With the coming of the second World War the clash between the Nine Unknown and Mr. Am’s organisation subsided, or at least was waged in less visible locations. My contacts for information on India, Tibet, Nepal, and the post-WW2 duel between Mr. Am's lamas and the Nine Unknown are slim, perhaps because what occurred before the war is now mostly unclassified while what happened after the war is not. So I have information on only a few individuals after the War.
During and after the war, four detectives came to the attention of the Indian public. While there is no evidence that they were in the employ of Mr. Am’s organisation, given the track record of the organisation it is quite possible that the four were influenced by the organisation, albeit at some remove. The four were Detective Janaki, a police detective active in New Delhi; Sambu, a private investigator working across India and in the West; Digambara Samiyar, a sanyasi (holy man) who crossed caste boundaries and all of the geography of India to fight for justice for all Indians; and Shanker Lal, a private detective who, like Digambara Samiyar, ignored caste in his fight for justice.
In 1944 an Asian of unknown background, Fen-Chu, was discovered in a base in Tibet. Fen-Chu was possessed of greatly advanced technology and even greater hatred for the West. His defeat was a near thing, and his base and technology were found in 1946 by a white scientist who attempted to conquer the world using the same tactics as Fen-Chu. I believe both of these individuals were backed by the Nine Unknown, who were attempting to take advantage of the confusion of World War Two to further their own plans.
In 1958 yet another Westerner came to Tibet in search of enlightenment. This man, an American surgeon, sought out a lama for one reason. The man's hands had been wrecked in a car accident, depriving the man of his livelihood, and after months of searching he had been told of a lama in Tibet who could heal him. The lama, however, did more than that, and after looking deep into the man's soul gifted the man with a variety of mental and possibly mystical powers and abilities. The man stayed with the lama for five years, studying and honing his abilities, and then returned to America. He moved in to an old mansion on Bleeker Street in New York City's village and began working as the occult investigator "Dr. Strange." He was quickly picked up on and fictionalised by Stan Lee, of Marvel Comics, who made him much more of a comic book superhero than Strange actually was.
In 1959 the noted French adventurer Bob Morane first encountered "Monsieur Ming," aka the "Yellow Shadow." Over the next several decades Morane and Ming clashed, Morane continually defeating Ming but never managing to finally capture or kill him.
Marvel Comics, having fictionalised the life and adventures of Dr. Strange, repeated the trick in 1963 and transformed another individual, who though extraordinary in some ways was by no means a "superhero." In 1963 a businessman named Wendell Rand was traveling with his wife, his nine-year-old son, and his business partner through the Tibetan Himalayas when an accident placed the party in danger. The business partner, a man named Harold Meachum, abandoned the party, and Rand and his wife died before help arrived. The only survivor of the group was Rand's son, Daniel. Daniel was rescued by the natives of the city of "K'un-Lun," who adopted him and raised him. He was trained in the martial arts and at age nineteen underwent a ritual which gave him the ability to harden his fist so that it was superhumanly strong. After this ritual Daniel Rand left "K'un-Lun" and returned to New York City where he became the urban vigilante known as "Iron Fist." Certain writers at Marvel Comics, on hearing about "Iron Fist," interviewed him and, with their agreement, inserted him into their fictional universe, where he continues to appear today, alongside such made up characters as "Power Man" and the "Black Knight."
Rand's ties to Mr. Am's organisation should be obvious. Mr. Am's organisation has a well-earned reputation for taking in orphans, like Mandrake the Magician, and turning them into living weapons against evil. With Daniel Rand they quite successfully repeated themselves. Of course, it was in Rand's blood to adventure and fight the good fight; Daniel's father, Wendell, was the son of Barry Rand, the "Red Falcon" and a member of the hero-producing Rand clan (see my "Secret Wars" article).
In 1964 Ganesh Ghote began working as a police Inspector in Bombay, and as the months and years passed he gained increasing fame in India as one of the country's best policemen. Surprisingly, there is no evidence directly linking him to any of Mr. Am's organisations, and although we may be sure he would agree with their aims he seems to have developed independently of the Mr. Am-Nine Unknown feud.
That same year the American adventurer and scientist Dr. Benton Quest began exploring the strange corners of the world, accompanied by his son, his bodyguard, and an Indian orphan of strange abilities. This orphan, "Hadji," used his abilities to help the Quests to fight against evil. It is my belief that Hadji, like several other Indians already mentioned, was a plant by Mr. Am's organisation, sent to aid the Quests if they were truly good and to hinder them if they were knowingly or unknowingly working for the Nine Unknown.
In 1966 Bob Morane, whose Rogues Gallery is the equal of any of his more famous American or British counterparts, gained another enemy from the Nine Unknown, this time one Dr. Xhatan, a scientist who used technology partially based on Nine Unknown designs (Xhatan got his start in Tibet) to master light and create an artificial race of green men.
In 1968 Nemesis, a sub-branch of Interpol based in Geneva, gathered together a team of three agents, Craig Stirling, Sharron Macready, and Richard Barrett, and sent them to China to investigate reports of strange and possibly lethal experiments conducted there. The trio gathered enough evidence to create an international furor, but while escaping from China their plane was damaged. They crash-landed their plane somewhere in the Himalayas and were rescued by, in their words, "members of an unknown civilization." When the trio finally returned to the United States they were gifted with superhuman powers, including telepathy, eidetic memory, and superior strength. They used these powers to fight for Nemesis as "The Champions." I believe that the three Nemesis agents fortuitously discovered one of the bases of Mr. Am's organisation and, like "Mr. Mystic" and "Dr. Strange" and so many other Westerners before them, were given superhuman abilities as a way to carry on the mission of Mr. Am's organisation and to fight against the forces of the Nine Unknown.
In the late 1980s, following up on a series of murders on the American West Coast, an FBI agent and members of the local branch of Mr. Am's "White Lodge" clashed with the "Black Lodge" in America's Pacific Northwest. This battle, fictionalised in a television series by writer/director David Lynch, ended inconclusively.
The following I know for a fact will occur, and yet I cannot prove it, as I have promised never to show the documents which I read. But trust me when I say that the following future events will occur as described.
In the year 2070 Mr. Am, now going by the name "John Gribardsun," will travel back in time to the year 14,000 BCE as part of an expedition into the past to study primitive man. "John" ends up living through the modern ages, side-by-side but always avoiding his original self. He is an immortal and does not age. In the year 2140 C.E. he revives his wife Jane, stuck in cryogenic freeze since 2070 C.E., and the pair depart for the star Capella.
They will live happily together for over two centuries, moving from colony to colony, until the year 2366, when they will be living on a human colony in the Delta Rana system. At that time the colony will be attacked by a cruiser of the Husnock race. The attack will be so sudden and vicious that Mr. Am, who will call himself "Kevin Uxbridge," will be surprised and caught off-guard, and Jane, along with 11,000 other humans in the colony, will be slaughtered. Horrified and heart-broken, Mr. Am will then use his powers to wipe out the entire Husnock species. Mr. Am will then use his powers to make a simulacrum of Jane, and will live with her in self-deluded peace until the Federation star ship Enterprise arrives to investigate. They will not be fooled by Mr. Am's deception and will finally force him to confront his loss. Mr. Am will tell them he is a member of the "Douwd" race--a lie meant to distract them--and will then vanish into space, perhaps rejoining the Q Continuum or perhaps simply traveling into Unknown Space.
As should now be clear, India, Tibet, and Nepal have a long and glorious history, not only as the homes to the Nine Unknown and Mr. Am and his lamas, but also as the birthplace of numerous, very worthy heroes. They should be honored and remembered.
In
the beginning
Before
the Twentieth Century
The
Twentieth Century
The
1920s
The
1930s
The
1940s & Afterward
Bibliography