This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post wraps up the last of the 86 Golden Age stories about the neglected character the Clock. He debuted in 1936, so BEFORE Superman and Batman.
CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #17 (Oct 1941)
Title: Killer Kale Dies Tonight
Villain: Killer Kale
Synopsis: Gangster Killer Kale is executed in the electric chair, but his thugs steal the corpse from the hearse and force a scientist named Dr. Jennir to use his new method for bringing the dead back to life. The Clock and his chauffer Pug Brady investigate when Kale murders Dr. Jennir. The pair find the new hideout of Killer Kale and his gang, burst in and defeat all the gangsters in a lengthy fight. Killer Kale is dead again by story’s end. Continue reading
WITHIN AN ACE OF THE END OF THE WORLD (1900) – Written by Robert Barr. No doubt about it, Barr was obsessed with the notion of humanity possibly bringing on its own demise through ill-considered scientific tampering. Recently Balladeer’s Blog reviewed another of his stories, The Doom of London, which mined the same creative territory. 
LADY JUSTICE Vol 1 #1 (Sep 1995) 
LADY JUSTICE Vol 1 #2 (Oct 1995) 
THE SHADOW OF THE VULTURE – This story by Robert E. Howard, the ONLY Howard story to actually feature Red Sonya, was first published in the January 1934 issue of Magic Carpet Magazine. As I’ve mentioned in many other reviews of old pulp characters, Howard’s REAL Red Sonya was indeed a warrior woman, but not one from his fictional Hyborian Age.
The Shadow of the Vulture is one of Howard’s historical adventures and it’s set during the 1520s, largely at the Siege of Vienna from September 27th to October 15th in 1529. Red Sonya of Rogatino is a Polish-Ukrainian woman who is more skilled than most men with swords and guns.
VENUS
THE DOOM OF LONDON (1892) – Written by Robert Barr. In the “far future” of the mid-Twentieth Century the narrator of this tale looks back at the catastrophe that hit London in the 1890s. 
THE THAMES VALLEY CATASTROPHE (1884) – Written by Grant Allen. The story is presented in the form of a memoir about the destruction of London as seen from “the futuristic” 20th Century. 
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #25 (Aug 1974) 
THE HERO: Space traveling anti-hero Smith was created by the female writer C.L. Moore in the 1930s. Four decades before Han Solo, Northwest Smith was a ruthless swashbuckling smuggler, thief and all-around mercenary. Smith’s less than sterling character made him a refreshing change from the usually wholesome pulp heroes of the time. 
SHAMBLEAU (1933) – While trying to lie low between smuggling runs, Northwest Smith stays in New Chicago, a dangerous Martian hotel with a deadly clientelle. Walking the nighttime streets, he saves an eerily seductive woman from a mob who want her dead for being one of the sinister race called the Shambleau. Can Yarol save Smith from himself as the Shambleau lures him into deeper and madder indulgences? Click 
RED NAILS – I always like to emphasize that – despite the way Marvel Comics’ 1970s and 1980s Conan stories kept the character’s name alive and introduced new generations to him – the Cimmerian was not a mere comic book figure. Iconic author Robert E. Howard introduced Conan on the printed page in his 1930s stories featuring the character. 
I. This first installment introduces readers to a blonde female pirate – Valeria of the Red Brotherhood. She is the only female pirate among them and is as notoriously deadly as the others. NOTE: Yes, this is the character that Sandahl Bergman played in the 1982 Conan the Barbarian film. That movie made her a standard thief instead of a pirate and – sadly – gave her the “ghostly return” scene that actually belonged to Conan’s true love Belit (Bay-LEET) from 
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