Thursday, July 26, 2007

Sun Koh and his Crew


The Nazi pulp übermensch, Sun Koh did not travel alone. Like Doc Savage, Sun Koh had his own crew of aides. Their number changed from time to time, but I have been able to piece together some of the Aryan warrior types that assisted Sun Koh on his adventures.

Sun Koh : Six foot six, well muscled, blond haired, blue eyed, bronzed skinned, and highly intelligent, Sun Koh was the last prince of Atlantis sent forward in time to prepare for the return of the Lost Continent before the coming Ice Age. (So much for global warming!) He had a tattoo on his back and left side which depicted Atlantis. His powers were mirror images of Doc Savage's. Sun Koh was also a "Man of Destiny" who had incredible luck in everything he did. He also had a "Danger Sense" that gave him a premonition of any threat to his person. He usually wore Jodhpurs, calf-high boots, and a military shirt with epaulets and pleated buttoned down pockets.







Map of Atlantis


Ashanti Garuda: (aka "The Daughter of Kali") Ashanti is the mistress and chief assassin of Sun Koh. Her nick name is Shani. She is a true Aryan from India who has mastered all forms of Yoga, Ayurvedic/Unani/Siddha medicine, Indian Mysticism, Sorcery, Alchemy, Kalaripayit, Marma Adi, Silambam, Varma Kalari, and other Indian martial arts. Her true age is unknown but she appears to be in her twenties thanks to her Ayurvedic Elixir of Life. She is a devotee of Kali and of the Left Hand Path of Tantra who has vowed eternal hatred on the British for oppressing her people. The six powers granted to her by Kali are pacifying (glamour, seduction), subjugating (hypnosis, sexual obsession), paralysing (pressure points), obstructing (grappling and throws), driving away (breaking kicks and punches), and death-dealing (strangulation, death blows, death points). Ashanti has a berserker attack that uses all four extremities and her head which is utterly devastating. She wears different colored Spider-web silk Saris that are light and airy and do not impede her leg movements but which can stop a pistol bullet or a knife. She has a blood red oval tikala mark on her forehead with a golden Swastika in the middle to honor Kali. She also has 12 swastikas tattooed on her body to protect her from harm (i.e., on the soles of her feet, the palms of her hands, inside of her thighs, the inner side of her arms, the outsides of her buttocks, and the lateral sides of her breasts). She has a pet miniature Golden Spitting Cobra with green eyes named Shakti that she wears as a bracelet entwined around her right upper arm or forearm. The snake remains still and appears to be just a bracelet until Shani awakens it. The snake can spit venom precisely from a dozen feet away on Ashanti's command to temporarliy blind an opponent. It's bite though is quite deadly.











Alaska-Jim : Jim Hoover, aka "Alaska-Jim," was a hunter and trapper in the Old West who also worked for the Canadian police. He was an associate of Sun Koh and was known for his riding, roping, and shooting skills. Jim was a giant mountain man with the ferocity and fighting prowess of Jeremiah Johnson. He was a Canadian of German descent who lived in the Yukon. He was one of the first of Sun Koh's associates. Jim always dressed in furs or Buckskins and wore a coonskin cap with a striped tail.




Jan Mayen : Jan Mayen was a detective-inventor-adventurer who flew around the world in an atomic-powered aircraft. He had adventures on every continent. He was like Captain Nemo in having advanced technology at his finger tips. He dressed in the uniform of an airplane captain with a round service cap.



Sturmvögel : (Storm Bird) Rudolf Rauhaar, aka Rolf Kraft, aka Sturmvögel was an associate of Alaska-Jim. Sturmvögel was seven feet tall and a well trained paratrooper, commando, and soldier in the manner of Rambo. While he had many adventures in the American and Canadian west, he also could handle himself in Jungle and desert terrain. He combined stealth with strength, speed, and lethality. He usually wore black fatigues and combat boots with either a German infantry helmet or an alpine military hat. He was the quintessential Storm Trooper.





Rolf Karsten : Rolf Karsten was a consulting detective and was known as , der Schrecken der Berliner Unterwelt (The Terror of the Berlin Underworld) or Schreck for short.. This was a private detective with edge who could match wits with urban criminals and who had no limits to what he would do to solve a case. Good with his fists and fast with a gun or a knife. Also an astute judge of human nature and human vices. He wore cheap suits with a small brimmed hat and was constantly smoking a cigarette. Sun Koh eventually used hypnosis on him to get him to quit smoking.



Minx : Ludwig Minx was a man of mystery: a ghost hunter, ghost breaker, and professional magician who usually wore a Top Hat, a tuxedo, a collared cape, a large wand/cane, and a goatee. He not only dealt with fantastic mysteries but more mundane ones as well. He possessed a wide range of mental powers, including hypnosis, telepathy, psychometry, and levitation. He was an expert in all forms of prestidigitation, and there was no phenomenon of somnambulism, of telepathy, of `telepsychics,' of levitation, hypnotism, magnetism, suggestion, and autosuggestion that was beyond him. He was trained by the adepts of the Agartha, the lost Aryan civilization residing inside the Hollow Earth and a member of the Thule Society. He was very much like the Shadow, Mandrake the Magician, and the Spider all rolled into one.



You will notice that none of these folks has a PhD or any constructive day job. They were all people of action, prone to violence, and having few moral limits.







4 comments:

Michael Brown said...

In reading of these group of people that worked with Sun Koh, most of them sound like characters who could hold their own as pulp style characters in their own right without Sun Koh, unlike Doc's crew, none of which IMO could have carries a story by themselves.

Where these character who had their own series, but then added on to Sun Koh?

Michael Brown said...

what's the original of the Sun Koh covers in this article.

The first one (him barechested with arms raised) strikes me as a 70s paperback cover.

The second one (him with the girl), strikes me as a 60s hardcover juvenile series.

The last one at the end of the article looks like an original cover from the 30s.

Art Sippo: said...

Most of the team-ups were stand alone characters. Ashanti is based on a RPG character created to be a match for Sun Koh. She was such a great idea (a REAL Aryan, not one of these Germanic types) that I had to use her.

The other characters were from Jess Nevin's website of foreign pulp characters under German Heroes:

http://www.geocities.com/jjnevins/pulpsg.html

Your assessment of the covers is correct. The original german pulp covers were not in full color. You can see some other examples of those covers here:

http://www.ssi-media.com/sunkoh/

Derrick Ferguson said...

Art,

I'm at last getting around to reading your Sun Koh stuff for two reasons: One, I've got a whole lot of stuff backed up that I keep promising I'm going to read and I'm taking a few days to go through all of it, starting with your stories. Two, Josh Reynolds and I have a joint project in mind that involves Sun Koh but I'll let Josh tell you about that (if he hasn't already)

The thing I took away from HOW ART THOU FALLEN is that Sun Koh is a supremely capable and advnaced individual of amazing peception and intelligence. At yet, he's not the mover and shaker of the story. It's as if he's standing in the center of a swirl of activity brought about by his showing up and letting everybody come to him.

You make it pretty clear what Sun Koh's mission is and why he's where he's supposed to be and what he hopes to accomplish but as yet it's not clear as to how he's going to achieve it. The cast of characters who show up to spirit Sun Koh away to Germany are interesting in their own right and have enough snap to have stories about them written, especially Shani. It's kinda hard to top a beautiful secret agent who is able to tame live poisonous snakes to the extent she can wear them as jewelry and wears dresses made of bulletproof spider silk. Pretty daggone cool, if you ask me.

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