CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 013

If I see a wound, I catalogue it.

Camilla, Queen of the Lost Empire:

Shot in the back with an arrow. (Jungle Comics 019, 1941)

Captain Flag:

Nearly dies of the Black Hand's horrible hand disease. (Blue Ribbon Comics 016, 1941)

the Cat-Man:

Stabbed in the chest, to death (he gets better). (Crash Comics Adventures 004, 1940)

Killed by a blood-freezing ray. He gets better again. (Crash Comics Adventures 005, 1940)

Dynamo:

Dynamo gets his skull creased by a bullet in the classic fashion. (Science Comics 005, 1940)

the Green Mask:

Michael Shelby is shot in the chest, prompting pal Professor Lascomb to stick him in the machine that turns him into the Green Mask. (Green Mask v1 001 1940)

Domino the Miracle Boy:

Later in the same issue, the boy known only as Don gets seriously exploded and must also be placed in the machine. (Green Mask v1 001, 1940)

Kaänga: 

Not even being an off-brand Tarzan can save you from being shot in the left shoulder,, as Kaänga learns here. (Jungle Comics 010, 1940)

the Mask:

District Attorney Colby is blinded by acid as part of his journey to becoming the Mask. (Exciting Comics 001, 1940)

Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle:

Tabu is shot in the right shoulder by this jerk. (Jungle Comics 019, 1941)

Just one issue later, Tabu is speared in the right arm by a different jerk. (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 045

It's hard out there for the little guys.

Unnamed Spy Chief:

I don't know if I've ever seen a comic book villain with such a distinctive look and clear devotion to a visual theme but absolutely nothing else. Her "decadent Egyptian Queen" bit doesn't spill into her plans, it doesn't inform how her minions dress... she doesn't even have a name. Baffling! 

On top of everything else, her plans are foiled and she is captured by the oafish Navy man Spark Stevens.(Green Mask v1 004, 1941)

John Dale:

When John Dale decides to murder his elderly cousin Ludwig in order to speed up the inheritance process, he disguises himself by grabbing this lizard-goblin mask that seems to be part of the decor, and then again when he decides that further murders will help him to cover up the first one. Thankfully for intrepid reporter Dell and her companion, the Night Bird is there to prevent this second (and third) murder.

Dale's plan is flimsy at best, and includes multiple key factors that would fall apart under the lightest of scrutiny (no autopsy because he, the main beneficiary with power of attorney, said that they didn't need it, fake will, etc). The best of these is this secret room setup, where the open window in the library is covered in an enlarged photo of the view from the secret room in order to obfuscate its presence to those in the library. Would having the will reading in a room other than the library make it even easier to conceal the secret? Certainly, but it wouldn't be as clever. (Green Mask v1 007, 1941)

the Corpse:

In Green Mask v1 007, the titular Green Masks solves the murder of a man named Brown over an engraved box that turns out to contain a map to lost pirate treasure. The murderer, a con artist and fake medium called Swami Zodia, is captured, and Michael "the Green Mask" Shelby and his pals take possession of the map in what I would call morally questionable circumstances. Hope Mr Brown didn't have any heirs!

The voyage to the treasure-bearing island is fraught with death and danger courtesy of a treacherous ship's captain and his ally the Corpse, supposedly the walking cadaver of the pirate who drew the map in the first place. This is of course hogwash, and despite putting in a surprisingly strong showing against the Green Mask and Domino the Corpse is eventually unmasked to reveal that he is... Swami Zodia again! Yes, having committed murder for it, Zodia isn't yet ready to give up on the treasure and has pulled out the comic book con artist's ultimate weapon: the fake ghost. Alas, it does not work. (Green Mask v1 008, 1941)

Simia:

Simia is, simply put, an evil ape (species up for debate. Chimpanzee? Gorilla?). He was found as an orphaned baby and raised by a man named Jim Keane - does his evil nature stem from being brought up in a household where using utensils was prioritized and acting like an ape meant that you get locked up in a cage, seemingly indefinitely? Possibly.

Simia is set free by some evil men who are after Keane, and immediately organizes an ape gang to terrorize the local jungle, which includes kidnapping Kaänga's mate Ann (he also inadvertently helps his foster father by killing his enemies).

Kaänga is not a guy whose home life you want to mess with, as Simia learns just before getting his head bashed in on a boulder. (Jungle Comics 014, 1941)

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 026

If we criminalize mad science then only criminal scientists will be mad.

Mauser:

Mauser is the second of two foes battled by two-fisted chemist Guy Gorham and also the second rogue biologist. Was this comic setting up some sort of biologist/chemist beef that never got a chance to pay off? Mauser's plans are never really spelled out, but he's got a colony of vampire bats that he seems to be training to attack human targets, which isn't great but which spells his undoing when he steals Gorham's food concentrate formula for use as vampire feed - presumably for when human blood is in short supply. 

A couple of other things about Mauser: he has a pretty decent uniform which he shares with his underlings, and despite his name (and the name of his henchman Herr Klotz) he does not appear to be a fascist. (Great Comics 002, 1941)

Dr Berchtoldt:

All Dr Berchtoldt wants to do is peacefully develop his robot army (and then take over the world). They won't let him do it on land, so he moves under the sea, where he still gets hassled by the Man, in the form of Navy Jones. And all he did was kidnap Princess Coral and threaten to marry her against her will: is that any justification for hounding a man from his undersea fortress and then blowing up him and his super submarine alike? (Green Mask v1 006, 1941)

de Moire:

De Moire and his pal the Skipper have come to the part of Africa that Kaänga hangs out in to do unethical human experiments on what they assume are expendable people. After transforming one guy into a huge green killing machine, de Moire becomes obsessed with doing the same to Kaänga to make an even more beefy creature. This obsession leads him to neglect his original creation, and it wanders off and gets a look at itself in a pool of water and realizes that it is now ugly, which in turn leads it to slay de Moire. The Skipper is likewise killed, leaving Kaänga to battle the monster to the death. (Jungle Comics 013, 1941)

Zalov Varno:

Zalov Varno has been sending teams of men out to attack the oil fields of Debra-Tabuk, prompting Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle to pay him a visit and see just what his deal is. Though he captures Tabu with surprising ease given the latter's vast magical power, Varno never actually explains just what he wants the oil for, which is in my opinion one of the greatest of villainous sins. I don't even feel bad for him when he gets killed with his own Devitalizer Beam.

The most interesting thing about Varno is what exactly is going on with his right eye. As far as I can tell, he wears some sort of semi-spherical black monocle, but just why he might care to do so is left as an exercise for the reader. (Jungle Comics 013, 1941)

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 042

I hope you like aliens, because I just can't stop finding new ones. 

Kobolians:

The Kobolians are from the underwater city of Kobol in the year 10 000 CE, and while we don't learn too much about how their society functions we can intuit a certain amount of civic pride, given that their leader is named Lobok - did he rise to power on the strength of that name? Did he adopt it? Is the city named after him? Whichever it is, Lobok commands enough loyalty that the Kobolians go along with him when he decides to acquire a human wife via extortion. And not just any human either, but the daughter of Biran, leader of the Army of New America!

Though the Kobolians live in an underwater city, it is not flooded, indicating that they are amphibious rather than fully water-breathing. They might even be that most rare of things: the underwater species that is fully air-breathing!

Anyway, Sub Saunders blows the place up after rescuing Ms Nirab. (Fantastic Comics 014, 1941)

Magyans:

Space adventurer Iron Munro (born on Jupiter in the 22nd Century and thus very physically mighty. If his name seems familiar it's because it was swiped by Roy Thomas and used as the name of the post-Crisis Superman replacement) and his companions, after being blasted into a "new universe" (contextually, a new solar system) by a rogue asteroid, find themselves in the middle of a conflict between two groups called the Magyans and the Tefflans. 

As explained by the Magyan leader, the roots of this conflict stem from a war between their ancestors and the underground-dwelling Tefflans on another planet, tens of thousands of years earlier, a conflict that resulted in the destruction of their mutual home continent as the remnants of both populations fled into outer space. Iron Munro takes an immediate wild swing and identifies this continent as Mu (why no Atlantis? Is Iron Munro a hipster?). 

If the Magyans are the lost inhabitants of Mu, then what does that make the Tefflans? Why, they are weird evil goat-men, and thus the basis for all of humanity's legends about demons and devils!

Munro and his pals side with the humans, of course, and over the next six issues there is an escalating back-and-forth war between the Magyans and the more technologically-advanced Tefflans that culminates in a devastating final attack in which the Magyans launch their twin moons Ma-Ran and Ma-Kanee at the Tefflan planet of Teff-El. It's a horrifying way to end a war! (Shadow Comics v1 002, 1940)

Man-Apes:

These Man-Apes serve megacreep Dr Wratt as muscle. They hold the particular distinction of being the least apelike ape-men that I have ever seen. (Jungle Comics 002, 1940)

CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 007

The right shoulder: unsung victim of the comics pages. 

Captain Battle: 

Captain Battle gets a fashionable bullet-creased skull on the docks of San Francisco. (Captain Battle Comics 001, 1941) 

the Cloak:

Being shot in the left shoulder is the inciting incident that leads Jeff Cardiff to adopt the Cloak identity in the first place. (Big Shot Comics 015, 1941)

the Face:

Shot in the right shoulder (Big Shot Comics 011, 1941)

Shot in the right shoulder again. (Big Shot Comics 018, 1941)

Shot in the left shoulder, which must have come as a relief. (Big Shot Comics 019, 1941)

the Fox:

Shot in the right shoulder. (Blue Ribbon Comics 012, 1941)

Kaänga: 

Shot in the right shoulder. (Jungle Comics 003, 1940)

Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians:

Shot in the right arm. (Big Shot Comics 012, 1941)

In what is probably the most sever non-fatal injury we have seen thus far, Marvelo takes an ape-powered throwing knife to the chest and is just barely alive for the remainder of the comic. (Big Shot Comics 016, 1941)

Skyman:

Skyman is shot in the ever-popular right shoulder, and no wonder: it's a big ol' target. (Big Shot Comics 002, 1940)