{"id":1226,"date":"2023-05-23T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-23T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2026-09-27T16:13:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T19:13:40","slug":"minor-super-villain-284-kai-mak-the-shark-god-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=1226","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 284: KAI-MAK, THE SHARK-GOD"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)<\/p>\n

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Kai-Mak here (AKA God of Sharks, Lord of Sharks, Lord of the Deep, Master of the Deep, the Man-Shark)<\/span> is one of my very favourite things in comics: a weird monster pretending to be a god in order to score power or riches or, as in this case, snacks.<\/p>\n

I’m so<\/i> fond of this trope, in fact, that I have to make sure to frontload the acknowledgement that it is predicated on the idea that a lot of the varied people in the world are credulous primitive savages with no critical thinking skills or I’ll focus too much on the monster and gloss over the racism. Someday we’ll get to M’nagalah the Cancer God, who at least has the decency to manifest in small mining towns and suburbs.<\/p>\n

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That having been said, we must acknowledge how great both Kai-Mak and his high priest look. Jack Kirby’s finest shark-based work, I reckon. Just look at his nose and his greasy hair!<\/p>\n

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The Vision shouts a bunch of guesses at what Kai-Mak is that are neither confirmed or denied – he could be right and Kai-Mak could be the last remnant of a race of sharkfolk, sure. He could also be a mutant, an Inhuman, a Deviant, some sort of alien or science experiment or heck, a demi-god spawned by Poseidon in a moment of weakness. Rather than spell out his origin, Kai-Mak opts for a no-holds-barred underwater deathmatch.<\/p>\n

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After a cool battle under the waves, Kai-Mak is killed and both his worshippers and a selection of human sacrifices are free to go.<\/p>\n

Now, if there’s one thing that any super-hero universe is simply crawling with, it’s humanoid sharks. On a strict market saturation metric there’s no logical reason to campaign for the return of Kai-Mak. Too bad for Adam Smith that I think the free market sucks eggs: BRING BACK<\/b> the Shark-God! There’s always<\/i> room for another giant shark-man! Particularly<\/i> one who’s been nursing his wounds at the bottom of the ocean for 80 years and is after a new community to subjugate. Have him pop up in New England, Deep One style! The old fish-for-sacrifice trade! It literally can’t go wrong!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941) Kai-Mak here (AKA God of Sharks, Lord of Sharks, Lord of the Deep, Master of the Deep, the Man-Shark) is one of my very favourite things in comics: a weird monster pretending to be a god in order to score power or riches or, as in this case, snacks. I’m so fond of this trope, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,168,42,784,44,509,120,1160,24,40,23,91,20,7,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-14","category-anthropophage","category-bring-em-back","category-cult","category-dead","category-fake-god","category-giant","category-kai-mak-the-shark-god","category-marvel-comics","category-marvel-mystery-comics","category-minor-super-villain","category-monsters","category-murderer","category-the","category-vision"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1230,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions\/1230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}