(Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) We rejoin the European version of the Golden Knight as he and his ladyfriend Alice are having a bad time in Blackamoor Forest: both Alice and Sir Richard’s horse Whitey have broken their legs in a fall and so Richard and Alice are forced to hole up in a cave for the night (Whitey, sadly, did not make it). But who is this ominous form? It’s the Hag of Blackamoor and she isn’t messing around! In…
(Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) Sanglor starts out strong. He immediately charms me with his aesthetic sense: his ‘Automatic Subplane’ spy drones are delightful, his ‘Flying Castle’ is simultaneously one of the most ridiculous and great-looking mobile bases I have ever seen and his costume manages to evoke the dress sense of a 1940s comic book movie villain in a way I have not seen since the Vampire, almost exactly 300 entries ago. He manages to mess things up almost immediately,…
(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940) Once again the nations of he world of the year 10 000 CE are faced with an oceanic menace. Twenty ships have been sunk – seems like a case for Sub Saunders! Could we be faced with yet another jerk ruler from the population of undersea humans? It seems likely! (aside: gotta give a shoutout to Thog here: having a name like that in a comic from 1940 is absolutely an early indicator that you are…
(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940) Dr Martinious holds a few distinctions. First, he is an Earth scientist who travelled to Mars on a rocket ship of his own design, an impressive feat and one that seems to have endeared him to the Brain Men of Mars sufficiently to make him their leader. Secondly, he is an early cosplayer. Note his pseudo-Roman outfit (better view below). This is the outfit of a person who showed up on Mars after reading a lot…
(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940) The eminent scientist Dr Chandler is being held in Amazoland, home of the Amazons! The extremely diplomatic Captain “Ugh!” Kidd sets out to rescue him! This is another one I might have skipped over if not for a couple of remarkable things, the first being that the poorly-named Amazon homeland seems to be just a country, somewhere in Asia if all the references to the Amazon’s eyes being almond-shaped (that’s not how Captain Kidd puts it,…
Incorrigible scamps the lot of them. This unnamed scientist uses fake spirits, death traps and so forth to drive adventurer Ted Crane and his companions away from the jungle temple he is looting. BUT! He has made a classic mistake: they weren’t planning on entering the temple in the first place and based on their action in earlier issues they certainly don’t object to white people hauling off as much ancient African swag as possible. He gets punched out a…
(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940) It happened again. Space Smith and Dianna were just noodling along through space when they found themselves captured and transported to the surface of a strange world by strange aliens. In this case the world is the annoyingly named Vacuum Meteor and the aliens are the extremely cool Vacuumites. Like the Robot Scientists before them, the Vacuumites don’t seem quite sure what to do with their new prisoners – it seems to be an opportunistic kidnapping….
(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940) ‘bdula Khan is the capricious ruler of a mysterious oasis city in North Africa who offers the Golden Knight hospitality and then turns around and makes him battle monsters in an arena for his amusement. He’s not particularly notable and I’d likely have passed him over but for three things: 1. The Name. ‘bdula is presumably short for Abdula and might be a unique name? Abdula is such an uncommon variant of Abdullah already, and it’s…
(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940) Scientist-adventurer Flip Falcon has a machine that allows him to enter the Fourth Dimension and come out, effectively, anywhere. He’s used it to visit various other planets and will use it to travel through time – it’s an adventure machine, basically. The fact that it can detect something as vague as “a disturbance somewhere” is both on point and completely meaningless – when you can go anywhere and anywhen, you can always find a disturbance (he…
(Fantastic Comics 005, 1940) Sub Saunders needs to investigate a series of sunken ships, so he has his fiance Peg given the same treatment as he got from the great “oceantalogist” Professor Foama so that they are both amphibious and can go on missions together. This is wildly progressive for a Golden (or Silver, or a lot of Bronze) Age comic book hero! They’re usually more likely to toe the “this is too dangerous for a woman” line – it’s…