Epilogue 187
his attempts to thwart the attempts of Roxor (who is himself an Eg yptian mystic)
to destroy the earth with a death- ray machine (fig. E.1). It is worth noting that the
death- ray is a decidedly scientific apparatus, despite the fact that Roxor presum-
ably has much more “mystical” means of destruction at his disposal. Indeed, the
death- ray, which was actually first envisioned by Tesla as a technolog y of world
peace,^22 would, along with the futurist engineer’s other popular invention— the
eponymous Tesla coil— would become a favorite staple of pop culture super-
villains and mad scientists for decades to come. The story arch of a turbaned
American Yogi poised against an Oriental mystic using Western technolog y is
itself a testament to the increasingly blurry lines between not only the mystical
and the scientific but the racialized Yogi and the “universalized” superman.
Then there is Chondu the Mystic, a Marvel comic book character who first
appears in 1960 in the Tales of Suspense series as a sideshow magician at a carni-
val who lectures on yoga and the potential of the human mind and subsequently
exhibits some superhuman abilities of his own. Chondu has no formal links to
the earlier Chandu, aside from the fact that both appear as turbaned Westerners
who share remarkably similar names. Chondu returns for a longer stint as a
Figure E.1 Bela Lugosi as Roxor, the Eg yptian mystic turned supervillain, with his
death- ray machine in Chandu the Magician (1932)