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September 3rd, 2009

10:37 pm [dr_hermes] [Link]

How about a little mongoose blood? From the January 1940 issue of AMAZING STORIES, "Dr Varsag's Experiment" is a neat little science fiction thriller by "Craig Ellis" (actually Lee Rogow). While no classic every fan should rush out and track down, it is a brisk story with some impressive action and creepy atmosphere, reminding me very much of a Universal "B" monster movie of that time. Superhero fans should also note that here apparently is a source that Timely Comics drew on to create the Whizzer. A second-rate hero of the Golden Age, the Whizzer was basically an imitation of the Flash, dressed in a singularly unappealing yellow costume* with small wings on his helmet (and what looks like a pigeon beak, for some reason). He is best remembered for appearing in two stories of the All-Winners Squad with heavyweights Captain America, Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch.The Whizzer's origin has understandably come in for a good deal of ridicule. He was injected with mongoose blood by his father. Rather than promptly sending him into fatal shock, this somehow gave him the blurring speed of a mongose. Well, all right, it's time to make a costume and find an arch-foe. The Whizzer (surely there must have been a better name available, guys) first appeared in USA COMICS# 1 (August 1941). But his pulp forerunner had already seen print in AMAZING STORIES over a year earlier. (Comics, pulps, old time radio.... all those guys swiped ideas from each other shamelessly.) "Dr Varsag's Experiment" takes the human mongoose concept but goes about much more plausibly, develops the character into an awesome and unsettling creature and builds toward an inevitably grim finale. Our narrator tells us of his long friendship with his two college chums. One was the brilliant but erratic Arnold Varsag, who has gone deep into esoteric research. The other friend is Dexter Montrex, who started off as a scientist but met some setbacks and instead became a prizefighter. (Quite a change in careers there, Dex.)Varsag has become fascinated with the (admittedly impressive in real life) mongoose, that weasel-like animal that does indeed fight cobras. It might be interesting to give a human being the speed and reflexes of a mongoose, he reasons. All it would take is a few completely illegal advanced surgical operations, like transplanting parts of a mongoose's cornea and nervous system into a person. (Ow, my suspension of disbelief just pulled a muscle) Oh, and a diet supplement of brown paste made from vital organs of mongooses (mongeese?)Recovering quickly, Montrex goes back in the ring and promptly becomes a huge sensation. He seems to knock out an opponent with a single punch, but a high speed camera filming the bout reveals the truth. "The camera showed nine lightning blows and behind those blows was the perfect timing and muscular coordination of the fastest animal on earth!" In six weeks, Montrex downs seven increasingly tough fighters with startling ease.He becomes known as the Human Cobra, a case of genuine irony considering the mongoose is the legendary ememy of the cobra. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, this is not a superhero comic but a horror story. Rather than finding a noble calling in a crusade against criminals or saboteurs, Dexter starts drifting away from human concerns altogether. As he continues to mutate physically (his hair bristles now when he's angry and his eyes are starting to look pretty scary), he also begins acting more and more sullen and uncommunicative. The animal instincts are taking over. Dexter develops an unhealthy obssession with a large cobra in the city zoo and steals out at night to break into the reptile house.There, for no good reason except the call of the wild, he teases the snake face to face (Kids! Don't try this at home!), irritating the serpent no end until it's exhausted. Eventually, he makes a bad judgement call in not realizing that one night there is another cobra in the enclosure. Considering that the opening sentence of this story describes the narrator attending the funerals of both Dexter and Dr Varsag, it's not giving much away to say that they wouldn't be back for "Revenge of the Mongoose Man" in a later issue of ASTONISHING TALES. _______ *A yellow costume for "the Whizzer"...! Tags: char: the whizzer, era: golden age (33 comments | Leave a comment)