PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 005

Some day we will hit Peak Problematic and I can't decide if it will be soon or in a decade or so. 

the White Leader: 

Our last Problematic Round-Up featured a lot of white guys dressing up like Yellow Peril villains in order to lead Chinese gangs, something that we will unfortunately be seeing plenty more of. This here fellow follows a different path: not putting on yellowface in order to lead a Chinese gang and in fact leaning hard the other way by having them call him "the Great White Leader" or just "the White Leader" the whole time. Is this technically better? I suppose it is. Is it not by much? Certainly!

Anyway, the White Leader is really wealthy playboy Anthony Clare, who turns out to be wealthy because he is a drug kingpin. Until he gets pinched by Detective Sergeant Burke, of course. (Startling Comics 001, 1940) 

the Voa:

Roger Barrow and his nephew Phillip Acton have just returned from a diamond-buying trip to Africa, and they must have been on their best behaviour because the local inhabitants of wherever they were doing their business sent them home with what is essentially a curse on their heads: the promise that the death-god Voa will follow them back.

This is of course a classic setup for a Woman in Red whodunnit mystery, with one of the six possible suspects bumping off the rest for those sweet, sweet diamonds. It's a classic solution to such a problem!

To give this comic the tiniest amount of benefit of the doubt I think that the false Voa that shows up to start killing people (aka Phillip Acton, the nephew) is dressed up like some sort of mahogany idol, but what that all adds up to is that while he is not technically doing blackface, he certainly appears to be doing blackface. It's not better, I'll say that right now.

Anyway, he was going to murder his whole family in order to get his hands on some stupid diamonds, so it's not like we were under the impression that he was a good person. About the only fun thing about this one is that Acton's chosen weapon is a blowgun that shoots poisoned crystal shards. (Thrilling Comics 005, 1940)

Princess Ah-Ku:

Princess Ah-Ku is a recurring villain of Bob Phantom's and she's just kind of generic: generically villainous, generically Yellow Peril... she even adopts an extremely generic alter ego called the Master in her first appearance. Most of her schemes involve smuggling. (Top-Notch Comics 004, 1940)

Princess Ah-Ku returns in Top-Notch Comics 005 under yet another identity, as the Doctor, leader of a gang of kidnappers. As always, the surgical outfit-as-costume is a very strong look, though something about the reveal of Ah-Ku as the real identity of the Doctor makes me think that this was a last-minute change to spice up the adventure a bit.

Top-Notch Comics 006 involves Ah-Ku doing some opium smuggling, with a sideline in trying to figure out who Bob Phantom is so that she can kill him off. This allows for the hilarious old bit where she captures Walt Whitney in order to grill him for information on his own alter ego.

In her final appearance in Top-Notch Comics 009, Princess Ah-Ku attempts to take over Chinatown by killing off the Council of Seven who apparently have been running it. She manages to get it down to a Council of Four before Bob Phantom catches wise and steps in.

Princess Ah-Ku is finally brought to justice thanks to Bob Phantom's unexpected skill with the throwing axe. Perhaps it's for the best - at the rate her Yellow Peril levels were rising, the next time we saw Ah-Ku she might have sported a fu manchu.

the Brahmins: 

Kardak the Mystic and his gal-pal Lorna are just kind of wandering around the Louisiana bayous when they stumble across a Siva-worshipping cult of fanatics in a weird mystical pocket dimension. They foil the Brahmins' initial attempts to destroy human civilization (and acquire a new companion named Balthar in the process) and then spend the remainder of 1940 on a voyage through various other magical lands on the way to confront the Brahmins' masters, conveniently named the Master Brahmins. Look out for them in a 1941 edition of this very Round-Up. (Top-Notch Comics 006, 1940)

PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 003

This edition of the Problematic Round-Up is devoted to minor MLJ character Fu Chang and his foes.

Fu Chang:

Reading Charlie Chan comics has absolutely messed my head up in a specific way: because Charlie Chan is so clearly a project with the set goal of having a Chinese character who is not an overt racist Yellow Peril stereotype (while, yes, being pretty racist in a bunch of other ways) I give it more of the benefit of the doubt than I otherwise would. For instance, I just kind of skim most of what Charlie Chan says because actually parsing it is very painful. 

The problem is, I keep automatically giving various other series featuring Chinese American detectives the benefit of the doubt, and very few of them are also earnest-but-flawed attempts to avoid the overtly racist tropes of the day. This is all to say Fu Chang and his adventures are pretty racist and it caught me off guard and I had to work through it here.

So: Fu Chang is an American educated Chinese man (with a more Caucasian skin tone than the bright yellow Evil Chinese such as the Dragon, below) who is very dedicated to his (personal? family?) god and as a result has been gifted a chess set with "all the magic powers of Aladdin's Lamp" (and this smearing of everything East of the Mediterranean into one big exotic mess is classic Orientalism) which in effect means that he has a bunch of little guys at hand to do his bidding.

If there's one fun thing about Fu Chang, it's trying to figure out exactly what the heck kind of game this chess set could be used for. Here are the known pieces:

- the Warrior - just a little guy, used to spy on folks

- unnamed stage magician - has ESP or other way of locating hidden objects

- the Little Man of Magic - a magician in the Indian mystic vein. More talkative and proactive than many others. Able to paralyze humans via magic 

- the Doctor - healing plus some hand-to hand. Also has wings in one story

- the Mermaid - amphibious

- the Woodsman - tree-chopping action

- a pilot - can fly a plane but the plane is sold separately

- group of men in suits plus military officer and a jodhpured adventurer - engage in combat with the Tiger-Devil

- Seen but never used: the shirtless guy, the blonde lady in the red dress, the policeman, the crook, the fat bald guy

- winged people - obviously they can fly. As the series goes on the winged figures show up more and more until the last few adventures feature nothing but up to a couple of dozen of them.

I suppose it's possible that you could cobble together a complete chess set out of those. Obviously the winged guys would be the pawns, but where would the mermaid come in? Even more concerning than the fact that there might not have been a complete Fu Chang lore bible with detailed breakdowns of all the chess pieces and their powers is the constant slander of Aladdin's lamp. Unless Fu Chang and his god have a chronic lack of imagination, this is a pretty weak showing from a fabled object. (Pep Comics 001, 1940)

the Dragon:

The Dragon is really notable only for his fantastic name as well as to illustrate the weird vibes-based skin-colouring in the Fu Chang comic - the more good and Westernized you are, the pinker your skin. Otherwise he's a creep and a low-level Yellow Peril gangster. (Pep Comics 001, 1940)

the Cult of the Tiger-Devil: 

While I love the Tiger-Devil itself, the Tiger-Devil Cult that serves and has summoned him is some pan-Asian degeneracy nonsense straight out of Lovecraft. Serves them right for summoning a demon to conquer the world with that it gets beaten up by a bunch of little chessmen - though the Tiger-Devil has dominion over all men, the chess pieces are no men. 

If the MLJ Universe hadn't stopped being a continuous continuity in the early 90s it might be more significant that the Tiger-Devil ends up sealed in a jar and dropped into San Francisco Bay. Alas. (Pep Comics 002, 1940)

the Drug-Master:

It's a Fu Chang sweep for this instalment of the Problematic Round-Up with Ghor here, aka the Drug-Master, a very hard-core name that I wish I could celebrate a bit more but no: he's yet another Yellow Peril type with a bit of added spice in that he is also involved in the sinister Asian Drug Trade. Specifically, he's bringing a powerful new drug into San Francisco's Chinatown, one so addictive that it makes anyone his slave rather than do without it, even Fu Chang's fiance Tay Ming. It's so potent, in fact, that withdrawal induces a suicidal/homicidal frenzy and since the Drug-Master does not seem to be a particularly good boss, he's letting his drug slaves go into withdrawal all over town. As is usually the case, the skills that make a criminal successful in human circles are of little use against a bunch of Fu Chang's tiny guys and the Drug-Master ends up blowing himself to kingdom come. (Pep Comics 003, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 264: THE VOICE

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 006, 1940)

The Voice! Mysterious drug kingpin of San Francisco! Nobody has seen his face, not even his henchmen!

The Voice! Using loudspeakers and radios, he coordinates his operations from a hidden place of safety!

The Voice! Is a street-level supercrook who has the misfortune to be operating in a story about Electro, Marvel of the Age! All his precautions are as nothing against the giant remote-controlled robot! Adding insult to injury, he isn't even the main focus of the story, as Electro is on a nation-wide anti-drug crusade. Poor the Voice.

BONUS HONOURS: Professor Zog gets a telegram of congratulations from FDR!