DIVINE ROUND-UP 025

Gods gods gods. 

Puni, God of Fire: 

Sea-faring adventurer Lance O'Casey almost gets sacrificed to this fire god by the cannibalistic inhabitants of a tropical Antarctic island before escaping, entering the volcano in question and meeting the other Puni. Not sure how much the volcano-dwelling madman and the actual religion influenced each other, but it must have been at least a little. Also: cool idol.

God Style: Idol (Whiz Comics 019, 1941) 

the War God:

This War God idol functions like one of those hollow dog statues you see at grocery stores, that you put your change in to help raise money for people to get seeing eye dogs (and if that's not a thing where you live then sorry for the unrelatable analogy), only the money is meant to go to the defense of China against Japanese invasion, and instead of a dog it is a sick-ass god-monster. It's never entirely clear if this is supposed to be a representation of an actual god or just a marketing gimmick.

God Style: Idol (More Fun Comics 059, 1940)

 Wotan:

As was established when he beat up Mars that one time, Merlin the Magician hates war, and seeing as he has a magic cloak and a can-do attitude he sets out to do something about it. His first step is to go back in time and save a couple of young Ancient Britons from being human sacrificed by some Druids. What does this have to do with ending war? No idea, but then again I don't have a magic cloak so my perspective might just be too mundane to comprehend the intricacies.

Having reviewed the plan, I must conclude that Merlin just needed a couple of people with no ties who would be grateful enough to him to do whatever he wanted and that Druidic sacrifices were his first thought. Specifically, he asks these young folk to act as peace ambassadors to an unnamed fascist nation in order to undermine the efforts of the war god Wotan, who has been roaming the Earth inciting men to war.

(It would have been quite thematically satisfying if the two young people had been rescued from being sacrificed to Wotan, and while that might have implicitly been the intent, it's just not there on the page) 

The young people are somewhat successful, in that they are immediately killed by a similarly young and idealistic pair of enemy soldiers (and what a progressive fascist nation, to field female soldiers in 1941!) who then become overwhelmed with remorse and swear of war forever, at which point Merlin appears and restores his agents to life - an effective but painful strategy, it seems.

All this talk of pacifism and understanding between nations draws the ire of Wotan himself, who shows up to kill Merlin and ends up on the end of a killing sword-blow from the magician, making the current score Gods: 0 Merlin the Magician: 4.

God Style: Real (National Comics 011, 1941)

Death: 

This version of Death is bound to obey an artifact known as the Sceptre of Eternity, and as such has been commanded to replace the lost daughter of a guy called the Sheik of Kamroon in the 12th Century, and as such has made off with a present-day woman named Betty Jekil. I'm pretty sure that this was a calculated move, as Betty's father turns to super-magician El Carim for help, which ultimately results in El Carim trading the Sceptre of Eternity for Betty's life, which is a pretty good deal for Death.

God Style: Anthropomorphic Personification (Master Comics 019, 1941)

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 026

There is a never-ending supply of aliens (and so forth) in comics, and here are some of them. 

Giants: 

When Doctor Voodoo is flung into the past by an old wizard, his only instruction is to find something called the Golden Flask, located somewhere called the Valley of Giants. Astonishingly, it only takes him about two issues worth of privation to get there, whereupon he and his pal Nero are immediately taken captive and frogmarched to the castle of the Queen of the Giants.

As can be seen in the above panel, these are the less extreme kind of giant, being only ten or so feet tall (based on their sizes compared to Doctor Voodoo - probably a standard length of hero at six feet - and Nero - extra big and tall so at least seven). Hardly as dramatic as a forty-foot titan might be but at least you don't spend the whole time wondering how their bodies hold together under the strain.

The Queen of the Giants (Anita to her friends), by contrast, is a regular-sized lady who comes across as quite nice until Doctor Voodoo rejects her romantic advances and she has him thrown to Achilles, who turns out to be a giant python. Despite this, when the Valley of the Giants is depopulated by pirate raids, Docotr Voodoo rescues her and takes her along on the remainder of his adventures in the past. And since he never actually makes it back to the present on-panel, perhaps romance does eventually blossom, who knows? (Whiz Comics 020, 1941)

Camurians: 

Space hero Captain Venture and his companion Zyra, aka the Planet Princess, spend a lot of their early adventures just wandering around space and seeing what the cosmos has to offer. On one of these jaunts, they land on Planet Camur, where they find the native Camurians enslaved by another species called the Valhoes, and being righteous hero types they resolve to liberate them from bondage. 

After being captured and enslaved themselves, Venture and Zyra lead an uprising and free the Camurians from the tyranny of the Valhoes, who were unprepared to face any resistance from their seemingly cowed slaves.

Just where the Valhoes come from is not expanded upon in the story but just by looking at them we must reasonably assume that they also come from Camur, right? Millions of years ago some sleepy-eyed alien ape species' population split along nerd/jock lines and the Camuriand and Valhoes were the end results. Nature is grand, really. (Nickel Comics 006, 1940)

Catskill Dwarfs: 

Thanks to a plane crash in the Catskill Mountains, super magician El Carim and his assistant/ love interest Gladys find themselves in the underground realm of the Catskill Dwarfs, aka the Little Men of the Mountain of Rip van Winkle fame.  

It's all pretty goofy until Galdys swats the Dwarfs' Scared Flea, at which point the Little Men of the Mountain try to murder both her and El Carim in a fit of righteous ire. All is forgiven, however, by the time they return to the comic two issues later - I suppose sacred fleas are easy to come by. (Master Comics 020, 1941)

Djungas: 

Captain Venture and the Planet Princess' wandering ways come to an end eventually when they crash on the far-off Asteroid Djung and are captured by the local Djunga people on behalf of their tyrannical leader King Leon. 

The Djungas are that ever-popular combination of a high-tech society with medieval trappings, and Leon is very much a medieval tyrant figure who spends much of his time attempting to wed Zyra against her will while pitting Venture and his Djunga companion Tazon up against a series of deadly situations. These often involve the wide array of other intelligent species endemic to Asteroid Djung and its local system, so more on them later.

The series eventually had to end, and King Leon with it, with the flick of a giant's finger. Tazon is installed as the new King of Djung, and peace presumably reigns among the Djungas. (Master Comics 009, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 042

Boys! Boys! Boys! Super powered boys!

Magno: 

Magno, aka the Miracle Man, aka the Magnetic Man, aka Tom Dalton, was a power line worker who died when he was shocked with 10 000 volts DC and then revived when he was shocked again with 10 000 volts AC. As a result, Dalton developed electromagnetic powers that he used to fly, simulate super strength when dealing with metal and create magnetic force fields. Not a bad deal.

Magno's Golden Age career was short and fairly undistinguished, and his main claim to fame is being the only one of the old Quality heroes to be killed off by Roy Thomas in All-Star Squadron to never be brought back (Magno's look also reminds me of Jericho of the Teen Titans for some reason, but that's hardly another claim to fame). (Smash Comics 013, 1940)

the Ray: 

I had a couple of issues of The Ray comics from the early 90s when I was younger and so have a tendency to think of the Ray as being a far more prominent character than he actually is - he's got to be fourth-tier at best, really (assuming that top-tier characters are the ones that everyone knows, your Batmans and Supermans, and second-tier are the ones that even a casual comics reader would consider essential. Third-tier and below is where you get into debating territory).

Regardless of his level of prominence, the Ray is actually Happy Terrill, a devil-may-care young reporter who signs on as crew in a balloon trip to the upper atmosphere and is... empowered? When he ventures out into a cosmic storm to secure some essential safety equipment. Honestly, as presented on the page Terrill could be assumed to have been replaced with some sort of cosmic entity but maybe I'm the only one who thinks that because it certainly isn't reflected in subsequent Ray lore.

Cosmic entity posing as human or no, the Ray is endowed with a startling array of powers, including at least partial invulnerability, the ability to become and travel along light, giant growth, a healing touch, light projection and telekinetic rays. At first, anyway - after a couple of issues he adopts more of a two-fisted adventurer persona whose main power is the ability to change between Happy Terrill and Ray identities and who occasionally remembers that he can fly and shoot rays of light at people.

A fairly consistent thing that I've noticed in depictions of the Ray post-Golden Age is a tendency to portray him as a very dour and serious guy, which seems a disservice to someone with the nickname "Happy." I suppose I must give it to those later scribes in that the Ray himself almost discards his Happy Terrill identity in his first adventure before eventually coming to his senses. Neither the reason for resuming life as Happy nor the process by which he explained how he made his way back from the upper atmosphere is shown on-panel, but I have to assume that being a super-hero 24/7 just gets boring after a while and he wanted to have a bit of a break. (Smash Comics 014, 1940)

Master Man: 

Master Man starts out as a weedy little kid, too small to play, who is gifted a magic vitamin pill by a kindly doctor and becomes incredibly powerful adult man. It's all there on his one-page introduction, but what's missing is one important detail: is this a gradual process like the Champ's origin, where he takes the vitamin every day and grows up big and strong, or did this little kid instantly transmogrify into a grown man, like a permanent Captain Marvel? I suppose that if Master Man really is a little kid in a man's body it would explain why his first act is to build a cool clubhouse on top of a mountain, presumably containing lots of slides and fireman poles instead of stairs. 

Being a Fawcett Comics character, Master Man is technically owned by DC Comics now, though they haven't yet bothered to trot him out of retirement, possibly because of his name, which sounds fascist enough that Marvel Comics has several full-fledged Nazi characters that use it. He would be an interesting character to use as a foil for Superman, since his powers are magic-based, but Captain Marvel does usually fill that role so we're unlikely to get a Master Man revival any time soon. (Master Comics 001, 1940)

El Carim:

One more crime-fighting-stage-magician-with-actual-magical-powers for the pile, El Carim ("miracle" backwards, as the caption box is at some pains to inform you at the start of every story) also subscribes to the same tuxedo and thin black mustache school of fashion as his contemporary Zatara, though the turban does make it easy to tell the two apart.

What sets El Carim apart from his contemporaries early on is the fact that his crime fighting is done with a series of magical items rather than with magical spells. He has a magical monocle that can deflect bullets (in what must be a very alarming manner, visually) and project illusions and which can be combined with a device called the Spectograph to scry distant locations. In addition, he has a super powerful magnet capable of plucking bullets from the air (useful for when he already has a headache from bouncing a few off of his eye, perhaps) and the Arrestor, which is able to freeze others in place, even against the pull of gravity.

Over time, El Carim starts slinging spells in a way more in line with the other magic men of comics, and I personally reckon that that's why he has languished in relative obscurity since the 1940s (other than an appearance in a 2016 issue of Scooby-Doo Team-Up, that is), as without that hook he is not appreciably different from any of his peers. (Master Comics 001, 1940)

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 003

They may not be the top of the class, but they did their time in the evil sciences!

Dr Eric Karlin has a lot of moxie on paper: a Nazi psychologist with a sideline in Egyptology, he dissolves the enemies of the Reich in acid and keeps their jellied remains in a series of jars in his basement. He also employs mind controlled pseudo-zombies in a scheme to recover frozen Nazi assets from a bank vault. The problem is that while all of this makes for a dynamite summary, the Blue Diamond story that he appears in is... not very good. (Daring Mystery Comics 008, 1942)

DeVaux here had a plan to grow regular guys into huge guys and use them to take over the world but made the elementary mistake of trying to kill a friend of super-magician El Carim as his literal first step toward that end - it didn't go well. (Master Comics 011, 1941)

I'm not sure if this guy is even a scientist, but if you're "the worst foreign spy living" and your name is Dr Evil and your cover as you plan to blow up a NYC analog is to call yourself "Dr Live" well then I can't help but love you, even if you do get electrocuted by extremely generic Golden Age hero Lightning. (Jumbo Comics 015, 1940)

And speaking of Lightning, he also battled Dr Tol, who used remote stone-crumbling technology to open up banks for his gang to loot. He also had very cool goggles. (Jumbo Comics 020, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 358: THE BLACK HOOD

(Master Comics 018, 1941) 

Okay, I am a big fan of the Black Hood. Let's count down the reasons:

One: very exciting to see the classic super-suit being worn in the early days of suits and robes. This look won't take long to become ubiquitous once it catches on but it's still pretty rare in 1941.

Two: not only is he a fashion pioneer but he is a thought leader in the field of henchman couture. Dressing your guys in a slightly worse version of your own costume (in this case bright rather than dark blue) is a surefire move in the villain game and it's going to be a while before we see it with any kind of regularity.

Three: The Black Hood is introduced as El Carim's arch-enemy, despite never having appeared before' and there are allusions to El Carim having broken up "four of his best rackets" etc. Implied lore is admittedly an easy way to build up a story's interest but I guess I'm a sucker for it.

About the only real criticism I have for the Black Hood is for all that he has experience battling El Carim (potentially years of experience, depending on the rate at which he sets up rackets) he is entirely unprepared to deal with Carim's dank majiks. His approach is a completely straightforward trap and kill attempt and it goes very badly. A real shame.

Nonetheless. regular costumed crooks like the Black Hood are the backbone any supercrime economy and he or his heirs should be BRUNG BACK post haste.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 356: OLBAID THE GREAT

(Master Comics 016, 1941)

I almost missed the fact that this guy is an evil equivalent of El Carim! I somehow read that opening blurb and thought that his name was Diablo but it's not, it's Olbaid - he has a backward name like El Carim!

What's more, Olbaid has roughly equivalent magical powers to El Carim, and uses magical items to supplement them just like him. In Olbaid's case, this involves the Snake Pool, a magical pool of water that turns humans into constrictor snakes, suitable for use as snakey minions.

While Olbaid is not a stage magician like El Carim, he does have a show business tie via his stable of ex-circus performer henchmen, including cowboy Rifle Ralph, lariat artist Roper Pete and an unnamed knife thrower.

Sadly for Olbaid, the similarities between him and El Carim end when it comes to power levels and their magical duel ends with Olbaid in jail and the snakes restored to humans who hopefully can't remember being used to squash a bunch of people.

NOTES - OCTOBER 2023

Ripped from the headlines:

The acclimation of a new Dalai Lama must have been big headlines in 1941 because not only did Zoro the Mystery Man save him from being kidnapped for ransom... (Master Comics 014, 1941)

... but over on Earth-Two, the Three Aces did the same! (Action Comics 032, 1941)

Great Folk:

Wizzar, Father of All Magic, teacher and mentor of El Carim, dead and returned as a spirit who appears "when some great crime against the dead remains unpunished" is that all-too-frequent thing in comics: a cosmic plot-hook-delivering entity used only once and never seen again (Master Comics 015, 1941) 

Also, Wizzar sends El Carim to the planet Zaam to battle the tyrant Rashtala and basically everyone on Zaam has an amazing look:

Just great.

Grandfather Oyster, the big oyster that eats people when they try to get the little oysters, is a really terrific sea monster concept. Is this the only hostile oyster in comics history? Probably! (Master Comics 017, 1941)

Memes of Yore: COWARD!

Very unsympathetic crowd of Goat-People watching space hero Captain Venture fight a space dragon. (Master Comics 021, 1941)

Nobody ever delivers a long monologue on why kicking people is an unmanly way to fight but there are a lot of expressions of distaste, like Spike of the Companions Three is uttering here. (Master Comics 021, 1941)