Number 2548: “Do my bidding through your frozen brains...”

Weird Comics is aptly named, or at least as far as is shown in this chapter of the Sorceress of Zoom series. The sorceress has her own magic city, which she can send anywhere. That sounds good. Why travel the old fashioned way, airplane, car, horse-and-buggy, if you could just take your home and city, and plop it down where you want to go?

Toonopedia’s Don Markstein says of the Sorceress of Zoom, who appeared in the first 20 issues of Weird Comics, that she was a villain who later became a hero, but more of “an ambiguous hero like Sub-Mariner.” Would you trust anyone who was described as ambiguous? Not me.

The article also says the early adventures were drawn by Don Rico, and he may have created the Sorceress of Zoom. It appears the history of the feature is also ambiguous.

From Weird Comics #5 (1940):

Number 2399: “You don’t think Caius Martius Wheeler is a man!”

The Dart is an ancient Roman, a “racket buster” named Caius Martius. He had been trapped by a sorcerer in a block of stone until he worked his way out in this modern era, taking the surname “Wheeler.” He became a teacher. And who better to teach about ancient Rome than a Roman imprisoned by magic in a block for 2000 years?

Caius has a woman in his life, Miss Tillbury, and she is tough on him. She insults him with her opinion that he lacks manhood. “If I were a man, I’d get that state witness back, to give crime a black eye!” He says he understands but then exclaims, “You don’t think Caius Martius Wheeler is a man!” Ouch! But he knows something she doesn’t, that he is the Dart, a costumed hero who is more than capable of taking care of the Black Spot Gang, but to do that he brings along his young sidekick, Ace the Amazing Boy.

The Grand Comics Database doesn’t list a writer or artist, but it is not the pseudonymous Jerry Arbo from the splash panel. The Dart was created by Louis Cazeneuve, an early comic book artist, according to the Public Domain Super Heroes website. They also tell us the Dart  appeared in Fox Features’ Weird Comics numbers 5-20.

This story is from Weird Comics #7 (1940).

Number 929


Sorceress of Zoom!


Joe Simon is given credit for the drawing on this strip from Fox Features' Weird Comics #17, 1941. The Sorceress of Zoom was a continuing feature in Weird Comics from issue #1 through the last issue, #20. Don Markstein's Toonopedia attributes the creation of this bad girl sorceress (who became a not-so-bad, not-quite-evil sorceress after a couple of issues) to Don Rico, yet another journeyman who drew as well as wrote. He wrote the adventures of Lorna, yet another sexy heroine, for Atlas in the mid-'50s, for instance.

I have only seen this episode of "Sorceress" so I can't say for sure, but she has an interesting moral code: She can have the widowed man's dead wife's necklace only if she gets the owner to give it to her, even if it means by trickery.