Luvverly aliens and so forth for ye today, guv.
the Freaks:
Silver Streak, investigating a series of mysterious murders, follows a lead to the aptly-named Fantasy Isle in the Pacific Ocean.
The inhabitants of Fantasy Isle probably don't refer to themselves as "the Freaks" but as that is the only thing that they are called in-story I suppose that we must go with it. They are a heterogeneous collection of humanoid who have isolated themselves from the world, presumably due to the threat of persecution, which would make them fairly sympathetic characters if a) they didn't routinely sink passing ships and imprison their crew in deep dank dungeons, and b) their king didn't respond to the threat of exposure by attempting to destroy the entirety of North America.
As so often happens when a nonhuman group threatens the lives of a human one, the Silver Streak's solution involves mass murder, in this case by dumping the entire population into the ocean. One can only hope that a few of them made it, for anti-genocide reasons.
It's hard to tell if the Freaks are supposed to be one species with several different morphologies or several different small populations banding together for mutual benefit. Either way, there are a few recurring types. From top to bottom we have: imp type, weird bird man type, tentacle man type and suction cup lizard man type. The king and that three-eyed guy seem to be unique, but maybe there are more of them lurking around in the shadows. (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)
Gargantuans:
The Gargantuans are military expansionists who you expect to be big but are in fact regular sized. Instead, they are at or close to the maximum number of facial affectations that an alien species can have, including green skin covered in little spines, antennae, big pointy ears, fangs, a skeleton nose, satanic eyebrows and in the case of their leader Lobar a matching goatee and mustache.
The Gargantuans come very close to destroying Earth's space fleet and turning the planet into a military base, until Lobar makes the mistake of bringing Cosmic Carson onto his flagship and getting within reach of his Earthman fists. (Big 3 001, 1940)
Mercurians:
The Red Panther is helping his pal Toni Beltan test her orbital Stratoplane when it goes haywire and rockets them to Mercury. There, they encounter two types of Mercurians: the Giant Mercurians, who wear cool heat-resistant armour that kind of makes them look like beetles and are enslaved by the Surface Mercurians, big-headed imps who are led by a fellow named Kogh and are frankly assholes.
Kogh has the Red Panther and Toni tossed in a hole to be devoured by the giant bats of Sub-Mercury, only to unexpectedly benefit when the bats all end up dead at the barrel of the Panther's Atomic converter, thus opening the riches of the underground to exploitation by the resource-poor Surface Mercurians. To his credit, Kogh then has enough grace to allow the duo to return home. (Jungle Comics 010, 1940)
Giants:
One of the lost sci-fi tropes is that of the typical kind of humanoid life that you'd find on each planet of the Solar System. Mercury is hot so you get fire guys or other heat-adapted species there; Venus is either a giant swamp or a "primitive" planet so you get a lot of semi-aquatic lizard guys there etc etc. This is all to say that you don't get 'em any more but because Jupiter is a great big planet one of the standard kinds of Jovians you would see in sci-fi is the giant humanoid, like these fellows, who are conveniently and simply called Giants.
Golo, ruler of the Giants, has succumbed to arrogance and issued a challenge to the rest of the Solar System to meet his Giant army in personal combat, seemingly as a precursor to a campaign of wholesale conquest. His challenge is met by the Red Comet, who, despite Golo's initial disbelief, is able to employ his nigh-limitless power to grow extra-huge and lay waste to the Giant forces.
Golo himself gets away pretty lightly with a mere bop on the snoot for his hubris. Hopefully the hundreds of dead soldiers outside of his palace are enough of a lesson in humility to curb his warlike instincts in the future. (Planet Comics 003, 1940)
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