{"id":408,"date":"2026-06-08T10:33:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T13:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=408"},"modified":"2026-09-27T15:37:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T18:37:45","slug":"aliens-and-so-forth-round-up-046","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=408","title":{"rendered":"ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 046"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good lord! Aliens<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Mupha’s Species<\/b>:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Mupha, ruler of the undersea Land of Peril, is the kind of creep who sends his subjects to kidnap women to become his queen. This eventually brings him into conflict with underwater adventurer Sub Saunders -not because Sub is looking for kidnappees but because he happens to pass by the Land of Peril and makes Mupha nervous enough to open fire on his submarine.<\/p>\n

As Mupha appears to have only two subjects we must assume that either a) his species is nearly extinct (which explains his quest for a mate but does not excuse it) or b) the Land of Peril is a breakaway group from a larger population somewhere, political exiles, perhaps, because of their pro-kidnapping policies. In either case, the group does not survive its encounter with Sub Saunders. <\/p>\n

Also please note their stylish hooves, a very unusual feature in an aquatic species. (Fantastic Comics 018, 1941)<\/p>\n

Martians<\/b>:<\/p>\n

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The only example of this particular Martian species who we meet is Kodi, partner to Nick Nelson in the Space Patrol. At least, I think so. See, much like the adventures of Spacehawk<\/a>, “Space Patrol” is a Basil Wolverton comic, and one thing that Basil Wolverton liked was drawing all kinds of different weird-looking aliens. So while Kodi is the only big-headed orange Martian who we see in the course of the series, there are also a variety of other Martians in a range of colours and shapes and who’s to say whether they aren’t all the same species? (Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 012, 1939)<\/p>\n

Spider Men<\/b>:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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While there are also a variety of different Venusians depicted in the pages of “Space Patrol,” I am pretty confident in my assessment that they are unrelated to the Venusian Spider Men. Encountered by Nick and Kodi as they pursue a fugitive into the deep jungles of Venus (Tropical Jungle Planet being one of the old sci-fi paradigms for the planet), the Spider Men are presented as relentless predators of intelligent humanoids. They also look great, even better than my beloved Martian Spider-Men<\/a>. Imagine: a whole species of balding men with unkempt beards!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The Spider Men manage to drag Nick Nelson back to their cave home (where we learn that they are tool users!) but are ultimately no match for the Space Patrol’s various beams and rays. (Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 012, 1939)<\/p>\n

Mercurians<\/b>:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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While looking into the disappearance of a space freighter and its cargo of green diamonds, Nick and Kodi track its location to a volcanic crater on Mercury, where the ship’s pilot has murdered the rest of the crew, stolen the diamonds and dumped the ship itself into a lava pit, with the aid of a crew of Mercurian Mole-Men<\/b>. As is so often the case in a sci-fi story, our impression of an entire species must be formed by the actions of one of its worst members, and we simply must assume that this kind of theft and murder is atypical, or however would our nameless villain have gotten his job in the first place?<\/p>\n

As for the Mole-Men, they don’t get a lot of characterization beyond the fact that they are “the savage inhabitants of the underground regions,” but as always I do enjoy Wolverton’s use of morphological similarities (specifically the ears, nose and especially feet and legs) to show that they and our Mercurian friend evolved from some common ancestor. Plus it’s hard not to love a cave-full of little glaring goblin-men. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The Mercurian gets a bit to smug about the fact that he has Nick and Kodi at his mercy and manages to nearly blow his own head off with a phenomenally bad shot. I do not like his knees, but I do like that horde of rampaging Mole-Men.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Having made their way back to their ship, Nick and Kodi decide to just skip the tedious parts of the legal system (arrest, trial, state-mandated punishments, etc) and skip straight to the execution. A few well-placed atom bombs and the volcano takes care of both the Mercurian and the Mole-Men for them. (Amazing Mystery Funnies v3 003, 1940)<\/p>\n

(very similar Mercurians<\/a> are featured in Amazing Mystery Funnies<\/i> v3 006, 1940)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good lord! Aliens! Mupha’s Species: Mupha, ruler of the undersea Land of Peril, is the kind of creep who sends his subjects to kidnap women to become his queen. This eventually brings him into conflict with underwater adventurer Sub Saunders -not because Sub is looking for kidnappees but because he happens to pass by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,5,14,71,144,3,545,89,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-69","category-5","category-14","category-alien","category-centaur","category-fox-features","category-space-patrol","category-sub-saunders","category-undersea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","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=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}