MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 253: THE WHITE DRAGON

(Flash Comics v1 023, 1941)

Not much to say about the White Dragon: he's a guy with a bunch of costumed henchmen who captures Chinese folk in NYC and uses them as slave labour in his motor factory until the Whip settles his hash.

He is of course Walter Morgan, a guy who brags to Rod "the Whip" Gaynor about how well he's doing in the motor business on the first page of the story. About the only interesting thing to be found here is a one-panel whip duel between Our Hero and the White Dragon, They can't all be great, folks!

NOTES - FEBRUARY 2023

The Whip is an okay character aside from the brownface bit but one thing I absolutely love about him is that although he does a credible job at the Ineffectual Secret Identity act he also just travels from town to town with an enormous black horse.

(Flash Comics v1 005, 1940) 

Names:

This old dude shares his name with Kurt Busiek's Astro City character Samaritan! The tally of comics characters named Asa Martin stands at 2! (Flash Comics v1 010, 1940)

Same issue's Hawkman story features a (bad) guy named John Denver!

I'm usually pretty good at catching allusions and so forth in these old comics but I have no idea why Joe Magee = "always bungling something" (Flash Comics v1 015, 1941)

Places: It's a bit hard to make out but the flash on this armoured car seems to place Seguro in "New Texirona" rather than New Mexico, which might just be the most egregious example of 40s comics writers avoiding real place names that I've ever encountered. (Flash Comics v1 016, 1941)

This is how I order in restaurants, too. (Flash Comics v1 017, 1941)

Number of references to "the Third Degree" aka the cops torturing someone as a positive thing this month: 3