Monday, August 12, 2024

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 584: THE LEOPARD MEN

(Exciting Comics 002, 1940)

Recently graduated top college athlete Ted Crane and famed anthropologist Professor Hawkins (and Hawkins' daughter Betty, who stowed away as all young women had to if they were going to have adventures in the 40s) set out to find Kenya's lost Konogo Tribe but almost immediately meet opposition from one of the Leopard Men. Despite being a supposedly mythical group, this Leopard Man has a gas-dispenser in his mouth that really knocks Ted for a loop while it gets away.


Even with the additional help of rubber plantation owner J. Atkins Bullard, the party is being harried by Leopard Men at every turn. Why if anything it seems to be worse after he joins them! How can this be?

It turns out (of course) that Bullard is taking advantage of the local superstitions about the terrible Leopard Men in order to make it easier to kidnap the Konogo as slaves for his plantation. A terrible man! Also a very unobservant one, as somehow in the months and months that he had been leading raids on this poor community he never noticed that the centre of the Konogo village is dominated by a huge solid gold idol.

Ted Crane, by the way, is a pretty by-the-book adventure character with the addition of a completely football-centric worldview: all of his allusions and most of his fighting are football flavoured. It's novel!

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