Halloween Hospital Horrors SCIENCE COMICS "Dr Doom's Diabolical Disease"

No, not this well-known Marvel villain...

...but his totally-unrelated Golden Age predecessor who had his own strip in Fox's Science Comics!

In a future when Mankind has colonized the Solar System, a somewhat-stereotypical Mad Scientist constantly threatens all civilized life due to unspecified "injustices" allegedly-done to him!

Opposing this nutcase are heroic square-jawed aviator Jan Swift and his co-pilot/girlfriend Wanda.

And that's all you really need to know...

In the early days, few comics were about just one character.

(Even books which were titled after a lead strip, like Superman, had backup stories about other characters to fill out 52 to 68 pages in each issue!)

Most comics of the era were anthologies, with up to a half-dozen strips ranging through every genre you could think of!

Many titles had an ongoing feature about a villain...who lost almost all the time!

And even if he (Or "she"! Comics were equal-opportunity when it came to evil!) was captured, they would escape to plot evil once more!

This never-reprinted tale by "Richard Crater" (a pen-name) from Fox Feature's Science Comics #6 (1940) was typical of those "villain strips"
Trivia: Dr Doom appeared in all eight issues of Science Comics, with a couple of already-prepared tales appearing in the back of other Fox comics after Science's cancellation.
None of his stories has ever been reprinted!
Unlike later Science Comics series from other publishers, Fox Feature's version had absolutely no educational material!

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Countdown to Halloween 2024

Halloween Hospital Horrors HAUNT OF HORROR "Nightmare Patrol"

We lead off out annual Halloween Horror-fest with a fascinating Vietnam War-set tale...

...created in 1974, just after American participation in the drawn-out conflict ended!

This never-reprinted tale from Marvel's Haunt of Horror V2N1 (1974) was part of a wave of horror tales prompted by the loosening up of the Comics Code to allow "traditional" monsters (who had been banned since the mid-1950s) back into comics!

DC was having some success with their new Weird War Tales book as well as the long-running Our Army at War/Sgt Rock and several others, but Marvel's war titles had been reduced to just Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos...and that had just gone reprint!

So a new war-oriented title was out of the question, and the story found a home in the premiere issue of the second version of Haunt of Horror (the first was a short-lived digest featuring novelettes and short stories).

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Countdown to Halloween 2024

The Return of...NIGHT NURSE...BOTH of Her!

In 2004, after 31 years of not even being mentioned anywhere in the Marvel Multiverse, she suddenly turned up in Marvel's Daredevil #58 (2004) as Daily Bugle reporter Ben Urich tried to find a wounded Daredevil/Matt Murdock, whose dual identity is now known to the public...

Urich, who discovered DD's secret identity (but kept it secret) feels that the medico who aids injured superheroes would make a good story, but that her identity and location of her clinic be kept secret!

Not having super-strength or invulnerability, Daredevil tended to be her steadiest patient...

Besides DD, numerous other injured heroes and heroines have shown up on the Night Nurse's doorstep (including Captain America, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Spider-Woman [Jessica Drew], Elektra, FireStar, Ariana) and, particularly, a certain surgeon-turned sorcerer...

For the record, I haven't seen the incident Stephen Strange describes where Linda Carter was rescued by a super-hero/heroine!
Linda plays a major role in the Doctor Strange mini-series The Oath, and has a brief affair with Stephen.

She reunites with him, joining Marvel's other practicing physicians/superbeings...

...in Marvel's Jane Foster: Valkyrie #6 & #7 (2019-2020) to make an interdimensional house call to keep Death itself from dying...

...as we showed HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE during a previous October Halloween Hospital Horrors blogathon!
Note: Jane Foster is now an MD as well as a Valkyrie!
Night Nurse is still around, and continues to appear in Marvel comics to this day!

But that's not all!

"Night Nurse" has also appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe...but she's not Linda Carter!

In the MCU, the Night Nurse title is used by Claire Temple, RN, another Marvel Multiverse medico, performed by Rosario Dawson!

The character has appeared on Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and The Defenders!

In Marvel Comics, Dr (not Nurse) Claire Temple was involved with both current beau Luke Cage (Hero for Hire/Power Man/Cage) and ex-husband Dr Bill Foster (Black Goliath/Giant-Man II/Goliath IV) who was not an MD like her, but a PhD-holding biochemist who worked with Dr Henry Pym (Ant-Man I/Giant-Man I/Goliath I/Yellowjacket I)!

As you might have guessed, Luke and Bill ended up fighting it out for her affections, as super-heroes tend to do in such situations!
Trivia: Both Claire Temple and Linda Carter were appearing simultaneously in Marvel Comics in the 1970s, but their paths never overlapped!

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) is an RN instead of an MD, she and Luke Cage (Mike Colter) are, as they say, "involved"!

Dr Bill Foster/Goliath (Laurence Fishburne) is Dr Henry Pym/Ant-Man 1's (Michael Douglas) former business and research partner.

There is no mention of any connection between Temple and Foster in the Marvel movies or TV series...so far!

To wind this month-long feature up, we return to All of the Marvels author Douglas Wolk to explain his theory of Linda Carter being the lynchpin of the Marvel Multiverse.
(Bet you thought we forgot about that, didn't you?)

The third reason I like to think of Linda Carter, Student Nurse #1 as the real starting point of what I read for this book is that the big Marvel narrative becomes strangely beautiful if it’s Linda’s story.
It’s ridiculous to think of any one character as the protagonist of this half-million-page epic, of course, but—what if that were true?
What would it mean if the Marvel story is really about her, as comparatively little time as she’s spent on panel?

The Marvel story is understood, too often, as a story for boys; with Linda at its center, it also belongs to a specific tradition of stories for girls.
It’s a story in which science and knowledge are defining forces; as Linda’s story, it’s about a woman who begins the most important part of her education on its first page and continues to learn even when she steps away from our view.

 

Linda Carter lives in a world more dangerous and overwhelming than anything she could have imagined when she first arrived at Metropolitan Hospital.
If Marvel’s body of comics is her story, it’s about how that world has changed around a woman who has a perspective like that of the story’s readers—someone with no special powers or more-than-human gifts.
Linda’s life has given her just what the old con man Stan Lee promised when she first appeared: thrills, but also humor and glamorous romance.
What she’s learned from the marvels that saved her is how to be brave and kind—and also that it can be fun for her to give herself another name, and sometimes wear a little cape.

Now who can argue with that?

Not me!

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The Departure of LINDA CARTER and the Coming of...NIGHT NURSE!

We Have Already Seen the Coming of Linda Carter: Student Nurse...

(you were expecting Lynda Carter aka Wonder Woman?

We already did that visual joke twice!)

As of #9 in 1962 (above), Linda disappeared...and I mean totally-vanished!

That run's never been reprinted!

But it wasn't the end of Linda Carter in the Marvel Multiverse, folks!

A decade later, Marvel launched a trio of female lead characters in their own titles as superheroine The Cat, jungle girl Shanna the She-Devil, and Night Nurse all made their debuts within a month of each other!

The other two were totally-new characters, but Night Nurse was a sequel/semi-reboot of Linda Carter with a whole new supporting cast and an emphasis on "relevant" storylines within a hospital/soap-opera format similar to those on prime-time TV!

While not exactly an ensemble book (Linda was clearly the star), we got to see a lot more of her roommates' family and friends whose tales wove through the fabric of hospital life than the previous version!

Since the Comics Code had been loosened the previous year...

...storylines that had previously been forbidden...

...showing authority figures like doctors becoming drunk and endangering patients' lives could now be shown...

...along with the pickled physician facing relatively-real life consequences!

No "happy ending" here!

The third issue was an "urban crime" story popular in movies and TV of the early '70s.
But the sales on the first two issues were poor and the decision was made to cancel the book as of #4 in 1973.

So the creatives decided to try something really different...

...doing a contemporary gothic romance tale starring one of the supporting characters!

There was no interaction/crossover with any of the other Marvel characters in any of those issues, not did Linda or any of the cast appear (even as cameos) in any other Marvel title...until Marvel's Daredevil #80 (2006)...

Here's the intro...

Be Here Next Friday for...well...

Just Be HERE!

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