MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 881: THE TIGRESS

(Spy Smasher 002, 1941)

After the heady times of having an actual Nazi agent in the person of the Red Death last time, we are back in the realms of plausible deniability and no-name fascism in the person of the Tigress.

Though the Tigress does indulge in some activities relating to her chosen theme, including somewhat gruesomely using her two trained tigers for corpse-disposal duties, her main line is in murdering US officials such as Senator Whitney here and then substituting her own disguised men for them.

The Tigress' latest plot involves replacing influential politicians such as  the aforementioned Senator Whitney and his co-Senator Burke here in order to influence the vote on something called the "South American Fortification Bill" and presumably then arrange an invasion of the US from the South. Luckily for Senator Burke, Spy Smasher was on hand for the assassination of Senator Whitney and where he failed to prevent that he is able to keep Burke from dying to an exploding cigar and having "Died due to Prank" engraved on his tombstone.

Despite being prevented from murdering Senator Burke, the Tigress is still one step ahead of Spy Smasher, having had the foresight to station a couple of fake cops at the hotel where the assassination was to take place. They "take him into custody" right into the Tigress' clutches, where she reveals that the next stage of her plan is to make up one of her guys into a fake Spy Smasher and use him to kidnap Admiral Corby, who will in turn be impersonated as part of the larger plot.

Long-time readers may recognize where the Tigress' plan goes awry: locking the hero in a supposedly inescapable deathtrap - in this case a room containing two tigers - and then failing to confirm that it worked is a sure-fire recipe for an alive hero.

Having successfully escaped, Spy Smasher shows up in his Gyro-Sub just in time to save Admiral and Eve Corby from being flung to their dooms from a high cliff in what looks like a more public area than I personally would choose to murder someone who I hoped to replace with a double, but then again who am I to argue with the future... Dictatoress of America?

Everything wraps up fairly quickly after this: the fake Spy Smasher meets the hero imposter's frequent end as he is shot by mistake in the melee and the Tigress and her remaining men are rounded up (the Tigress' vest also comes open in the scuffle and I have to assume that someone at Fawcett HQ declared the sight of her bare sternum to be too sexy, because that is clearly a retroactively-applied yellow shirt).

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 880: THE RED DEATH

(Spy Smasher 002, 1941)

Spy Smasher occupies a niche in the crimefighting community: he smashes spies, and since he also stars in a comic book, the spies he smashes adopt increasingly baroque themes as time goes on. Take the Red Death, a master spy who also dresses like a skeleton man out of an Edgar Allen Poe story, and who also happens to be the only one of Spy Smasher's 1941 foes to creep far enough over the line of plausible deniability that I'd call him an outright Nazi. It's the swastika on the forehead what does it, even if that's just an affectation for splash page drama.

The Red Death is in fact such a feared figure in military/ espionage circles that a General Noosan calls a meeting to brief various high-ups about the possibility that he may have made his way to the US, which he certainly has because he crashes the get-together about one minute after it begins. 

Both General Noosan and the Red Death himself do a little oblique name dropping ("just look what he did to France, Norway, Poland... and others!") to indicate that the Red Death is responsible for the Nazi successes of World War II, though the Red Death throws in a reference to Russia that Noosan leaves out -  perhaps Noosan has a better idea of how the Siege of Moscow will turn out than the Read Death does.

Oddly, though Noosan is the one who called the meeting to discuss the Red Death's presence in the US he is also the one to be so skeptical about the identity of the skeleton-faced man who just burst into the room that he ends up serving as an example of the villain's signature weapon: a deadly gas that is also called the Red Death and which turns its victims a stylish red as they die.

It is at this point that Spy Smasher shows up and rescues the remaining officials, though the Red Death and his cronies get away.

(bonus Looming Spectre of Death image featuring the Red Death as Death and also a reappearance of the telltale swastika)

Spy Smasher attempts to infiltrate the Red Death's organization and learn his plans by posing as a low-level henchman named Mousey. He is successful insomuch as he does learn that the Red Death is going to subject the population of NYC to his gas by bombing them with it, but this is leavened by the fact that he has to get himself captured along the way.

Spy Smasher is left behind to suffer in the knowledge that he was unable to save NYC, only to be set free by an abused Red Death henchman named Hermann, proving once again that it doesn't pay to be a bad boss, even in the supercrime game.

Spy Smasher makes his way onto the Red Death's bomber thanks to his Gyro-Sub's superior airspeed and engages the entire plane in a fistfight that doesn't have time to resolve before the rack of Red Death bombs break loose and start stinking up the joint. Spy Smasher escapes but the Red Death and his cronies die to their own gas as the bomber crashes just off the shore of Liberty Island, which is probably symbolic somehow.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 879: THE DARK ANGEL

(Spy Smasher 001, 1941)

We've entered 1941 and the crypto-fascist spies are getting closer and closer to being just plain old Nazis. Case in point: the Dark Angel, a classic femme fatale spy with just enough plausible deniability to satisfy comics' compulsion to stay just barely technically politically neutral. 

The Dark Angel's name might be straight out of the mid-90s but her plans are 1941 all the way down. As the story opens she is sending two of her men to blow up a bridge and a factory and a bunch of soldiers, never imagining that Spy Smasher already has a comfortable vantage point to watch her give orders and thus is perfectly able to foil her schemes.

Not one to wallow in defeat, the Dark Angel manages to turn the tables on Spy Smasher by discovering his secret identity* of Allan Armstrong and ambushing him in his own home. It's honestly an impressive feat for a first-time-on-the-page villain!

*well, technically one of her minions goes out and discovers it but if "employing competent henchmen" isn't a key skill that many villains lack then what is it.

A combination of sadism and unrequited love/lust inspires the Dark Angel to keep Spy Smasher alive with the knowledge that she and her men are off to assassinate the President rather than execute him immediately. Unfortunately for her/ luckily for Spy Smasher, she isn't completely infallible in her choices of henchmen, as seen in the person of chosen Spy Smasher guard Fritzy, a drunken oaf who passes out almost immediately and whose body furnishes Spy Smasher with the knife he needs in order to escape.

Though the Dark Angel and her guys get inside the White House with shocking ease, only to find not Franklin Delano Roosevelt but Spy Alan Smasher sitting in the President's official comfy chair. Dark Angel and her guys are swiftly rounded up and chucked in jail and the fact that she and at least one of the guys knows his secret identity is just kind of ignored.

DIVINE ROUND-UP 022

Oh my gosh this place has so many god options.

the Sacred Leopard: 

The animal-worshipping tribe who all dress like the animal in question is a regular trope in jungle comics so of course Kalthar, lord of the jungle eventually encounters some of them. In this case it's Leopard Men from the Leopard Village, who dress in leopard skins and worship Karno, the leopard (Karno seems to be the collective singular noun for the leopard, a thing that happens a lot in jungle adventure books. I'm sure that it happens in real-world language as well, just as I'm sure that most of the examples in comics are just arbitrarily made up). The Leopard Men attack Kalthar and his people because they are being manipulated by a slaver who has a vendetta against them, and end up minus a lot of leopards for their trouble.

God Style: Animist (Zip Comics 005, 1940)

Roor the Octopus God: 

After former Zatara foe Setap achieves her goal of regaining her youth, she reforms and starts looking to reconnect with her Atlantean roots by the simplest way possible: enlisting Zatara's help in finding the sunken city of Atlantis.

Everything is going great - Setap is welcomed with open arms, she and Zatara are learning why Atlantis sank (hit by a lost second moon, natch), etc - when one of the sailors they brought with them starts trouble while stealing everything not nailed down, as so often happens when an ancient civilization is discovered by sea. Specifically, the sailor enters the temple of Roor, the Octopus God, within which the giant and insatiable immortal octopoid was not so much worshipped as imprisoned.

Roor is free to lay waste to Atlantis, and not even the power of Zatara can touch him. The Atlanteans are justifiably upset by this.

Thankfully, the one magic that Zatara has that can affect Roor is that of illusion, by which means he fools the ancient/powerful/gullible god into eating a whole heap of sponge and salt and then exploding himself by drinking more water than he can contain. Atlantis is saved!

God Style: Real (Action Comics v1 018, 1939) 

the Sacred Oak: 

One of the earliest DC books, New Comics (which eventually becomes New Adventure and then just Adventure Comics) had among its many features an adventure strip called 'Vikings' which was kind of slow and dour like a lot of early comics but did feature these doily-hatted Druids and their Sacred Oak that communicates to them via stiff breezes.

God Style: Animist (New Comics v1 010, 1936) 

Shin-Giva: 

Shin-Giva is the god of the Dwarf People of Matto Grosso in Brazil, and his solid platinum idol is the focus of the attention of crooked explorer Frank Hart, who wants to steal it, and his former partner Henri Rinaldo along with Zatara, who want to return it to Shin-Giva's worshippers and do so thanks to Zatrara's mighty magicks (please note that the idol is not returned out of any sense that you shouldn't just waltz in and take valuables from less technologically-advanced societies but rather out of a desire to not crash the world platinum market. So noble!).

God Style: Idol (Action Comics v1 033, 1941) 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 878: MR NIMBUS

(Zip Comics 009, 1940)

Mr Nimbus is a simple kind of crook: he has developed or otherwise acquired a liquid that creates a corrosive green gas and he is going to use that to kill people and steal riches from them. No dreams of world domination, no grand designs, just good old fashioned murder and robbery. But also no especial care taken, as he leaves behind a very big clue to the location of his next crime for the Scarlet Avenger and his Operative 1, Inez Courtney to find.

Mr Nimbus dutifully shows up to gas the Metropolitan Opera House and steal all of the jewellery on display in the audience, but thanks to his carelessness the Scarlet Avenger is there to prevent any rich people from getting killed. Too bad about the performers, though. The downside to being a simple kind of crook, I guess, is that you are also quite predictable.  

Everything comes to head on the Opera House roof, from which Mr Nimbus takes what should be a fatal fall, only to be missing when the Scarlet Avenger checks for his body, like a proverbial Michael Myers. Look out for him in the 1941 run of Zip Comics! Will my whole "simple guy" thesis hold up? Who knows!

(Mr Nimbus also has a cool hypnotic ring but it didn't fit the narrative I was building about him being a simple, one-trick villain. The thesis was already flawed)