ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 001

I've highlighted some particular aliens before but what is this blog but an exercise in making note of every dang thing I come across. And so: aliens! We're going to stick to our old familiar way of dealing with things that will have a lot of examples with little info: the round-up, and since I've been reading Target Comics recently, we'll be seeing all of the alien weirdos that Basil Wolverton designed for Spacehawk to encounter! As time goes on we'll see some of the (checks files) nearly 900 alien species I have catalogued in a dusty old spreadsheet, as well as any new ones who might come our way.

Bat-Men:

Spacehawk encounters this solitary Bat-Man in the giant ant tunnels that riddle the crust of Neptune, and he just wants the danged Martian pirates who have been making their lair nearby to clear out and stop being such bad neighbours. I really appreciate the 1940s "didn't bother to check out what a bat wing looks like" wings, which can be totally justified because, hey, this is an alien! Why would it have the same kind of wings anyway? (Target Comics v1 005, 1940)

Martians:

And speaking of those Martians: here they are. As you can see, the Martians in Wolverton's Spacehawk stories have a fair amount of different facial lumps and bumps, but they all have droopy little ears and noodly tentacle arms. (Target Comics v1 005, 009 x2, 011, 1940)

Mercurians:

I said it before in the Grebo entry but the point still stands: I really appreciate this glimpse of "men of all the nations of Mercury" that shows that there is just an incredible amount of phenotypic diversity in the Mercurian genome, covering every humanoid alien look from lizard-man through pink and lumpy to weird little imp. (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)

Draxions:  

The Mercurian tendency toward genetic diversity finds its ultimate expression in the Draxions, who moved to Venus after a disastrous war and managed to become water-breathing fish-men over the course of a couple of hundred years merely by hanging around a lake enough. Luckily for them, Spacehawk is on hand to help them out with a bit of superscience when they decide that living in a lake isn't all that it's cracked up to be. (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 802: HAMMERFIST

(Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

Hammerfist is a good old-fashioned gang boss-with-a-gimmick, in his case an iron ball in place of his missing right hand. He's on a mission to take over the night club scene in New York City by the simple expedient of shooting up clubs until business gets so bad that everyone is willing to sell cheap rather than go bankrupt.

More importantly, Hammerfist is the person responsible for framing Niles "the Target" Reed's brother Bill for murder, which leads to Bill's death and then to the creation of the Target and the Targeteers. I really want to say that he's also the one responsible for the protection racket that left the Targeteers homeless orphans to be taken in by Niles, but while this is plausible it's never quite explicitly laid out. 

More importantly, even though Niles/the Target battles and captures his brother's killer in this issue, he never learns that Hammerfist is the one who framed Bill! Which is actually a very interesting contrast with Bill "supposedly escaped murderer but actually dead in a shallow grave" Reed, with the law seeking a dead but innocent man and the Target looking for a man who has already been captured. I'm sure that someone could really do something with all of this if the Target were still a going concern!

Hammerfist and his gang do pretty well against drunken nightclub patrons, but ultimately their role is to serve as punching bags to show just how good the Target and his Targeteers are at beating up crooks. And they're great at it! Don't worry though: even though he's hung up for the police to find, Hammerfist will return in 1941 for what is hopefully a more illustrious appearance.

(almost forgot to include Hammerfist's amazing entrance)

REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 015

Time for another round! Of round-up!

Adolf Hitler: 

When time traveller Whiz Wilson journeys to the far future world of 1960 CE he gets mixed up in a scheme hatched by agents of this fellow, ruler of "the dictator realms of Europe." Is he meant to be Hitler or merely evoke him? Hard to say, but I for one think he's supposed to be Old Hitler. (Sure-Fire Comics 001, 1940)

He's not that much of a Hitler, but Don Ruizen, dictator of the South American country of Bolita, is absolutely a little guy with a toothbrush mustache who has started a ruinous war for his own enrichment (at the insistence of an oil company, but still). (Target Comics v1 001, 1940)

This is the back of Hitler's head in all but name - there's even a cut-off "fuhrer" in the first panel - from a fictional movie called The Maskless Axeman, about the dictator's very well-dressed executioner. (Target Comics v1 001, 1940)

Al Capone:

 Honestly not sure what percentage of guys like Boss Barone here are purposeful references to Al Capone and how many are just a result of the rhythm of his name entering the collective unconscious of comic book writers as sounding gang-bossy. (Target Comics v1 010, 1940)

Albert Lebrun:

It's the same old story: the White Streak is in Paris in 1940 and the President of France has been kidnapped. Do we count the fact that Albert Lebrun was President of France in 1940 higher than the fact that this unnamed president doesn't really look like Lebrun or vice versa? (Target Comics v1 005, 1940)

FDR:

Minor appearance by FDR to give the thesis of this White Streak adventure. (Target Comics v1 010, 1940)

Joseph Stalin:

He's unseen in the fake movie The Blue Zombie but Josef Malinsk (Joseph Stalin), dictator of Bolshemania (Russia) drives much of the action of the story when he orders the invasion of Coreland (Finland) and inspires the creation of the titular Blue Zombie (original creation). (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)

the Koh-i-Noor Diamond:

Once again "Kohinoor" crops up as shorthand for "a big gem," and this time it's even a diamond! As is often the case, the dang thing ends up being stolen and it's down to the Chameleon to recover it for its wealthy owner, if not the British Crown or the nation of India. (Target Comics v1 007, 1940)

the Mona Lisa: 

Whiz Wilson's exploration of the future takes him to Switzerland in the year 2040 AD, a land devastated by World War Four. He helps a band of Americans hold a castle stuffed full of treasure from a band of roving horselords, treasure that includes both the Mona Lisa and "the Venus statue" which I'm going to assume is the Venus de Milo and not, say, the Venus of Willendorf. (Sure-Fire Comics 002, 1940)

Robert Taylor: 

The smallest possible name check here: the never-seen Robert Baylor is almost certainly a reference to actor Robert Taylor. (Target Comics v1 002, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 050

Novelty Press character round-up, more like.

the Chameleon:

An unnamed master of disguise (throughout his 1940 appearances, at least) who dispenses vigilante justice on an ad hoc basis, the Chameleon's major distinction is that his name is always written in cursive. Other than that: he's got a chauffeur/sidekick (Slim) and a bumbling police nemesis (Inspector Parks) and somehow manages to simultaneously be one of those heroes who is wanted by the law and whose identity and address are just kind of common knowledge. (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)

the Blue Zombie:

"Fantastic Feature Films" was a strip that ran in the first couple of years of Target Comics, with the same conceit as Ed Wheelan's Minute Movies: that the stories being presented were films in which the were being portrayed by a pool of fictional actors - the titular Blue Zombie of this feature, for instance, was played by Orson Black, a Boris Karloff-style Man of a Thousand Faces. This is a fantastic fictional conceit and I am surprised that it hasn't cropped up more over the years.

In the fictional movie The Blue Zombie, Bolshemanian scientist Igor Zamoisky rebels against his country's warmongering dictator and heads to the neighbouring country of Coreland in order to put his scientific discoveries to use in thwarting a Bolshemanian invasion. Discovering a lost Bolshemanian battalion that succumbed to the harsh Corelian winter, he attempts to restore one of them, his old friend Nicholas Samousk, to life. Instead of a restored Samousk, his experiment produces a bright blue zombie version of his friend who responds to his mental commands but cannot think for itself. Zamoisky restores the rest of the battalion in a similar fashion and uses them to crush the Bolshemanian invasion of Coreland, then sets off with his zombie army to free his homeland. 

Obviously describing a one-off like the Blue Zombie as a super-hero is a bit of a stretch, but a) he's not that far off of the Purple Zombie in his origin and general deal, b) I wanted an excuse to talk about the fictional-actors-in-fictional-film conceit and c) the Blue Zombie is a really good name. (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)

the Target: 

It's always fun when an old-school anthology comic book gets a character to match its name fairly late in the game and to prove my point here's the Target, showing up in the tenth issue of Target Comics.

The Target makes his debut with a big advertising push to really get the word out that he is out to crush crime in his version of NYC: full page newspaper ads, messages on the radio, threatening telegrams sent directly to crooks... at one point a lady calls that number that used to tell you the correct time and a recording of the Target tells her to keep her nose clean. It's really the opposite of the modern Batman as Urban Legend school of superhero mystique.

The Target's gimmick is also Batman adjacent: like 50s 60s 70s whichever era's Batman first justified the yellow circle on his chest as a bulletproof target for crooks to aim at, the Target is running around with a literal target painted on his chest (and back) because he has a bulletproof leotard on underneath. Just why the fact that his legs are unprotected is a) necessary and b) emphasized is never really addressed.

Finally, the Target has a thematically appropriate calling card, a dart. We'll see how long he keeps using it for. (Target Comics v1 010, 1940)

the Targeteers:

The more astute readers among you might have noticed that I didn't really go into the actual origin of the Target in his own entry, and that's because it's tied in with that of his sidekicks the Targeteers and so we're covering them all at once.

So: Niles Reed is a brilliant but aimless metallurgist whose only relative, brother and New York City District Attorney Bill Reed, is framed for murder and scheduled to be executed at Sing Sing.

Niles dons a domino mask and attempts to bust Bill out during his final prison transfer but the guards manage to hit Bill during their escape. After a heartfelt "why me?" Bill dies and Niles buries him in an unmarked grave, which means that he's still considered to be at large, an evocative detail that I had hoped would lead to something like Niles hinting that the Target is actually Bill to throw suspicion off of himself and flush out the crooks who framed him, it never really seems to come up again.

This would ordinarily be the point in an origin story in which the costume would come into play, there's one more step to the Target's origin and that's the Targeteers.

See, Niles is wandering the streets at night, trying to figure out just what he can do in the face of an uncaring world in which innocent district attorneys are gunned down in the street for merely trying to break jail, when he runs off some thugs who are attempting to kill or at least maim two teenage boys, Dave and Tommy. It turns out that the kids are both orphans who also hate crime because the crooks had already killed their father (well, one father and one unofficial adopted father, but why get technical).

Having two young wards who love to talk about getting real beefy and wiping out crime is the final catalyst for Niles, who remembers that he has some superscientific bulletproof material and three super-hero costumes just lying around, and since the three were playing darts when they came up with the idea the whole endeavour ends up being dart and target themed (and as this is possibly my favourite style of generic supersuit it's nice to see three people running around in it at once).

The two lads collectively go by the Targeteers, which is a nice change of pace from teen sidekicks who just go by their own names. Finally, according to some dialogue later in the comic the jailbreak, ad hoc funeral, befriending of the boys, making costumes and the initial Target adventure in the previous issue (including the entire publicity blitz) all take place in about a week, which is very efficient. (Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 801: GENERAL Z

(Target Comics v1 007, 1940)

Boystate is under attack! At first, it's a relatively innocuous disruption of the power supply, which from what I've been able to glean is broadcast power derived from cosmic rays, but it swiftly escalates until all contact with the rangers operating outside of the Boystate boyborders is lost.

And just in case there's any confusion, this disruption attack is swiftly followed by a barrage of poison gas missiles, and the Boystate child army must be rolled out to deal with them using flamethrowers.

The culprit behind these dastardly attacks turns out to be General Z, who in turn is revealed to be the former Captain of Boystate, who was dismissed from his post for selling the Skipper's inventions on to ne'er-do-wells and is now back for revenge. This is one of those times that something seems like a hoary old trope (the new villain is actually a disgraced former holder of a heroic position) is probably still fairly fresh.

General Z's minions are called the Z-Men and I must say that they're terrific: they have a great name, they are dressed in a kind of junior version of Z's own outfit, they seem like they're a little dumb, they're roughly equivalent to the Boystate Rangers... it's like a checklist of all the things I want to see in a group of henchmen, plus they have death ray guns. All that's really missing to really make the experience complete are one or more lieutenants with code names and/or slightly distinctive uniforms.

I said that the Z-Men are roughly equivalent to the Boystate Rangers, but there is one missed opportunity here: though they do have a kind of slouchy adolescent look the Z-Men appear to be adults, and it would be much more symmetrical and satisfying if they were also troubled youths but instead of the benevolent arms of Boystate they had been taken in by General Z and turned to a life of crime.

Perhaps the reason for this is that the Skipper's first plan is to simply blow up General Z's whole compound, Z-Men and all, and it might not reflect well on him as a saviour of the at-risk youth were he seen to be okay with murdering them en masse. In any case, he is prevented from doing so when General Z kidnaps Jerry, the grandson of the Skipper's old friend Colonel Richey. Instead, while the Z-Men and the Boystate Rangers engage in deadly hand-to-hand combat, the Captain and M-4 (formerly Pretty Boy, and one of the few Rangers to make even a second appearance) infiltrate Z's compound in order to rescue Jerry and shut down the signal-damping device that is keeping the Boystate air force grounded.

Jerry is found in this absolutely awesome looking cryogenic chamber in which General Z freezes his enemies and then sticks them in little oubliettes. Not particularly important to the plot but certainly sick as hell.

The Captain also manages to trash the power plant, and once the Boystate bugplanes start joining the fight, General Z legs it (knocking his subordinate to the ground in the process just to underscore what a wretch he is).

Also please note that young Jerry is completely traumatized by the experience, which is a real change of pace from the usual plucky kids in these kinds of stories. 

General Z returns in Target Comics v1 011, but as the real meat of that story takes place in issue 012, in 1941, I'm going to cover both together once we get to that batch of issues.