"The Mad Master of the Murder Maze" is the story that in many way was my first introduction to the horror of the holocaust. While I might've come across the dreadful info at school, there's little doubt the emotional power of this Gil Kane drawn comic was lacking. Written by Roy "The Boy" Thomas, this one felt different from the other collaborations he did with Kane on Captain Marvel and he says that Kane (real name Eli Katz born in a Latvian Jewish family) was the impetus that made this one hum. It has a power other comics lack, and that comes from the visceral reality of the background.
Rick Jones, at the time the inter-dimensional partner of Captain Marvel (formerly of the Kree Empire) finds himself in need of a living situation and finds an apartment in Minos Towers which seems to good to be true. And it is, as we discover a madman has assembled a carefully balanced population inside the towers so that he can at his discretion conduct weird and deadly experiments on them, measuring their psychological responses. He regards his tenants as lab rats and that dehumanization connects his work to that of the Nazis years before. It takes the bravery of a former Aushwitz prisoner to end the threat.
It's a story not directly about the Nazis, but more importantly really about the dehumanizing attitudes which allowed them to flourish, attitudes which are very much still with us and thriving in the modern day.
Note: This post originally appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo.
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