MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 519: THE GHOST OF THE CYCLOPS

(Blue Bolt v2 004-005, 1941)

We open on a bit of... not hubris but it's often framed as hubris. I'm sure that TV Tropes has a name for it but danged if I'm going to go hunting for it. It's the phenomenon in which a character in an ongoing fictional setting jokes about how they're sure glad that *SPECIFIC THING* isn't real etc and that thing is the focus of the next story. In this case, Sergeant Spook says he's glad that mythology doesn't real and so Ghost Town doesn't have to contend with the ghosts of mythological characters and BAM the ghost of the Cyclops starts destroying Alaska.

Although the human world sees these attacks as merely a bizarre and terrifying natural disaster the ghosts of Ghost Town know what's up and dispatch Sergeant Spook northward. On arrival he is met and guided by several of the Cyclops' recent victims - always a handy part of being a ghost cop.

Spook's encounter with the Cyclops follows a fairly predictable pattern: cornered in a cave, he anages to temporarily blind the other ghost and then trace him back to his lair by clinging to his cyclopean sandals. This encounter does serve to further muddy the waters of how ghosts workin Sergeant Spook comics, however: can a ghost hit another ghost with a corporeal snowball? Is Alaska covered in a layer of ghost snow? Or is the Cyclops just super-vulnerable to eye-damaging attacks like a video game boss?

The second issue of this two-parter is a bit perfunctory: Spook arrives at the Cyclops' lair where we learn that when not translucent to signify that he is a ghost in the corporeal world the Cyclops is green. He is also served by other, unidentified ghosts who are presumably being bullied into servitude with the threat of violence like the Ghost of King Tut's slaves. He also captures Sergeant Spook with very little trouble. Things look bad, but then:

HERCULES! Because of course if the Cyclops is real then there's gotta be guys like Hercules (famous foe of the Cyclops) running around too. There's a bit of a scuffle and then he plants a slobberknocker on the Cyclops that decisively concludes things.

Hercules' reward: eternal vigilance. His ghost pledges to guard the Cyclops' ghost for the rest of time, which will presumably entail regular brawls whenever his charge wakes up and wants to cause more chaos. Maybe this is a good outcome for Hercules? I just hope that someone in Ghost Town thinks to ship him some ghost books or the like.