DIVINE ROUND-UP 012

Craig Carter's whole deal is summoning ancient gods out of his ring, and since he only had two issues in which to do so I am able to offer you a complete list of them here. With pictures!

Zeus: 

Zeus acts as the spokesgod of Craig Carter's magic ring, and seems to be the one in charge of summoning forth the other deities. He's called the "god of wisdom" here. I dig his little crown. (Wham Comics 001, 1940)

Pegasus:

Technically summoned by Zeus for Craig rather than directly from the ring, but who cares about technicalities: it's a divine flying horse! (Wham Comics 001, 1940)

Mercury: 

Mercury serves Craig as a land-based equivalent to Pegasus after he discovers that his adversaries are holed up in a cave. His super speed really saves Carter's hash on multiple occasions. (Wham Comics 001, 1940)

Pluto:

Pluto, styled as the "Master of Hades, Prince of All Black Magic", is summoned to deal with a Hindu mystic that Carter's second batch of foes has on call. He absolutely has the most personality of any of the gods summoned from the ring, and though the magic battle between the two suffers somewhat from Golden Age crudeness it does manage to look pretty intense and harrowing.

Pluto wins the duel, of course, then decides to stay on Earth and get up to some mischief instead of returning to whatever world exists in the ring. He is pretty clearly intended to be an antagonist for Carter going forward, but since the feature never reappeared this was to be it for him. A true shame - just look at that cartoonishly evil face. I bet he'd have been brilliant. (Wham Comics 002, 1940)

Thor:

The only non Greco-Roman god summoned in the two Craig Carter adventures, so we can only speculate on the extent of its god-summoning powers. Could you get Mithras out of it? What about a god that is currently being worshipped? What about Catholic saints?

Thor, like Pegasus and Mercury before him, is summoned as a mode of transport, via his goat cart, but sticks around to bust some heads. He also has a weird spiky halo that is never addressed.

In a very frustrating development at the very end of the second and final Craig Carter adventure, Thor takes the antagonists back into the ring with him to "lead a better existence," leaving us with even more questions about just what is going on with that thing than before. Is it simply a portal to the homes of the various gods, meaning that the thugs are now hanging out in Valhalla? Does it perhaps lead to some sort of amalgamated afterlife where all of the deprecated pantheons hang out together? We shall never know, alas. (Wham Comics 002 1940)

The Also-Rans:

The header of the first Craig Carter strip in Wham Comics 001 included three gods who never got to actually strut their stuff. It's hard to say who the two in the back were supposed to be (I might guess Hades for the one on the far right if we didn't get Pluto), but if that fellow with the club isn't Hercules (or indeed Herakles), I'll eat my hat.