December 1944: Truth, Justice & the Tibetan Way

One of those powers the Green Lama acquired in Tibet must have been adaptability.

Though little-known now, the Green Lama was a fairly important American superhero in his day, a crossover character in three media — pulp magazines, comic books and dramatic radio.

In the pulps where the Buddhist superhero first appeared, he was like the Shadow. In comic books in the 1940s, he was like Superman. And on radio, he was like the Saint.

The Green Lama, who was really millionaire Jethro Dumont, was created in 1940 by pulp writer Kendell Foster Crossen as an assignment from Munsey Publications. His mission was to duplicate the success of the pulp and radio Shadow.

“I was trying to pick a name somewhat like in sound to Lamont Cranston,” Crossen recalled.  “You know what I mean, Lamont-Dumont. It was as close as I dared get to Lamont Cranston. A book had just been published about an American who had gone to Tibet and studied and had become a lama, the only white person who ever had at that time. The result was the Green Lama, which the company liked.”

Sales of Double Detective Magazine jumped for the issue when the Green Lama appeared. Unlike other superhero creators, Crossen wisely retained the rights to his character.

When the Lama’s pulp magazine ran its course in 1943, Crossen spring-boarded the character as a rival for Captain Marvel and Superman. The Green Lama’s comic book adventures for Spark Publications benefited from art by the much-admired Mac Raboy.

In comics, the now-caped Green Lama could fly and smash Japanese Zeroes. But even in pulps, he had some modest super powers. He could, by ingesting “radioactive salts,” stun criminals with a gentle touch. Seems more fitting for a Buddhist hero than a teeth-rattling haymaker, somehow.

In 1949, as the comics’ superheroes were fading, Crossen sold the character to CBS as a radio series, and the Green Lama almost made it into onto early television.

Golden Lad gives a pitch for the Green Lama Club

March 1942: A Joker for Junior

You might call Mr. Macabre Captain Marvel Junior’s Joker. Like Batman’s arch-nemesis, he was introduced as an extortionist who broadcasts murder threats to his victims over the radio.

“Tonight, at precisely twelve o’clock midnight, I will kill Henry Claridge and steal the Claridge diamond. Do not try to stop me! The Joker has spoken!” boasts the Joker in Batman 1 (Spring 1940).

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Macabre cutting in! In less than one minute, Harold Pittwell will die!” broadcasts Junior’s foe in Master Comics 24 (March 1942).

Instead of the Joker’s “smiling venom,” the cloaked and fedora-ed Macabre uses equally effective poison ice darts.

Originally an embezzler named Filpott who adopted his costumed identity to exact revenge, Mr. Macabre plunges an ice dart into himself, faking death to avoid capture by the young superhero. The poison turns his face green, however, making Macabre resemble the Joker even more.

The villain isn’t even displeased by the change.

“A face to inspire terror and horror in many future victims! Ha ha!” Macabre says, underscoring his villainous credentials by allying himself with Captain Nazi.

Many of Captain Marvel Junior’s early adventures show him trashing German and Japanese tanks, ships and artillery, and he does so again when Mr. Macabre reappears in Master Comics 31 (Oct. 1942), having kidnapped an American ambassador.

In the process of rescuing him, the teenage superhero saves American troop ships bound for Australia by intercepting and detonating a Nazi torpedo and then hauling the German submarine that fired it to the surface so the crew can be captured.

Mr. Macabre’s final 1940s appearance came in Captain Marvel Jr. 2 (Dec. 1942), when he tried to sabotage Texas oil fields for the Axis powers.

Blown down by Junior’s super-breath and drenched in crude oil, Macabre is jailed for the duration without ever learning the connection between “that meddling punk” Captain Marvel Jr. and Freddy Freeman, who always seems to be around before the superhero shows up.

Fawcett comics on the newsstands that month

December 1941: With Two Magic Words, ‘Captain Marvel!’

Two new concepts — the superhero and the teenager — had to intersect at some point, and that point was Captain Marvel Jr.

CMJ was introduced in Whiz Comics 25 in December 1941, a good four years before Superboy debuted in More Fun Comics 101 (Jan.-Feb. 1945).

“Captain Marvel proved to be the most popular superhero character of the medium with his comics outselling all others, including those featuring Superman,” noted comics historian John Cimino.

“Part of the reason for this popularity included the inherent wish-fulfillment appeal of the character to children, as well as the humorous and surreal quality of the stories.”

Captain Marvel Jr. also expressed the powerlessness-to-power theme, with Freddy Freeman, a lame newsboy, transformed by magic lightning into a flying superteen. 

That fantasy proved durable enough to outlast even the character himself. Two decades later, the lame Dr. Don Blake would be transformed by magic lightning into the flying god Thor.

“Never as successful as his brawnier predecessor, Junior nevertheless had a long and lucrative career that lasted until 1953,” observed author Ron Goulart.

Mac Raboy’s art on the feature was a good decade ahead of its time, more illustrative than cartoony. His poses were graceful and lyrical, and his CMJ looked like an actual teenage boy, not just a small man.

The Fawcett stories sometimes contained surprisingly human touches. 

For example, in Captain Marvel Jr. 28 (March 1945), having destroyed Dr. Sivana’s building-crumbling ray and thwarted a Japanese saboteur disguised in his own costume, CMJ embarked on a flight into space to recover lunar rocks (which turned out to be moon monster eggs, drat the luck). Otto Binder penned the tale.

“Brr! Kind of lonely up here all by myself,” Captain Marvel Jr. thinks while soaring through the cold darkness of space, even as artist Bud Thompson provides a close-up of the teen to underline his sense of eerie isolation.

Not a thought that would ever have occurred to the stalwart, space-born Superboy.