DIVINE ROUND-UP 032

It can't all be off-brand Greek gods. I'm elbow-deep in the 1941 issues of Jungle Comics, so here are some off-brand African deities.

Damballah and Gbeji-Nibu:

The evil witch doctor N'Goku has been using his magical abilities to cause problems in his area (plagues of snakes, a sickness among the cattle) and then solve them for cash money, and then when Fantomah (post-Fletcher Hanks) points out that he is doing so he attempts to do away with her. N'Goku invokes Gbeji-Nibu, the God of Steers, as well as Damballah the Snake God, and since the latter is a real deity in West African Vodún we must assume that the former is as well, though as far as I can tell he has been made up for this comic.

Neither Damballah or Gbeji-Nibu are fictional in the world of the comic, however, as both of them are pretty mad at N'Goku for his misdeeds and send a divine animal avatar to punish him. To death. Interestingly, it seems that N'Goku's fatal mistake was not in using his divine gifts for evil but in crossing Fantomah, who is on good enough terms with Damballah that she calls upon him a few issues later to deal with a snake-pit situation she finds herself in.

God Style: Invoked (Real) (Jungle Comics 018, 1941)

Tokpodu:

We don't learn anything about the entity called Tokpodu but it evidently does hold some power, as the wizard Guluba here is able to use his jackal-hair whip to shrink both people and animals after invoking this entity. He too crosses Fantomah and ends up paying for it with his life.

God Style: Invoked (Real?) (Jungle Comics 019, 1941)

Leopards:

There's not much info on what this fellow is actually up to. Certainly he is sacrificing lambs (and attempts to sacrifice a human) to some leopards that he has in a pit in an ancient lost Egyptian temple, but whether he is worshipping them specifically or they are acting as avatars of a deity that was worshipped in the temple is unclear. I can't find an Egyptian god with an especial link to leopards but that might just be a sign of poor research on my part. Complete understanding of this issue is hampered by the fact that the story's protagonist is a lion and thus not equipped to do exposition or offer any real insight at all.

God style: Animist (I guess) (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

the Elephant God:

This nameless Elephant God is worshipped by the Goru people, who hold all elephants sacred, except for a brief period when wealthy hunter Ali ben Yusi rolls through and convinces them that ivory hunting is more profitable. This ends when a herd of elephants smash up the village and the Goru reconsider their allegiances.

God Style: Idol (Real?) (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 985: THE MAD GHOST

(Green Mask v1 008, 1941)

The tale of the Mad Ghost ("Death Deals in Diamonds!") is presented as a classic whodunnit, which happen to be one of my very favourite genres of both comic stories and of fiction in general. Sadly, this story is a prime example of how poorly this genre can be executed, and an early sign of this is in the dramatic presentation of suspects on the splash page. While it is pretty common to include the story's protagonist in such lineups for aesthetic reasons or maybe to bulk things out a bit, this batch includes both Lens "the Night Bird" Crockett and his partner Dell, rendering that fat juicy suspect pool down to a mere three guys.

As we get into the story proper we can find this same commitment to quality, as our murder mystery is in fact nothing more than a loosely connected series of action vignettes featuring the Mad Ghost. In terms of clues to the mystery of the Ghost's identity, we learn that Count Rogo is a shady customer and that the hotel manager and detective are present, and that's about all. Other than the fact that the hotel detective and the Mad Ghost wear the same colour suit, but surely that must be a red herring, yes?

No, that's really it so far as audience-friendly clues go. The Night Bird claims that he "recognized his profile" but c'mon. He's wearing a rubberoid mask when he's the Ghost! Are we using "profile" in a bold new way here? And just why was he dressing up like a creepazoid and stalking the rooms of a failing hotel? Because he is actually an escaped diamond thief who murdered and impersonated the real hotel detective while attempting to discover the location of his swag, which the detective had confiscated and hidden somewhere in the building. Was committing a series of monster murders a reasonable way to go about solving this problem? Sadly it was not.

Categorized in: Body (Sanity), Theft (Jewel Thieves), Supranormal Beings (Ghosts)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 100

You like minor super-heroes? We got more than four hundred of them!

the Night Bird:

The Night Bird might just have the simplest origin in the history of super-heroes: when newspaper Dell (just Dell) is captured by gangsters, her photographer Lens Crockett sets out to rescue her. Deciding that he needs a disguise, Crockett looks in the office storeroom and finds a full super-hero outfit stuffed in a bin - if it were about ten years later this might be a joke about Superman changing in the Daily Planet storeroom but he didn't really get up to that so much yet so it's just weird and random. Crokett's costumed outing goes well, so he decides to keep going out there and fighting crime. And that's the origin.

The Night Bird (aka the Nightbird) only has a bare handful of appearances, so he doesn't get a lot of room for character development. There are a couple of interesting things to note about him, however: firstly there isn't even a hint of romantic feeling between Crockett and Dell which is always nice if only for the change of pace from the typical setup. Secondly, and in common with his fellow newspaper photographer the Fox, Lens Crockett seems to be a legitimate clumsy doofus in his civilian identity rather than a suave coolguy putting on an act. (Green Mask v1 006, 1941)

The Night Bird also continues the grand Fox Features tradition of changing costume designs between issues with a palette swap between his first and second appearances. His costume continues to change in minor ways as time goes on, but this is the only major one.

Categorized in: Animals (Birds), Day Jobs (Newspaper Photographers), Locations (Temporal Locations)

the Tumbler:

When famous circus acrobat Lee Brothers, known professionally as the Tumbler, goes to visit his old mentor Sockey, he finds him mixed up with a gang of payroll robbers who have decided to use his property as a hideout. Lee and Sockey manage to escape with the loot but Sockey dies in the process and Lee is reported dead.

As is only sensible, Lee does not immediately clear up this mistake and go on with his life but takes this as an opportunity to adopt a costumed identity and get up to a little vigilante justice. His decision to do so while calling himself the Tumbler and thus inviting connection with the supposedly deceased Brother is a bit suspect, however. (Green Mask v1 007, 1941)

This is even more in his second (and final) appearance, when he does the traditional costume change and just starts wearing his old acrobat costume again. Does the Tumbler want to have his identity revealed?

Categorized in: Activities (Acrobatics), Day Jobs (Circus Acrobats), Professions (Acrobats)

the Mechanized Skeleton:

This was a surprising one! I really and truly thought that the Mechanized Skeleton was going to be a bad guy. This is mostly because he almost certainly was going to be one when he was first introduced, as can be deduced from the fact that the Skeleton's creator Chico is ranting an raving about "having power" and "showing them all" as he assembles and tests his creation. As the Mechanized Skeleton had a very minor appearance in the 1940 run of Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics with the bulk appearing in the 1941 books I recently read I have been awaiting his return for more than a year, real-time, with the expectation that I would see some science skeleton-on-science zombie battling once it and the Purple Zombie finally met.

Chico doesn't do much to dispel my assumptions about him and his creation in his next couple of appearances, as he demonstrates a very loose attitude to law and order: in Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics 004 he attempts to steal Purple Zombie creator Kim Hale's car, only to lose his Skeleton (and inadvertently save Hale's life) when a car bomb goes off. Then in RFHC 005, Chico attempts to procure a set of clothing for the replacement Mechanized Skeleton he has just completed by driving a car off the road and killing all of the occupants. Was the car full of gangsters who had kidnapped the Purple Zombie in an attempt to recruit him into their gang? Yes it was. Did Chico know this? No he didn't - the car might have been filled with nuns and orphans as far as he was concerned.

(please note that issue 005 does feature my anticipated Purple Zombie/ Mechanized Skeleton battle and that the Skeleton is comically outmatched) 

Despite all of this evidence of Chico's villainous nature, once Kim Hale and the Purple Zombie get ahold of him he suddenly reveals that he, like Hale has created his scientific version of a Halloween monster not for evil but for the betterment of mankind. Specifically, he made them as a foil to a Nazi death ray that has been giving the Allies a lot of trouble - what better foil to a death ray than the already-dead, after all? Such is the power of Chico's newly-revealed convictions that the Purple Zombie goes with him when he sneaks off in the night to battle the Hun.

And it works! The Purple Zombie leads a squad of Mechanized Skeletons (all hilariously decked out in doughboy helmets) to victory in just a couple of pages!

Chico requests (and receives) a hero's burial for the Mechanized Skeletons, causing me to wonder for the first time just where he got the base materials for them from. Though they are gone for good, Chico himself stays on as a supporting cast member during the next phase of the Purple Skeleton's career as he and Kim Hale are basted back in time. (Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics 003, 1940)

Categorized in: Origins (Face Turns), Origins (Robots), Supranormal Beings (Undead (Skeletons))

Man O'Metal:

In addition to having on of the more strangely-constructed names in comics, Man O'Metal, aka Pat Dempsey, has a bafflingly straightforward origin on par with his fellow Eastern Color character Fearless Flint: while working in a foundry one day, Dempsey is caught in a flood of an unspecified molten metal, and instead of dying horribly he transforms into a superhuman metal man. It's a weirdly modern style of origin in that there is absolutely no attempt to introduce an external catalyst for this change - if he were a DC Comics character he would just turn out to have the metagene, for example.

Man O'Metal is like Fearless Flint in a couple of other ways: firstly, his power switches off after a few minutes, but can be restarted by the touch of metal (including incoming bullets, which proves to be handy). This requirement later changes from metal to heat or electricity, but the bullets are evidently hot enough to qualify. 

Dempsey's boss is underwhelmed by the prospect of having a white-hot metal guy running around his foundry and so he just kind of gives him to the FBI without really consulting him on whether this is something he might want to do. The FBI have a bit more vision re: the potential inherent in a superhuman employee and happily accept. He is immediately sent off to Badagero, South America to root out subversives. (Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics 007, 1941)

Categorized in: Elements (Metal), Origins (Material Mutates), Team Memberships (FBI)

Very Minor Hydroman Updates: Hydroman is confirmed as vulnerable to freezing (Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics 004, 1941), is now wanted by the police (Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics 007, 1941).

MEDIA IN COMICS 009

I hope you like media from comics, because I certainly do and I am going to keep doing these.

Comics:

Bullied bootblack Timothy Smith just wants to buy a comic book with his last nickel and he has a whole selection of Fox Features titles to choose from, but what draws his eye is a book called The Land of Magic, a comic so fantastical and majestical that he wishes himself away to live inside its pages the next time he gets beaten up. (Green Mask v1 007, 1941)

We never actually see the Colossal Guy comic book, but this Colossal Guy superfan is evidence enough that he is a character with get-up and go. Enough to inspire Captain Bruce Blackburn to invent his alter ego of the Destroying Demon, in fact. (Feature Comics 039, 1940)

"Ripley's Believe it or Not" had enough cultural caché in its time that there are innumerable plays on it in comics, just as there were imitators in real life. These mostly differ by how successful a play on the name they have: "Don't You Doubt It," as consulted by Eve Colby as part of one of Spy Smasher's cases, is about average. (Whiz Comics 005, 1940)

Magazines:

I have a lot of affection for the concept behind Jim Dolan, two-fisted magazine editor, who solves crimes and then writes about them for Daring Detective Magazine. The magazine itself is fine. (Slam-Bang Comics 001, 1940)

Movies:

We never learn more about The Big Snatch other than that it is a mystery thriller. The big joke here is of course that the star of the film is comics creator Joe Devlin. (Smash Comics 014, 1940)

Likewise, we never learn much about the Western Hearts of the Range other than the fact that it starred the blowhard Sheriff O'Toole. (All-American Comics 021, 1940)

Melody of 1941 here is likely a play on Broadway Melody of 1940 and as such a musical, and stars a couple of classic mixed-up name actors in Tyrone Taylor (Tyrone Power/ Robert Taylor) and Myrna Rogers (Myrna Loy/ Ginger Rogers). (Detective Comics v1 046 1940)

We have no information at all about Old Bill. It has a pretty big premiere for a movie with such a drab name, so it must have something going for it. (Action Comics v1 028, 1940)

Oriental Horror is the name of the hit movie that made Barry Moore's name just before he quit acting, moved back to Center City to become a police scientist and adopted the identity of the Scarlet Seal based on the yellowface character he played in the movie. I would venture a guess that the film is not considered an enduring classic in the present day DC Universe. (Smash Comics 016, 1940)

She Made Him Love Her! is the name of a romantic movie attended by Sisty and Dinky, aka the daughter of the future Red Tornado and the brother of teen cartoonist Scribbly, aka the future Cyclone Kids, after the former falls in undying love with the latter. And to be fair to her the duo are canonicall later married, so this is a proven tactic. Eventually.

The movie itself might be loosely based on the film They Knew What They Wanted, or I might be grasping at straws. (All-American Comics 012, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 984: THE GHOUL

(Green Mask v1 007, 1941)

The Ghoul has a simple, brutal, efficient racket: identify people who have large life insurance policies, murder them, and then extort the payout from their beneficiaries with threats of violence. What is unclear is exactly how long the racket has been going on, and whether the point we come in at represents some awkward teething troubles or a long-established operation beginning to crumble.

Either way, the Ghoul's last score is a mess: actor John Pierce is shot down mid-play and then the gang's lieutenant, Steve Pelley -himself a very recognizable New York crime figure scoops up Mrs Pierce in front of the theatre and brings her in to be shaken down. Aside from the fact that this is a sure way to draw attention to Pelley as the probable murderer (which he is)... the insurance claim hasn't even been filed yet! What the heck is the hurry?

Indeed, all of this suspicious activity attracts the attention of the Green Mask and Domino, who clean up the gang in short order. Please note the Green Mask's punch shattering the Ghoul's skull mask: this is a classic visual and always fun to see.

Categorized in: Extortionists, Murderers, Supranormal Beings (Undead (Ghouls))