MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 771: CAPTAIN DAVY JONES JUNIOR

(Super Comics 027, 1940)

A tough-talking femme fatale pirate captain is a pretty good foil for super magic jungle guy Magic Morro - he might be able to walk through fire and juggle three grown men like rubber balls but one thing that he definitely can't do is hit a lady, not even a pirate lady.

And speaking of her being a lady, that sure is an interesting name for a 1940s lady pirate, I wonder where she got it? My initial thought was that it was just a cheeky reference to the sea spirit with the famous locker, but then one of Jones' grizzled old pirate crew members mentions sailing with her father, which introduces the possibility that it is her literal name and that her dad performed a rare cross-gender junioring. Fun!

In addition to having a dynamite name, Captain Davy Jones Junior just generally rules. She and Morro's crew come into conflict over a treasure map that has been split into thirds and that they each have part of. They agree that whoever finds the third piece will get the whole treasure, at which point Jones begins trying to double cross Our Heroes: trying to steal their portion of the map, trying to seduce Magic Morro over to her side, preparing to steal the treasure anyway after Morro finds it, etc. Ultimately the question of just who is going to get the treasure is decided by a third party, a crazed hermit who blows up the island rather than let the others get their filthy hands on his precious gold. We last seen Captain Davy Jones Junior as she is stranded, presumed dead, on the smouldering wreckage of what was once a tropical paradise, but fret not! A little bird (in the form of me reading ahead) has informed me that she returns in 1941!

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 045

Ah the super-hero.

Ace Buckley: 

Ace Buckley is a time traveller, a subgenre of comic book hero mostly notable for the fact that they have no one to blame for their troubles but themselves. Like most of his peers, Buckley (along with his intriguingly-named companion Toni Stark, whose role in the stories is to get captured and then swan around in minimal clothing while waiting for Buckley to rescue her) flings himself willy-nilly into the hotspots of human history and then murders his way free with barely a though to such things as "causality" or "the grandfather paradox" or "the integrity of the timestream". (Startling Comics 003, 1940)

Magic Morro: 

Some time around 1922, young Jack Morrow and his father are shipwrecked on an uncharted Atlantic island. Proclaimed to be the next prophesied leader of local inhabitants the Utangos, Jack is raised to be a superhuman white jungle guy in the classic Tarzan style, only with all kinds of magical knowledge imparted to him by the former ruler, Tanta Talu. As Magic Morro, he is super strong, immune to fire, possibly bulletproof, can turn himself invisible and move objects with his mind, and those are just the abilities that he demonstrated in his first year worth of adventures!

(Bonus Parenthetical: despite having a fully magical ruler who can do prophecy and summon lightning and stuff, the Utangos also have a standard issue treacherous witch doctor, who is named Mango! What's with all the evil Mangos?) (Super Comics 021, 1940)

Vulcan: 

Vulcan, the Volcanic Man is the descendant of the Roman god of the same name and shares with him a broad dominion over fire, if not an inclination toward metalworking. He generates heat, can pick up and manipulate flame, is immune to heat and flame and also the forces involved in being blasted out of a volcano in the South Pacific and landing in the United States, is bulletproof in the sense that bullets melt before they can injure him, etc. He also has a radical fire-themed haircut.

Like a lot of fire-based super-heroes, Vulcan ends up fighting a lot of hapless arsonists who waste all of their best fire-based deathtraps of a guy who can't shut up about how he used to live in a volcano. (Super Mystery Comics v1 001)

Magno:

Control over magnetism is one of the classic comic book powers and Magno here (not our first Magno and certainly not our last) has the bargain basement version of it: he can pull things toward himself or pull himself toward things, a version of flight that requires enough admin work on the part of the artist that it is eventually rounded up to his just being able to fly outright. He also eventually gets a magnetic anti-bullet force field for a similar reason, I reckon: it's no fun having to do the admin of Magno disarming every crook in every room he enters individually.

Also unfortunately falling by the wayside over time is Magno's power to project his face onto solid objects to vex and annoy crooks and cops alike. Was this meant to be an aspect of his magnetic abilities somehow or just a cool thing he could do? It is never specified.

Finally, I must note that the somewhat abstract design on Magno's chest is a representation of a bar magnet, in one of its few victories over the horseshoe magnet on the battlefields of graphic design. (Super-Mystery Comics v1 001, 1940)