ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 035

Aliens! Aliens? Aliens.

the Black-Light Men:

Like the Emerald Men of Asperus, the Black-Light Men travel on a mobile planet (the Black-Light Planet, natch, so named because it is not visible using conventional light) and like so many Fletcher Hanks villains they are looking to take over the Earth, in this case by pulling the whole planet out of orbit and freezing it solid before selling it on to the Martians. Due to the Black-Light Planet's perpetual cold, the Black-Light Men are all blubbery. Just what the little rhino horn situation they have going on is for is beyond me. 

Luckily for the Earth, space hero Whirlwind Carter is on the case and the planet-jacking is halted before more than a measly few million people are killed. Carter leads the Earth military in a retaliatory strike on the Black-Light Planet but it quickly turns into a hand-to hand battle that leaves the human forces ata severe disadvantage.

Thanks to Whirlwind Carter's companion Brenda, the Black-Light Men are discovered to have a crippling fear of fire and armed with that knowledge the Earthian forces are able to drive them to self-destruction. (Daring Mystery Comics 005, 1940)

Serviles: 

Flip Falcon's portal to the Fourth Dimension allows him to do a whole lot of different things, for instance: look at images of the planet Mercury and notice that there is a cool-looking city there, then visit that city with his partner Adele. We soon learn that the city is called Servil, and it is inhabited by some truly delightful aliens with the bodies of plucked chickens and the heads of bargain-basement mannequins and who are revealed to be called Serviles in a text box several issues after this appearance.

The Serviles communicate using extremely cute golden helmets. Up until this point they might just be the perfect alien species, but they have to go and ruin it all by being weird 1940s misogynists and denying women the ability to speak (!) because they "talk too much."

Anyway, Servile civilization is plagued by these cool-looking dragonoid beasts called Heidites that crawl over from the hot side of Mercury to eat them, but who could care? (Fantastic Comics 005, 1940)

Hoof-Men: 

The Hoof-Men are 1. extremely burly 2. hoofed and 3. of a class of science fiction alien that can best be described as "space bullies," who exist to give humans a hard time. In this case they have captured the (also very burly) space explorer Professor Darrel and are threatening to turn him into a bug if he doesn't say that Hoof-Men are better than humans, and it all gets a little too real until space hero Cosmic Carson has to step in and break things up. (Science Comics 003, 1940)

Hoppers:

The Hoppers are yet another group of Fletcher Hanks aliens who live on a wandering planetoid, in this case on that looks just like a cartoon tropical island and seems to just aimlessly float through space. As might be expected given their name the Hoppers a big on jumping and can seemingly do so to get from planet to planet. They have the beefiest legs in comics and show them off in what I can only describe as bicycle shorts, in an astounding bit of predictive design-work.

Unlike most Fletcher Hanks aliens, the Hoppers don't have some sort of over-the-top plan to destroy humanity - they aren't even hostile, as far as I can tell. They do hop on over to Space Smith's ship as soon as it comes into range, which he interprets as a hostile act, but I'm inclined to disagree. The only aggression the Hoppers display is after they are trapped under a big metal net, and even then it is nonlethal.

Perhaps Smith agrees with me after all, because instead of gruesomely killing the Hoppers he instead essentially pranks them by bringing them to New York City to be spooked by the hustle and bustle of big city life, with its bodegas and whatnot. Unable to hack the Big Apple, they hop back to their small-town planetoid. (Fantastic Comics 005, 1940)