ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 003

It's time for round three of all the various aliens encountered by Spacehawk in his crusade for justice in the year 1940!

Neptunian Dog-Men, Plutonians, Jovians, Lunarians: 

This gang of space pirates that Spacehawk and his pal Galar beat up are described as "screaming, bloodthirsty Neptunians, Plutonians and Jovians" and this is somewhat vexing because they are an extremely heterogeneous bunch who absolutely come in more than three distinct styles, but I reckon that we can do it. The Neptunians are described in a couple of places as "Neptunian Dog-Men" so let's say that they make up the bulk of the group, the light orange ones. With the exception of the camel-faced guys lugging hoses in the first panel above - they seem distinct and arbitrarily reading left to right I'm going to say that they are Plutonians, which means that all of the green lizardy guys are by default Jovians, even the one with tentacles.

The pirate captain is the Lunarian, and I have to say that I am a big fan of his segmented arms and big ears, but not so much of his attitude. (Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

Uranians: 

We only encounter the Uranians as represented by the evil denizens of a pirate city for jerks, so their horrible rat-man personas are really emphasized. It's entirely probable that there is a pleasant city full of nice rat men who do arts and crafts on the other side of the planet. (Target Comics v1 010, 1940)

Vulture Men:

Really enjoy the look of the Vulture Men, who come from a far distant star to skeletonize people and steal our planet. They've got bird legs for arms!

They also appear to not have an articulated jaw, as seen when they themselves are skeletonized as an ironic punishment by Spacehawk. How do they eat? Nobody knows! (Target Comics v1 008, 1940)

Spacehawk's Species: 

As revealed in the Galar entry of the recent Minor Super-Hero Round-Up, he and Spacehawk are both members of a human-appearing alien race from somewhere outside our solar system. Not much is known about this species: they have some degree of super strength as compared to humans, they can communicate telepathically and their lifespans are long enough that Galar and Spacehawk, having not seen one another for six hundred years, catch up like two old high school friends now in their thirties. (Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

Mentioned but Unseen: 

the Savage Snake Men of Planet Hogo (Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 051

It's Day Three of Round-Up Week here at the Curse of Skeleton Munroe. 

**UPDATE** the White Streak:

Novelty Press is back at it again, exercising their compulsion to tone down the "fantastic" in their comic book stories. The White Streak has gotten a job as an FBI agent, and so he gets plastic surgery in order to make his inhuman face into that of a square-jawed white guy. Now instead of being the utterly fantastical ancient android in a bright costume running around blasting people with electron vision and zooming through the skies on an electric ladder, he's... the same thing but he looks like a normal guy. Plus he tries to limit his power usage so as to stay inconspicuous, so he sticks to x-ray vision and electrified punches. Very realistic stuff. 

If this move was in the cards for the White Streak, this might also be the explanation we were looking for for why Dr Simms went off the rails and blew up his entire life as Dr Death: it was a good old-fashioned slash-and-burn of a comic book's supporting cast before a change to the status quo. Feels like I'm in the Nineties again! (Target Comics v1 010, 1940)

Galar: 

A childhood friend of Spacehawk's from the same near-human species as him, Galar is turned from his six hundred year-long career as a space pirate by the intervention of his old friend and sent out into the galaxy to act as the protector of some random solar system, which it turns out is the reason that Spacehawk is protecting our solar system: he just arbitrarily chose it. (Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

the Stratosphere Patrol: 

Speaking of Spacehawk, here's "Spacehawks," a Basil Wolverton strip that didn't really get the room to shine before its home comic was given the axe. While "stratosphere" in the context of 1940s comics is often a flowery way to describe everything up to and including interplanetary space, the meaning here is quite literal: Steve Grover and Bart Bixby and their colleagues are charged with policing the vast array of air traffic that is constantly whizzing around in the near-future, and their greatest challenge occurs when they encounter an evil scientist who can go into the upper, upper atmosphere! Heady stuff. (Circus, the Comics Riot 001, 1938)

the Ghost Rider: 

There are a seemingly infinite number of masked cowboy vigilantes roaming the various Wests of assorted comic book universes, and the Ghost Rider is one of them. In his one recorded adventure he stops the wretched gambler and crime boss of the town of Last Chance, Poker Slade, from murdering miner Robert Burton and his daughter Rose and stealing their gold claim. Also, though it's not particularly visible in the image above, this particular Ghost Rider is the only one to have a mustache.

As always, there are no new super-hero names under the sun, and "Ghost Rider" might just be one of the ones to unexpectedly crop up the most times. (Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 004, 1939)

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 002

It's back-to-back round-ups this week!

Moon People: 

Spacehawk seems to make friends easily, and wherever there is an evil alien space menace he must battle there is seemingly a friendly alien species nearby to help out. In this case, the space menace is on the Moon, and the friendly folk are the Moon People or Moon Men, barrel-chested fellows with the faces of cartoon mice. I like them, even if their eyes do freak me out. (Target Comics v1 008, 1940)

Neptunians:

This unfortunate Neptunian space pilot has the misfortune to be the first target of Jark and Zorg and so the only state we see his species in is hapless fear. I kept wondering what I found so appealing about this design but then I realized that it reminded me of Earthworm Jim and all was well.(Target Comics v1 007, 1940)

Saturnians:

Given the Wolvertonian trend toward species with a lot of physical variation in their populations my instinct is to try to see how the melty-faced Saturnians in the first panel above and the worried green fellow on the right hand side of the second panel (pictured with two hapless and fearful Neptunians) are part of the same species. It's a real stretch, I must admit. (Target Comics v1 006 & 007, 1940)

Plutonians: 

Love these little toad-faced Plutonian space cops. Really wish that they were running around the whole story, making that face the whole time, but they stupidly chase a fleeing suspect into a pirate city and get absolutely annihilated. Captain Dakk there is the only one who makes it and even he would be toast is his friend Spacehawk hadn't placed his brain in an alien dinosaur. (Target Comics v1 010, 1940)

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 001

I've highlighted some particular aliens before but what is this blog but an exercise in making note of every dang thing I come across. And so: aliens! We're going to stick to our old familiar way of dealing with things that will have a lot of examples with little info: the round-up, and since I've been reading Target Comics recently, we'll be seeing all of the alien weirdos that Basil Wolverton designed for Spacehawk to encounter! As time goes on we'll see some of the (checks files) nearly 900 alien species I have catalogued in a dusty old spreadsheet, as well as any new ones who might come our way.

Bat-Men:

Spacehawk encounters this solitary Bat-Man in the giant ant tunnels that riddle the crust of Neptune, and he just wants the danged Martian pirates who have been making their lair nearby to clear out and stop being such bad neighbours. I really appreciate the 1940s "didn't bother to check out what a bat wing looks like" wings, which can be totally justified because, hey, this is an alien! Why would it have the same kind of wings anyway? (Target Comics v1 005, 1940)

Martians:

And speaking of those Martians: here they are. As you can see, the Martians in Wolverton's Spacehawk stories have a fair amount of different facial lumps and bumps, but they all have droopy little ears and noodly tentacle arms. (Target Comics v1 005, 009 x2, 011, 1940)

Mercurians:

I said it before in the Grebo entry but the point still stands: I really appreciate this glimpse of "men of all the nations of Mercury" that shows that there is just an incredible amount of phenotypic diversity in the Mercurian genome, covering every humanoid alien look from lizard-man through pink and lumpy to weird little imp. (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)

Draxions:  

The Mercurian tendency toward genetic diversity finds its ultimate expression in the Draxions, who moved to Venus after a disastrous war and managed to become water-breathing fish-men over the course of a couple of hundred years merely by hanging around a lake enough. Luckily for them, Spacehawk is on hand to help them out with a bit of superscience when they decide that living in a lake isn't all that it's cracked up to be. (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 799: GLORK

(Target Comics v1 009, 1940) 

Glork here is a candidate for election to the post of King of Mars who manages to lose despite massive political interference on his part. This is probably because he is a very unpleasant and transparently evil person.

Despite some recent real-world examples, Glork might still reign supreme as the worst-ever loser of an election. He immediately settles upon a plan to pull the moon Phobos down to the surface to destroy the entire Martian civilization, while he flees the planet in his personal spaceship to seek glory in the wider Solar System. 

It can't be a surprise at this point: Spacehawk does not take this kind of thing lying down. He busts into Glork's secret lair disguised as a Martian, reverses the polarity on the device so that Phobos returns to its normal orbit, and when Glork makes a run for it Spacehawk uses the attractor machine to crash his spaceship in his own pit full of man- Martian-eating beasts. 

Special shout out to this guy, who I completely thought was being set up to murder Glork in a fit of pique later in the story but who I guess was just an object illustration of what a jerk Glork was.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 797: JARK AND ZORG

(Target Comics v1 007, 1940)

Jark and Zorg, an alien duo of unknown provenance, continue the trend of Spacehawk villains who could broadly be described as space pirates. They also a) have a very hard pair of names to remember without accidentally mixing up some of the letters and b) are possibly the most phallic-looking alien designs that weren't just ambulatory ding-dongs that I have ever seen.

Jark and Zorg's plan is... not simple, per se, but it doesn't have a lot of steps. It goes like this: 

1) get a planetoid and fit it with propulsion devices 

2) fly around until you are in the path of a space freighter 

3) use a tractor (bumper) beam to ensure that the freighter only crashes a little, so that the precious cargo is okay

4) unleash a bunch of creatures called Snurls to wipe out the passengers and crew

5) loot and profit

It's a solid enough plan, albeit one which requires a lot of advance effort and advanced technology, and Zorg even adds a step 6) kidnap a lady off of the first ship they bring down and transform her into an attractive phallus-alien for a little non-Jark companionship. Unfortunately for him, this particular lady is the same one who Spacehawk rescued from Grovak the Martian not two issues prior, and he seems to have some sort of Superman/Lois Lane ability to sense when she is in mortal peril, as despite Zorg's certainty that their planetoid will never be discovered by the hero he is in fact already in orbit.

Jark makes a go at taking care of Spacehawk with his atom rifle but it's simply not enough firepower and he ends up mashed to a pulp.

Zorg, building on his deceased partner's efforts, seems to succeed where Jark failed, and further managed to unmask the Spacehawk to reveal that he was a robot the whole time!

OR WAS HE? No, he wasn't. Instead, the Spacehawk turns out to be a man with a collection of robot doubles that can substitute for him or otherwise aid him in his crusade against evil. Zorg ends up joining his partner in whatever afterlife that ding-dong aliens get and Spacehawk gets a smooch.