Tuesday, January 28, 2025

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 714: SKLAR

(Prize Comics 006, 1940)



It's a regular day in Mongol-dominated New-New York City of the year 1982 CE: the people are oppressed in various ways and Power Nelson is around to help them solve some but not all of their problems. Suddenly! A space capsule lands and disgorges a trio of rampaging robots! This is a perfect task for Power Nelson to handle as it it a short-term solution to an immediate problem but very importantly does not require and attempt to change systemic problems. Smashy smashy!

Nelson's ally Zora Doone of the Interplanetary Red Cross soon informs him that the robots were sent to Earth from the planet Argus and he speeds there as past as possible, only to find himself outfoxed: Sklar, Lord of Argus has taken Zora hostage, necessitating an escape through the monster-filled Cave of Terror to remove her from danger and pad the pagecount.

Power Nelson decides that the best solution to Argus' and Earth's problems is to depose the unpopular Sklar by way of a revolution, and let me say that this is a very galling thing for him to do. I've been bitching and moaning about how Nelson never gets around to freeing the people of Earth from the despotic reign of Seng I, the thing he was created to do, by the way and here he is, 15 minutes into his stay on Argus and elbow deep in revolution? What a piece of work.


The revolution doesn't prove to be strictly necessary, as Nelson ends up confronting Sklar one-on-one and just kind of tips him off of his volcano lair into the fiery depths below. I suppose it's important for the populace to feel like they helped.

Inspired by this, Nelson bids farewell to Zora Doone and finally, finally heads off to depose Emperor Seng I, a character who, might I remind you, he could crush with one hand and who he stands within five feet of in every single issue of Prize Comics. FINALLY.

(this is very frustrating on a non-narrative level because the publicly available portions of Prize Comics 007 and 008 do not include the Power Nelson strip and somewhere in those two issues he goes from being a hero of the 1980s to one of the 1940s. Details are scarce, but it seems as though Nelson is flung back in time somehow, but does he actually depose Seng I first? No idea)

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