Samson
Entry updated 22 December 2025. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1940-1941). Fox Publications, Inc. 6 issues. Artists include Alex Blum, Will Eisner and Bob Powell. Script writers include Toni Blum, Nathaniel Nitkin and Bob Powell. 68 pages, with 6-7 strips and a short text story per issue; 3-4 strips would feature Samson.
American, long-haired and blonde, Sam has inherited the great strength of his ancestor, the biblical Samson (see Religion; Superpowers). In 1940 a college friend, Professor Brun (see Scientists) invents the Iconoscope, allowing users to observe anything happening in the world, and the pair watch "the wise man of the East" praying for "a strong man ... to combat the forces of evil and injustice". Sam pays a visit, to assure him he will be that strong man; the wise man predicts he will find a young helper, and so it proves. Our hero meets orphan David shortly after: "Your lariat and boy scout lore will come in handy." Their first adventure – in India or thereabouts – has them foil Mad Scientist Dr Dag's plans to release deadly bacteria. At one point a cannon ball is fired at Sam, but he smashes it with his fist. Another tale has a further mad scientist, Thorga, planning world conquest: his Inventions include a thought transmitter, used to keep in touch with his armies (see Communications). Samson also foils dictator Dragor of Ratonia's Invasion of western Europe and criminals whose plane is fitted with a Magnetic Ray which can lift ocean liners (it also works on people). In later issues genre stories are less frequent, but include a device used to Hypnotize Samson, though his willpower means its effects are short-lived (#2); whilst Professor Brun is blackmailed into using his Demoleculing Ray on a bank vault, with Samson briefly inconvenienced when his hair is accidentally cut, but it grows back overnight. Brun explains how the Demoleculing Ray can be turned into a Death Ray, despite it presumably already being one: "the wires on the back of the machine. Just reverse the poles" (#4).
Non-Samson strips usually feature characters from other Fox comics. #2 includes Don Quixote in Modern Times (see Wonderworld Comics). #3 has Navy Jones (see Science Comics) with his futuristic submarine (see Under the Sea), and here helped by Captain Nemo (see Jules Verne) to defeat an invader with underwater tanks; Voodoo Man (see Weird Comics) uses Magic to kill a man who mistreated some natives: the strip's hero, Bob Warren, responds "He deserved to die ... but we can't have white men murdered" (see Race in SF). Perisphere Payne (see Science Comics), the "captain of a huge space battle rocket ship", rescues the President of New America's abducted daughter: the kidnapper dies when the "old and rotten" planet where he is hiding explodes because of vibrations from Payne's Spaceship lifting off. #4 has two more Wonderworld Comics stalwarts, K-51 Spies At War, where Nazi agents use a "Thermo-Gun" (see Weapons), and magician Yarko – here a scientist invents "brain paralysing gas" and declares it "the greatest boon to civilization in the last century ... but in the wrong hands it would be disastrous". And into the wrong hands it duly falls. Both characters also appear in #5. [SP]
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