The Enchanted Dagger

Kalthar the Giant Man!  I knew early on that I wanted a Giant to show up to battle Roger.  My feeling about the Enchanted Dagger was that with its weird magic knife it had a toe hold in the old world fairy tales.  So a giant was needed and Kalthar fit the bill.  He also had a strange magic element, a bag of magic grains that he keeps tied behind his ear (huh? that’s amazing! see…old world…).  Additionally, both Kalthar’s father and Henry Chalmers were involved with the East African slave trade!  Kalthar would become the Chief of the Urgana tribe after having been adopted  after his father saved the tribe from “Arab” slave traders!  No kidding!  Kalthar was undoubtedly a variation of Edgar Rice Burroughs “Tarzan” character.  Burroughs was a big influence on all these early comic books and they borrowed liberally from his books.  There were many white jungle Kings and Queens in the early comics, which might seem strange and racially tinged by our modern sensibility, but for back then was probably just following the Tarzan bandwagon. In any case, he and Roger must’ve had some history!

Kalthar made his way into the story pretty quickly…say Jan 2015.  At that point the plot of the book was  unfolding for me very clearly and I was  trying to decide whether to try to make a run at a graphic novel.  More than just a warning about crypto-fascism, with the rest of the story I’d try to reflect on the cultural id.

Then, in June, Trump throws his hat in the ring…..

Kalthar the Giant Man was created by Harry Shorten and Lin Streeter for the publisher MLJ.  He appeared in Zip Comics, beginning in 1941.  I haven’t read a lot of original Kalthar, but he seems like a pretty good one…he was in 9 issues!