MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 539 UPDATE: THE CLAW (1940)

(Silver Streak Comics 002, 006)

As you may or may not recall, when I covered the Claw's sole 1939 appearance I concluded that taken on its own, it read like one of those stories where a villain holds sway over an area by means of a fake monster and that if the Claw had never appeared again that's what I would assume he was: just an illusion composed of papier mache and maybe a balloon or an image projected on a cloud.

Well, surprise, surprise, because that wasn't the only appearance of the Claw and in fact the vary next issue of Silver Streak Comics features him joining up with an unnamed but very recognizable Adolf Hitler in return for control of half of Europe following a Claw/Nazi victory.

The first part of the Claw's plan involves attacking allied shipping using his very cool underwater train/tank. Next, using super-powered artillery cannon to shell civilian population centres... somewhere. I mean, the cities all look pretty Western hemisphere but as the Claw's original HQ on the island of Ricca was in the Pacific and he's still close enough to there that the ships he sinks are being transported back to be used in Riccan munitions factories, so maybe he's attacking the West coast of the United States? Not sure how that helps the Nazis, honestly, but it's either that or his artillery is really really super and he's bombing Europe.

The Claw eventually gets impatient with just blowing things up and proves me wrong yet again by growing enormous and using his weird powers to set up a whirlpool so mighty that it not only draws in and dooms ships from across the ocean but also changes the world's weather patterns, causing the tropics to freeze over. Bad!

Our old pal and original Claw foe Jerry Morris is of course not going to take this, particularly after his previously-unmentioned younger brother Tad is lost at sea in the Claw's oceanic chaos. He combines one of his signature astonishing super-science inventions - in this case a special bulb that emits light rays that instantly freeze water - with some cars stored in the hold of the ship he is on to create vehicles that are able to fabricate a sheet of ice to drive on across even the deepest water. And since the ice goes all the way to the bottom, these vehicles are able to neutralize the Claw's maelstrom by creating a series of concentric ice walls around it.

There ensues what is actually a pretty neat battle between ice-road cars and the submarine tank/train, with the cars attempting to hem in the train with walls while the train fires its artillery cannons upward - I would enjoy playing a video game about this! The Claw is ultimately killed in an explosion when the munitions on his train explode... OR IS HE?

He is not! And despite the assertion at the end of the previous story, Jerry Morris seems to have foregone taking the Claw's body back to the US for dissection, perhaps because it was not technically a legal thing to do. Whatever the circumstances, the body ends up falling into the hands of a group of "devil worshippers" somewhere in Asia, but whether the Claw was the devil in question or not is hard to say (though in leaping back to life just as his body was consigned to the funeral pyre he certainly must have inspired some supernatural awe).

Also, for this story alone, the Claw is referred to as the Green Claw and his claws are indeed coloured green for the occasion.

The (Green) Claw's opponent in this case is Major Carl Tarrant, who is either a soldier of fortune or a member of the local colonial police, but either way he simply must investigate the possibility of the Claw's return. Tarrant manages to avoid the Claw's cultists but is tracked down by the villain himself with some high-tech devices, then shrunk via magic and stuck in a metal box to gruesomely expire when the shrink spell wears off.

The Claw then reveals his latest plan to take over the world: a kick-ass robot army! No notes, 10/10, a classic for a reason, just look at those cool robots.

Tarrant of course has to spoil everything by getting out of the box before he gets squished. He destroys the robots by taking advantage of the Claw's metal-destroying anti-bullet force field and then does one better by bombing the entire fortress/city to smithereens. But though the Claw is thwarted, HE YET LIVES. What horrors are we in store for in 1941?

(just had to feature this cover from Silver Streak Comics 006, which I spent an inordinate amount of time being creeped out by - those hands! - as replicated in Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Super Villains)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 539: THE CLAW

(Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)

The Claw is a character we will be returning to - he's one of the most prominent Golden Age super-villains, after all - but this entry is concerned only with his first appearance in accordance with my new policy of approaching things as they come. And while the Claw who eventually battles super-heroes like the Ghost and Daredevil and massacres thousands in an attempt at world domination is a size-changing monster-man this first version reads more like an elaborate hoax.

As the story opens, "chemist-adventurer" Jerry Morris and "America's only female ambassador" Eloise Pearsall dock at the Pacific island of Ricca on their way to China with a shipload of gold to aid in the war with Japan. One hitch: Ricca is home to the Claw, a giant who holds the whole island in the grip of fear and incidentally also runs the submarine pirate operation that is looting ships in the region.

The Claw maintains his grip on the island using his own fearsome looming presence, plus a "maddening hum" that also influences Eloise Pearsall to jump overboard and make her way to the castle because the Claw is also a creep who wants a "queen" and doesn't care if he has to do a little mind control to get it.

Jerry Morris of course goes after his travel companion and it's a good thing that he's a chemist-adventurer because he manages to whip up a useful serum in his stateroom/ laboratory, a radium-based solution that renders one immune to "any mental or physical attack". Jerry infiltrates the Claw's organization by feigning interest in signing up and discovers that the Claw ensures loyalty in his henchmen by giving them addictively pleasant dreams (and also punishes them with nightmares, natch). Eloise is in the first stages of the addiction treatment but lucky for her the radium serum covers that too and one shot later she is free.

Thanks to his complete immunity to harm, Jerry goes on to foil a submarine raid on the gold shipment and returns with a load of sailors all hopped up on serum. They rout the Claw's men only to find the villain's throne empty and abandoned.

(due to a flamethrower attack by the Claw's defenders there is also an unusual amount of male nudity thanks to the invulnerable men not thinking to wear invulnerable clothing)

Like I said, if I didn't know that the next issue would feature the Claw walking around and demonstrating his power to grow to colossal sizes I would assume that he was a fake, engineered to keep the island people under the thumb of some schemer like the Purple Monster - the enthroned Claw actually a robotic shell, the towering Claw some sort of projection or inflatable. The mind control? Sonics and drugs. After all, why would such an enormous man flee from a handful of nudists, even if they are invulnerable?

UPDATE 1940