Where would comic books be without real people, after all? Easter Island: Lance O’Casey and his pal Dan’l Doom fight some wreckers on Easter island, and while I can’t tell if the place saw enough ship traffic in the 1940s to make shipwrecking a profitable enterprise, I will say that the concept of Lance and Dan’l just casually passing by one of the most isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean while travelling from place to place is an eyebrow raiser. The whole…
(Whiz Comics 012, 1941) The city of Watertown is under the thumb of a mysterious crime lord known only as the Big Shot, and Edward Lucas, the Special Prosecutor in charge of tracking the Big Shot down, has been shot and killed just before a meeting with Watertown District Attorney Harper. Enter super sleuth Dan Dare and his associate Carol Clews to pick up the trail and finish Lucas’ last case. The most obvious suspect is of course DA Harper,…
The fools! The fascist fools. the Steel Guard: The Steel Guard are a home-grown fascist group in the Balkan country of Murania, who plot to sell out their country and its oil wells to the Nazis. They fail to recognize the threat inherent in leaving a camera in the hands of crack magazine photographer Fran Frazer and she ruins their entire setup with a few evidence-heavy snaps. (Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940) the Redshirts: The Redshirts are a homegrown US fascist…
(America’s Greatest Comics 001, 1941) Like Mr Skeleton before them (and possibly because I first encountered them both in the same comic), the Death Battalion is one of those super-villain concepts that really lodged itself in my brain and which I am glad to have finally appear here. Unfortunately, unlike Mr Skeleton, the Death Battalion isn’t quite as great as I’d remembered. For one thing, I’d long thought that they were a Mr Scarlet revenge squad, but despite the fact that he…
(America’s Greatest Comics 001, 1941) Mr Skeleton is one of the handful of minor super-villains who are foundational to this blog, the true weirdos who my mind turns to whenever the subject of obscure comic book characters comes up, and so it’s a real relief to have him finally hsow his face here. This will keep happening at least until we reach 1978 and train-themed super-villain Casey Jones appears here. There are three really important aspects to Mr Skeleton that…
A few classic minor super-heroes. Bulletman and Bulletgirl in particular have just barely managed not to remain relevant – I suppose the pointy helmet is too much of a hurdle for the modern audience. Bulletman: Jim Barr is perhaps the most thoroughly-motivated super-hero of the Golden Age. He is: a. from a long line of police officers b. the son of a famed police officer who was murdered for being too good a cop and who c. told the young Jim that…
(America’s Greatest Comics 001, 1941) An invisible killer is on the loose in New York City, robbing banks and hijacking gold shipments and murdering bank clerks, and while an invisible killer is a very scary thing to contemplate we must as ourselves: is armed robbery the best criminal use of the power of invisibility? If nothing else, a stealthier approach would have kept the involvement of an invisible man a secret for longer, since as it stands the poor gunned-down…
(America’s Greatest Comics 001, 1941) The Ghost of the Deep, a dastardly fellow indeed. As the comic opens, a captive scientist named Hugo has just completed a mysterious formula for him, only to be rewarded with murder. In the following days, the Ghost attacks US West Coast shipping, each time leaving behind a calling card in the form of a message in a bottle. The Ghost even tries to silence Billy Batson’s fairly routine reporting on the attacks (but why…
(Wow Comics 004, 1941) The piratical Bluebeard and his gang of fake sea dogs crash the costume ball of the wealthy van Hoffs and make off with Mrs van Hoff, demanding a ransom of one hundred thousand dollars for her return. Since Bluebeard had already tried to do extortion on the van Hoffs by sending them threatening notes, Mr Scarlet and Pinky were already on hand to swiftly track down the kidnappers and beat them senseless. The post-beating unmasking reveals…
Today we journey into the far future! Cave-Dwellers: The hunt for Atom Blake’s father takes him from Earth to Mercury, to Mercury but millions of years in the future, where he encounters these little fellows. Driven out of their surface city by invaders, the Cave-Dwellers are understandably hostile to outsiders, but Atom manages to win them over eventually, free his father (the hunt, though long in distance and time, was short in terms of steps) and retake the city. What…