(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940)
'bdula Khan is the capricious ruler of a mysterious oasis city in North Africa who offers the Golden Knight hospitality and then turns around and makes him battle monsters in an arena for his amusement. He's not particularly notable and I'd likely have passed him over but for three things:
1. The Name. 'bdula is presumably short for Abdula and might be a unique name? Abdula is such an uncommon variant of Abdullah already, and it's a bit tricky to search for a name starting with an apostrophe, but I'm reasonably certain that this is the only 'bdula in comics.
2. The Monsters. I love a good monster and these are suitably weird. Plus, 'bdula Khan keeps them in line with his magical ability to place living beings in suspended animation, a good trick.
3. The Solution to a Mystery. This is the most important one. I mentioned in the entry on the Black Death that Sir Richard and Alice are in Europe when they should be in North Africa somewhere, right? It's not, as I had surmised, because the writer forgot, it's because Golden Age comics and Fox Features in particular had a greater tendency than some of their competitors to swap out writers and artists, presumably for the sake of a deadline. Records of just who was on each feature are pretty spotty (and not helped by the use of a consistent house name no matter who was producing a particular feature) but I reckon that we've got two parallel Golden Knight timelines: one in which he's in Europe with Alice and another in North Africa with a magic ring. I can hardly wait to see if the two timelines are merged (unlikely) or one is forgotten entirely (very likely).
Oh also 'bdula Khan is turned into a statue of a hyena for being a jerk.
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