Balladeer's Blog

MORE PARANORMAL ADVENTURES WITH G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES

Balladeer’s Blog resumes its exam-ination of the neglected Pulp Hero G-8. This is a story-by- story look at the adventures of this World War One American fighter pilot who – along with his two wingmen the Battle Aces – took on various supernatural and super- scientific menaces thrown at the Allied Powers by the Central Powers of Germany, Austria- Hungary and the Ottoman Muslim Turks.

G-8 was created by Robert J Hogan in 1933 when World War One was still being called simply the World War or the Great War. Over the next eleven years Hogan wrote 110 stories featuring the adventures of G-8, the street-smart pug Nippy Weston and the brawny giant Bull Martin. The regular cast was rounded out by our hero’s archenemy Doktor Krueger, by Battle, G-8’s British manservant and by our hero’s girlfriend R-1: an American spy/ nurse whose real name, like G-8’s was never revealed.

49. THE HAND OF STEEL (October 1937) – This story introduces another of G-8’s Rogue’s Gallery of recurring foes – the madman called Goulon. Once a skilled flying ace for Germany in the Red Baron’s Flying Circus Goulon was eventually shot down, his crash landing resulting in his left leg and left foot being permanently bent and twisted.

Now called “the cripple of Hartsburg” – and by his OWN side (now that’s cold) Goulon’s face was also badly burned in the crash (shades of G-8’s foe Steel Mask) and the burned skin was removed, leaving his face resembling a skull with a perpetually opened mouth. To top it all off the crash also caused his left hand to be replaced by a steel claw. Talk about a bad day! Goulon blames the Allies for his condition and spends the rest of the war coming up with super-scientific inventions to help the Central Powers win.

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