ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 029

The wonders of the cosmos!

Spiny Scalemen: 

The Spiny Scalemen are yet another group of gross-looking underwater humanoids who threaten the mostly peaceful nation of Amloza, and what's worse, they're doing it as part of a Nazi plot to take over the city and use it as a naval base. Thankfully Mogg the Fish-Man and only competent citizen of Amloza realizes that city walls are a bit of a useless affectation in an underwater environment and destroys the Scalemen by collapsing Amloza's onto them. (Champ Comics 016, 1941)

Categorized in: Body (Nonhuman Parts), Generica (Men)

Flat Heads: 

"Og, Son of Fire" was a comic adapted from a Big Little Book that was based on a series of short stories and also a radio show about Og, a young caveman who is trying to make his way in a hostile world. And importantly for the purposes of this blog, one of the things making the world more hostile is this tribe of ape men led by a fellow named Long Tooth. Heaven knows I love an ape man, but I love 'em even more when they're called something fun like "Flat Heads." See also the Flat Heads' Sun God here. (The Funnies 013, 1937)

Categorized in: Body (Heads)

the Flies:

While the Barrangees of Planet Barrang have had a lot of problems with insects over the years - they famously grew giant and drove the Barangee population underground, while insect-worshipping Barrangee priests stymied any attempt to reclaim the surface - their most troublesome foes were always the giant flies. These creatures have adapted to their new size by becoming active hunters rather than scavengers, and the Barrangees are a favourite prey. Couple this with the fact that Earthman Captain Tornado and his cohort have encouraged the Barrangees to move above ground and you get situations like the above, in which a Fly abducts a Barrangee child in broad daylight.

The Flies are the most intelligent and organized of the Barrang insect species featured in the "Captain Tornado" feature, and they make war on the Barrangee city under the direction of their Fly King until Tornado bring knowledge of both firearms and insecticide to the planet and effectively counters their offensive. (Popular Comics 054, 1940)

Categorized in: Animals (Insects), Extrasolar (Planet Barrang)

Fourth Dimensional Creatures:

After foiling several of Satan Rex's attempts to destroy humanity, scientific adventurer Jon Linton and his pals return to their first love: tinkering around with spaceships. And since Jon et al exist in an adventure comic, the first test flight of their new rocket turns into an out-of-control flight through space at never-before-seen speeds, careening directly through planets without touching an atom and ending up on a world where thought and reality intersect, kind of like that one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

During their pell-mell flight through space, Linton and pals are briefly visited by these tentacle-legged lizard monsters, who appear to be kind of generically hostile for a few minutes before fading back into the ether. Just what the heck is going on?

Jon hits upon the answer with his customary swiftness: these are inhabitants of the Fourth Dimension, and the ship briefly intersected with their space. Does this justify the seeming aggression that their show to the people on the spaceship? We cannot accurately judge, alas. (Amazing Mystery Funnies v3 007, 1940)

Categorized in: Extradimensional (Fourth Dimension)

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 028

Dudes come in all kinds of shapes nowadays.

Walrus Men:

We first encounter the Walrus Men in Champ Comics 013 when the newly-reformed Neptina goes to them to ask for help in reclaiming the throne of Amloza from her sister Mhersa, only to discover that the friendly Prince Eon has been overthrown and that the Walrus Men are now ruled by the expansionist tyrant King Walro.

Not that Walro is unopposed in his rule, as there are still Eon loyalists willing to help Neptina and her friends in their quest.

Neptina, her friends and the loyalists rescue Eon from the hole that Walro has been keeping him in, upon which it becomes clear that, like the Fish-Man population of Amloza, the Walrus Man of Polaris are ruled by a very human-looking nobility. This isn't such a huge contrast in the Walrus Men's initial appearance, when their tusks are small and dainty, but...

 

From Champ Comics 014 and onward they really put the walrus in Walrus Men. So no Neptina and Eon represent an ocean-wide ruling class? Did some sub-oceanic Queen Victoria seed the thrones of the Atlantic with her grandchildren? Should Neptina and Eon's burgeoning romance be quashed for the sake of their children's genetic health? 

(this issue also establishes the signature piece of Walrus Man technology: "mole ships" that travel beneath the sea floor for surprise attacks) 

Finally, Prince Eon is restored to the throne of Polaris in Champ Comics 015 after fatally(? it is under water, after all) punching Walro off of a balcony. 

Categorized in: Aliens (Earth), Animals (Aquatic Mammals), Generica (Men)

Fish-Men UPDATE: 

Speaking of the Fish-Men of Amloza and the morphological differences between them and their ruling class, Neptina and her companions find themselves in the Kingdom of the Fishmen while fleeing from Walrus Men forces. The Fishmen, hyphenated or not, appear to be their own people who just happen to live in Amloza in significant number. Neptina's chief scientist Mogg is welcomed to the Kingdom as a citizen, which introduces some interesting questions about how the nation-states of the Atlantic work.  (Champ Comics 014, 1941)

Fernomacs:

When space adventurer Spurt Hammond is appointed as Earth's ambassador to the Mercury of the year 2520 CE, he quickly finds favour with Thermod, king of the Mercurian Fernomacs, a species of leather-skinned green humanoids. By contrast, Hammond and his rising influence makes him an enemy in the eyes of the sinister Baron Burno.

Burno expresses his frustration by staging a coup and dumping Thermod and Hammond on the desolate dark side of Mercury (not how Mercury works). All seems lost until...

Grubmen:

... the Grubmen show up! These inhabitants of the dark side of Mercury don't get a tremendous amount of characterization: they love light and worship the flashlight-wielding Spurt Hammond as a god and he's happy to exploit their adulation for his own benefit. Pre-religious reformation under Hammond they appear to have been ruled by the largest member of their species but he sees the writing on the wall and joins up with Hammond without a fight.

In a bit of good luck for the Grubmen, exposure to the light and heat of the light side of the planet causes them to grow powerful and so they are able to effectively combat Burno's Fernomac forces rather than die en mass as Hammond had presumably assumed they would given the physical and technological gulf between the species initially.

King Thermod is re-installed on the throne of Ferno and as the Grubmen are of no further use to Hammond he leaves them behind as citizens. A happy ending for everyone but Baron Burno and his co-conspirators! (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

Categorized in: Aliens (Mercury), Animals (Insects), Generica (Men)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 920: MHERSA

(Champion Comics 003, 1940/ Champ Comics 011, 1940)

Half sister to the mercurial undersea tyrant Neptina, Mhersa originally appears as the head of the Maella, a rebel group comprised of female members of the same race of underwater beings as Neptina (I'm not going into that again). Mhersa and the Maella are isolationist but reasonable compared to Neptina's capricious ways. (Champion Comics 003, 1940)

The Maella help Lt Brad Fletcher off and on during his conflict with Neptina, but Mhersa's next major move comes in Champ Comics 011, when she seizes the throne of Amloza while Neptina is out and about. Though this is a pretty reasonable act considering the way that the kingdom was being run, it is framed as villainous due to the fact that Neptina had just finished reforming her ways when she got the news. 

Still, in my eyes Mhersa is still on the side of the angels, just trying to do right by the people of Amloza. Right up to the point that she surrenders the city to the fascistic King Walro of the Walrus Men in exchange for an easy life in his administration, that is. 

Just why Mhersa does this is never explained - perhaps her opposition to her sister was less about justice and more about some sort of irrational rivalry and this is the best way that she can think of to spite her? (Champ Comics 013, 1941)

Neptina and her allies (now including Prince Eon, former ruler of the Walrus Men and new Neptina love interest) prepare to take the fight to Mhersa, but before they get much further than their initial brainstorming session Neptina gets a psychic vision: Mhersa has left Amloza. It turns out that she was somehow less popular than her half sister and is now gone by popular demand. 

Mhersa enlists the aid of King Walro in an attempt to murder Neptina outright that really cements my theory that this is all about sibling rivalry rather than differing opinions on good governance.

Believing Neptina to be dead, Mhersa leads a force of Walrus Men to retake Amloza, only to be defeated, captured and jailed by her sister, never to be seen again. (Champ Comics 014, 1941)

Categorized in: By Birth (Undersea Beings), Generica (Ends in A), Theft (Usurpers) 

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 017

A panoply of wonders awaits.

Karnak's Slaves: 

This otherwise-unnamed race from an unnamed planet get a pretty raw deal: conquered and mind-controlled into servitude by scientist Karnak, they all seemingly die when he does. It's a real shame. (Weird Comics 007, 1940) 

the Deadly Plants: 

It's hard to say much about the so-called "Deadly Plants" of planet Vegeto, aside from the fact that they work together to capture a handful of prospective human colonists and dump them in a pit, and that for this act of moderate aggression the Red Comet dumps the entire termite population of Earth on them, seemingly wiping out their entire species. This is what we call "disproportionate response" but is in perfect keeping with the 1940s (and beyond!) view of the relative value of human life vs all other life. (Planet Comics 004, 1940)

Dhakka Snail-Men: 

Every undersea race in comics needs a selection of other undersea races to have conflict with, and Neptina's Fish-Men are no exception. They are menaced by the Dhakkas, aka the Snail-Men, led by Prince Petor, who attempts to invade the territories of Amloza for no stated reason - I guess that's just what you do when you have an army and an abyssal plain to march across. Unfortunately for Petor and his ambitions, Neptina and the Fish-Men are backed up by Brad Fletcher and his Super-Sub, which are enough to decisively turn the tide. 

The Snail-Men also might be some of the least like their namesake of any of the [animal]-Men we have yet encountered. They ride snails, sure, but about the only thing that they themselves have in common with snails are some pretty modest eyestalks. (Champion Comics 009, 1940)

Dragon-Lizard Men: 

Encountered by detective Fu Chang as he searches for treasure on fabled Money Pit Island, the Dragon-Lizard Men are not so much guardians as obstacles on the way to wealth. The most remarkable thing about them is that if they are as Fu Chang asserts descended from the "lizard and dragons" left on the island by the treasure-burying pirates they managed to not only evolve into fully humanoid forms but also enough of a sense of shame to wear briefs over their mysterious lizard and/or dragon genitals. Nature is really amazing. (Pep Comics 009, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 569: NEPTINA

(Champion Comics 002, 1939) 

I can't say for sure that whoever created Neptina sat down and said "I will make a lady version of Namor the Sub-Mariner" but it's at least plausible. Neptina is the ruler of the undersea kingdom of Amloza, and has designs on a total conquest of the surface world as well as the depths.

Neptina is, like Namor, a horny character. She captures US Navy Lieutenant Brad Fletcher early in her series and spends a considerable amount of mental, martial and political energy in subsequent installments in service of keeping him near her and away from other women.

(note the little tuning fork thing that Neptina is holding - it works in concert with a telepathic receiver as a form of communication for the Fish-Men of Amloza. There are lots and lots of panels featuring characters who look like they're playing with a toy from the 1920s when in fact they are talking to one another. It's fun!)

Neptina is shown to be a ruthless slaver with ranks of surface men pillaged from ships and equipped with gills in place of their human lungs. The reverse operation can be performed on Fish-Men to allow them to become fully amphibious, though the lungs involved must be harvested from a human. Neptina's vanity is showcased when she demands that the lungs for her operation be harvested from a beautiful woman only. This also proves to be Neptina's first major stumbling block, as Brad Fletcher immediately falls in love with movie star Norma Kane when she is brought to Amloza, and rescuing her is one of his major motivations for disrupting Neptina's plans in early installments.

More interesting than Neptina's schemes is the biology of Amloza's population. There appear to be at least two biological castes, with more humanoid Fish-Men Nobles like Brad Fletcher's friend Gakk holding higher station than the fish-headed commoners (Neptina's chief scientist Mogg is a regular Fish-Man and probably the most competent character in the comic, in a welcome nod to the foolishness of biological determinism).

Complicating things further is the fact that the female population of Amloza appears to consist entirely of bodacious blonde babes in shell bras. If it were just Neptina I'd figure that she was a surface woman somehow elevated to the throne (the racial politics of the time would almost demand that a non-white/nonhuman group would instinctively subjugate themselves to a blonde bombshell), but this suggests the kind of sexual dimorphism we see in fantasy and sci-fi character design (mildly NSFW comic, but Oglaf as a whole is wildly NSFW).

The other option, and the one I favour, is that the group represented by Neptina and the Fish-Men are two morphologically distinct but related species operating as a unified society - perhaps the Neptinans are naturally parthogenic (sp) which explains their seeming single gender, while the Fish-Men could lack any sexual dimorphism. The Fish-Men Nobles would thus represent hybrids of the two populations and thus their role as nobles could be seen as a bridge between the two.

Speculative biology aside, here's a timeline of Neptina's deal:

-after Brad Fletcher and Norma Kane escape, she acquires lungs from a second, less fortunate surface woman and makes her way to NYC.

-while attempting to raise capital by selling some huge pearls, Neptina runs afoul of both the NYPD and a gang of crooks, who foolishly attempt to get rid of her via drowning and end up on the bottom of the harbour themselves.

-the pearls in question are the sacred Tear Drops of Neptune and scientist Mogg, already a mite anti-monarchist in his leanings, embarks on a) a mission to recover them and b) an attempt to undermine Neptina's plans of conquest.

-also set against Neptina: Gakk the Fish-Man Noble and her own half-sister Mhersa, leader of a rebel group called the Maella.

-Brad returns with a diplomatic envoy. Things are tense but civil until the surface folk help drive off an invasion by Dhakka Snail-Men. At this point, Neptina effectively reforms - Mogg has even seemingly forgiven her for making off with the sacred pearls. More dark: the US Government in the form of Brad Fletcher has forgiven her for the many crimes against its citizens in pursuit of a powerful alliance. 

As 1940 closes, Brad, Norma, Neptina and Mogg are stranded mid-ocean and Mhersa has taken over Amloza. Will she be villainous enough to appear here? Find out when I make my way to the 1941 issues of Champ Comics!