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Dixon, Don. Don Dixon was created by Carl Pfeufer and Bob Moore (Gordon Fife) and appeared in the comic strip “Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire” (1935-1941).

Don Dixon lives and adventures in a vast world beneath the surface of the Earth. The “Hidden Empire” of the strip’s title is Pharia, which is discovered by German surface scientist Dr. Lugoff and his two child assistants, Matt Haynes and Don Dixon. After reaching Pharia they help the rightful king overthrow the evil vizier who had displaced him. The king is grateful enough to give Haynes the hand of one of his daughters, Princess Marcia. This horrible fate led to their disappearance from the strip.

Lugoff, Dixon, and the blonde Princess Wanda, Don's girlfriend, join forces to fight against the enemies of Pharia. They then began looking for a way back to the surface world, and have a variety of adventures as they make their way across the swamps, forests, deserts and mountains of the underground world, fighting tigers, giant mice, and evil wizards and sorceresses. Once they reach the surface world they are forced to confront and defeat the Destroyer, the leader of a secret organization called the Seven Assassins who are intent on world conquest and operate from Himalayan headquarters; Dr. Strunski, who kidnaps Wanda and who plans to CONQUER THE WORLD! with his giant robot armies controlled from his Rhode Island headquarters; and Wulf, a mad submarine captain modeled on Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo. Eventually Dixon et al. become involved with Morgan le Fay and a series of Wagnerian adventures.

* I'm including "Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire" in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because of the ideasplosions within it. Look, "Don Dixon" is in a lot of ways an also-ran comic strip. The art was okay, the writing was okay-to-good, it all felt like a lesser version of what was being done or had been done with Brick Bradford and Flash Gordon. But I have to give respect to a comic strip that had such a wide variety of adventures and concepts in them. That those adventures and concepts would have been much better in more talented hands is undeniable. Nonetheless, in the hands of Pfeufer and Moore they were entertaining and imaginative enough to be listed on the Best of the Encyclopedia page. 

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