MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 995: ORG

(Jungle Comics 015, 1941)

Org is a fellow with a gift - the power to play the drums hypnotically - and also the knowledge of the location of a hidden valley full of giant spiders. He combines these two factors as a part of his scheme to conquer "all of Jungleland," which probably means Africa and possibly means India but in my heart will always mean a humid pocket dimension summoned into being by Fletcher Hanks and his fellow Jungle writers' lack of geographic savvy.

Org quickly organizes a spider army with his sick beats, earning him one strike on Fantomah's personal "should I kill this guy" tracker.

This is often the point at which Fantomah gives her target a little hint that he might want to cut back on the wanton slaughter, etc. for his own sake, but Org is given no such grace - perhaps Fantomah just hates spiders. Or drummers. In any case, Org appears to be a pretty thoroughly rotten guy who delights in having his minions attack human and animal alike. It is at this point that I must point out the horrific fact that Org's spiders have what appear to be human hands on the end of each of their legs, which is gross.

Attacking people and animals like this were evidently strikes two and three, because it is at this point that Fantomah steps in, just a little too late as per usual. Org is paralyzed and unceremoniously fed to his own erstwhile troops, who in turn are shrunken down to the size of regular everyday spiders. We can only hope that there wasn't some sort of catastrophic megafauna that they were keeping in check with their predations, I guess.

Appropriately for what I am almost certain is our last Fletcher Hanks comic (but not out final Fantomah), our hero gives a little farewell at the end of the comic!

Categorized in: Accessories (Giant Spiders), Powers (Animal Control), Supercrime (Attempted Conquest)

DIVINE ROUND-UP 033

The theme today is animal gods.

Joboloa the Elephant God:

Joboloa the Elephant God is invoked by Fantomah to punish the evil M'Dibo by means of a horde of spectral pachyderms. Honestly he is an odd choice for the job, as while M'Dibo's crimes involve elephant ivory it's not so much that he's killing elephants to get it as stealing it from other people. Is Joboloa cool with elephant hunting as long as a proper chain of possession is maintained?

God Style: Real (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

God of the Vultures:

We don't learn too much about the God of the Vultures other than that its worship involves human sacrifice and that its devotees seem to have some control over the vultures that live near the temple. Possibly because they are into the human sacrifices. Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle, someone who is very much not into human sacrifices, busts them up.

God Style: Idol (Jungle Comics 021, 1941)

Monkey and Cobra Cults:

In possibly the only time that the fact that Jungle Comics stories just kind of saw wildly between being set in Africa and India is justified, Fantomah is captured by slavers in Africa and comes ashore in India when she escapes them. There, she immediately gets mixed up in a conflict between the Cobra Cult who worship the Sacred Cobras, and the Monkey Cult who presumably do the same but with sacred monkeys. The former try to sacrifice Fantomah, so they are the bad guys.

God Style: Animist (Jungle Comics 021, 1941)

Crocodile God:

This unnamed crocodile deity this is has some rivalry with the priesthood of Damballah, or at least its representative in this village does. It can be hard to differentiate the tenets of a religion from the actions of its worst adherents, after all. One thing is certain, however: a crocodile theme makes for some terrific architectural and fashion options.

God Style: Idol (Jungle Comics 023, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 994: AKINA

(Jungle Comics 015, 1941)

Akina is the hereditary ruler of the African kingdom of Lomar, and as such she has just inherited the mystical Stone of Hanniban. As a newly invested magical being, she falls into the very common trap of deciding that she must be the very best and most powerful of all magic users right away, and immediately sets out to prove herself by challenging Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle to a death duel.

This goes poorly. Tabu defeats the inexperienced Akina without even breaking a sweat and depowers the stone to boot - hopefully it wasn't the linchpin of some sort of defence strategy that Lomar depended on. A few highlights form their magic battle:

Tabu gets turned into a drum, then explodes and reforms as three Tabus.

Akina summons these giant flaming lizards, which Tabu then levitates straight into her palace. Do the lizards eat a lot of people who are arguably blameless in Akina's crimes? Indeed they do.

Tabu ultimately concludes the duel by shrinking both Akina and the entire Black Ivory Palace of Lomar; The Stone of Hanniban is the only thing that he leaves at its original size, and though it's never spelled out, one can reasonably assume that this is as part of a trick to get Akina to fork over the thing willingly rather than have her neck be broken by its relatively enormous weight.

Categorized in: Accessories (Gems), Generica (Ends in A), Powers (Various Magics)

REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 028

Mostly a case of the Usual Suspects today here in the Real Person Round-Up, I'm afraid.

Adolf Hitler:

The bulk of the comic this panel comes from is MIA as far as people without hundreds of dollars of Buy Golden Age Comics money are concerned, and this is the only real look we get of this slightly off-brand Hitler and Goering. I might not have bothered to include them here devoid of other context except for...

... the splash page for the story, featuring our Hitler-alike in a beast-man form and commanding a horde of Hitlerian minions that are probably both allegorical but which are very representative of the "mad-dog" framing that he was being given in a lot of the comics of the time. Presumably air ace Bill Barnes really scuttles his plans. (Bill Barnes America's Air Ace Comics 002, 1941)

This husky Hitler look-alike is the head of a fascist force that almost manages to destroy the US military presence in Alaska but is himself destroyed by the Liberty Guards. (Man of War Comics 001, 1941)

Here time/space traveller Whiz Wilson encounters a particularly low-rent Hitler-alike named Raggo. (Lightning Comics v1 006, 1941)

Cordell Hull:

When Bill Barnes needs two hundred jeeps to defend the Panama Canal, who does he call? Secretary of State Cordell Hull, that's who! (Bill Barnes, America's Air Ace Comics 005, 1941)

Franklin Roosevelt:

A more on-model  (and more face-forward) version of Roosevelt than we usually see in comics learns of the existence of the Liberty Scouts from their sponsor, retired patriotic millionaire Patrick Henry (who named himself such after immigrating to the US as a young man). (Liberty Scouts Comics 002, 1941)

FDR returns in the second Liberty Scouts comic to tour the very on-the-nose Fort America (Liberty Scouts Comics 003, 1941)

Hermann Goering:

Orders the destruction of Bill Barnes. (Bill Barnes America's Air Ace Comics 004, 1941)

Hollywood Shuffle:

It's another classic case of mixing up first and last names of movie stars to make all-new ones, in this case Tyrone Taylor (Tyrone Power/ Robert Taylor, probably), and Myrna Rogers (Myrna Loy/ Ginger Rogers, almost certainly). (Detective Comics v1 046, 1940)

Leopard Men:

Since I recently realized that I had failed to be curious enough and that the Leopard Men were not just a fanciful idea that people kept coming up with but in fact a vilified version of real African secret societies, they now get a place in the Real Person Round-Up. These particular Leopard Men are just as bloodthirsty and savage as the rest of their fictional ilk, but are distinguished by being some of the few to not wear some sort of leopard-head cowl. Possibly because the Red Panther already has that bit of fashion sewn up. (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 993: ZOMAX

(Jungle Comics 014, 1941)

Zomax, the "demonized marine scientist," has a very over-the-top, Fletcher Hanks villain goal: to kill every animal in the jungle. And he isn't afraid to say it.

I won't say that Zomax has a good reason for wanting to destroy all jungle life, but he does have some justification, stemming from a big game hunt he went on that involved, in order:

1. being mauled by a fatally wounded lion. Once the lion died, Zomax wandered away, only to...

2. be grabbed by a man-hating elephant and tossed into a stagnant pond where...

3. swarms of poisonous gnats shredded his skin. Zomax crawled out of the muck in torment, only to be...

4. crushed by a boa constrictor, but not killed, because he was...

5. pulled away by the Hannibal Lector of gorillas, who then proceeded to take Zomax home to his nest and inflict months of psychological torture on him.

Though one might see all of this as a kind of ironic punishment for going on a big game hunt in the first place, Zomax does not in fact see it that way, and concludes that the jungle is an evil place fit only for destruction. And since he is a "marine scientist," what better tool of that destruction than the ocean itself?

Specifically, Zomax has built a machine that can create and control a bespoke tidal wave to to wash over the entire continent of Africa (or that portion of it that contains jungle animals) and destroy all of his tormentors. Other than the gnats, I reckon: I bet they do just fine in a landscape covered in brackish ponds. 

As violence against any jungle is violence against the universal Jungle that Fantomah protects, she is out to get Zomax as soon as he actually initiates the tidal wave engine (though please note the silhouettes that indicate that Zomax gets revenge against one representative of each animal species that wronged him, gnats excepted).

Having been given an unusual number of chances to repent and stop his machines by Fantomah, Zomax instead decides to flee in a plane, leaving her not choice but to destroy him with his own tidal wave, or, as Fantomah (and the second Paul Karasik collection of Hanks comics) puts it "YYou shall die by your own creation!"

Categorized in: Generica (Ends in -x), Origin (Vengeance Quest), Supercrime (Disaster Causers)

MEDIA IN COMICS 011

I've heard of comics in the media, but media in comics?

Books:

This book is only our second example of a piece of media called Crime Does Not Pay! but I am confident in predicting that that particular phrase - the regular shouting of which appears to be the major means by which people in the 1940s discouraged children from adopting a life outside the law - is going to be the one we see the most as time goes on.

We don't learn too much about the contents of this particular book, but it makes a decent projectile for Robin here. (Detective Comics v1 050, 1941)

Spider Craft, on the other hand, is pretty clearly just a reference book on spiders, albeit one with a very charming name. (Detective Comics v1 057, 1941)

Movies:

While attending to his extremely unruly supporting cast, Captain Terry Thunder happens upon a movie improbably being shot in North Africa in 1941. This movie is unnamed, but G.G., the director, is also responsible for the film Lost Souls, about which nothing else is known. (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

Radio:

Radio Quiz show How Do You Know is your place to try your luck at winning two dollars and a big double box of Kracked Korn in a knock down quiz-off against Dolliver King. (Feature Comics 034, 1940)

If there's one kind of radio program that comic books love the most it's the "man on the street" style with their handy remote microphone for all your evidence-gathering or (as seen here) confession-broadcasting needs. This particular show is called Public Opinion. (Nickel Comics 004, 1940)

Theatre:

The Fancy Follies of 1940 is a revue-style show that is the site of the first in a series of entertainment industry murders investigated by the Flash. (Flash Comics 002, 1940)

Billed as a musical, In the Groove is another show plagued by crime. The Purple Trio clear things up after they manage to scrape together enough dough to get inside. (Smash Comics 015, 1940)

Thanks to the fact that they had to pose as performers to solve the In the Groove case, the Purple Trio get their own self-titled show. The Purple Trio show probably involves more than the acrobatics we see here, but that's all that the group gets through in this issue before they realize that a) one man has bought out the entire theatre and b) he has been murdered. (Smash Comics 016, 1940)

This backstage conversation is all we get to see of the melodrama Remote Control, which is a real shame. What does a play with that title look like in 1940? (Crack Comics 008, 1940)

Finally we have The Totsy Revue, attended by Johnny Thunder in one of his many attempts to impress the ever-fickle Daisy Darling, thanks to a tip that the show's headliner Hoco tThe One and Only) is passing counterfeit money as part of his act. (Flash Comics 008, 1940)