“The World Below the North Pole” was Wonder Woman’s second foray as a strange Northern. This time it appeared in Wonder Woman #47 (May-June 1951). Written by Robert Kanigher (as Charles Moultan), it was drawn by Harry G. Peter.
Steve Trevor is flying a secret mission to establish a radar base in the Arctic, when his plane is attacked. He thinks the culprits are the forces of Warlandia (a thinly disguised USSR), who are locked in a cold war with America. As he crash-lands he sends a radio message for Wonder Woman.
General Darnell comes knocking on Diana Prince’s door. WW has to do some quick thinking to give the impression she has just arrived too. Darnell is fooled. He was going to ask Diana to call Wonder Woman and give her a letter with instructions for a secret mission.
Wonder Woman’s plane is loaded with secret equipment. Warlandian spies send a radio message to HQ. Her secret mission isn’t so secret.
Underway, Wonder Woman can’t open her secret instructions until she has arrived in the North. She is terribly worried for Steve Trevor.
Warlandian planes attack her. WW takes out the enemy planes by using the treetops like a slingshot. She takes the captured planes to a forest ranger station for questioning. Unfortunately, one plane escapes her notice and reports back.
Meanwhile Trevor lands his plane safely. The wings have been shot full of holes. A strange-looking crew show up with weird paralyzing guns. They accuse Steve and the Americans of dropping bombs on them. Steve denies it, explaining it must have been the Warlandians. The Americans are frozen and captured.
Now in the Arctic, Diana opens her letter of instructions. She had feared it would take her away from Steve. The orders are to install radar equipment and find Trevor and the missing men. Someone begins shooting anti-aircraft bombs at her. She knows where to start her search.
WW sends her plane up into the atmosphere to cruise, while she takes out the anti-aircraft guns. They are automatic so no one is manning them. She destroys them before entering a weird underground city. Diana has found a world below the North Pole. Men, riding polar bears, confront her. She is taken to join the others for execution. While Wonder Woman rides a polar bear, the Warlandians put their secret plan in motion to bomb America.
Diana learns about the underground dwellers. They were once people from Atlantis, but the upheavals that destroyed that island, sent them to the north. To survive the cold, they burrowed underground and used the volcanic vents to heat their city. The Warlandian bomb tests set the Atlanteans against all outsiders.
The prisoners are to be executed by freezing inside an ice bubble. The slow freezing process makes the prisoner go into suspended animation, not actually killing them. Wonder Woman breaks her bonds and is ready to save Steve and the others but news comes. The bombers are back. WW has to choose between saving Steve or America. She goes to stop the planes.
She does this by cutting a sheet of ice and using it as a reflector. The Northern Lights blind the pilots who have to land.
The Warlandian pilots are captured and Steve and the other men are saved. Wonder Woman asks if they can set up radar equipment to protect America. The Atlanteans are going to be good allies.
The shift in four years since “Treachery in the Arctic” sure shows the changes going on in America. If “Treachery” is out of an issue of Adventure or Short Stories, “World Below the North Pole” is descended from any issue of Wonder Stories or Fantastic Adventures. (This is four years before 1956’s The Mole People but the same years as “Superman and the Mole Men”.) The Cold War is dominate here, not gold-mining or Eskimos. The polar mounts are interesting considering the date. More common now after The Golden Compass, they are unusual in 1951.
Robert Kanigher would use the underground city and Atlantean survivors theme again and again in Korak, Son of Tarzan (1972-1975). Edgar Rice Burroughs had used the same idea with his Oparians, a lost branch of the Atlantean race in the African jungle as early as The Return of Tarzan (1915). A. Merritt gave us the frozen version of that in Dwellers in the Mirage (1932). Lester Dent used it too for the Doc Savage adventure, Quest of Qui (1935). William L. Chester set his Tarzan in the Arctic in Hawk of the Wilderness (1935). The remoteness of the North, the last frontier, was still convenient for hiding lost races.
Wonder Woman still had one more Northern in the very same issue…
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