien and so forth dollar today: seven for the price of four! the Nameless Ones: “The Bingham Boys” was a short-lived feature about twin brothers Billy and Bobby Bingham and their dipshit friend Specs inserting themselves into the life of adventurer Dusty Travis. I their first appearance, the trio tag along on what turns out to be a flight to Mato Grosso, Brazil to search for a clue to the fate of lost Atlantis, for some…
(Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941) After his initial defeat at the hands of Thun-Dohr, the villainous Sin Khaii is on the lookout for an ally in his war on humanity and he finds one in the pages of a tome called the Book of the Dead, and presumably it’s the Egyptian Book of the Dead because the candidate he lines up is called the Black Pharaoh, the only Pharaoh evil enough that he was cursed and sealed up in a pyramid to…
(Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941) Herr Skull is the leader of the Skull Men, a band of fascist saboteurs who dress up like ghoulish skeletons in order to facilitate their crimes. Why do they have spikes on top of their heads? I do not know the answer to that. Perhaps Herr Skull just thought the look needed a bit more to really pop. Spike aside, the plan works! The Skull Men are terrifying enough that their victims are caught completely…
(Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941) The Scarlet Skull was a real surprise to me! Going by cover dates, he debuted about the same time as the second/”real” Red Skull over at Marvel, which means that he was probably created in the window between the death of the original, George Maxon, and the debut of the Red Skull we will eventually know as Johann Shmidt. Obviously the fact that these are now considered to be two separate characters is all retcon…
(Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941) Sin Khaii, a lama at the same monastery that Thun-Dohr was raised at, has been cast out for unspecified reasons. His reaction to being an outcast – to steal Pandora’s Box and use it in a war on all humanity – would seem to retroactively justify the exile, however. Just why a Tibetan monastery would be the hiding place of Pandora’s Box is likewise left unexplored. Sin Kahii is able to use the Box to…