In the last few years of Fawcett Comics' existence before the lawsuit with DC forced them to shut down their superheroes, premiere writer Otto Binder showed no sign of flagging creative powers. In CAPTAIN MARVEL ADVENTURES #125 (1951), Binder and artist C.C. Beck introduced a new villain, King Kull, the last survivor of a race of ancient beast-men.
He was also supposedly the source of all mortal legends about "boogiemen," though I have to say that this character-- whose name may owe less to the Robert E. Howard hero than to a traditional king of Irish myth-- doesn't really look like he could terrify anyone. In his original appearance, Kull pops out of the Earth for the first time in decades and immediately starts trying to kill off modern mortals, the descendants of the ancients who slew his people (admittedly in self-defense). Kull, who possesses incredible technology for a caveman type, starts unleashing a cataclysmic doom on the world, and Captain Marvel comes to the rescue. The hero wins but the villain escapes.
I'm not sure if "The Democracy Smasher" from MARVEL FAMILY #67 was Kull's second outing or not, but the book-length script shows a much greater concentration by Binder on the thematic thread of ancient horror menacing modernity.
This time, before Kull strikes, the three members of the Marvel Family just happen to be taking part in a newly minted local holiday, "Democracy Day," in which Billy Batson and his buddies celebrate the historical tradition of democracy. Slightly later, Old Shazam summons the Marvels to his sanctum, claims that he gave Billy the idea for the new holiday, and shows the heroes three statues of "three torches" that "are the world's hope for democracy and peace."
Kull, once again emerging from the chthonic womb of the Earth, swears to destroy the democratic way of life, and tries to make the statues of mankind's great evils help him crush his enemies.
Batson and friends transform into their heroic identities, but while they're saving themselves, Kull not only steals the torches, he extinguishes them with a pill filled with "distilled evil" in a nearby subterranean river. Kull escapes and lights a "torch of evil" that makes modern humans despise their democratic traditions.
The Marvels figure out that the only way to re-light the three beneficial torches is to travel back in time to each of the three times when democracy's light was kindled. First, they go back to Athens, and manage to ignite one of their magical torches from the original one, though they have to fight an earlier incarnation of King Kull to do so. Binder of course was writing for children, so he oversimplifies the extent to which Greek philosophers championed democracy, to say nothing of conflating that supposed tradition with the practice of "torch races" in the early Olympics.
While Mary Marvel takes her lighted torch back to 1951, Captain Marvel and his junior partner journey to England to light another torch during the signing of the Magna Carta. Naturally this idea of a "flame of freedom" from that historical period is based in nothing but Binder's imagination, and thus this is the least interesting of the three voyages. Still, Marvel Jr gets to light his fire and he also returns to 1951.
Captain Marvel soldiers on alone to 1776, for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and we finally get to the heart of all this torch-imagery: that of the torch held by the Statue of Liberty. Perhaps to get around the fact that the authentic statue was not erected until 1886, Binder imagines that three of the grey eminences supposedly present at the signing-- Ben Franklin and the country's first two presidents-- just happen to have a simulacrum of the Statue of Liberty there in the room. Kull raises his beastly head again, but the hero sends him packing and re-lights the last of the magical democracy-torches. (One witty line: Washington remarks that they've been "saved by a redcoat.") Then, back in 1951, all three heroes return and douse Kull's torch of dictatorship, but can't prevent the sub-man from returning to his subterranean domain. The story ends on a predictable but still pleasing denouement, in which the heroes once more affirm the traditions they hold sacred.
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