“Aurora, Queen of the Arctic” (Blackhawk #51, February 1951) from Quality Comics, offers a Pulp style Northern with a mysterious siren who draws men into the freezing death of the North Pole. Taking an image from A. Merritt’s The Dwellers in the Mirage (1932), the story spins a supernatural feel but quickly disspells it. This story was written by an unknown author and may have been drawn by Dan Zolnerowich or Bill Quackenbush.
The story opens at the North Pole, where a new five-man team works to keep America safe from invaders. The radar station operatives get a surprise when a beautiful glowing woman appears. She lures the first man out into the fifty-below weather to die. When his friends go looking for him, they encounter rifles that shoot them down.
Only one man survives long enough to send a message to the Blackhawks, the squadron of heroes that are led by Blackhawk himself. An evil agent gets on the radio afterward and says the whole thing was an accident, a gag. The Blackhawks don’t buy it, having heard the dead man’s death rattle.
Blackhawk asks what the weather is like, and the evil agent lies saying it is clear while a blizzard rages outside. The Blackhawks fly north in their rocket planes, having to battle the storm. They arrive at the polar station and begin questioning the men there. When Blackhawk notices the weather map is a day old the jig is up. The fake weathermen try to shoot the newcomers. Fists fly and the baddies are captured.
The Blackhawks don’t have long before Aurora shows up, and Blackhawk and Andre (the one who speaks with a French accent) follow. They fall through the snow to end up in an underground compound. (The place is heated by underground hot springs so it is quite warm.)
Aurora and her men try to capture them but the boys know how to fight. Only when more men show up , and Aurora reveals she has all the Blackhawks in a cage, does Blackhawk stand down. Aurora shows the Blackhawks some of her evil technology when she “frees” the bunglers from the station. She jettisons two of her men out into the Arctic chill to die.
She has Blackhawk and Andre take off their parkas, then explains why she is doing what she is doing. She plans on taking over the world (of course!) and she wants the handsome Blackhawk at her side. She shows him the lab where she will use her captives as guinea pigs. Blackhawk keeps her talking long enough to find out how she can walk outside without freezing to death. She has a special insulation plastic she covers herself with. Blackhawk grabs a barrel of the stuff and throws it at the bars of the cage, coating his men in the plastic.
Releasing them, a crowd of baddies come and a punch up follows. The Blackhawks escape out the back door for the complex is about to explode because of Aurora pulls a control switch for the hot springs piping.
She then locks all her henchmen in with her. “You were willing to share my triumph!Now share my destruction!” The Blackhawks make it back to their planes as the ground collapses, killing all the bad guys.
Written toward the end of the Golden Age, the villainess of Aurora is grand psychopath in the operatic style. No Comics Code baddie could get away with such behavior. She kills at will, experiments on people, and destroys herself and crew without a thought. Also part of that Golden Age is the racist portrayal of Asians with the character of Chop-Chop. As much as I like the no-holds bar plots I can do without that.
In terms of a Northern, the plot is pretty typical stuff. I wish they could have kept the mystery going a bit longer. The “sybil of the ice” thing is classic Pulp, from A. Merritt to Clark Ashton Smith. Of course, here it is a ruse used for world domination.
I’d like to read it
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