CREEPS OF THE WORLD: THE LIVING PLANET MONSTERS

(Fight Comics 010, 1940)

I wanted to do a fun title goof where "World" was crossed out in favour of "Space" but it seems that I don't have that ability. But yes, it's true! These Creeps of the World are not in fact on the world! Any world! They are in fact one of my favourite sci-fi tropes: living beings so large that they are mistaken for planets!

These particular creeps show up in the solar system early in the 21st Century and after an expedition to explore them goes missing they are visited by Saber, the Spy Fighter, who at this point is pivoting a bit from exclusively fighting spies to general super-hero pursuits. He also gets a massive power boost in this issue, gaining the ability to fly through space unprotected and under his own power as well as to grow to planetary sizes in his own right.

This sequence, in which Saber discovers that the missing expedition is building a colony inside of the monster using its own bones as building materials, is 100% the reason for this post. What an image! Even before the horde of Martian warriors came charging up the rib cage this was one of the weirdest sci-fi locales I had ever seen.

A good thing like an endless bone-filled plain inside of a moon-sized monster man can't last, however. After getting the expedition back to thir spacecraft (and tossing the Martians into interplanetary space), Saber beats up all three of the Living Planet Monsters and then throws the three of them so hard that they disintegrate.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 648: GARR STORM

(Fight Comics 008, 1940)

The geopolitics of the future as represented in Spy Fighter stories sure is complicated! At first, the far future world of 1997 contained only three megacountries: Mongo, Russmany and Greater America, but soon enough Greater America was menaced by aggressor nations such as Grotonia, Prussany and Antarctica. Simultaneously, the timeline advanced from 1998 to a more ambiguous "early in the Twenty-First Century." Is the unspoken background story the fracturing of these enormous countries back into something resembling the world today? If it is, then this adventure certainly ties into that as it is concerned with the succession of the Southwest US from the rest of what looks suspiciously like the United States. Whither Greater America? Has it too become fragmented?

The leader of what is only ever referred to as "the States" is the fantastically-named Garr Storm, who either has a tremendous gift for persuasion or is tapping into a legitimate rift between the States and the federal government. Don't start your succession with a war, you guys! It's a bad idea.

But Garr Storm doesn't stop there! He's not just a traitor but a double traitor, as his interests lie not with the people of (scrolls back up to squint at map) California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and New Mexico but with an unnamed Asian power, possibly Mongo. Was this whole civil war solely for Garr Storm's benefit or was he forced to broker the deal to secure the arms he needed to take on the US Army?

Regardless of his motivations, the revelation that Storm had sold them out is surprisingly effective in cooling the revolutionary spirit of the Southwest and the nation is once again united in harmonious patriotism. What a fantastical future world!

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 025

Just a great bunch of guys.

David:

I read the Samson stories in Big 3 before those in his home comic Fantastic, so while I knew about his sidekick David I didn't really know what his whole deal was. I had read that Samson just found him sitting around somewhere and assumed that that was hyperbole but no, it's not: Samson is investigating some mysterious plane crashes in the Rockies when he just finds a kid, who turns out to be the only survivor of the latest crash, and just... brings him along. There's no real attempt to address the fact that he must be an orphan now (or if not and he was travelling alone for some reason, that his family now thinks he is dead) or to find him a familial guardian - heck, his name isn't even David. It's low-key one of the weirdest sidekick origins in comics and that's before he gets his own pair of fur briefs. (Fantastic Comics 010, 1940)

UPDATES: Even in the updated Samson origin, David is still a hanger-on (Samson 001, 1940)

UPDATE - the Fantom of the Fair:

The Fantom of the Fair gets his own short-lived book that sees him spending more and more time fighting crime outside the New York World's Fair, if you can believe it. To that end he adopts the more generic name of the Fantoman. The costume changes (blue instead of black, uncovered lower face) happened at the end of 1939 and technically I've read more Fantom stories in which he had the new one than the old but it never feels right to me. At least you can still see his hair through the cowl.

Though he has a new name and a not-so-new look, Fantoman retains one of his most iconic properties: every time you start thinking of him as just another masked adventurer he busts out another heretofore-unseen superpower or bit of lore suggesting he is a thousand year old demigod or something. See above as he either teleports or passes through matter for the first and last time. (Fantoman 003, 1940)

the Spy Fighter:

It kind of says something about the mood of America in 1940 that there are multiple comic book series that take place in the 1990s after what we know as World War II has stretched on for fifty years (Marvel's Breeze Barton is the other one that I can recall off the top of my head, while MLJ's Doc Strong is from a future ravaged by a whole century of WWII). In this version of that, the war has resulted in an amalgamation of the world into three rival nations: Russmany (Europe and Africa), Mongo (Asia) and Greater America (the Americas), and in this world of super nations, a super spy is required to ensure the sanctity of the Greater American way of life.

That man is Saber, the Spy Fighter! Who does eventually put on a shirt. Saber starts out as physically gifted telepath who roots out enemy agents by reading their ill intent in their own minds and then beats them up for it. Over time, the challenges he faces get larger and less specifically espionage related, and he develops new abilities to meet them, including that of changing his own size at will, to the point that he is eventually able to travel through space on his own power to fight planet-sized enemies. And what can Mongo do to challenge that? (Fight Comics 001, 1940)

the Skull Squadron:

Chip Collins' Skull Squadron is extremely unremarkable but at this point I have to make note of every skull-adjacent comic book thing. They operate somewhere in between a commando group and the Suicide Squad and barely even have skulls painted on their planes. SKULL SCORE: 1/2 and only for the name. (Fight Comics 001, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 646: THE LIZARD

(Fight Comics 006, 1940)

The Lizard was (will be?) the leader of a group of Grotonian spies working to sabotage the military of Greater America in the far-off future year of 1998 AD. He had (will have?) the pretty clever idea of being arrested as a petty thief and running his operation from inside a jail cell but unfortunately for his reputation as a smart guy he then fell for the most obvious trick in the world when Saber the Spy Fighter, head of Greater American Super Intelligence, was put in his cell for an unstated crime and in full super-power granting uniform and casually "allowed himself to be recruited to the Grotonian cause.".