ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 017

A panoply of wonders awaits.

Karnak's Slaves: 

This otherwise-unnamed race from an unnamed planet get a pretty raw deal: conquered and mind-controlled into servitude by scientist Karnak, they all seemingly die when he does. It's a real shame. (Weird Comics 007, 1940) 

the Deadly Plants: 

It's hard to say much about the so-called "Deadly Plants" of planet Vegeto, aside from the fact that they work together to capture a handful of prospective human colonists and dump them in a pit, and that for this act of moderate aggression the Red Comet dumps the entire termite population of Earth on them, seemingly wiping out their entire species. This is what we call "disproportionate response" but is in perfect keeping with the 1940s (and beyond!) view of the relative value of human life vs all other life. (Planet Comics 004, 1940)

Dhakka Snail-Men: 

Every undersea race in comics needs a selection of other undersea races to have conflict with, and Neptina's Fish-Men are no exception. They are menaced by the Dhakkas, aka the Snail-Men, led by Prince Petor, who attempts to invade the territories of Amloza for no stated reason - I guess that's just what you do when you have an army and an abyssal plain to march across. Unfortunately for Petor and his ambitions, Neptina and the Fish-Men are backed up by Brad Fletcher and his Super-Sub, which are enough to decisively turn the tide. 

The Snail-Men also might be some of the least like their namesake of any of the [animal]-Men we have yet encountered. They ride snails, sure, but about the only thing that they themselves have in common with snails are some pretty modest eyestalks. (Champion Comics 009, 1940)

Dragon-Lizard Men: 

Encountered by detective Fu Chang as he searches for treasure on fabled Money Pit Island, the Dragon-Lizard Men are not so much guardians as obstacles on the way to wealth. The most remarkable thing about them is that if they are as Fu Chang asserts descended from the "lizard and dragons" left on the island by the treasure-burying pirates they managed to not only evolve into fully humanoid forms but also enough of a sense of shame to wear briefs over their mysterious lizard and/or dragon genitals. Nature is really amazing. (Pep Comics 009, 1940)

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 015

A veritable bounty of aliens for your perusal.

People of Venus, the Jibbering Giant of Jupiter, Weird Inhabitants of the Strange Planet: 

Blast Bennett has lost his little pal Red, and his solution is to just kind of bop around from planet to planet, asking random aliens if they have seen a red-headed guy. I've grouped these alien together because they all represent a very boring alien design trend of the 40s and 50s (and beyond!): the alien as just some guy. The Venusians are short, bald guys; the Jovian is a really big guy and the weird inhabitants of the strange planet are guys who could use a shower. (Weird Comics 004, 1940)

Ceresians:

During an unscheduled stop on then-asteroid/now-dwarf planet Ceres for water, Ted Hunt and Jane Martin, aka the Star Rovers, stumble into a conflict between the underground-dwelling native Ceresians and gargoyle-like invaders known as the Harpies.

This is a pretty classic setup! The planet full of generic white guys vs some horrible space monsters scenario is a surefire way to engender sympathy in an early 20th Century American audience! It does however leave you with some fairly uninteresting humanoid aliens - I do appreciate the seeming shift in Ceresian society from a Medieval to more of a Roman aesthetic as they are forced to abandon their castles for retrofuturistic bunkers, but that's about it. (Exciting Comics 005, 1940)

Harpies: 

The Space Rovers make their way to the Harpy home on Asteroid Nunda and are almost immediately captured after being incapacitated by the thin Nundan atmosphere. They find that rather than being simple predators, the Harpies have an advanced society that places great value in both science and the democratic process. They are, sadly, complete Harpy chauvinists who don't recognize the humanity harpianity shared intelligent experience of other species, which is why they're so happy to raid Ceres for fun and food.

Ted and Jane escape this fate due to the Harpies' scientific curiosity about them, and manage to parley that into a successful escape attempt. Once back in their ship and armed with superior firepower, perhaps they will be able to force the Harpies to stop their vicious ways at the barrel of a gun!

Just kidding! As a nonhuman species who pose a threat to a world of white guys, the Harpies are of course fair game for utter and total annihilation - I'm talking blow up their cities and hunt down all of the survivors. But don't feel bad, because as Jane says, "they're nothing but enormous, blood-thirsty bats!" Now the Ceresians are free to go back to inventing feudalism or whatever. (Exciting Comics 005, 1940) 

Lunaris:

The way I do these Alien Round-Ups is that the first entry is from whatever comic I'm reading at the moment and then I pluck the rest from a big ol' spreadsheet that I've been maintaining for years, which is why it's a pretty fun coincidence that the the next aliens on my list after the Ceresians were the Cold Men, who rule the surface of an unnamed icy moon while a race of white guys called the Lunaris hide in tunnels below. Once Ray Darrow, aka the Star Rover (another little coincidence there) stumbles into this conflict he of course sides with the noble Lunaris against the horrible Cold Men, and it doesn't hurt that the Lunaris Queen is somehow descended from Earth humans, so that Darrow can feel okay with being attracted to her, I guess. (Doc Savage Comics v1 003, 1941)

Cold Men: 

Cold Man society isn't quite as fleshed out as the Harpies' was, but Darrow's conclusion is the same: to ensure the continued safety of the much more familiar-looking Lunaris, the Cold Men must be utterly annihilated - sure hope that the newly surface-dwelling Lunaris don't find the headquarters of some sort of Cold Man organization dedicated to fostering peace between the species or they might end up feeling guilty about their role in this genocide some day. 

... I do like that the Cold Men seem to actually be made of snow or ice. (Doc Savage Comics v1 003, 1941) 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 626: THE SUPER FIEND

(Fantastic Comics 010, 1940)

The Super Fiend (aka the Super Fiend of the Lost Planet) is, if not the archetypal Fletcher Hanks villain then certainly representative of one of the major Hanks villain types, the civilization hater. He's got no stated motivation but the Super Fiend hates civilization so much that he's out to destroy it on a planetary scale, starting with Mars and moving on to Earth as an encore.

The Super Fiend's Thermal Ray Spore does the job on Mars, rendering the question of whether non-Hanks Stardust stories actually canonically occurred a bit moot - if Dr Martinious and the Brain Men did actually exist then they're just so many charred bones now.

Though Mars is toast and Earth is in the crosshairs, unfortunately for the Super Fiend Stardust the Super Wizard only allows one genocide per story, and with a cry of "You're going bye-by!" he whisks his foe off to face justice.

Like Wolf-Eye before him, the Super Fiend is made big and strong for the final righteous beatdown - presumably this keeps happening because Fletcher Hanks recognized that even the righteous Stardust looks like a bit of a bully beating up people 1/3 his size.

The Super Fiend is left behind on Mars to contemplate his actions among the bones of his victims for the rest of his life - a classic Stardust punishment and in fact the same one meted out to Moloka in the non-Fletcher Hanks story in the previous issue. This raises the schoolday spectre of the compare-and-contrast vis-a-vis Moloka and the Super Fiend. On paper, they are very similar villains, but Moloka never felt quite right as a Stardust foe while the Super Fiend did. Why? Simple clarity of purpose, perhaps? Molka's goals remain undefined throughout while the Super Fiend was lightning focused on destroying civilization, one planet at a time.