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Miss Victory Realizes She's In A Comic

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Seen as being the original patriotic superheroine, Miss Victory was drawn by Blue Beetle and Cat-Man artist Charles "Chas" Quinlan in 1941. The character was Joan Wayne, no relation to a certain Batman, who was a government stenographer when she smelled trouble during wartime would put on her red-white-and-blue outfit with the occasionally chest-exposing top as the masked maiden Miss Victory. There's never been a definitive example of if she had any genuine superpowers, but her knack for to surviving deadly situations has left many to believe she was at least partially invulnerable with varying levels of enhanced strength. One of her adventures had Joan working for the Secretary of Commerce checking up on some hometown pals who were in Washington as defense workers. Joan goes to her friend Maggie Duckett that had been kidnapped by Nazi spies who sent their agent Fritz to sabotage a munitions plant as Mr. Duckett. Joan changes into her heroic persona to stop the Nazis who ...

Are You Sure You're From Earth?

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A terrible miscalculation in size can be a real bummer when you're planning to assault another planet, and this shows in spades in Chalton's Space Adventures 41 with another Bill Molno-drawn sci-fi oddity. I Am From Earth introduces us to the Zebra People of Karas on an alien world who were planning to in attack Earth, but then they get a surprise when an Earthling representing shows up in his big rocket and it turns out that humans are at five times as big compared to Karas' striped citizens. Introducing himself as William Robb, this captain of Earth's space force picks up one of the Zebra People as if they were an action figure and puts him down giving him the pet name of Ed as he starts to go all Godzilla on Karas. They aliens send their flying saucers after him and start shooting like planes on King Kong hitting him with everything from heat rays to nuclear blasts all of which have no effect on the invulnerable human. Captain Robb picks up Ed again and demands the Z...

A Two-Headed Glip Is Worser Than None

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Artist Bill Mono did great deal from Charlton Publishing's various sci-fi anthologies and really stood out in Issue 60 Strange Suspense Stories with the unorthodox tale of The Two-Headed Glip. In what seems like a family-friendly episodes of Twilight Zone, John Reis regularly tells bedtime stories to his toddler son Billy starring fantasy creatures such as dragons and giants, but the reigning champion of his fictional universe was the Glip, a humongous two-headed serpent that scared off all the other monsters. John then starts having dreams where the Glip is chasing him only to be saved by his son with toy bow and arrow, so one night he decides to stop telling Billy stories. Later on, Mr. and Mrs. Reis here a roar from outside, but they shake it off thinking that's it's just a coincidence a mysterious roar sounding like the monster one of them thought up is staring at them right outside their window. John again dreams of the Glip hunting him down and biting him on the arm o...

Trees Gone Wild

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Key Publications founded by Stanley Morse started cranking out funny books in 1951 with several imprints, one of which was Gillmour Mazazines who's longest running title was Weird Mysteries, an anthology of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. One strange short was titled Reaching For The Moon which got retitled to Out Of Control in some reprints, and the opening narration is by your typical green-skinned ol' witch character who was probably between jobs while hosting this and working for EC Comics, although why the story is being told by a witch is perplexing as its more of a science-fiction tale instead of supernatural. Murray Wacasey is a biologist who has the exotic Ironwood tree from Texas to his laboratory in New Jersey to prove that it's possible to transplant them to a different environment. Wacasey's associate Theron Moore offers his special vitalizing formula, but Wacasey doesn't want to share the glory, so Moore just sneaks into the lab later and gives the Ironwo...

Could It Be...Satanas?

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Not too many comic villains can claim that they are "The Most Evil Man In The Universe", but Satanas gave it his all in his two comic book appearances. Rural Home, also known as Croydon Publishing, had a peculiar anthology titled Red Band Comics in 1944 which was called that because the interior stories had a genuine red banner on each page and had nothing to do with audience ratings, but Red Band's weirdest feature is that out of the four issue run only two of them were original as Issues 2 and 4 were just reprints of the previous issues, including the covers. Satanas appears in the first issue, however he also appears on the cover of Issue 3 along with the hero Bogey Man on each one even though the two characters don't actually meet up, only briefly in the creation of the parodic superhero Captain Milksop, but that is another story. Satanas' origin story begins a few millennia ago on Pluto in a tale drawn by Hangman artist Sam Cooper. Among the other amoral Plut...

Torchy Makes A Mummy Out Of You..Twice!

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Bill Ward was considered one of the cornerstones of good girl art, and his character of Torchy was at the front of the line when it came to blonde bombshells. He did artwork for various superheroes like Bulletman and The Shadow, but Ward came up Torchy when he was serving in the army during WWII that eventually made its big debut in the pages of Quality Comics' Doll Man as its own segment. Torchy Todd was a ditzy dame that went from one madcap situation after the other in titles like Modern Comics before she eventually landed her own short-lived self-titled comic in 1949. Strange thing is that this glamour gal was mistaken for being an ancient Egyptian queen on two separate occasions. One time has our flighty female fretting over not having enough funds to get a new gown when she walks into a museum to see the well-preserved outfit of Queen Ishmar in their mummy display and tries the two-piece costume on but quickly retreats when the museum guard returns. A pair of Egyptian envoys ...

The Highness Of Rip-Offs

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Kid Eternity was one of the few solo teenage superheroes of the Golden Age that wasn't a sidekick and gained the power to summon up anyone from history like they were his own personal Pokemon. Creators Otto Binder and Sheldon Moldoff had Kid fighting everybody from Nazis to regular hoods, but the only adversary that managed to stick around was the feisty but elderly con woman referred to as Her Highness. She and her gorgeous strongarm Silk crossed paths with Kid Eternity on two occasions and was popular enough to get her own segment starting in Hit Comics 28 where the two of them escape jail again after just being run back in. The diminutive deceiver hijacks a bus and beats it to California hoping to find bigger suckers than those in Kid Eternity's town and literally beat their way through some police once they hit the state line. Since it's 1943, the California city Highness and Silk get to are celebrating the survivors of a torpedo attack by the Japanese, so Highness gets...