G-8’s foe Grun the Primeval debuts in this week’s trio of tales.
Balladeer’s Blog re-sumes its look at 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 super- natural 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.
79. WINGS OF THE DRAGON LORD (April 1940) – The Chinese genius Chu Lung strikes again! In real life China entered World War One in August of 1917 but the nation’s internal turmoil prevented it from having too much of an impact on the war. Chu Lung, a variation of Fu Manchu and Wu Fang, picked up the slack for his country by working for the other side, the Central Powers.
The aristocratic scientist has discovered literal dragon creatures living in China’s Gobi Desert and seeks to harness them for the nation’s war effort. He’s not just going to waste them in frontal assaults on the Allied armies, though – his plans are much more sinister and far-reaching.
The saliva of these dragon creatures is a deadly poison, a poison so unfathomably fatal that a mere pint of it dumped in a city’s water supply would kill a million people. Chu Lung plans to unleash total warfare by using this poison to contaminate the water supply of all the major cities in each of the Allied Powers nations! Continue reading
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