MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 874: MAGI

(Zip Comics 004, 1940)

The villain for today is called Magi, and is the chief magic-user to a race of Mermen and Mermaids. Magi and his pal Torno have come to the surface world on a mission to retrieve the last descendant of the Mer-folk on land. Some notes:

-Magi gets no small amount of points for recognizing Zambini as his greatest threat among the surface world people and moving to neutralize him in advance of the mission.

-These points are lessened by the fact that Zambini manages to wake up mid-Eternal Sleep spell and turn it into a Long Nap spell instead.

-Mary Reed, the last Mer-descendant on Earth, is somehow the key to making the Merfolk able to walk the land again, but just how this is to be achieved is never articulated. Does it have something to do with her being the only part-Mer human or have the Merfolk simply been procrastinating for generations?

-The reason that the Merfolk can't just walk up onto land may shock you: it's not due to amphibiousness-related problems as you might expect but rather because they can't see in daylight. Wild! 

Magi and Torno successfully nab Mary Reed, but her savvy friends recruit Zambini (extremely refreshed from his long magic nap) to help rescue her. In addition to Mary's friend Jean Sampson (cruelly institutionalized for reporting Mary's abduction but sprung by Zambini) and Jean's fiance Stanley Hamilton, they are accompanied by Hamilton's friend and minor antagonist Paul Lloyd, whose lust for Merman gold is such that he attempts to murder Zambini for it while walking around on the bottom of the ocean in a Zambini-made air bubble that he has no hint will survive the magician's death. If ever a man deserved magical punishment (specifically: having his arm turned into a fish fin) it is he.

The rest of the adventure is a foregone conclusion, considering that Magi was not quite powerful enough to overcome Zambini while the latter was in deep REM sleep. After some magical spankings and a round of apologies, the humans are off to the surface while the Merfolk city is spared further wizardly wrath. Even Paul Lloyd gets his regular arm back though he doesn't deserve it, the jerk.

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Top-quality aliens, fresh-baked! 

Unnamed Species:

This unnamed species has that most delightful and implausible of features, an organic wheel that they use to locomote around! Other than that they're your typical underground dwelling species: they live far enough under the surface or have an extensive enough range that one can enter their kingdom in the Himalayas and exit in Iran; they have a captured surface woman named Rina as their queen but the real power lies with "He", who is four or five times bigger than the rest of his species; and they are very sensitive to sound. Regular stuff. 

Those wheels though! (Wonderworld Comics 011, 1940)

Earth-Men: 

The Earth-Men are the fellows who worship the ancestor-god Sakka, as detailed in a Divine Round-Up a couple of months back. They're little bug-eyed guys with a high incidence of male-pattern baldness and a hostile attitude until adventurer Rocky Ryan kind of accidentally convinces them that he is the reincarnation of Sakka. 

In the peaceful times that follow, Ryan's companion Professor Ames is able to explore the Earth-Man city and make some frankly astounding discoveries, including the facts that 

1: There used to be a land mass spanning the Pacific between South America and Asia 

2. At the time, Earth had 2 moons, one of which then exploded

3. The force of the exploding moon sank the Pacific continent

4. The Earth-Men are the remnants of that Pacific civilization, and their shrunken stature and big ol' eyes are a result of living in a dense jungle, somehow.

It's a real upending of everything that we thought we knew about the history of the Earth, plus now Ames has enough material for a book. Publish or perish, huzzah! (Big Shot Comics 014, 1941)

Mercurians (Three Types):  

Space Adventurer Flint Baker and his companion Mimi make their way to the planet Mercury, where he finds a city strewn with humanoid corpses. Eventually, they find a single survivor, who reveals that he is the last of the Western Hemisphere Mercurians, the rest having been wiped out by...

... the Eastern Hemisphere Mercurians, a rowdy bunch of cave-man types who storm in and kidnap Mimi before Flint can do anything to prevent it. Through a series of battles, he recovers Mimi and seemingly wipes out the Eastern Mercurians in turn. Mercury is now an uninhabited planet.

But not for long, because Flint then uses the atomic conversion pistol gifted to him by the last of the Western Mercurians to make a whole new batch of hot Mercurians out of some nearby flowers and install them in the now-deserted city. (Planet Comics 006, 1940)

Erostians: 

After space vigilante Cosmic Carson's men shoot down a pirate ship over planetoid Eros, both they and the pirates' victims come under attack by the green, caveman-like Erostians, who carry off as many women as they can get their grubby green mitts on (bonus entry: these women are all Venusians).

Cosmic Carson himself sets out to rescue the captives and ends up a prisoner himself, wherein he learns that the Erostians are not simply a species of humanoid aliens, but the former dominant species of Earth, thrown down and banished to Eros by some ancient scientist. Plus, they eat people, with a preference for pretty women. It's actually a bit of a roller coaster, as the standard alien lust for human (or humanoid) women is explained by the fact that the Erostians are also human or at least homo but then their desire turns out not to be lust but gluttony and thus back in the realm of the inexplicable.

Anyway, Cosmic Carson blasts most of them to smithereens. (Science Comics 005, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 860: MUSKOG

(Whirlwind Comics 002, 1940)

This is Muskog, ruler of the Earth's core in the far-future year of 1980 CE and total dick. Muskog has been blasting the surface of the planet with a static electricity ray for seemingly no reason whatsoever, or at least no reason that he cares to state. This of course attracts the attention of crack science adventurer Bruce Barlow, who ventures into the molten depths on behalf of his people to ask "how come?"

There are precisely three things I want to note about Muskog's sole appearance. The first is simply to note that his name is infuriatingly close to muskeg, the Arctic/subarctic bog biome. Is this a coincidence, or did Bruce Barlow's unknown creator(s) know and love the word as much as I do?

Secondly, we must mention Barlow's method of getting to the centre of the Earth: via a capsule that is shot out of a big gun into a volcanic crater. Never has any idea so neatly conveyed how simultaneously wonderful and dumb comic books can be. And how is he going to get back, you ask? Why by means of an "upward space helmet" that will simply float him back through the fiery mantle.

Finally, as always, I must take note of any time that an alien or otherwise nonhuman species crops up in which the males are, e.g., bug-eyed green weirdos but the females are conventionally attractive human women, as seen here in the person of Muskog's rebellious daughter Eda. Ah, the wonders of evolution.

Eda frees Barlow, allowing him to destroy the irreplaceable explosion machines,  but unfortunately is unable to join him on his voyage through thousands of kilometres of molten rock because she is wounded. Barlow promises to return and is later seen trying to spin this return voyage not as a sex thing but as being in the interests of science, heh heh.

Bruce Barlow is of course honoured by the surface world for his efforts, and this gives us the opportunity to see that the US flag of 1980 has only 28 stars - what great calamity has caused 20 whole states to succeed/ be kicked out/ other? Worldbuilding!

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Love those aliens. And so forth. 

the Sea Demons:

The Sea Demons are a hostile underwater race of fish-men who look great but get very little character development as a society. Their main thing seems to be a deeps desire to attack and capture...

the Sea Amazons:

The Sea Amazons (described as "blonde Sea Amazons" at least twice in the text despite the fact that a pretty noticeable percentage of them - including their queen! - are brunettes) are about a (blonde) hair more well-developed than the Sea Demons. They are a race of amphibious women who live in the city of Mermea under the rule of Queen Bea (or possibly Mea) and who just hate being kidnapped by those dang Sea Demons. To that end, they have tamed a creature called the Guardian, and I must say that while I love the Guardian and its look I have an incredibly hard time figuring out its anatomy: its main component is an enormous humanoid head, yes, but is it stuck on the end of an eel body with a chin-mounted tentacle? Is it more like a giant slug? Are there two tentacles that I'm meant to picture churning through the water? 

Though the Sea Demon and Sea Amazon societies are at odds, they do in fact have a lot in common, such as the Sea Demon's own beast, the Seaclops, seen here battling the Guardian. They don't really get around to exploring these similarities, however, as undersea hero Typhon ends up blowing up both the Seaclops and most of the Sea Demons. (Weird Comics 005, 1940)

Crab Men: 

These Crab Men from Mercury have been trapped on a derelict spaceship for twenty years - are they really vicious or just looking for help? Space adventurers Gale Allen and Jack North are taking no chances, and vaporize them with an artificial sun ray. (Planet Comics 008, 1940) 

Cranians:

Rex Dexter of Mars has the honour of encountering the Cranians, an alien race so goofy that even in-fiction they are believed to be just a myth. But what has brought the Cranians out of the mists of legend to aggress against the human race?

It turns out that if you have a hand for a head and heads for hands, having that extra nose means that you will breathe twice as much and thus eventually use up all the oxygen on your planet, and rather than planting some extra forests, the Cranians have decided that the best solution to this problem is the conquest of Earth and its rich stores of O2.

I personally do not think that a machine that controls Earth's atmosphere such that oxygen levels can be cut in half near-instantly is a particularly good idea, but it turns out that I am a fool because not only does the far future Earth of 2000 AD have such a device but it proves integral to the defeat of the Cranian menace when Rex Dexter does just that. Live and learn, as they say. (Mystery Men Comics 017, 1940)

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We've hit a rich seam of aliums this month.

Mermaid/ Reptile-Men:

This city of Reptile-Men is ruled over by a Mermaid queen, and I am forced to contemplate, and not for the first time, whether this is an instance of a member or group of one species ruling over another or if it's one of extreme sexual dimorphism. Whichever one it is, I do appreciate that the Reptile-Men have that really goofy wide stance going on with their lizard legs. (Weird Comics 003, 1940)

Monkey Men: 

Also known as the Cannibalistic Monkey Men, these beefy lads vex one of those hidden Ancient Roman colonies that are all over Africa and the Middle East by demanding tribute of human flesh. They eventually meet their match and are seemingly wiped out entirely when they try to eat Kaänga and his new pal "Red" Longjohn. (Jungle Comics 007, 1940)

Capris-Men:

Earth is in need of radium, the only cure to a deadly plague that is ravaging the population, and so an expedition headed by Rex Dexter of Mars sets out to get some from the nearly 100% pitchblende planet Capris (okay, so it's called a planet throughout the story but it's got to be a dwarf planet or an asteroid or something based on travel timelines alone). The fantastic-looking native Capris-Men, aka the Capris Monsters, don't take to kindly to this and mount an attack on the expedition, which leads the expedition to leave early, meaning that they don't get enough radium to treat everyone.

The obvious solution to this problem is, of course, to tow the entire planet(oid) into orbit around Earth, so that the healing power of ionizing radiation can eternally shine down on its inhabitants and make them the healthiest people in the universe. No word on what the Capris-Men thought about this development. (Mystery-Men Comics 002, 1939)

the Cave Men and the Lizard Men:

The Cave Men are basically just some extra hairy guys who live in a cave system called the Underground Empire beneath Rhodesia/modern day Zimbabwe. They are possibly immortal and are ruled by a white lady named Aldia, who is - the question is whether she bothered to share the secret of the Immortal Flame with her subjects.

The thing that really sets the Cave Men apart is the quality of their enemies, the Lizard Men. Sure, they're just a mindless horde of inhuman monsters who exist only to be righteously slaughtered by the heroic Lance Hale, but just look at their majestic fins! (Silver Streak Comics 004, 1940)

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When deep-sea diving off of the Marquesas Islands, explorers/lovers Chuck Hardy and Jerry Peterson are caught in a volcanic upheaval and sucked through a rift in the ocean floor. They find themselves in one of the many underground lands that dot any comic book version of the Earth - this one being lit and heated by an enormous volcano called Roara.

Chuck and Jerry's time in the underground land (never actually named as a whole, so I have been calling it Aquatania even though properly that refers to the one named kingdom in the underground area) is made easier by the fact that something in the atmosphere has given them both enormous strength. Which is good, because Aquatania is a rough-and-tumble place full of reptilian monsters and hostile humanoids. And speaking of those:

the Frog-Men:

Though the first Frog-Man that Cuck and Jerry meet, Mogba here, is a friendly guy, the Frog-Men as a whole are pretty aggro. They fill the role of the general antagonist for a couple of the other intelligent species in Aquatania and thus spend a lot of time getting beat up (and worse) by Chuck Hardy.

Please note also the long lobster antennae sprouting from between Mogba's eyebrows. These are features shared by several of Aquatania's different humanoid species and frankly I love this kind of thing. Suggesting a common ancestry between your multiple intelligent species that all live within walking distance of one another? Yes please. (Amazing-Man Comics 005, 1939)

The Frog-Men return to vex Chuck and Jerry in Amazing-Man Comics 011, and in issue 012, Chuck meets the Frog-Man leader, the two-headed Toga (who I can only assume is not green because the colourist forgot about the 'frog' part), in battle and kills him by heaving him off of a cliff. Hopefully the absence of Toga's influence will usher in a new era of peace for the Frog-Men. 

Aquatanians: 

The Aquatanians are the default white-guy species that you get in a lot of these many-lands-full-of-many-peoples adventures, thought the fact that they too have little lobster antennae suggests that they're descended from the same kind of ocean bugs as the Frog-Men, which is fun.

The Aquatanians have a sort of generically advanced and peaceful society mixed with a certain amount of medieval ignorance - they have high-speed air vehicles, for example, but no means of making fire other than sending Chuck to that big volcano I mentioned earlier to get some. They're also the ones who take the time to teach Cuck and Jerry the local language so that they don't have to spend most of their adventures doing charades. (Amazing-Man Comics 006, 1939)

the Quadropel Men: 

The Quadropel Men are our first Aquatanian race not to have antennae, suggesting that they may have evolved from an entirely different kind of ocean bug. They live in a hole in the ground (making them an under-underground race, yes) and do human intelligent being sacrifice to their deity, the Sacred Steam God. (Amazing-Man Comics 009, 1940)

the Swamp-Men:

Chuck and Jerry encounter the Swamp-Men after an unexpected flood washes them, along with their Aquatanian companion Oxan and Aquatanian antagonist Princess Irina out to sea on a raft improvised from a palace door. As can be seen above, the best thing about the Swamp-Men is the fact that they have domesticated these amazing giant turtles and insist on standing like they're zooming around on them even though the turtles are consistently described as being very slow. It's great!

Otherwise, the Swamp-Men are kind of jerks. They capture Chuck, Jerry and Irina (Oxan sneaks away in order to effect a dramatic turtleback rescue later) and intend to use them as food for their mounts - I mean, say what you will about human sacrifice, but at least the Quadropel Men had a reason for being murderous assholes. Princess Irina successfully ransoms herself with some spare gold, but even then her two escorts decide to rob and murder her rather than take her all the way home. Definitely the worst bunch in the entire underground world, even with the turtles taken into account. (Amazing-Man Comics 010, 1940)

the Lobstermen:

The final species encountered by Chuck, Jerry and Oxan before their series is phased out are the Lobstermen (aka the Pigmy Lobstermen) a bunch of friendly little pink guys ruled by Queen Irena. The Lobstermen are another antennaed species, and their lobster claw hands might just be a hint as to the ancestry of the various related races.

If Queen Irena's skin tone is anything to go by, the Lobstermen also seem to be another one of those races with the kind of sexual dimorphism whereby the males are all wizened little weirdos of some description and the females are essentially conventionally attractive human women, right down to not having lobster claws. It amazing how often that happens! (Amazing-Man Comics 011, 1940)