DIVINE ROUND-UP 008

Some more dubious theology for you. 

the Stone Tablet:

The pompous jackasses at the British Archaeological Club really get Mr Mystic's goat when they treat the theories of his friend Doctor Gadasky like trash, so he does the only sensible thing and uses his magic to travel back to 1 000 000 CE to see for himself. Gadasky claims that Cro-Magnons had a religion based around the worship of a stone tablet, and wouldn't you know it, he's right!

Mr Mystic's jaunt through time is about as well-considered as those things normally are, and he ends up causing the deaths of two Cro-Magnons, including the Stone Tablet's keeper, plus the loss of the Tablet itself in a quicksand pit, which is a boon for Gadasky, as he is able to dig it up in the present and prove his theories. Take that, establishment jerks!

Speaking of those theories, just where did they come from? Is the fact that Gada, the Stone Tablet's guardian, is a dead ringer for Gadasky and that Gadasky carries an echo of the wound that killed Gada (reptile-bird beak to the skull) on his flesh an indication that the Tablet posesses some measure of actual power? Could be!

God style: idol (the Spirit Section, 8 December, 1940)

Oona, the Angry God: 

Oona is the Angry God, a generically sinister Asian deity who requires the sacrifice of a good English girl now and then. Inspector Dayton is of course having none of that, particularly as the sacrifice happens to be his love interest Wini. Oona worship in England is ended at the barrel of a gun.

God style: idol (Jumbo Comics 022, 1940) 

Orga: 

In a near-deserted lost city of gold, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and her paramour Bob Reynolds come across an unnamed mad king and his court of trained gorillas. The King has been sacrificing travellers (and implicitly his own people, leading to the city's depleted population) to his gods. I can only assume that the fantastic idol behind the king's throne is a representation of Orga, the only god mentioned by name. 

God style: idol (Jumbo Comics 009, 1939) 

Orta the Sun-God: 

Captured and sentenced to death by a Peruvian tribe, Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians pulls a variant on the old "we are divine beings, you primitives" gag by transforming his companion into a fireball. Is Orta the Sun-God something that Marvelo makes up on the spot or is he exploiting these (admittedly inhospitable) people's extant beliefs? We shall never know.

God style: fake (Big-Shot Comics 014, 1941) 

DIVINE ROUND-UP 006

More gods means more options. 

Katagwah, the Rain God: 

An unseen Native American rain god whose most fanatical adherent is attempting to perform a human sacrifice to bring rain to the Mojave Desert when Mr Mystic steps in to help the intended victim's brother put a stop to the ceremony. I felt certain that the story would end with a rainstorm brought on by Mystic chucking the aggressor into the sacrificial canyon, but no such luck.

God style: invoked. (The Spirit Section, 18 August, 1940) 

the Sacred Lion:

Real-life big game trapper Clyde Beatty heads into the African jungle to prevent evil men from stealing the Sacred Lion God from the Ugandi Tribe who worship him. Not because it's wrong to swan into someone else's temple and steal their god, mind you, but rather because Beatty wants the Sacred Lion for his own circus.

God style: animist (Crackajack Funnies 018, 1939) 

the Living Tribe God: 

Clyde Beatty is back again, in the Amazon jungle this time, and thanks to the machinations of his rival Bart Slay he almost gets eaten by/sacrificed to the Living Tribe God, an enormous tarantula. Strangely, even after clearing things up and avoiding death, Beatty doesn't bother stealing this god to take home.

God style: animist (Crackajack Funnies 037, 1941)

Naga Goona: 

Naga Goona, God of the Silvery Moon, is worshipped by the near-human Troglodytes of Matto Grosso. On the one hand, this is just another idol that a white explorer has to be saved from being sacrificed to, but on the other hand... just look at that face! Naga Goona might just be the most charmingly goofy-looking god on record, especially after his idol is animated by Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians and starts walking around and telling people off. 

God style: idol (Big Shot Comics 010, 1941) 

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 010

The thing is that they have some but not all of the attributes of a super-villain.

A sea-raider who uses a stolen acid gun to build a psychically-controlled army of skeleton men? If only he had a name or had a bit more swagger! Alas for him the Shark puts him down before he could do enough to elevate himself out of this gathering of also-rans. (Amazing-Man Comics 021, 1941)

This gang of guys dressed as mailmen don't give the Blue Beetle much trouble even when wielding compressed air guns that fire explosive pellets. I admire the visual, though. (Big 3 005, 1941)

The Scooby-Doo style "fake haunting to drive people away from treasure/natural resource/property" is of course super-villain adjacent, but there are so many instances of in comics that I tend to disregard them as generic criminality. This unnamed fellow, however... not only was he attempting to scare off a homeowner so that he could look for pirate treasure in her basement but he went and "I would have gotten away with it..." -ed at that meddling Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians. (Big Shot Comics 009, 1941)

Just some nameless goons that take part in an usurpation attempt against Blue Bolt villain the Green Sorceress but they're Jack Kirby goons so they look fantastic. (Blue Bolt v1 004, 1940)

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 008

Mad or criminal, it's the science that matters.

This fellow is known only as "the hypnotist" and has an unspecified plan to do... something that involves taking control of flights of Army bombers and having them blow up targets of his choosing. If the details seem thin on the ground it's because this fellow speaks precisely three words (see above) before being captured by Jeff Cardiff, Spy-Chief and so the only knowledge we have about his plans is that which can be extrapolated from his actions.

Bonus details: 1. he hypnotizes people with his large purple eyes 2. his plan requires a video hookup to the planes he is controlling, which I personally did not know was standard or even possible in 1940. (Big Shot Comics 008, 1940)

De Carva here developed an earthquake causing ray and almost managed to conquer the US with it but made the classic mistake of trusting in his deathtraps to finish off Skyman without bothering to confirm if he was, in fact, dead. This is known as hubris, kids. (Big Shot Comics 015, 1941)

Professor Scorp here is a mad Egyptologist! That's right, folks, we've got a mad social science case on our hands! Scorp suffered some sort of breakdown and his family made the unfortunate and retrograde decision to confine him on their island estate rather than, say, seek treatment for him. Eventually, two unscrupulous servants helped him escape as part of a plan to steal and resurrect the mummy of evil pharaoh Tut-Akum-Aut so as to learn the location of his legendary lost treasure. The reanimated mummy above is sadly merely an illusion conjured by Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians. But on a happy note, Professtor Scorp is taken somewhere for proper treatment at the end of the story! (Big Shot Comics 015, 1941)

This is Humpy Hudson, who has a moderately foolproof scheme (develop a substance that explodes the air around it but is itself unharmed and make it an innocuous shape, thus giving yourself a hard-to-spot, untraceable bomb, then bomb utilities until you can extort money out of them) hampered by some poor planning (he only has one reusable bomb and he made it in the shape of an onyx statuette). Humpy spends most of the issue trying to get his bomb back after it gets picked up by a youngster and sold at a pawnshop, then gets captured by Skyman. (Big Shot Comics 019, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 497: RAMUN THE EVIL ONE

(Big Shot Comics 016, 1941)

Ramun the Evil One aka Ramun the Great is a hypnotist/ stage magician with a simple if short-sighted plan: 1) open a club in New York 2) have it become popular with the wealthy social set 3) hypnotize rich guys 4) profit

(aside: just look at that charming picture of a man who thinks he's an ape! The little dance!)

The short-sighted part goes hand-in-hand with the profit, as once Ramun has induced his victims to hand over all of their fungible wealth he orders them to drive into the Hudson River and drown themselves, and he's done this more than a dozen times over the course of two weeks. This is... not smart. "Hey, every victim went to the Egyptian Gardens and got hypnotized just before withdrawing all their monies from the bank and disappearing" is a thought that even the most dull-witted police officer will eventually have, to say nothing of Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians.

Ramun does find an unorthodox counter to the common super-villain problem of invisible magic-men creeping around in their lairs: train an ape to deal with it. And he comes as close as anyone to killing Marvelo, so good job Ramun!

Ramun blows himself up at the end of the story but manages to recover enough for he and Edpo the ape to return in Big Shot Comics 019, wherein they have switched their focus from larceny to espionage. This time, Ramun seems to have some actual, non-hypnosis-based magic to call on, but it's not quite enough.

Ramun, Edpo and their unnamed employer end up simultaneously perforated and drowned at the climax of the story, and while this is exactly the kind of off-panel "nobody could survive that" death that Ramun came back from the first time he was doomed by a far more insidious foe than mere bullets: popularity. Big Shot Comics 020 was Marvelo's final outing and so Ramun would never get his chance to return.

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 007

The mad scientists are usually up to something criminal, but the criminal scientists are often completely rational.

Like a fair few of the scientists I speak of here, Dr Hayles here talks a big game but gets caught in the planning stages before he has the chance to prove to the world that he was right all along. In Hayles' case it was kidnapping a bunch of boys that got him in trouble and operating on young boys' brains in order to make them geniuses that he never got to prove before he was corralled by Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians. (Big Shot Comics 002, 1940)

This here Count Alexis fellow is an agent of an unspecified foreign power who employs his extremely cool fleet of giant flying magnifying glasses in an attempt to destroy Boston. This, in turn, will cow the States into serving said unnamed country. It's a bit of a flimsy plan, especially once you see Skyman beat the tar out of the mere two men operating one of the lenses and using that lens to melt the other four three (almost forgot that he captures two of them, as well as Count Alexis himself) 

Count Alexis also lives in Vermont and is 100% the only villain on this blog as it currently stands to do so. Congratulations, Vermont! You made it! (Big Shot Comics 007, 1940)

This unnamed scientist developed a steerable electrically-charged tornado called a "Force-Top" and attempted to extort the US into buying it but got pinched by Jeff Cardiff, Spy-Chief basically as soon as he put his plan into motion. (Big Shot Comics 007, 1940)

As far as ways to extort the US (in this case into acclaiming Our Villain here as dictator), freezing entire cities solid isn't a bad way to go, and Norgo goes for some big targets after his initial test freeze of a Florida beach: Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, St Louis and Washington DC. He might have gotten in with a chance if it hadn't been for Skyman completely owning his plan and unfreezing all the cities in about half an hour - though the fact that he does so by exploding balls of "atomic power" over each city is at least a bit concerning. (Big Shot Comics 008, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 005

All Columbia Comic Corporation edition!

Skyman: 

Skyman (properly the Skyman but it just doesn't scan for me) is a pilot hero, normally a ho-hum sort of character for me. But between his sci-fi super plane (the Wing), his blood-freezing stun ray (the Stasimatic) and his cool on-the-edge-of-being-too-busy costume there's just enough super-hero peanut butter mixed in with the pilot chocolate to make it appealing (bonus running list of Skyman's super science: atomic explosives, invisible glass phonograph, disitegrator ray, explosives-detonating ray and a ray that fuses gun barrels shut)

After a few issues we learn that the Skyman is actually Allan Turner, wealthy good-for-nothing playboy who lost his parents to a plane crash when he was a child. If the Bruce Wayne parallel was 1:1 he would have grown up to become a noted slayer of planes, but that's a villain's origin. Instead, Allan Turner dresses up as a plane to fight criminals. It doesn't make quite as much narrative sense as Batman does but it's probably more fun to read than the other way around.

Early Skyman also might just hold the record for the most overinflated torso in comics outside of parody characters. He gets a bit more proportional eventually but for a while there you're concerned for his ability to live a normal life.

the Face:

The Face, like a lot of early comics heroes, draws a lot of elements from the pulps: a tuxedo-clad hero drives around in a souped up roadster fighting crime with his fists and an automatic - a pretty regular early super-guy. Even his secret identity of Tony Trent, radio station owner/ radio announcer is in the pulp-adjacent character wheelhouse.

It was very exciting to me when I realized that the Face's face is frequently referred to as a rubberoid mask, my favourite term for the kind of masks that only exist in comic books - perfectly realistic and naturalistic but also very easy to don and doff. This particular mask was made specially for Tony Trent by someone whose other major characteristic is being dead, which is apparently a combination that makes Trent feel quite jolly.

Weirdly, in Big Shot Comics 006, the Face has a new, slightly less grotesque mask. No word on where he got this one but he goes back to the original pretty quickly.

Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians:

Created by Fred Guardineer, who also created Zatara over at DC Comics, Marvelo is... extremely similar to Zatara. Aside from their different approaches to dressing like a stage magician, I'd say that there are two slight differences between the characters: 

1. Rather than speaking backward to cast spells, Marvelo shouts "Kalora!" as an all-purpose magic word.

2. Marvelo's manservant Zee is just a hair more racist than Zatara's manservant Tong. It's pretty close but I reckon Zee takes it.

Big Shot Comics 017 reveals that Marvelo is the son of the ruler of the generically foreign South Pacific island of Brahama (hell on autocorrect). This doesn't seem to have anything to do with him being a magic man but it's nice to know. (Big Shot Comics 001, 1940)

the Cloak:

Jeff Cardiff, Spy Chief was a feature in Big Shot Comics from issue 1 (well, it was Jeff Cardiff, Spy-Master for the first issue or two but the point stands) with all kinds of foiled plots and plans and spies of both the vaguely fascist and vaguely communist varieties. In Issue 15, however, the spies adopt the reasonable policy of attempting to shoot on sight the man who has foiled so many of their plans and a wounded Jeff Cardiff goes to recuperate at his brother's house.

Long story short, Jed Cardiff is a coal magnate with a collection of "adventure curios", including the namesake cloak of Revolutionary War-era costumed spy the Cloak and it being 1941 and a comic book, Jeff immediately adopts the Cloak identity as his own. It's a fairly basic costumed hero shtick but I appreciate the effort and it's always nice to see a more elaborate cape and cowl getup now and then. (Big Shot Comics 015, 1941)

The original Cloak eventually shows up in a flashback and it turns out that his impact on the history of the American Revolution is only slightly less impactful than Superboy's in the 1949 story in which he goes back in time and takes part in about half the major events of the war. I must say that I do love a retcon of a historical event. (Big Shot Comics 021, 1942)

NOTES - MARCH 2024

The Foot Test For Guns:

I sincerely can't believe we've found another person trying the Foot Test For Guns, the worst of all ways to see if a gun is working. (Big Shot Comics 004, 1940)

Kids Playing Super-Heroes:

Jibby Jones is a pretty weak sauce comic strip (seen here in comic book reprint, natch) but dang if I'm not intrigued by this Moon Man character. (Big Shot Comics 005, 1940)

Honours:

Jeff Cardiff, Spy-Chief saves Washington DC from being exploded by unspecified foreigners and is rewarded with the very official-sounding honour of "Greatest Espionage Achievement of the Year" by FDR himself! And is that J Edgar Hoover in the background? Probably! (Big Shot Comics 006, 1940)

Who is Lazy Ray?:

I've been reading Big Shot Comics from the Columbia Comic Corporation for the last week or so and I believe that I've spotted an in-joke. But who is the "Lazy Ray" referenced in the two panels? Both Spy-Chief (above) and the Face (below) are Mart Bailey joints, so it could be a personal joke of his or it could be a joke among the contributors of this magazine as a whole (like the seeming industry-wide joke of putting Gil Fox's name in as a reference at every opportunity - wish I'd though to screenshot those as I came across them). The only Ray associated with Big Shot that I can find is Ray McGill, who seems to have mainly done gag panels. Who can say but I shall be watching out for Lazy Ray going forward.

MORE LAZY RAY SIGHTINGS:

"the Face" (Big Shot Comics 011, 1941)

"the Face" (Big Shot 018, 1941)

Nova Scotia:

It's not like it matters to the plot but the action of this Marvelo story takes place largely on a beach on Cape Breton. (Big Shot Comics 013, 1941)

the Fate of Mu:

A fairly straightforward account of a Pacific continent sinking, with the fun added detail that it's because of Earth's lost second moon exploding. It's never actually called Mu and in fact it's Atlantis that gets namechecked, but a close reading of the relevant text suggests that the two continents merely sank at the same time, so Atlantis was also presumably moonstruck.

Really fond of these little bug-eyed guys, by the way. (Big Shot Comics 014, 1941)

Weed Propaganda:

Santy Claus:

To the extent that the Columbia Comic Corporation has a shared universe, Santa Clause is confirmed real in it. (Big Shot Comics 020, 1941)

Drawn Without Reference:

(Blackstone Super-Magic 001, 1941)