Wednesday, September 25, 2024

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 624: MOLOKA

(Fantastic Comics 009, 1940)

Moloka is our second Stardust the Super Wizard foe from a story not penned by Fletcher Hanks and I'd say that our unknown scribe gets things mostly right: there's certainly enough wanton destruction for this to be a Hanks comic. Moloka is a humanoid alien who has developed world-wrecking super weapons and as the comic opens is using them to blast away at various inhabited planets.

Where exactly this is happening is a little unclear. If Fletcher Hanks' idea of how outer space is structured is a little fuzzy then his stand-in is even more vague on the particulars. It's equally possible that Moloka is based in another star system and using weapons with an interstellar range as it is that he's in our own Solar System and there are just a heap of extra planets to blow up.


Moloka's goal is also a bit unclear. I think that he's looking to become some sort of Galactic or Solar Dictator but he spends an awful lot of time just blasting away at inhabited planets without really asking to be put in charge. It's possible that the power is an excuse and the blasting is the point.

Moloka is based on Pluton, which is either an alternate spelling of Pluto (that I have seen before to be honest) or as mentioned above a completely extrasolar one. There's no way of working out which it is though I will say that none of Pluto's satellites were discovered before 1978 so I have no idea where Nemus is supposed to be.


Moloka does give some hints as to his mental state when he mistakes a vengeful Stardust for some sort of elemental being created by the hellish energies at his command. It's kind of charming! It's also wildly out of character for Stardust "the shortest distance between two lines is a punch" the Super Wizard. Stardust's goal with this little ruse is to goad Moloka into firing his weapon at Earth, then using his own patented ray-reversal technology to redirect it back to its source.


As to whyhe bothers to do this when he's perfectly capable of blowing the whole of Pluton to hell and gone? I guess it's a bit more of an ironic punishment to leave a warmonger stranded on a planet that they themself have devastated? Sure, we'll go with that.

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