MEDIA IN COMICS 010

Is the media in comics any good, do you think? Do super-heroes get to watch good movies?

Movies:

Arizona Nights is a Western being produced by King Studios when a climactic gunfight scene is used as cover for a real-life murder. Detective Sergeant Carey clears up the mystery (it was the cameraman) but we never learn if the footage of a man dying in real life was used for the added verisimilitude. (More Fun Comics 052, 1940)

Call of the North, a Mounted Police picture by Pioneer Films, is not marred by murder, but if the Quality Universe IMDb userbase is on the ball the trivia section for the movie includes the fact that several of the mountie actors were used as backup by RCMP Sergeant Reynolds in the apprehension of a kidnapper. (Feature Comics 037, 1940)

Dread Castle has a place in comic book history as the film that drove Basil Karlo over the edge and into the persona of Clayface, as he saw the attempt to remake a movie that he saw as one of his greatest roles as an insult to him personally. Both Dread Castles are medieval films about a murderous hunchback called the Terror - not a terribly exciting prospect without the excitement of all the real-life murder that went on during production of the second one. (Detective Comics v1 040, 1940)

The other Basil Karlo role that we learn about in his initial appearance is the one that he takes his criminal moniker and appearance from, a movie seemingly also called Clayface. (Detective Comics v1 040, 1940)

Music:

Is "Star Dust" Clark Kent's favourite song as he claims it is while big-dogging this club maître d'? I sure hope so. No idea what kind of song it is, but you can slow dance to it. (Superman Comics v1 007, 1940)

Newspaper Columns:

"Town Talk" is the kind of snotty gossip column that inspired a thousand murder mystery plots. In this case, columnist Walt Willard turns up dead and Steel Sterling has to comb through the wealth of suspects to figure out whodunnit. (Jackpot Comics 004, 1941)

"Around the Town with Joe E. Brown" is your standard gossip column-as-exposition-vector, though why the writer has the same name as an old-time film comedian is unknown to me. (Special Edition Comics 001, 1940)

Paul Pryer, writer of the imaginatively-titled "Paul Pryer's Column" is one of those comic book celebrities who I am certain is based on a real person, but whether it's just someone like Walt Winchell or there's a Paul Prowler out there just waiting for me to learn about him is up to chance. (All-Star Comics 003, 1940) 

Meanwhile: "Society," the most pragmatically-named society column of all time. (Batman Comics v1 001, 1940)

We don't get to actually see "Tom Peeping's Column" in this Minute Movies strip, but I like to imagine that it features a cheeky little cartoon of the writer with big binoculars at the top. (Flash Comics 004, 1940)

Newsreels:

I don't know enough about newsreels to know if they normally had titles, but the Ace Films company is trying to capitalize on their beautiful camerawoman "Dot Daring," aka Beautia Sivana and so chooses to call this one Flirting with Death. (Whiz Comics 010, 1940)

DIVINE ROUND-UP 015

Hate and deception abound in this batch of deities.

Wangwa, God of Hate: 

Wangwa, God of Hate is the personal god of Okoro, medicine man of the Blancas and enemy of Doctor Voodoo. I've never decided if the Evil Medicine Man trope is mere condescension toward native spiritual practices or a porting over of the Evil Vizier archetype to jungle comics, and in all honesty it's probably both. Anyway, Okoro fits the mould to a T and he worships the god of hate. Sorry he's so fuzzy.

God Style: Idol (Whiz Comics 008, 1940) 

Cheops:

Adventurer Clip Carson and his archaeologist companion Jim Blake are searching for the fabled lost tomb of Cheops one day when they find themselves in the midst of an entire cult dedicated to the worship of what is apparently the resurrected Pharaoh himself. Carson and Blake are captured by the cult, upon which the supposed Cheops - with very little prompting, mind you - reveals himself to be Sergeant Beatty of the local colonial government, out to seize the treasures of Cheops for himself. Blake and Carson of course escape, and along the way Beatty is exposed as a fraud and torn apart by his former devotees. 

The deep need for modern Egyptians in adventure fiction to turn to Ancient Egyptian religion, but only in the most secret, cultish, conspiratorial way is another one of those things that you end up wondering about once you read it enough times. Is it merely a fun and easy way to inject some mysterious action into your story? If so, why does it crop up instories set in Egypt so much more than ones set in Greece of Italy? Is it racism again? 

God Style: Complicated - Cheops/Khufu could be considered to be a deified ruler of Egypt, even though the practice of doing so became common something like a thousand years after his time. Plus this is just some dude posing as him. (Action Comics v1 016, 1939)

Doolong: 

Remember Korieg the Sea Devil from a little while ago? Well, the same island people who hate that guy just love to worship Doolong, "god of [their] ancestors". Not too much detail on Doolong, other than a) his idol is just a little face mounted on the wall and b) he slings a very accurate prophecy - he totally predicts the arrival of Tex Thomson and his party on the island, even if the small matter of Tex being the Princess' destined mate is inaccurate. 

God Style: Idol (Real?) (Action Comics v1 011, 1939)

the Druid God: 

This is possibly only obvious to someone who lives in the area, but the "group of islands" being indicated in the above image is clearly Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Was Cape Breton seen as a place just far enough outside of the everyday for things like shipwrecks and secret cults to happen in, or did "Reynolds of the Mounted" scribe and lifelong resident of New York State Art Pinajian just trace a random bit of Canadian coastline and call it a day?

Speaking of shipwrecks and secret cults, the first of those happens when Sergeant Reynolds heads toward the last known location of missing rich guy Johnny Westlake. Like Johnny, Reynolds washes up on the shore and is found and nursed back to health by local Pierre Dulac.

Westlake has been on the island long enough to be able to relate the local legend of the Druid Cave, a spooky cave surrounded by spooky rock formations and regarded with fear by the superstitious islanders, who believe that though the cave is full of gold it is also cursed and that anyone venturing inside will die. Reynolds and Westlake venture inside after finding a local fisherman dying on the nearby beach and discover that the cave does in fact contain an ancient treasure and that the curse is probably just plain old asphyxiation thanks to some natural gas deposits.

Here's where the cult comes in: the islanders just kind of spontaneously develop it after finding Westlake emerging from the cave shortly before an explosion rocks the countryside. Never trust a group who turn to human sacrifice as a first option, is what I always say.

In the end, the real culprit behind the murders and explosions turns out to be Pierre Dulac, who, far from being an altruistic soul, has been manipulating the situation to bring maximum chaos as a distraction while he sneaks off with the treasure. He didn't reckon with Reynolds' tenacity, of course, and ends up exploding along with the treasure and all evidence of whatever fantastic culture produced the Druid Cave. The islanders just kind of scatter, presumably to keep the worship of the Druid God alive in secret.

God Style: Invoked (Feature Comics 045, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 228: THE PURPLE MONSTER

(Feature Comics 049, 1941)

The Purple Monster is a pretty lacklustre super-villain. He ticks all the boxes: volcano lair on an island somewhere off BC, army of costumed henchmen, subjugated population of poor island yokels to exploit complete with fake human sacrifices and an unexplained sinister use for the sacrificial victims... it's a complete checklist of features designed to qualify him for this list. He even draws his name from a local superstition, albeit one he started himself by projecting a monstrous face on the purple clouds that billow from the volcano.

It's all so... low-rent. He's set himself up with all of this super-villain infrastructure to what? Extort resources out of a small community? Maybe organ harvesting or something? If he plans on moving on to greater things he doesn't get around to saying it on-panel - just as well he suffers the fate of most volcano-dwelling crooks: death by exploding volcano.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 030: THE RED TRIANGLE

(Feature Comics 046, 1941)

An exciting development! Up until now our minor super-heroes have been of two flavours: the stars of minor super-hero strips or a new identity adopted by the stars of crime or adventure strips - the key word in either case is star - they are the focus and driving force of the strip.

The Red Triangle is our first example of another type of super-hero: the single issue guest star. These are far more common in the Silver Age, when they pop up every so often to complicate the main hero's life for an adventure before retiring in shame or glory. I don't have a full classification scheme for them yet, but I suspect that there will be a distinction between at least two types: the one who is making an attempt at being a big-time super-hero and the one who temporarily adopts an alternate persona to achieve a goal, with the Red Triangle being the latter.

So: the Red Triangle is a masked vigilante who gets involved with a Reynolds of the Mounted case, which actually and weirdly makes him one of the earliest Canadian super-heroes.

The Red Triangle, real name Baxter, is a man who got mixed up in a counterfeiting gang and when they wouldn't let him back out, disappeared and adopted a new vigilante identity. It's unclear whether he spent the year that he was the Triangle getting into any other crimefighting adventures - the crooks all know his name, but that might just be because he's been hassling them specifically. 

Once the gang's been rounded up, Baxter takes the usual path that this style of minor super-hero does and hangs up the Red Triangle identity to return to the simple life of a hotelier.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 226: THE BLACK BAT

(Feature Comics 043, 1941) 

Another example of the classic combination of someone posing as a spooky local legend-figure in order to scare folk away from a valuable area. In this case one Jean Dupre and his mother are trying to use the legend of the giant Black Bat (that they might have just made up) to scare their step sister/ daughter Marie away from the family ranch, which is just lousy with radium ore.

It's a good attempt, foiled by only a few factors: 1) Marie won't leave and instead calls in the RCMP; 2) Reynolds of the Mounties and his guide/ skáld the Old Timer show up and basically immediately unravel the plot; 3) they both end up dead, from a rock to the head (Madame Dupre) and glider malfunction (Jean Dupre). As usual, the less profitable option of splitting the proceeds of your find with the rightful owner would have been the way to go.

Unless I've been grossly negligent, this mother/ son duo is our first French Canadian representation on the list, so there's that at least.

MINOR EDIT: This is touted as Reynolds' first case in the previous episode, but also he's already a sergeant at the beginning of the story so I don't know when it happened. Some time in the past!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 055: MR BIG

(Feature Comics 022, 1939)

Just a regular counterfeiter, but he's our first Canadian crook who squeaks over the line into the realm of the super-villain, so here you go.