MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 616: THE HAG OF BLACKAMOOR

(Fantastic Comics 007, 1940)

We rejoin the European version of the Golden Knight as he and his ladyfriend Alice are having a bad time in Blackamoor Forest: both Alice and Sir Richard's horse Whitey have broken their legs in a fall and so Richard and Alice are forced to hole up in a cave for the night (Whitey, sadly, did not make it). But who is this ominous form?

It's the Hag of Blackamoor and she isn't messing around! In common with many villainous older women in comics, she wants to regain her lost youth and beauty and she's willing to sacrifice others to do it. And because this is a Golden Knight comic, she has a proper quest for our hero to do: he must retrieve the Golden Stallion from Ice Mountain, for he alone can take the Hag to the Tree of Eternal Youth. That's right: all the nouns are capitalized when you start talking about quest stuff.

The bulk of the story is all quest stuff with no Hag, so we'll just run through it quickly. Sir Richard must climb the Ice Mountain (his magic ring turns out to have a heat ray setting)...

... slay a fire-breathing dragon (his magic cloak is proof against its flames)...

... and get past a guardian giant (his magic strength is up to the task of cleaving the giant's head in twain).

Golden Stallion successfully retrieved, the Golden Knight mounts up and returns to the Hag and his lady love, where it turns out that a) the Stallion doesn't like the Hag very much and b) the Hag didn't plan on that coming up and so does not protect herself from being trampled. Once she is dead, we learn c) that the Golden Stallion was in fact the enchanted Queen of Blackamoor. 

This raises some questions! Like: what the hell was the point of that quest? If the Hag turned the Queen into a horse then why wasn't she prepared for that horse to hate her? How did the Stallion get so well defended? If it was the Hag who put the Stallion there then why did she need a champion to go fetch it and if it wasn't then who did? Does the Queen know where the Tree of Eternal Youth is or was that just a horse thing? None of these questions will ever be answered.

As a reward, the Queen of Blackamoor gives Sir Richard a (presumably) magical horn that will summon her subjects to his aid if blown, because he certainly didn't have enough magic items already.