DIVINE ROUND-UP 011

Lookit'm go!

Thor: 

This particular version of Thor, Norse God of Thunder invests mortal man Grant Farrel with his powers, but while most ancient gods who get up to that sort of thing in comics are looking for an agent to fight against or promote a cause or agenda, Thor seems to just seems to want to see his powers being used in adventures. It's kind of wholesome!

Please also note the weird discs on Thor's helmet. What the heck is up with those? 

God style: real (Weird Comics 001, 1940)

the Slave Giants' Goddess: 

Space-time adventurer Flip Falcon (back when he was called Flick Falcon, before someone realized that "flick" in comic book block lettering is awful close to "fuck") spent his first few escapades getting in the middle of a conflict between various Martian races and an invading three-armed species. As a part of this, Fli(ck/p) and his companion Adele come up with a scheme to substitute her for the idol that the Three-Arms had been using to control the credulous Martian Giants.

This works well enough that it causes a minor holy war among the Giants, but I suppose that all's fair in planetary defense. 

God style: idol/ fake (Fantastic Comics 003, 1940) 

the Sun God: 

A big tree worshipped by a group of hominids known as "flat heads" via human hominid sacrifice. Fortunately for Og, Son of Fire and his companions, they represent a slightly more quick-witted type of hominid and manage to escape this grisly fate. 

God style: animist (The Funnies 013, 1937)

Zagu: 

Source of conflict between a local tribe who insist that he lives in a mine site and the guy who really wants to mine there. Unsurprisingly, the Red Panther shows up to take the mine owner's side.

God style: invoked (Jungle Comics 003, 1940) 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 637: CHANG

(Fantastic Comics 013, 1940)

It finally happened: Flip Falcon told the world that travel between Earth and the Fourth Dimension was possible (I haven't been highlighting it because there aren't super-villains etc but a fair few of his adventures have just been commissions from randos to go back in time and find out where pirates hid some treasure and whatnot. Everyone knows about the Fourth Dimension, Billy.) and someone has finally replicated his findings. Too bad for the world in general and Flip Falcon in particular that that person was Chang.

Chang is a Tibetan Lama for some reason (the reason is that Tibet is far away and Tibetan Buddhism was exotic so virtually any secret knowledge could be ascribed to them. And also Tibetans are Asians, so racism) and is notably more cautious than Flip. Rather than dive headfirst into what could reasonably be called a Hell Dimension, Chang has chosen to communicate with the various spirits and demonoids who reside there. Details are sparse but it seems that he was attempting to recruit them as an invasion force before Flip Falcon cottoned onto him.

The real stars of the adventure are the creeps and ghouloids that slither out of the landscape to take Chang up on his offer. For such a fun and diverse collection of creepos they certainly get little enough page time in favour of a guy in a robe and a widow's peak.

Chang's caution proves to be his ultimate undoing, however, as while he has not been placing himself into the same danger as Flip Falcon, he has also not been charged up with the same extradimensional energies that Flip is when he does and which allow him to, for example, easily escape from a deathtrap and then fly off after blowing up Chang and his entire lamasery. A valuable lesson, learned too late.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 633: CHONGO

(Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

Flip Falcon's Fourth Dimension Machine has served various roles as a sort of all-purpose portal to adventure over the course of his tenure in Fantastic Comics, starting out as an interplanetary teleporter allowing access to the various planets of the Solar System and later acting as a time machine. Now it is entering what I believe to be its final form as a gateway to the Fourth Dimension itself, a weird hellscape of the imagination briefly seen in Flip's encounter with Lucifer.

In addition to bordering on all times and places, the Fourth Dimension seems to also contain if not the entire afterlife then at least some version of Hell, occupied by the Demi-Things. Ar the Demi-Things demons? The souls of the damned? Some sort of third thing? Whatever they are, Chongo is the worst of the bunch and thanks to the bizarre dimensional pseudo-physics he is able to steal a radio beam and re-purpose it into a death ray/ surf board.

He immediately attacks Earth with this ray and unfortunately I must report that it looks very cool. It's a skeletonizing ray!

Flip Falcon of course sets out to defeat the evil Chongo but the ultimate victory must go to the greater society of Demi-Things, who rally together and basically beat him to death once he is removed from the shelter of his death ray. I guess this might be considered some sort of redemptive act - does this lend credence to the Demi-Things = lost souls theory? I believe that we'll be seeing more of them in the future, so we'll just note that down without drawing any conclusions just yet..

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 609: LUCIFER

(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940)

Scientist-adventurer Flip Falcon has a machine that allows him to enter the Fourth Dimension and come out, effectively, anywhere. He's used it to visit various other planets and will use it to travel through time - it's an adventure machine, basically. The fact that it can detect something as vague as "a disturbance somewhere" is both on point and completely meaningless - when you can go anywhere and anywhen, you can always find a disturbance (he does sometimes let Adele come along, by the way).

This turns out to be Flip's first adventure to take place in the Fourth Dimension itself and the first time that the Fourth Dimension is suggested to have a supernatural element, as he encounters Lucifer himself! And his magical mouth!

Perhaps I gave the disturbance-detector too hard of a time, because the disturbance it somehow detected was Lucifer getting ready (did he finally accrue enough power or just make the decision?) to destroy planet Earth!

Lucky for the Earth and all who dwell on her, the trail of energy that Flip leaves behind as he travels not only functions as a lifeline to his home but in a bit of a deus ex machina turns out to have anti-demonic properties! Flip securely ties up Lucifer and then... just goes home. It's a very confident move, assuming that the Great Adversary, a being capable of destroying whole planets, will never escape from your improvised knot, and if he does (he does, we'll be seeing him again) he won't bother blowing up the planet out of embarrassment or something. And just because that's exactly what happens is no reason not to ask questions.

CREEPS OF THE WORLD: HUMANS OF THE YEAR 1001939

(Fantastic Comics 004, 1940)

Scientist Flip (formerly Flick) Falcon, along with gal pal Adele, usually find themselves contending with problems on the planet Mars thanks to Flip's discovery of interplanetary teleportation based on transit through the Fourth Dimension. In this particular adventure, Flip and Adele flee Mars through a similar device created by Mars' three-armed alien overlords and find themselves not back on the bucolic Earth of 1940 but...

THE FUTURISTIC HELLSCAPE OF 1 001 939 CE! And not only do they find themselves captured by the humans of that far-flung era but those same humans turn out to be a bunch of smug jerks!

These future-jerks follow the familiar sci-fi trope of the species that is all mind, no body BUT instead of taking the more familiar form of a big head with a shrivelled little body, these fellows are regular-sized if emaciated human heads atop bodies that are just skeletons with a bit of skin to hold them together! It's an amazing design choice!

Flip and Adele get away by the simple expedient of removing one of these withered husks from his life support system and blackmailing him into sending them home. It's truly one of the more remarkable sequences in comics history.

NOTES - AUGUST 2024

Cops Shooting Fleeing Suspects: 

The cops try to gun down the fleeing Sphinx. (Exciting Comics 004, 1940)

Aliens:

Can't get over how much these alien bat-folk look like they're Simpsons characters (Exciting Comics 005, 1940)

It's a shame that these Mercurians are weird misogynists, because I really dig their look. (Fantastic Comics 005, 1940) 

A few issues later, Flip is back on Mercury and meets these giant insect-men and their queen, whose father (never seen) somehow made his way to Mercury and mated with a giant insect-man. Mated with a giant insect-woman, I suppose. It's a heckuva thing to contemplate. (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940)

Honours:

Yank Wilson declared Public Hero No. 1 at an official banquet. (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940)