Colorful Diseases of the Golden Age: The Green Plague

March 25th, 2008

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

scene from Yankee Comics“The Green Plague”
Sure sounds impressive. What does it do?
It turns your skin green…but only temporarily.
Anything else?
Nope, that’s all it does: turns your skin green for a few days.
I changed my mind. That’s not impressive at all.
True, but it was still enough to base a Golden Age story on:

Patrons of the most expensive restaurants in Washington D.C. are mysteriously turning green. Lawsuits have been filed. Customers are actually choosing to eat at home. Senators and lobbyists have nowhere to go. It’s nothing sort of pandemonium.

Scene from Yankee ComicsIt turns out the Green Plague is nothing but a plot by one of the local mobs. It’s all part of a classic protection scheme: the mob demands a restaurant pay them $500 to provide “protection.” If the restaurant owner refuses to pay, his customers mysteriously develop the Green Plague. Well, it’s not so mysterious really: one of his mobsters — who just happens to be wearing a chef’s out — knocks out the real chef and then dumps a chemical in the soup. Anyone who eats the soup turns green.

Luckily, the Enchanted Dagger is there to save the day. The Enchanted Dagger, as his name suggests, got his powers from an enchanted dagger. Thanks to his magic cutlery, he could fly, make pithy comments, hypnotize criminals, and smoothly slice a tomato even after cutting through a concrete block. The Enchanted Dagger appeared just four times in the Golden Age (in Yankee Comics #1-4, 1941-2) and then disappeared, never to be seen again (except in the occasional black and white reprint like this one). He was drawn by George Tuska, so at least he had that going for him.

Thanks to his amazing powers, the Enchanted Dagger is able to stop the evil chef, locate the mob boss, escape a Rube Goldberg-ian deathtrap, and finally capture the entire mob, making the Washington D.C restaurant scene safe for all once again.

scene from Yankee Comics

The Green Plague: a lame disease, but not too lame for a fourth-string Golden Age hero!
(Tomorrow, a different plague, a different color…and in color!)

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6 Responses to “ Colorful Diseases of the Golden Age: The Green Plague ”

  1. Mr. B
    March 26th, 2008 at 9:14 am

    “Thanks to his magic cutlery, he could fly, make pithy comments, hypnotize criminals, and smoothly slice a tomato even after cutting through a concrete block.” LMAO!

    “The Green Plague” sounds familiar to me. I recall reading a book about “urban legends” or “1,001 interesting myths”, about a story that kinda fits.

    The mob/mafia used to shake down restraunts and demand protection money. Parsley (green) would be sold to the unhappy restraunt owners, at severely marked up prices. It’s not extortion to sell parsley. If the bagman was pinched by the police; he would have an air tight alibi. He was only selling parsley. (maybe The Green Plague was slang for the parsley protection racket.)

    It would be doubtful that anyone would not pay the “parsley tax”, as they would have had their windows broken or a kitchen fire.

    I’ve always wondered if that was a myth or not.

    (By the way if pregnant, don’t ingest parsley.)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsley

    Parsley should not be consumed as a drug or supplement by pregnant women. Parsley as an oil, root, leaf, or seed could lead to uterine stimulation and preterm labor.[3]

  2. ScienceGiant
    March 26th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    “Wuxtry, wuxtry! Dialogue balloon filled with exposition. Read all about it!”

    “Let me see that, son. My god, the lad’s right — there’s not a hint of decompression in this comic!”

    “Hey, mister. For a nickle, Bendis will stretch this one panel out into a trade.”

  3. Keith
    March 26th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    Ah, the Golden Age…when beautiful young women were named “Agatha”, and the mobs only wanted $500.

    The man in frame 2 should be shouting “Help! My face is turning 50% gray!”

  4. Sarah
    April 1st, 2008 at 10:11 pm

    Years later, the punks would rediscover the Green Plague and take it up as a bold fashion statement.

  5. Polite Dissent » The Peril of…the “Crimson Virus”
    June 6th, 2008 at 12:47 am

    [...] 5. Despite being 1000 years in the future, the Legionnaires sure have some dismal medical care. Sure they have fourth dimensional surgery, but when you get down to it, that’s actually pretty backwards. An earlier issue showed that they keep a powerful healing urn stored in a museum — why not actually use it? This is what happens when you have a Coluan who thinks that he’s a doctor. Source: Adventure Comics #313, “The Condemned Legionnaires,” by Edmond Hamilton and Curt Swan Other colorful comic book diseases: Black Flu, Green Plague (1), Green Plague (2), Purple Plague, Red Rain, and Scarlet Jungle Fever. Tags: comics medicine legion of super-heroes virus supergirl super-pets kryptonite [...]

  6. dr pepper
    December 18th, 2009 at 8:39 am

    A newspaper comic in the mid 60s (forget the name) had a storyline like that. For some reason, the military wanted to fake a plague, so a bunch of enlisted personnel were ordered to take a swim in green dye, go out and mingle, and react in horror when apprised of their condition. They called it the “green goombles” or something like that.

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