(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940)
The eminent scientist Dr Chandler is being held in Amazoland, home of the Amazons! The extremely diplomatic Captain "Ugh!" Kidd sets out to rescue him!
This is another one I might have skipped over if not for a couple of remarkable things, the first being that the poorly-named Amazon homeland seems to be just a country, somewhere in Asia if all the references to the Amazon's eyes being almond-shaped (that's not how Captain Kidd puts it, of course) are anything to go by. Are they just another lost jungle civilization and I'm reading too much into things or does Amazoland have a seat at the UN in a decade or so?
The second thing is that this may be the least a character has sexualized a society of scantily-clad women in all of fiction. I'd blame it on the 40s obsession with male vs female roles but Captain Kidd doesn't really say anything about that so I assume he's just too racist to be attracted to Asian women.
Queen Izzuki turns out to be an older woman who is obsessed with regaining her lost beauty and so has captured Dr Chandler to perform plastic surgery on her. Captain Kidd turning up is a bonus: free husband!
Captain Kidd was already against this whole situation but the prospect of having to marry an old woman (an old Asian woman!) really galvanizes him. He does let Dr Chandler get shot with an arrow (fired by Izzuki, who's not some layabout queen who doesn't know how to shoot an arrow at someone) but he's mostly okay afterward. They escape and Amazoland has to consider more conventional ways of attracting a plastic surgeon, like paying for their education in return for a certain number of years of service.
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