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Purple Claw, The

Entry updated 3 February 2025. Tagged: Publication.

US Comic (1953). Minoan Publishing Corp. 3 issues. Artists include Ben Brown and David Gantz. Script writers include Charles Kuhn. 36 pages per issue, with three long strips (all featuring Dr Weir with the Purple Claw), a short text story and 1-2 short strips (some non-fiction).

Dr Jonathan Weir is severely injured when his plane crashes in an African jungle, but is cured by a local witch doctor using the purple claw, which is worn like a gauntlet; his benefactor laments its inability to alleviate the sickness afflicting his people. Dr Weir recognizes their symptoms as malaria, gives the witch doctor some of his anti-malaria pills and advises him to drain the local swamp. Later, as he departs for America, the other gifts him the purple claw and says, "Go friend and continue to do good and punish evil."

He proceeds to do so. In #1 a man who died two months ago tries to cash a cheque at his bank, causing some consternation: Dr Weir is called and takes a blood sample, to discover it is not blood but "living radioactive fluid ... he is only a container for it. His body is dead." A Dr Gool now appears and confiscates the sample, warning Weir not to pursue the matter. Dr Gool has created an army of Zombies at his sanatorium by replacing the victims' blood with the radioactive fluid, which can report back to him: it is "a living record of its own path. Not a drop goes anywhere, but atomic impulses record it on my fission fluidometer." The blood sample Dr Weir took has somehow told him about the purple claw; it is not clear whether the fluid actually has Intelligence or where Gool is being poetic. He intends world conquest, but Weir uses the purple claw to hit him, a nearby zombie and then the container storing the fluid, and so is victorious. "The Devil is a Dame" has a glamorous but sadistic "witch" ruling a city's underworld (see Crime and Punishment), armed with a gun possessed by her guardian demon, "provided by Satan himself!" (see Gods and Demons). The third Purple Claw tale concerns an undead Torturer from centuries ago, cursed to murder until someone can hang him: to the killer's own relief Weir is able to do so using the claw. #1 also has a non-fiction strip titled "The Problems of Space Travel" (see Space Flight), discussing trips to the Moon and to the Stars, as well as discreetly hinting at issues involving bodily functions.

#2 has giant black widow spiders in the Italian alps who are trapping locals and disbelieving Scientists in their webs to drain their blood. Dr Weir investigates and is invited by a local aristocrat, Countess Arachni, to her castle. It emerges that her family Shapeshift into the spiders, though her own interests are romantic ("I have waited long for the embrace of a man"), hampered by a jealous relation who kills her suitors; when Dr Weir learns her secret her attentions become murderous. "The Killer in the Snow" is a snowman created by a husband just before he was murdered by his wife and her lover, who now wreaks revenge on his killers and the friends who condoned the deed. The third Purple Claw tale, "The Serpent Strikes", features a were-snake ("one of the snake clan of ancient Africa") who tries to convert her husband.

#3's "Giant from the Tomb" is set in an unnamed central European state whose dictator kills a giant (see Great and Small) and passes it to the mortuary attendants kept imprisoned under his castle. They reanimate it, hoping it will kill the dictator; but it goes on a rampage in the town. Dr Weir initially struggles to defeat the undead giant, but eventually succeeds, with the dictator dying too. "Death Flower" has a beachcomber in the Everglades luring victims into the grip of a tentacled, giant carnivorous plant; he and the flower prove to be one and the same, presumably making him a were-plant. In "The Final Horror" an alcoholic Scientist is tormented by nightmares where he meets "the final horror", a figure whose cap hides their face. The Purple Claw enables Dr Weir to join the man in his dreams (see Dream Hacking) to discover the figure is the evil, vicious part of the man's nature that is trying to take him over: he encourages the scientist to fight and defeat it.

We never learn the origin of the purple claw, nor are its powers defined: it acts as a deus ex machina doing whatever is needed to defeat the problem faced, from punching zombies to entering dreams. Though nothing stands out, the Dr Gool, were-spider and were-flower tales are fun; the "The Final Horror" can be seen as a metaphor for the work of a psychologist (see Psychology). [SP]

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