NULL-MYTHS: "FATE SPINS AN EVIL WEB" (YOUNG ALLIES #2, 1941)

I finally got around to reading this 1941 story, a follow-up to the CAPTAIN AMERICA story "The Case of the Black Talon," which stands as one of the first times in comics that a villain introduced in one feature made a "crossover" appearance in another-- though one of the characters in the CAPTAIN AMERICA ensemble, Bucky, was also a charter member of the Young Allies.

This is however no mythcomic, and what myth-material appears has less to do with the Black Talon-- whose evildoing role could've been fulfilled by nearly any similar fiend-- than with the myth of American "Manifest Destiny," linked with the struggle to find resources with which to defeat the Axis powers. Oddly, Otto Binder, who created the Talon, wrote most of the first issue of YOUNG ALLIES, but "Evil Web" is totally the product of Stan Lee and artist Al Gabriele. As the cover suggests, this is pure wild-and-woolly pulp at its finest, though with none of the subtler aspects of the Simon/Kirby story. There's only one quickie reference to the reason Black Talon has one black hand, and significantly, it's used to put down the savagery of the Nazis.

That said, "Evil Web" is certainly chauvinist, for eventually the Talon and his heroic enemies will contend over a newly risen island rich in raw materials/ The island's discoverer is named Livingstone, and Lee even goes so far as to directly align him with the historical explorer, though a better analogue might be Christopher Columbus. The moment after Livingstone conceives of turning the island over the Allies, its residents-- a race of fish-men who not only can breathe air but who talk like Indian stereotypes-- attack him, and never once does the white guy think that the island might belong to the people inhabiting it.

Livingstone hides from the savages on the island, but sends out a "message in a bottle." The Young Allies find the bottle and notify the man's daughter, who insists on going along to rescue her dad. But the Nazis are monitoring her, so the Black Talon goes after the heroes.

Eventually, after the heroes fight lots of thugs and a giant spider, everyone gets to the island, and then the fish-men, despite saying words like "gettum" and "make-um," start looking more like African cannibals, and Toro even routs them with an elephant attack a la Tarzan. The fish-men then disappear from the story, and the Allies manage to blow up a whole Nazi camp, which effectively returns the island to the Allies. "We were here first," Bucky helpfully explains. For a finale, the Allies call in two senior heroes, the Human Torch and Captain America, to help take down the Talon.

The only other incident worth mentioning is that even though the Negro member of the team is drawn in the grotesque manner of most "comic Negroes" of the time, he does get to kick a little ass, and even rescues his fellow teens from a death-trap at one point.