(Champ Comics 015, 1941)
Okay, Genghis Khan. A lot of guys in comics like to call themselves Genghis Khan or claim to be his successor etc, and importantly they all seem to be into all the old Genghis Khan stuff like horse archers. Absolutely 100% stuff that Genghis was into at the time he was around of course, but I personally think that he would enjoy a machine gun if he had the chance.
Duke "the Human Meteor" O'Dowd is getting up to his usual day of driving cabs and palling around with his shoeshine boy pal Toby when suddenly the city is attacked by a mass of cavalry led by a shirtless giant wielding a flaming sword. This is Genghis Khan (a Genghis Khan, at least), and he is probably the Human Meteor's only recurring foe, appearing in 3 (possibly 4, but Champ Comics 018 is currently AWOL) whole issues.
A conquering giant cuts an intriguing figure, but the unfortunate thing about Genghis Khan is that the stories he appears in are pretty incoherent. There's a plot, but everything other than the plot is just shiny bits glued on like sparkles. That said, here are the most interesting and intriguing things about him:
1. Size and Origins
Genghis Khan's size remains fairly consistently enormous during his first two appearances - if anything, he might just be a bit bigger in the second one. His third appearance, however, shows him at a considerably reduced stature, from the third set of panel above in which he's maybe ten feet tall to perhaps fifteen feet at maximum. Is this an indication that he can control his size or just a general disregard for continuity?
The unanswered question of just what is up with this guy's size is a symptom of the fact that he has no real origin. He just shows up one day, stomping around Manhattan. Is he even Mongolian? Not to put too fine a point on it, but I've read a lot of 1940s comics and I think that they would have drawn him differently if he was.
2. Technology
The other major unanswered question about Genghis Khan is: just where did he get those wonderful toys? Such as...
His giant flaming sword that can also change its atomic structure on the fly, seemingly specifically so that the Human Meteor can't pick it up.
His cool dirigible base and its defensive screen of flamethrowers.
The "sky road," a transparent walkway that both men and horses can travel to and from the dirigible on, which need no support and must have some sort of crazy friction going on considering the angles that people are climbing it at.
3. Goals
Unsurprisingly, the self-declared successor of Genghis Khan, this fellow's main goal is conquest. The attack on New York in his initial appearance is the first part of an attempted takeover of the US, for example.
In Genghis Khan's second appearance (Champ Comics 016, 1941), he is laying siege to the hidden, high-tech city of Bayakura, the place that Duke O'Dowd became the Human Meteor.
Though the Human Meteor drops a mountain on him at the end of that second appearance, Genghis Khan survives somehow (perhaps by shedding mass to allow himself to escape his mountain tomb? That'd be an interesting aspect of the character if it ever came up) and allies with the Japanese to harry the US fleet off China. The Human Meteor sinks the Khan's entire fleet, and since he (probably) never appears again, drowning does what being crushed under a mountain failed to.
Categorized in: Famous Figures (Genghis Khan), Real Folk (Genghis Khan), Supercrime (Attempted Conquest)
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