(Jungle Comics 013, 1941)
The Vahines, aka the Tiger-Women of Wildmoon Mountain, have a plan: kill every other woman in the world, which will then give them ultimate power over all men. Some thoughts on this setup:
1. The logistics of this plan are trash. There are maybe 15 to 20 Vahines total and estimates put world population at around 2.3 billion in 1940, so murdering half of those people will be a full-time job that will probably take the rest of their lives*. And if they succeed, what then? They rule over a population that is going to die out in a single generation? They certainly can't repopulate the planet because they spent their fertile years slaughtering people.
*It's just possible that "the world" referred to by the Vahines is the weird liminal Jungle-Dimension that Fantomah comics seem to be set in, but seeing as how that's mostly something I made up to explain how weird the worldbuilding in these stories is, I doubt it.
2. I keep saying that we're almost out of Fletcher Hanks stories but I really mean it this time, so it's nice to get one last instance of women surfing around on the backs of big cats.
3. "The Vahines have come down off of Wildmoon Mountain to murder all other women" sounds like the synopsis of a MADtv sketch about PMS.
Regardless of the canonicity of the liminal Jungle, that's where their mountain is located and so that is where they start murdering women. This goes against Fantomah's mission to protect Jungle life, and so they meet resistance in the form of All Animals. The Vahines, however, are no fools. They knew that Fantomah wouldn't be cool with their insane mission and so they have prepared a salve that makes them glow in a way that is scary to animals. Problem solved!
Or is it? in a classic blunder, the Vahines have failed to contend with the fact that Fantomah a) is not afraid of a mild glowing effect and b) is a minor deity. It takes the merest exertion of her powers to remove the glow, and soon the Vahines' tigers are a mere smudge on the jungle floor.
As for the Vahines themselves, it is now the time for the extreme retribution. Fantomah begins this by extracting the enormous moonstone called the Wild Moon from inside of Wildmoon Mountain - it seems that the name was more than just cool but that it also meant something - and sticking the Vahines to it. This is initially very concerning to the Vahines because of a prophecy about their lives ending if the Wild Moon leaves...
... and then very, very concerning, as the Wild Moon, with its Vahine cargo, is blasted off to slam into the surface of Mars. The prophecy was correct! If unhelpful!
Categorized in: Animals (Tigers), Ideologies (Misogyny), Murder (Mass Murderers)
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