REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 021

They just love putting real folks and versions of real folks in comics and I just love finding them and putting them on my blog. 

Adolf Hitler:

An in-all-but-name version of Hitler gets mad at Citizen Smith for foiling his plans and plots. (Captain Fearless Comics 002, 1941)

Gang boss and Deacon foe Duke Adare's little toothbrush mustache is what initially drew my attention, even though that wasn't nearly as glaring a signpost of a character being a Hitler stand-in in the 1940s. As the story wore on it became clear that my instincts were correct, as Adare used overwhelming military force to overwhelm the lawmen of Midland City and loot its treasury. And then of course you get to the end of the story, where they're referring to him as a "would-be Crime Fuehrer". (Cat-Man Comics 005, 1941)

Minor appearances: 

Captain Fearless Comics 001, 1941 

Al Capone: 

Lou Pacone, gang boss and murderer of the Secret Circle's father, is yet another example of Al Capone's name being remixed to give someone a gangstery sounding moniker. (Choice Comics 001, 1941)

Axis & Allied Figures: 

"America's Air Army" was an extremely patriotic feature that was essentially US Army Air Force fan fiction about what would happen if and when the United States entered WWII, published just before they did. It's the tale of the US forces (with a little help from the Brits) curb stomping the Axis for about half an hour before we get this little scene, with Hitler surrendering while Goering, Walther von Brauchitch (recently relieved of duty when this comic was published), Cordell Hull (I think) and Churchill observe. (Air Fighters v1 001, 1941) 

FDR: 

The President gets kidnapped by Dr Sivana! And Rescued by Captain Marvel! (Whiz Comics 014, 1941)

Minor Appearances: Captain Aero Comics 001, 1941

Lord Haw-Haw: 

In his final Golden Age adventure, the Arrow aka intelligence agent Ralph Payne heads into Germany to apprehend the traitorous broadcaster "Lord Hawford." (The Arrow 003, 1941) 

Manuel Prado Ugarteche: 

Lance O'Casey and his pal Dan'l Doom wash up on the shores of Peru and get mixed up in a scheme to overthrow the country by the wicked El Tigre. They foil him and restore power to the rightful president, Alfredo Blanco, who is extremely not Manuel Prado Ugarteche, the Peruvian president in our version of 1941. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

Rudolph Hess: 

"Deputy-Dictator Brinker" lands in a farmer's field near Washington in what is certainly a reference to Hess' flight to Scotland but is in fact revealed to be part of a plan to invade the US. The whole thing is nearly undone by the fact that the FBI doesn't even bother to check on this seeming defection and just tells the poor farmer to deal with it. (Captain Fearless Comics 002, 1941)

Sherlock Holmes:

Dr Miracle is on the trail of a mystery, and who better to help than the summoned spirit of Sherlock Holmes Herlock Sholmes? Per the conceit of the story I guess this means that Sholmes was a real living guy at some point. (Champ Comics 012, 1941)

Unknown Dancers: 

Yet again we have an example of "this seems like a reference to something but I can't find specifics," in this case a dance team known as Velox & Costanza. The concept of a duo performing cultural dances from exotic locales crops up now and then as entertainment in comics but I'm never sure if the references to them are general or specific, and brief fads in live entertainment are among the trickiest things to casually research on the internet - it's more of a "comb through several years' worth of newspapers" kind of thing. (Whiz Comics 023, 1941)

Walter Winchell: 

As an example of why I include the Unknown entries in these round-ups: I had Walter Chinwell here listed as "Unknown Reporter" for something like two weeks before I came across Walter Winchell's name in a list of 1940s radio announcers. And Winchell is someone I had already heard of! (Silver Streak Comics 008, 1941) 

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)

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 033

Just another buncha jerks.

John Elton: 

This fellow brings us right back to the roots of the Generic Costumed Villain Round-Up, being a businessman who puts on a mask to run a gang and kill off the other officers of his company so that he can buy up all their shares and make a fortune. Plus, his name is John Elton, which doesn't mean anything but is still a fun coincidence. Dan Dare gets 'im. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)

the War Lord:

Like the War Maniac before him, the War Lord is a generic and unseen stand-in for Adolf Hitler with a good enough villain name that I had to highlight it. A whole passel of his agents feature in the story in which Smasher Spy goes back to being Spy Smasher and get beaten up by Spy Smasher, Smasher Spy and Captain Marvel. 

It's not particularly germane to anything but this panel of Spy Smasher flying out a window into the arms of the War Lord's agents after almost being blown up looks very nice and I had nowhere else to use it. (Whiz Comics 018, 1941)

The War Lord returns to vex Spy Smasher in Whiz Comics 019, in a rare return appearance for a generic Axis dictator. In fact, he is also the power behind the fascist group the Blitzys and Ibis the Invincible foe Half-Man as well - he's one of the most prolific Hitler stand-ins of the Golden Age!

The War Lord finally shows up in person in Whiz Comics 024 and while he is clearly just a straight-up stand-in for Hitler his main character trait seems to be in expressing himself like a disappointed father. He sticks around just long enough to instill a deep sense of despair in the Half-Man, leaving him vulnerable to being turned to the side of good by a bit of kindness from Ibis the Invincible. Once again being a bad boss fails to pay off!

Puni, God of Fire: 

The above text box precedes the Lance O'Casey story in Whiz Comics 018 and let me tell you: none of that stuff happened in the prior issue. We are very much dropped in media res on the tropical Antarctic island populated by cannibals and also lost explorer Hiram T. Wallis - I don't know if this is some remnant of a never-published story or just an attempt to shake things up again (EDIT: it happens, in fact, in Whiz Comics 019. The two-part story was just published in the wrong order).

Lance and his ever-expanding supporting cast (including Hiram T. Wells, old-timey pirate Dan'l Doom and not one but two monkey sidekicks) are venturing into a volcano to get some gold that Wells had found there when they are confronted and menaced by the self-proclaimed Puni, God of Fire, who is in actuality Marino, a sailor shipwrecked at the same time as Wells and presumably driven insane by ten years of living in a volcanic cave. Puni/Marino never manages to get very close to killing the party but he does try in his way, and by gar can he belt out a villainous pronouncement.

Everything ends up okay, as Marino has the kind of insanity that can be cured via a solid smack to the jaw and a dunk in the ocean. 

This adventure also features a giant treasure-guarding parrot, just one of the many cool creatures that do their best to convince me to add the truly life-ending task of chronicling all comic book monsters to my already overloaded to-do pile. (Whiz Comics 018, 1941)

Herculo Svenson: 

This is Herculo Svenson, pirate, Doctor Voodoo antagonist for several issues and man in the running for best name in comics certainly for 1941 and possibly for all time. He kills a whole valley full of giants, kidnaps their regular-sized queen and makes off with magical McGuffin the Golden Flask before eventually getting killed by bigger villain Black Marco. (Whiz Comics 022, 1941)

DIVINE ROUND-UP 020

Human sacrifice is the order of the day with this bunch of deific bad-boys. 

Shem: 

Shem, the Sun God, is worshipped in the Land of Shem by the Shemmites, aka the Men of Shem. It's a very well-branded religion. 

The Shemmites capture and attempt to sacrifice Kalthar, king of the jungle, but fail to reckon with his tendency to grow to fifteen feet tall and be invulnerable to harm, and are ultimately driven from their lands. 

God Style: Invoked (Zip Comics 004, 1940) 

Marro: 

When the Three Aces set out into the Amazon jungle to investigate rumours of an ancient flying machine they end up discovering a lost colony of Atlantis for the second time in their careers - an astonishing hit rate (though their memories were wiped after leaving the first one and a language barrier probably prevented them from knowing about the Atlantis connection this time, if we're going to be scrupulously accurate). Upon arriving, they are immediately captured and prepared for sacrifice to the Atlanteans' god Marro. 

Luckily for the three aviators, Marro turns out to be the very ancient aircraft they seek, sealed against the ravages of time in a glass dome. They manage to convince the Atlanteans to not sacrifice them if they can make the god fly again as it did in their legends, and being the expert fliers that they are, the Aces pull it off without a hitch. 

God Style: Animist (Action Comics v1 043, 1941)

Moloch: 

The set up for this is a bit convoluted, but here goes: an anthropologist named Dr Chadwick is showing Zero, the Ghost Detective a weird skull that he dug up in Egypt one day when the ghost of the skull's former owner shows up to take it back, and makes off with Chadwick's daughter, to boot. Zero pursues the ghost back to Egypt and through a portal to Ancient Egypt, where he finds himself in a temple to Moloch and learns that the skull had been stuffed full of jewels sacred to the god. Zero manages to escape back to the 20th Century with the girl but wisely leaves the jewels behind.

There is of course a lot of business involving human sacrifice to Moloch via the white hot hands of his idol, and while Moloch himself only shows up in the form of the idol the question remains: just who is raising all these ghosts and powering this time portal?

God Style: Idol (Real?) (Feature Comics 041, 1941)

the "Monster-God": 

The Monster-God is not this fellow's name. We never learn what, in fact, it is, because the adventure he appears in is another boilerplate heroic-white-explorers-versus-evil-native-heathens adventure, handled with all of Fawcett Comics' trademark cultural sensitivity. I include him only for completions' sake and to point out that I like how gangly he is.

God Style: Idol (Whiz Comics 006, 1940)

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 028

Scoundrels! Mid-tier scoundrels! 

Simon Rudd loves games and gambling and taking chances, and somehow that has led him to a South Pacific island where he wears a full tuxedo and bosses around a local tribe all day. When ocean adventurer Lance O'Casey and his companions wash up on his shores, Rudd engages in a little Most Dangerous Game action with them, presumably out of sheer boredom. This being a Lance O'Casey story, his ultimate fate is to be socked in the nose. (Whiz Comics 010, 1940)

Ordinarily these round-ups have four characters in them, but I'm breaking tradition today and making it either two or seven, depending on how you look at it, because today we look at all of the crooks and ne'er-do-wells who have gotten their hands on Ibis the Invincible's Ibistick.

The Ibistick is first stolen by an unnamed thief as Ibis searches for Taia's mummy in a likewise-unnamed European city. His role in the story is mainly to provide an object lesson of just how the Ibistick works: anyone can use it to, for example, make so many gold coins that they start falling out the window and make you easier to track down, but just try to harm Ibis, the wand's true owner, and your magic will rebound back on you. In this case, the thief is turned to gold. (Whiz Comics 002, 1940)

Murder Malone is a pretty rotten character whom Ibis and Taia first encounter while investigating trouble at a town of orphan boys - the trouble turns out to be that Malone's gang has enslaved all of the boys and is forcing them to manufacture weapons. The experience leaves Malone with a desire to own the magic wand that played such a major role in his undoing, but once he gets ahold of it he makes the classic mistake and ends up turning himself into a toad. (Whiz Comics 005, 1940)

The very next issue features our old pal the Hobo-Millionaire getting all the power in the world and turning himself into ice with it.

 

In Whiz Comics 007, Ibis and Taia travel to Hollywood to see the stars, whereupon they fall in with unscrupulous movie producer Carl Brand, who initially offers to buy the Ibistick and then manages to steal it. He then of course tries to turn Ibis into a rabbit and is made one himself, but unlike the rest of those who have made the same mistake, Brand is given a second chance by Ibis and turned back.

He of course repays this mercy by kidnapping Taia in another bid to get his hands on the wand, only to ultimately be murdered by Piang the Terrible as part of his bid to acquire it.

Piang finally gets ahold of the Ibistick in Whiz Comics 010, only to immediately screw it up by attempting to remove "all magical powers" from Ibis, which of course rebounds on him, leaving him open to be "accidentally" tossed off of a cliff by the hero.

When Piang is stripped of all magical power, the Ibistick flies out of his hand and ends up in a nearby river. From there, it finds its way into the hands of an escaped convict with the unlikely name of Grom Deeters, who weirdly is the only alternate wielder of the Ibistick to almost get away with it, thanks to his initial impulse to merely imprison Ibis and Taia upon meeting them, rather than devising some gruesome magical death for them.

Deeters makes his way to Egypt, where he is undone by his own impulse to be a horny creep: since Taia was the last woman he saw, he summons her to him to try and put the moves on her, then inadvertently animates the Sphinx, then has to summon Ibis in order to calm it down (this incidentally means that in  the Fawcett universe the Sphinx is located a few hundred feet away from where it would normally be found).

The longer that Deeters has the wand, the longer it becomes clear that his initial successes were the merest flukes, as after attempting to bribe Ibis into convincing his wife to "go for" him he commands Taia to stab Ibis to death, only to of course be the one to taste her blade. 

That's all of the Ibistick thieves of 1940 - stay tuned for more in 1941.