![](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEhtV_efw9MxzSQIo8PuS9ehN6L1LWCW7sph_IUMTvE483C_Ml5nhRq8JFqnq_Bhi__bF_35NN-5QMWCkCTkLWtQ7PSGBLpA7rfIj_9W0ehUk0eNbln_WSAh01n9qIix3WTOqfbQajjDt8BnNwxKb43yUCfI0ztIE9gpTKQbbeh3TB1lvEsE_eKPtkOPPKZ0\/w640-h228\/622a%20professor%20simm%20fantastic%20009%201940.JPG\" "\\"professor")
<\/a><\/div>\nWe open on a very exciting scene! Professor Simm has unleashed giant monsters on an unnamed US city! Chaos reigns!<\/p>\n
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<\/a><\/div>\nI unironically love these monsters. They have that half-baked quality that you get in generic kids toys – the kind of thing you got as a cheap way for your parents to occupy you on a trip and because they have no built-in lore you end up inventing a whole backstory for them. That picture of the humanoid reptile standing next to the giant anthropoid would be on the packaging.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/div>\nHaving front-loaded a lot of positivity (one last dollop: look at the cavemen riding away on the creatures! It’s very cute!) I must now reveal that this is a pretty bad comic book adventure. I don’t know what was going on at Fox Features in mid-to-late 1940 but they were wildly<\/i> swapping writer\/artists in and out of serials – this very issue features both a Stardust the Super Wizard and a Space Smith story drawn by someone other than Fletcher Hanks!<\/p>\n
While this is a minor problem in terms of narrative consistency – this is as far as I know the only time that Samson it depicted as being three times taller than an average human, for example – <\/i>it also feels like the story was put together in haste or as the third or fourth thing on someone’s mind. Nothing quite hangs together – Professor Simm starts out demanding control over the US government and later is purely interested in money, for example.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Once Samson makes his way to Simm’s island castle the story becomes a series of loosely connected vignettes: Samson finds a cage full of cavemen and gets inside, only to immediately leave again. Samson finds a room full of prisoners and skeletons and frees the prisoners. Samson confronts Simm, who escapes. Samson frees more prisoners. Samson kills Simm. It could <\/i>all be assembled into a coherent plot but very much is not.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n<\/a><\/div>\n