ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 022

Top-quality aliens, fresh-baked! 

Unnamed Species:

This unnamed species has that most delightful and implausible of features, an organic wheel that they use to locomote around! Other than that they're your typical underground dwelling species: they live far enough under the surface or have an extensive enough range that one can enter their kingdom in the Himalayas and exit in Iran; they have a captured surface woman named Rina as their queen but the real power lies with "He", who is four or five times bigger than the rest of his species; and they are very sensitive to sound. Regular stuff. 

Those wheels though! (Wonderworld Comics 011, 1940)

Earth-Men: 

The Earth-Men are the fellows who worship the ancestor-god Sakka, as detailed in a Divine Round-Up a couple of months back. They're little bug-eyed guys with a high incidence of male-pattern baldness and a hostile attitude until adventurer Rocky Ryan kind of accidentally convinces them that he is the reincarnation of Sakka. 

In the peaceful times that follow, Ryan's companion Professor Ames is able to explore the Earth-Man city and make some frankly astounding discoveries, including the facts that 

1: There used to be a land mass spanning the Pacific between South America and Asia 

2. At the time, Earth had 2 moons, one of which then exploded

3. The force of the exploding moon sank the Pacific continent

4. The Earth-Men are the remnants of that Pacific civilization, and their shrunken stature and big ol' eyes are a result of living in a dense jungle, somehow.

It's a real upending of everything that we thought we knew about the history of the Earth, plus now Ames has enough material for a book. Publish or perish, huzzah! (Big Shot Comics 014, 1941)

Mercurians (Three Types):  

Space Adventurer Flint Baker and his companion Mimi make their way to the planet Mercury, where he finds a city strewn with humanoid corpses. Eventually, they find a single survivor, who reveals that he is the last of the Western Hemisphere Mercurians, the rest having been wiped out by...

... the Eastern Hemisphere Mercurians, a rowdy bunch of cave-man types who storm in and kidnap Mimi before Flint can do anything to prevent it. Through a series of battles, he recovers Mimi and seemingly wipes out the Eastern Mercurians in turn. Mercury is now an uninhabited planet.

But not for long, because Flint then uses the atomic conversion pistol gifted to him by the last of the Western Mercurians to make a whole new batch of hot Mercurians out of some nearby flowers and install them in the now-deserted city. (Planet Comics 006, 1940)

Erostians: 

After space vigilante Cosmic Carson's men shoot down a pirate ship over planetoid Eros, both they and the pirates' victims come under attack by the green, caveman-like Erostians, who carry off as many women as they can get their grubby green mitts on (bonus entry: these women are all Venusians).

Cosmic Carson himself sets out to rescue the captives and ends up a prisoner himself, wherein he learns that the Erostians are not simply a species of humanoid aliens, but the former dominant species of Earth, thrown down and banished to Eros by some ancient scientist. Plus, they eat people, with a preference for pretty women. It's actually a bit of a roller coaster, as the standard alien lust for human (or humanoid) women is explained by the fact that the Erostians are also human or at least homo but then their desire turns out not to be lust but gluttony and thus back in the realm of the inexplicable.

Anyway, Cosmic Carson blasts most of them to smithereens. (Science Comics 005, 1940)

DIVINE ROUND-UP 010

Pad out your pantheon with some of these:

Death:

This version of Death may lack the social graces necessary to welcome Kardak the Mystic and his pal Lorna rather than attempt to murder them for entering his domain, but he does have a very good version of the classic "robed skeleton" look. And his house is charmingly coffin-themed, to boot! 

God Style: Anthropomorphic Personification (Top-Notch Comics 008, 1940)

Ramu, God of Fire: 

Ramu, God of Fire is another one of your deities created so that a group of "primitive savages" will have a reason to menace some "noble explorers" with the threat of being human sacrificed. Ramu at least is kind of fun because while he might have started out looking like the figure depicted on those red sacrificial poles, by the end of the comic this image has been supplanted by that of the miniature rocket ship that Minimidget and Ritty accidentally pilot into the middle of the ceremony.

God Style: Idol  (Amazing-Man Comics 010, 1940)

the Sacred Steam God:

The Sacred Steam God is worshipped by the Quadropel Men, who themselves are notable for living beneath the land of Aquatania, which itself lies below the Marquesas Islands. Worship of the Sacred Steam God of course involves human sacrifice, but erstwhile victim Terry is saved when Chuck Hardy topples the inexplicably-full-of-scalding-water idol onto the crows of spectators. 

God Style: Idol (Amazing-Man Comics 009, 1940)

Sakka: 

Sakka is, yes, another figure to whom some Noble White Explorers are almost sacrificed while making their way through the jungles of Matto Grosso in Brazil. Here's the difference, though: Sakka isn't just some idol, he's an ancestor spirit, and his name and his ancient sword are all that the big-eyed Earth-Men need to keep their faith strong and bloodthirsty, at least until adventurer Rocky Ryan picks up the sword and is acclaimed the second coming of Sakka, that is. 

God Style: Invoked (Big-Shot Comics 014, 1941) 

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 004

Now's the time that we start pulling aliens from the vaults! So look out for a lot of A-names for the next while! Not the first one though, because something has to come up organically.

Crillionites:

Hailing from the planet Crillon (which boasts the majestic Crillion City, natch), the Crillionites are a caste-based society in which the Lords of Crillon (like from the title of the comic!) rule over a slave population via some sort of divine right. This societal order is threatened by Professor Wendall Keene and his crew of space explorers: Hugh, Celeste, and the also-titular Ken Craig, but whether this is due to some innate sense of justice on their part or for some other reason is never quite spelled out in their one extant appearance, as things start in media res and Mort Cowen there presumably thought he could go back and explain what was going on a bit later. No dice, Mort. (Circus, the Comics Riot 001, 1938)

the Ancient Ones: 

It's that old staple of adventure, the ancient hidden civilization! Not all of them are different enough from regular humanity to qualify as an Alien and So Forth, but I reckon a society of prehistoric Antarcticans who retreated underground when the ice crept across their lands and have indefinite lifespans must surely count. The Ancient Ones are kind of boringly benevolent, but they do have a lot of gold, which inspires hero Rocky Ryan's crew to mutiny and thus provides a bit of excitement.

This also allows the Ancient Ones to show off their somewhat ghoulish hobby: collecting gold-hungry adventurers in suspended animation. Or possibly practicing human taxidermy. (Big Shot Comics 009, 1940)

Antarenes: 

The Antarenes, inhabitants of the planet Antar, have a problem: their sun has gone out. Their solution? Head underground and set out through the void of space with their whole dang planet to find a new one. Unfortunately for Earth, rather than one of the presumably many uninhabited stars in the galaxy the Antarenes have chosen Earth's orbit as the coziest place to pull up their planet, and the Earth is just going to have to move out of the way (and into the Sun), whether they like it or not. Fortunately for Earth, Marvo 1￮2 Go+ is on the case and Antar is rerouted back out of the Solar System to find somewhere elese to park.

One small detail that I appreciate about the Antarenes: as a society that seems to mimic the eusocial nature of our world's ants they of course have a Queen but we never see her, for the simple reason that she is way too important to let two weird randos just rock up and meet with her. (Superworld Comics 003, 1940)

the Ants:

Captain Tornado, along with Professor Bordani and his daughter Jane, are stranded on the extrasolar planet Barrang. They meet and shoot a variety of intelligent aliens while there, the first of which are these giant alien ants, who don't figure too heavily into the plot but who do engage in intraspecies warfare and melon farming. (Popular Comics 046, 1939)

REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 005

You can't deny that they were real people.

Adolf Hitler:

This unnamed leader of the unnamed forces that the Flying Trio are battling on behalf of the little nation of Sylvania is a real Hitlerian fellow (Crash Comics Adventures 005, 1940) 

Amelia Earhart:

Two variations on a theme: using the story of the disappearance of Amelia Earhart as fodder for a damsel-in-distress story. The first (Amazing-Man Comics 018, 1940) involves the Shark rescuing Amelia Reinhardt from an old man who has her trapped in the jungle in hopes that she will fall for him. The second (Big Shot Comics 019, 1941) features aviator Rocky Ryan and his pal rescuing Amy Every from cartoonishly racist cannibals.

Captain Kidd:

Crooks try to pull a fast one by purchasing Captain Kidd's authentic treasure chest and then "discovering" it after filling it with stolen gold (Cyclone Comics 001, 1940)

Ethan Allen: 

The Liberty Lads are back at it, getting their grubby mitts all over the American Revolutionary War. This time they meet Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys on the eve of the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. (Champion Comics 009, 1940)

John Hancock and Samuel Adams:

More Liberty Lads shenanigans. This time they're saving Samuel Adams and John Hancock from capture by the British, something that as far as I can tell almost happened in our timeline. (Champ Comics 011, 1940)  

Joseph Stalin:

"Nilats," leader of "Aissur" is tracked to his office in "Wocsom" by Strongman, who objects to the Aissurans' invasion of the Balkan country of Rutania (Crash Comics Adventures 003, 1940)

Orson Welles:

For a while, Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds' broadcast is used as a shorthand for a reason that the cops blithely ignore multiple calls about some fantastic threat, only they certainly never do more than allude to the real thing. This time it's giant mutant ivy plants and the dumb police are talking about a broadcast by "Worsen Welds". (Amazing-Man Comics 006, 1939)

Saladin:

Makes a one-panel appearance in the otherwise undistinguished Crusades comic "Reynard the Fox". (Cyclone Comics 005, 1940)

Tecumseh:

Whether "Metumseh" is a stand-in for Shawnee leader Tecumseh or they just mushed around his name to make up one for this fellow I cannot say, but they were certainly thinking of him while they did it. (Champion Comics 010, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 493: THE MOON-MISTRESS

(Big Shot Comics 006, 1940)

Moora, Queen of the People of the Moon, is technically only called the Moon-Mistress by her enemies, but what can I say, I love alliteration. As introduced, she is merely the leader of a troublesome "hill tribe" that pistol-packing adventurer Rocky Ryan is asked to settle down on behalf of a local Maharajah (where exactly this takes place is ambiguous: Ryan is one of those Golden Age soldier-of-fortune characters who perpetually bums around an "India" that is really a sort of pan-Asian pastiche).

The People of the Moon have a temple in the hills that does double duty as a laboratory for the wizened scientist La Chega, who has "gathered solar energy" into a series of rectangular prisms that the characters insist on calling cubes. Everyone gasses on for a while about how powerful this is without saying why so I assume that it's just going to be a power source when world domination time comes. Also yes solar power is a bit off-brand for a moon cult but consider: the Moon shines due to reflected sunlight. Makes you think.

The People of the Moon also have some sort of dark spirit that they worship as the moon-god Luna. If we accept the caption box info as canon then Luna is a remnant of a "long-dead god", which is heady stuff. That's unfortunately all we learn before Rocky Ryan, following standard operating protocol for meathead adventuremen, attempts to blow Luna away with a six-shooter.

Whether or not Ryan manages to make Luna even more dead, he does somehow hit one of the solar energy cubes rectangular prisms, setting off a chain reaction that ends up blowing the temple and everything in it sky high (though Rocky Ryan survives, of course). Another ancient culture wiped off the map - all in a day's work.