Hagg, Hunter of Helpless Humans

From TOS 37 comes Hagg, Hunter of Helpless Humans! (Stan Lee was huge on alliteration well before Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Bruce Banner, etc).

Hagg. You know, I got to take points off for the name. Not Haggu? Haggon? Haggril? Just take Hag and add another g? Sorry, I just keep picturing some sort of giant radioactive Halloween witch, which honestly feels likes something these old comics should have had.

Our story opens with random people across the world being abducted in bursts of light. The public is horrified, Washington has been notified, you know, typical “watch the skies” stuff. But big game hunter Brett Marlowe knows what’s up and goes to Washington to tell his story.

While in “a jungle,” which for the sake of my fanboy mind I’m going to assume is the Savage Land, Brett comes across Hagg and his giant UFO, which looks like a cross between your standard flying saucer and the Helicarrier, and becomes Hagg’s herald.

Yeah, before there were heralds of Galactus, there were heralds of Hagg.

Because Brett is a fellow hunter, Hagg looks upon him with favor, and tasks him with warning the planet that Hagg is about to do the Most Dangerous Game thing and start hunting people for sport. But Brett kept quiet, because he thought no one would believe him, and Hagg just started hitting people with his dematerializer beam out of the blue. Oops!

The military, of course, puts out a token effort to blow Hagg’s ship out of the sky, even shooting a polaris missile at it, but no dice, of course. The military never drops the monster before the final act.

Hagg even captures the crew of the Polaris sub by using his beam to heat the sub up to 120 degrees, which I’m assuming is Fahrenheit, because 120 C is uh, quite a feat for normal non-powered naval serviceman. Once they abandon ship, his beam grabs them, which demonstrates a limitation of the beam–it can’t grab people if they’re inside something. I wonder if that’s going to come into play later? That’s how they’re going to beat him or they’re going to use the Superman vs Brainiac thing where they get someone armed with a weapon inside his ship, that’s what I’m banking on.

Once aboard his ship, Hagg introduces the men to his ever-growing collection of humans, and though the cover teases that Hagg hunts other kinds of aliens, it seems in the story itself he’s strictly human focused, which is kind of a bummer because I was hoping the humans might get to team up with alien captives and use their combined skills and abilities to turn the tables on Hagg.

…Huh, that’s a neat concept for a story. I’m going to have to remember that one…

Hagg then goes around the planet easily capturing other humans, because what are you going to do against a guy with a beam weapon shielded inside a forcefield inside a spaceship? Hagg predates the Predators, but he’s a lot less cool than them. Preds are like Maasai lion hunters, they get down into it and engage their prey on their level. Hagg’s a weenie by comparison camping out in the cosmic version of a tree stand using the cosmic version of a sniper rifle. It’s just not sporting. General Zaroff, inspiration for all comic and pulp manhunters, would not approve.

I love the above scene. Hagg pulls the persistence hunter strategy on some poor old dude out in the dessert, for no other reason than he thinks its fun. What a dick!

The comic cuts to Russia, because Red suffering was a major theme of these comics. You’d see innocent Americans get put through the wringer by the monster, then as a little treat you’d get to see some evil Russians in jeopardy. Let that be a tip to any alien invaders out there: we humans hate each other, and we will absolutely cheer you on if you menace the humans we don’t like. You could easily conquer the world just by playing one side against the other. Don’t announce you’re going to take over the planet, announce you’re going to take over just China or America or Israel and watch how fast everyone else rushes to cut a deal with you.

Over in Japan, it’s domo arigato, Mr. Roboto. The Japanese use a decoy robot to…somehow short circuit Hagg’s weaponry. It’s not clear how it happened. Science or something. But it doesn’t stop Hagg because Hagg brought along a spare weapon, and that might seem like a writing cop-out at first glance, but think about it. If you’re a bazillion miles from home, in a place where everyone hates you, wouldn’t you bring a lot of spares? I know I’d bring at least three of everything.

But our main character Brett comes up with the plan to finally stop Hagg–a net, and not a tiny one!

Brett uses himself as a decoy (so I was sort of right, the Superman solution was part of the way they beat Hagg) to allow the air force to drop a giant steel net over Hagg’s ship, forcefield and all. Brett got the idea while reviewing footage of his old elephant hunts. Just because you can’t directly hurt or destroy an animal, doesn’t mean you can’t trap and subdue it. The pokemon is neutralized if you get it in the pokeball. The military then cuts a deal with Hagg–he promises to let all his captives go and leave the planet and they’ll remove the net. Hagg agrees, and fulfills his part of the bargain under “Intergalactic Law.”

Which makes me wonder something–who enforces this Intergalactic Law? My fanboy brain takes this as a reference either to Nova Corps or the Space Knights. But maybe Haggis referring to Skrull law? They do have a star empire, and Hagg does sort of look like he might be a Skrull if you squint hard enough.

Anyway, I quite liked this story. The monster here is less Hagg and more his ship, which swoops down upon the helpless like a predatory bird. You don’t have many ship monsters in these stories, so Hagg is novel. He also presages a lot of Marvel material. He hunts like Kraven, sends forth heralds like Galactus, meets up with Brett in what might be the Savage Land, and talks about what might be Nova Corps. It’s a fun little story to build headcannon around.

Powers And Abilities Summarized

EQUIPMENT: On his own, Hagg is nothing more than a big green guy about three men tall, and whether he has any innate powers is unknown. All of Hagg’s powers comes from his space ship, which presumably doesn’t use an FTL drive that generates any kind of significant thrust, otherwise he probably would have been able to buck out of that net. Maybe his ship doesn’t have FTL at all? Maybe it uses one of those “fly through a series of warp rings” systems? Hagg is armed with a spotlight-like (now isn’t that a tongue twister?) beam weapon which can dematerialize humans and rematerialize them in a holding cell aboard his ship. These beams have a “heat ray” mode which can heat the insides of a sub to 120 degrees Fahrenheit and can zig-zag like Darkseid’s Omega Effect, but are limited in that they can’t punch through barriers. If you’re inside something, you’re safe from them. Hagg’s ship also comes with a forcefield powerful enough to withstand a direct hit from a nuke.

PERSONALITY: Hagg, though a merciless sadist who loves running his prey to exhaustion, is beholden to “Intergalactic Law” and will keep his word.

Elektro (Ultron before Ultron!)

From TOS 13 comes the Marvel Elektro you aren’t thinking of.

Years before Maxwell Dillon would use the same name slightly altered with a C instead of a K in his supervillain career, there was another Elektro, a giant mechanical monster with more powers than you might think.

Our story opens with a hapless scientist named Wilbur Poole working on a computer smarter than any living human being, and if Marvel’s sliding timeline wasn’t a thing, this would make that computer quite smart, since Dr. Doom and Reed Richards were both supposed to be in college in the 1950’s. Suddenly, an “accident” happens, and the computer advances from intelligent to sapient.

Calculator to Skynet in 4 panels, that’s got to be some kind of record. I want to call attention to the first panel, I feel like that’s got to be Jack Kirby taking a little influence from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the scene with the Moloch machine in particular and the poor laborer working its gears. Speaking of influences, the evil AI hypnotizing a scientist isn’t a novel plot. I think Blackhawk did a similar story earlier, and at any rate, I know The Invisible Boy, a Robby the Robot film from 1957, had a supercomputer that hypnotized people.

In case you’re wondering, Robby wasn’t the evil supercomputer in the film. Robby was the good robot who helped a young boy beat the evil supercomputer. Yeah, people say that James Cameron ripped off Harlan Ellison’s Soldier for Terminator, but if you ask me, he ripped off The Invisible Boy for not just Terminator 1, but Terminator 2.

The Invisible Boy is probably the first time in pop culture history that a supercomputer would hypnotize a scientist into serving it, but Elektro wouldn’t be the last time. It wouldn’t even be the last time for Marvel. I’m sure most of you out there are familiar with the MCU version of Ultron’s origin, but in the comics, Ultron was created by Hank Pym, aka Ant-Man, aka Giant-Man, aka Yellowjacket, aka “that guy that slapped his wife.” After creating Ultron, Ultron hypnotized Hank Pym into forgetting he ever built him so that he could freely plot and scheme from the shadows. But in this story, the supercomputer actually makes use of his mind slave and orders him to construct a giant blue body in which he uploads his “mathematical calculations,” basically his brain/soul.

It’s my headcanon that “mental mathematical calculations” is what Marvel scientists called what would come to be known as brain patterns. You know, the stuff that makes up the personalities of various Marvel artificials like the Vision and the original 1940’s Human Torch, Jim Hammond. Everyone called them MMC until Hank Pym wrote an influential paper on the subject and coined the term “brain patterns.”

Though Elektro’s body certainly helped him get around, his main source of power wasn’t his body, but his brain. The dude’s mind is so developed, the dude is so damn smart, that he’s able to use pretty much all the Dungeons and Dragons psionic abilities.

 

You see that mountain he fired at? You know how when someone says a character is “mountain level,” it’s usually because the character kicked over a mountain like it was a sand castle? Elektro goes one step further. He turns an entire mountain into a thin smear of residue.

Now THAT is mountain busting! It ain’t busted if it ain’t dusted, but that is certainly dusted!

So we got forcefields, hypnotism, and gamma blasts, but what else is Elektro packing?

Would you believe he can turn off gravity?

Even the espers in Akira didn’t have this many powers! You know the Power Cosmic? The do-anything force that allows Galactus and his heralds to do whatever they wish? Well, this is the Elektro Cosmic.

Check this out:

Dude can destroy and create matter with the power of his mind. Yeah, Elektro vs Electro isn’t a contest, Elektro stomps. And Ultron? Well, he surpasses Elektro after a certain mk number, but boy, if Elektro was able to do all this shortly after going online, imagine if he had as much time as Ultron to plan and develop himself!

I just had a funny thought.

What if Hank Pym didn’t actually create Ultron? I mean, what’s the evidence for it? Ultron telling him? The same Ultron that messed with his brain? What if Ultron was actually created by Dr. Poole as a version of Elektro with all the intelligence but none of the psychic powers? Ultron didn’t want to to connected to some lame old dude. He wanted a cool dad, and so he hypnotized Hank Pym into being his super-cool superhero dad.

But for all his psionic powers and vaunted intelligence…Elektro goes out in a pretty stupid way.

His downfall starts when he forgets to refresh his hypnotism spell.

So what does Elektro’s creator do to defeat him? Trap him in one of those brain frying logic loops? Give him one final upgrade that teaches him empathy? Convince Elektro of the illogic of senseless destruction?

Would you believe he just walks inside Elektro and turns him off?

I suppose, herein, we see the difference between high intelligence and high wisdom. High intelligence will give you the kind of mind that knows how to reprogram reality with its own thoughts. High wisdom will give you the kind of mind that knows not to leave your vulnerable power core behind an access hatch on your heel.

I’d say this was a middling monster adventure. It’s interesting how Elektro presages Ultron, but beyond that, it’s one of those “Stan made the monster too powerful, so it could only be defeated by its own stupidity” stories. But in Elektro’s defense, he doesn’t have the lamest death.

Oh no, believe you me, there are worse endings in these stories.

Powers And Abilities Summarized

PHYSIOLOGY: Elektro is a psychic supercomputer whose existence consists in “mental processes.” While originally stuck in a computer bank, he downloaded himself into a giant blue mech.

DEFENSE: Elektro can surround himself in a forcefield capable of repelling conventional weaponry.

OFFENSE: Elektro has impressively broad energy manifestation and control powers, and all them come from his mind, not his body. he can create, destroy, and recreate matter at will, nullify gravity with a wave of his hand, and fire bursts of gamma radiation that can turn mountains to dust.

WEAKNESS: Elektro has an Achilles’ heel…in his heel. In a critical oversight, likely due to his enormous ego, Elektro’s entire power supply is concentrated in a transistor located through a door in his heel. A shrimpy old scientist was able to open this hatch and remove the transistor with his bare hands, so it’s a reliable way of taking him down that any opponent can make use of, provided his opponent knows about it, or has some way of scanning him for power sources.

 

Grogg (Fin Fang Foom Before Fin Fang Foom!)

You know, sometimes you don’t win by coming in first. Now, most of the time, you do. Have you heard the story of Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott’s race to the South Pole? That’s certainly an example of how first place is better than second. Let’s just say in that story, second place didn’t even finish the race. But sometimes, you want to be second, not first. You’d much rather be the second guy out of the trench than the first. Go ask the Go-Bots how well it beating Transformers to the punch worked for them. And Grogg? He will forever be known as “that monster like Fin Fang Foom,” though he appeared in Strange Tales 83 and 87 and Fin Fang Foom appeared in 89.

Now listen to this story. If you have a Marvel power level, it may sound familiar to you: A dragon slumbering beneath China is woken up and not being what you’d call a morning dragon brings Hell to the Chicoms, though he’s not necessarily on the side of the good guys. That’s Fin Fang Foom’s story, and it’s Grogg’s story as well. There’s also a bit of trivia linking Grogg closer to Fin Fang Foom. They were both depicted as orange and green. Grogg specifically was colored orange on the cover of Strange Tales 83, while inside the story itself was colored green, and was colored green on the cover of Strange Tales 87 but was orange in the story.

Our story begins with Soviet freedom fighter Miklos Kozlov being spared execution by firing squad at the last possible moment due to his identity as a noted scientist being revealed. The Reds want to force Kozlov to supervise their atom bomb tests at gunpoint.

It sounds kind of…ill-advised to put a guy you almost shot in charge of your a-bomb tests, but this is Earth 616, most legit Red scientists are stark raving lunatics, so I guess it’s a case of very slim pickings.

The tests are to be held in an unnamed northern Asian province which might be Tibet, or maybe Mongolia. I’m guessing somewhere in the Kunlun Mountains. It’s interesting to me that the story has China just sort of roll over for the Soviets and allow them to test nukes in their territory. It speaks to the common but naïve view at the time that the Communist powers were a a monolithic force. Of course the Chinese would let the Russians nuke their land, they’re on the same team!

Can you imagine how completely and totally severed Soviet-Chinese relations would been in real life if the Soviets tried to use them as a-bomb practice? Nothing says respect like “Hey man, what’s a few megatons between friends?”

To make matters worse, the test is to be held within spitting distance of a

The nearby villagers warn the Soviets that their tests will bring the wrath of Grogg down upon them, or rather up upon them, since Grogg is supposed to be slumbering beneath their feet. The Soviets, of course, ignore their warnings, leading to the predictable outcome.

Man, never ignore the superstitious prattle of native villagers. The native villagers are always right. Even when they’re wrong, they’re right. Like maybe the ancient spirit they say is holed up in the nearby cave isn’t an actual spirit, but it’s an alien. Even when they’re wrong, they’re right.

Don’t you just hate it when fickle fate leaves a giant dragon man right below your nuclear test site? I think the classic Godzilla origin story retold here only really works when the revived creature is mutated. Because then the moral is “nuclear radiation is bad, don’t make and use nukes.” Godzilla would have been just a little Gojisaurus if not for nuclear radiation. But when the monster is already super strong, and all the atomic bomb does is wake it up, well, then the moral becomes “pick your sites better.”

I see Grogg not being mutated as another sign of the times. Quite a lot of Americans didn’t want to dunk on nuclear weapons back in the day because they were America’s ticket to world hegemon status. The arsenal of democracy needs big bombs, you know? And this sentiment was, of course, encouraged by the government. Look up Edward Teller and his defense of atomic bombs sometime. Is fallout bad for you? Ah, well, that’s for debate, a little probably can’t hurt you…

Dude was the inspiration for Dr. Strangelove. That’s probably all that needs to be said about Edward Teller.

Now I want to go off on a slight tangent here…about, another slight tangent, but a great demonstration of post-war America’s defense of nuclear weapon testing comes from the American adaptation of the obscure Toho film

Now where was I? Oh yeah, Grogg…

The first thing Grogg does after waking up is head for the village, but then something weird happens. The village elder

Powers And Abilities Summarized

Grottu, King Of The Insects

From Strange Tales 73 comes Grottu, King of the Insects, though in truth he’s more like kind of the ants. No points will be awarded for figuring out what 50’s sci-fi classic inspired Grottu, but the twist here is that instead of an entire hive of giant ants, you have normal ants led by a single, giant king.

Well, I say “normal” ants, but let me be more specific. Grottu leads army ants. There are about 200 ant species called “army ants,” but they’re all from south of the equator, are known for their destructive swarms which can strip animals to the bone and cause entire villages to move out of their path, and, as the comic points out, are blind. Ants are very drone like animals, very robotic, but army ants are the droneist of them all. Some army ants do have eyes, or to be more precise, they have primitive photosensitive spots on their hots that can tell the difference between

Individual army ants must rely on pheremones to get around.

 

 

I think this was a pretty good story.

Powers And Abilities Summarized

ABILITY: Grottu is what you expect your generic escapee from the Them! set to be with two very notable exceptions: he is intelligent and telepathic. Grottu can command ants, specifically army ants, but it’s implied that he can control various types as well. His control over his ants can be extended through the ants themselves. In other words, ants controlled by Grottu can “link” ants to his will even outside his immediate presence. This was how he planned to extend his reach worldwide, by smuggling his ants onto ships charted for foreign ports. Exactly how many ants Grottu can control is unknown. He is said to be potentially capable of threatening the entire world, but he only controls a swarm large enough to overrun a small African village. I think the most parsimonious explanation is that, over time, Grottu’s telepathy could have reached to every ant on the planet, but again, only over time.