Issue(s):

Marvel Mystery Comics #23 - Sep 41
     "The Vision" - Jack Kirby & Joe Simon
     "The Case of the Vanishing Convicts" - Bill Everett
Marvel Mystery Comics#26 - Dec 41
     "The Parrot Strikes Back" - Carl Burgos
     "The Angel and the Case of the Armless Tiger Man" - Paul Gustavson & Allen Bellman
Captain America Comics #2 - Apr 41
     "Hurricane, Master of Speed" - (Unknown)
Captain America Comics #9 - Dec 41
     "Captain America and the White Death" - Joe Simon & Jack Kirby
Comedy Comics #9 - Apr 42
     "The Silver Scorpion" - Harry Sahle

Review/plot:
The Human Torch has captured The Parrot, whose power is that he has a Parrot's face. The Torch laments that The Parrot isn't getting the chair (we've seen in the past that he's got no problem frying people on the spot, so this isn't really surprising).

It's pretty violent by today's standards: the Parrot and his men gun down cops without a second thought. The Parrot escapes from custody at least twice during this 6 page story, so i guess the chair isn't a bad idea after all. There's also something going on with a volcano full of sulfur that the government needs to create munitions for the war and so they send the FLAMING MAN into the sulfur pit to check it out. But the best part is, one panel after the Human Torch agrees to go check out the volcano, the Parrot, trapped in a prison cell in the back of the same train the Human Torch is on, reads about it in the newspaper.

Does the Human Torch need to breath or what? Chloroform sure knocks him out.

Meanwhile, the original Vision is checking out the disappearance of a ship near the Antarctic. He runs into Khor, the Black Sorcerer, who was banished from France in 1245 from practicing black magic. He left France and found what looks to me like the Savage Land. Khor even looks a little like Belasco. That's about the only interesting thing going on here.

Hee hee! Far more interesting is the Sub-Mariner, driving from Utah to Oregon in a little go-cart that he built himself.

He's on a "quest for adventure" and stops at a gas station for 5 gallons of alcohol and 5 gallons of water. But while he's there, a local crazy sees Namor and freaks out.

Namor follows him to a mansion surrounded by an electrified fence, which Namor leaps over in his little go-cart. Inside, he's seduced by another escaped lunatic pretending to be a nurse.

The crazy guy and his assistant have such thick german accents they are almost unreadable, but it seems what's going on here is they were creating a race of amphibious men to invade America. Mind you they are somewhere between Utah and Oregon, where even the Sub-Mariner, WHO CAN FLY, needs a go-cart to get around, but invading with amphibious men it is. Anyway, Namor puts a stop to the whole thing and in the process the nurse claims that she was hit by some "queer chemical ray" and "cleared her senses".

The next story is about a speedster named Hurricane. He is introduced as the son of Thor, and exhibits a wide range of powers in addition to speed.

He shoots zap rays, the clouds thunder when he gets pissed, and he even gives someone a pair of temporary wings.

He was later retconned to be the Eternal Makkari, so that's kind of neat (Eternals have even shown to have the ability to transfer the power of flight to others). But in this story he kills a bunch of natives for messing with white doctors, including one female doctor who it turns out is very beautiful once she lets her hair down and takes off her glasses, but "My work demanded a scientist, not a woman. I became a scientist."

Meanwhile the Angel fights a German man whose super-power is that he has no arms so he learned to do everything with his mouth and legs. Seriously.

He hates machines and can't stop himself from destroying them, so Germany set him loose in America as a saboteur.

  < / 

But the the manly Angel ("Try some fist") puts a stop to that.

    

After he's captured, the Angel contemplates letting him loose on the Nazis. "That is if the R.A.F. has left any factories standing in Germany!" (Thumbs up!)

Next up is the Silver Scorpion, who is neither silver nor has any scorpion-like powers or theme.

But she's got a cool costume, and she foils the plot of a doctor who makes woman old and then charges them to restore their beauty. And she's as likely as not to deliver a pair of leather boots to your crotch if you give her any sass.

Lastly, Captain America and Bucky solve a generic murder mystery. You know the one where there's a will to be read and everyone's trapped in the mansion? I think it's the plot of the movie Clue? It's that story.

    

I'm glad someone else liked these stories, because eventually comics become good, but i don't know how they survived long enough for it to happen.

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - Despite appearances by some classic characters, there's really nothing going on here. I don't know why these stories were chosen to be reprinted.

Chronological Placement Considerations: These stories are so self-contained it doesn't really matter exactly where they are placed. Some take place during WWII.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Mystery Comics #1 (Dec 1999)

Human Torch and The Parrot: Torch gets knocked out by chloroform early on which suggests he needs to breathe. however, the scientist sends him into the sulfur laden volcano with no breathing equipment and aside from mentioning the bad smell, he suffers no ill effects. a few panels later when workers arrive to extract the sulfur, the scientist makes a big deal about them wearing masks because the sulfur is toxic when inhaled. but Torch, Toro, and the scientist been standing there on the rim of the volcano for hours with no special breathing equipment!

on top of all of that, after the Torch inspects the volcano, the three of them single-handedly construct an entire mining setup in a matter of hours. mind you, they just got off a train, with no building supplies or equipment.

how come the Torch gets an entire jumpsuit and little Toro only gets to wear a pair of swim trunks?

the old crazy guy was german, but i think the assistant was supposed to be hispanic with a very heavy hispanic accent.

Hurricane: he introduces himself as "Michael Gray" but inexplicably, later in the story, the woman scientist sees him in his "costume" and says "It's Michael Jupiter". also, page 8 should really come after page 9 for the story to make sense. or as close to sense as it can get.

Angel: hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *snort*

Capt. America: he's been sporting that pipe the whole time.

I think Simon & Kirby were responsible for the Hurricane story.

Tiger Man WTF

No, seriously: Tiger Man WTF

Oh sweet Jesus
Oh no no

Re: Khor, the whole Savage Land / Pangea thing needs looking at again. There are several origins and anomalies to reconcile. It was an alien pleasure playground. It contains the unique Vibranium Anti-Metal isotope. It has mystical properties. It has electromagnetic properties that sometimes but not always inhibits technology. It somehow preserves diverse eco-systems, inhibiting evolution and preventing extinction. It includes dimensional anomalies.

All of this is very Limbo-ish. Then there's the plurality of Limbos, mystic and scientific. Aarkus himself seems to derive his powers from different dimensions, and there's also the Immortus/original Human Torch links there too.

But also consider Quor, whose spaceship crashed in the Savage Land and who used Anti-Metal as a power source. Apart from similar names (and Quor's facemask which was never removed) there's nothing to link Quor and Khor - except that both were trapped in the Savage Land for extended periods of time and eventually tried to harness local resources to escape.

Then think of Malgato, the "Red Wizard" of Irandia, who used advanced technology to simulate magic, including robot pterodons, etc. He never gets any origin much, but wants Shanna and Ka-Zar to perform some mystical sacrifice ritual "to save the Savage Land". When he's defeated and falls into a volcano he leaves behind a mask that appeared to be his face.

However, Malgato's not the first Red Wizard. According to Malgato, in AD1000, the then Red Wizard supervised Razorak the Bold and Khan-Tar the Beauteous' leap into "the consuming flames" to preserve the Savage Land.

After the Great Cataclysm, it was a Red Wizard of the refugee survivors of Atlantis and Valusia who first invoked Garokk the Sun God to keep his people alive in what would become Pangea. Even before that, Aakos the Red Wizard was amongst those summoned by Agamotto to consider how to address the growing war of the Elder Gods.

Now these flame sacrifices might all tie in to Garokk - not the 17th Century refugee who became the villainous and tyrannical Petrified Man but the god at whose altar he originally drank to be converted. Garokk seems to play some role in the creation or survival of the Savage Land, at exactly the time when the Great Cataclysm has changed the world and the Elder Gods have all been transformed or bound. But Garokk was also associated with a bubbling black pool underneath the Savage Land that granted immortality and madness.

So we have dimensions, magic flame, and hot magic liquids. Consider then the cobalt living flame in South America from Avengers #30-31 and the underground Fountain of Immortality used by Tyrannus.

How if the Savage Land was created by the machinations of Agamotto and Gaea to hold back the time when the Elder Gods final, all-destroying conflict occurred? Atum was a sun god (like Garokk). His fires were sacred. It is Atum's energies that were somehow channelled in the "great machines" that preserve the Savage Land and the dimensional gates that attach Pangea. To work, the prison must be physical (the Anti-Metal), mystical (the various rituals and protective beings like the original Garokk), and temporal (the preservative and regenerative aspects of the Savage Land).

But the imprisoned Elder Gods seek to corrupt and ultimately control or destroy their prison. Hence the prevalence of plots to despoil, conquer, and generally repurpose the physical and mystical assets of the site by a range of suspiciously-similar bad guys. Going back to Khor, remember he wore a red outfit, just like the Red Wizards before and after. Belasco's original outfit was predominantly red too.

Fnord, I meant to ask where you found these stories?

They are from a Marvel Mystery Comics #1 published in 1999:

http://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=234771

Cheers!

I'm not being ironic when I say y'all need to check yourselves in regards to Armless Tiger Man. He's not all kinds of awesome; he's EVERY kind of awesome.

I was hoping that Armless Tiger Man was born without arms, and therefore could be classified as a mutant. But, no, he lost them in an industrial accident.

It's possible the armless Tiger Man was based on Lon Chaney in 'The Unknown', a Silent Film in which Lon is dangerous as a knife thrower who uses his feet. Sounds absurb but was pulled off quite well.

There's something so cute about these golden age stories. Gotta love the Silver Scorpion kicking the Beauty Butcher in the balls.