Oh boy! Minor super-heroes! 13: 13 (aka Thirteen, although the numerical version of the name is the official one) is the alias of Harold Higgins, whose life has been haunted by a series of misfortunes related to the number thirteen. A timeline of some of them: February 13, 1940: Harold’s brother Bob dies in a plane crash. March 13, 1940: Harold loses his life savings in the stock market. May 13, 1940: Harold’s sister Margy is paralyzed in a car…
(Daredevil Comics 006, 1941) New York’s dating scene is in trouble, as courting couples are being murdered at a blazing clip: six couples in two weeks as the story begins and a seventh just one page in – that’s fourteen people! That’s a person a day! On average! Nightro is on the case, but merely patrolling the parks and other canoodling spots is a bust as the killer knows to look out for costumed vigilantes and even leaves a taunting…
You just can’t keep ’em out of comics, those real people. Adolf Hitler: Dispatches super-spy Miss X to America. (Daredevil Comics 005, 1941) Raymond Stokes, the actor playing Hitler in a British propaganda film about London (the super-hero, not the city) inexplicably also turns out to be a Nazi agent who attempts to murder the Prime Minister when he makes a cameo appearance in the movie. (Daredevil Comics 005, 1941) Al Capone: No-first-name Perrone here is another classic example of…
(Daredevil Comics 006, 1941) Wolf Carson, gang boss, is in the hospital after being gunned down by his own traitorous associates. Faced with a choice between 1) dying of his wounds or 2) recovering so that the authorities can scoop him up and take him to jail, Carson takes the ever-popular option 3) take the nearby unethical doctor up on his offer to help cheat death via experimental science, in this case a total brain transplant! True to his word,…
In keeping with my decision to split the Claw updates for 1941 by heroic foe, here are the details of his three-issue dalliance with engineer Bill Hopkins. When last we saw the Claw… he was in the Pacific, roughing up Adolf Hitler. But before that, at the end of his long back-and-forth with the Daredevil, there was the small matter of his asking Lucifer for aid and getting it, with the caveat that if he still lost in his next…
(Daredevil Comics 005, 1941) We open on a demonstration by one Dr Roe of his invention the Death Detector, which he purports is able to determine if someone is incapable of murder (yellow light displayed), potentially capable of murder (red light) or has in fact murdered someone (blue light). While the implications and legalities of this device are legion (e.g., how does it determine this, does it distinguish between killing in self defense and manslaughter and premeditated murder, would widespread…
Cops Shooting at Fleeing Suspects: Here’s an intrepid officer trying to shoot the Black Terror and his (very young) sidekick Tim in the backs as they run away from the scene of a late-night disturbance. (Exciting Comics 015, 1941) Samson Does the Thing: Several new additions to the premiere Samson supercut: Marthas: A new addition to the League of Marthas: the Golden Knight’s mother, Queen Martha of the Tree People! (Fantastic Comics 015, 1941) Places and History: In a rare…
Damn their problematic hides! Rango: A former Vaudeville magician who employs a magical gem and some rubberoid mask blackface to establish himself as medicine man/bandit chief in Africa, Rango aka Harrigan is ultimately unmasked by Yarko the Great. (Wonderworld Comics 015, 1940) Unnamed Witch Doctor: This unnamed Haitian witch doctor has a very unusual scheme: blind entire American cities with a floating vision of some of his men and then loot those same cities of all of their diamonds. Why…
(Daredevil Comics 004, 1941) Bart “Daredevil” Hill and his fiance Tonia Saunders are accompanying their friends Jeff and Sue Hart on their honeymoon (!) yacht trip when they encounter the killer combo of rough stormy seas and a mysterious lighthouse that sends them right onto a reef. Happily for all involved (except two sailors who are swept overboard and never mentioned again) the yacht is merely wedged rather than sinking and there is a convenient nearby island. An inhabited one,…
(Daredevil Comics 002, 1941) 1900! Archaeologist Professor Pierce leads an expedition to find the tomb of Princess Sheba in Arabia! Buried alive in a solid gold tomb with a gold cobra perched on her chest, Princess Sheba appears to be meant to be the daughter of the biblical Queen of Sheba. The mummy, her grave goods and praticularly the golden cobra found sitting on her chest are all promptly packed up and shipped back to New York. Professor Pierce puzzles…