Wednesday, April 10, 2024

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 493: THE MOON-MISTRESS

(Big Shot Comics 006, 1940)

Moora, Queen of the People of the Moon, is technically only called the Moon-Mistress by her enemies, but what can I say, I love alliteration. As introduced, she is merely the leader of a troublesome "hill tribe" that pistol-packing adventurer Rocky Ryan is asked to settle down on behalf of a local Maharajah (where exactly this takes place is ambiguous: Ryan is one of those Golden Age soldier-of-fortune characters who perpetually bums around an "India" that is really a sort of pan-Asian pastiche).

The People of the Moon have a temple in the hills that does double duty as a laboratory for the wizened scientist La Chega, who has "gathered solar energy" into a series of rectangular prisms that the characters insist on calling cubes. Everyone gasses on for a while about how powerful this is without saying why so I assume that it's just going to be a power source when world domination time comes. Also yes solar power is a bit off-brand for a moon cult but consider: the Moon shines due to reflected sunlight. Makes you think.

The People of the Moon also have some sort of dark spirit that they worship as the moon-god Luna. If we accept the caption box info as canon then Luna is a remnant of a "long-dead god", which is heady stuff. That's unfortunately all we learn before Rocky Ryan, following standard operating protocol for meathead adventuremen, attempts to blow Luna away with a six-shooter.

Whether or not Ryan manages to make Luna even more dead, he does somehow hit one of the solar energy cubes rectangular prisms, setting off a chain reaction that ends up blowing the temple and everything in it sky high (though Rocky Ryan survives, of course). Another ancient culture wiped off the map - all in a day's work.

No comments:

Post a Comment

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 539 UPDATE: THE CLAW (1941 PART 1: THE CLAW VS DAREDEVIL)

The Claw  simply has too many appearances in 1941 and if we covered them all in one post it would be exceptionally long. Thus, we are breaki...