Balladeer’s Blog resumes its examination 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.
46. PATROL OF THE PURPLE CLAN (July 1937) – Not to be confused with the Purple Empire/ Purple Invasion storyline from the Operator 5 Pulp stories of the time. This tale is entirely unrelated. A squadron of purple-clad flying aces are terrorizing the skies over the United States itself, sabotaging American industry and preying on the population! The Purple Clan, as they’re called, are American traitors happily wreaking destruction throughout their homeland for a price – a fortune in gold being paid to them by the Central Powers.
As the American homefront mobilizes to deal with these attacks on its own soil G-8 and his Battle Aces are hurriedly dispatched to the U.S. on the naval cruiser Madison to help protect Washington D.C. from the airborne marauders. It turns out the leader of the Purple Clan is none other than G-8’s old foe Steel Mask, the deadly German who hid his disfigured face behind a mask of cold steel decades before Doctor Doom and Darth Vader did it. Continue reading
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