CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 006

Why of why do they keep on hurting our boys?

Meteor:

Silver Streak's partner Meteor is shot in the back by a Nazi, but it's okay: the bullet only "nicked" his back. (Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

Electro:

Professor Zog, the brains behind Electro, is shot in the left arm. (Marvel Mystery Comics 016, 1941)

the Sandman:

The Sandman has a very rough 1940, starting with a shot to the right shoulder... (Adventure Comics 047, 1940)

... then a shot to the left shoulder... (Adventure Comics 050, 1940) 

... a second shot to the right shoulder... (Adventure Comics 055, 1940)

... and the for symmetry's sake, a second wound to the left shoulder (All-Star Comics 001, 1940)

To add insult to injury, he has to have gotten at least a little radiation poisoning during his repeated encounters with the Yellow-Faced Terror and his killer radium ball. (All-Star Comics 002, 1940)

Sargon the Sorcerer:

Sargon the Sorcerer, shot in the left shoulder while trying to do his damn job. (All-American Comics 032, 1941) 

Zatara:

Zatara is shot in the right arm while hanging around a lost city of ape-men. (Action Comics 027, 1940) 

Then he is shot in the left shoulder by an uncommonly fast-on-the-draw crook. (Action Comics 038, 1941)

Zatara shot in the left shoulder again thanks to the fact that he overlooks a crook when making himself hypnotically invisible. (Action Comics 040, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 942: THE SERPENT

(Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

The Serpent, a well-established and powerful crimelord, has been laying low due to the threat posed by the Daredevil, but all that is at an end now because as far as she can tell the Daredevil isn't around any longer. She puts in a call to her men, and I really like the sequence that follows. Nothing can stop these guys from getting to work, not prison, not pool, not partying with babes.

The Serpent's plan is both simple and audacious: kidnap the children of the wealthy simultaneously in at least thirteen cities across the US, relying on the mass confusion of the event to hinder law enforcement long enough for her to collect the 10 million dollars ransom and skedaddle.

It turns out that the Serpent was right to fear the Daredevil as he had not retired or been killed but had instead been lying low specifically to draw her out. Now that she has revealed herself, he jumps into action and, barring a brief spell in the Serpent's dungeons (from which she has the audacity to try to ransom him back to the police!), he breaks up her operation in no time flat.

The Serpent herself is captured after an attempt to assassinate the Daredevil at his home because he a) didn't check to see if anyone was following him and b) walked back in uniform. Terrible secret identity hygiene, Daredevil!

Though she is jailed (and makes a great face while being captured!), the Serpent joins the ranks of one-off characters who are just kind of out there with full knowledge of their enemy's secrets. Luckily for the Daredevil, he existed in a less continuity-obsessed time than later heroes and so the Serpent never comes back to bite him for his carelessness.

Categorized in: Animals (Snakes), Kidnappers (Ransom), Villains Who Know Their Heroic Foe's Secret Identity

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 941: THE MUMMY MASTER

(Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

In a very comic book series of events, a rash of mummy thefts at the City Museum in NYC is followed by the emergence of a Nazi super-crook calling himself the Mummy Master.

While my normal modus operandi is to lay out the story of the villains I cover in an abridged but linear fashion, here I must jump ahead to the reveal that the Mummy Master is in fact City Museum director Dr Kolb, because I need to talk about just what the heck is going on with this guy and what exactly he was thinking. 

So: Kolb is a Nazi and he is either officially or unofficially working to hinder US defense production by targeting so-called "Dollar-a-Year Men" (a type of altruistic/patriotic rich guy explored recently in our discussion of the Death Battalion). On the surface his decision to become the Mummy Master is... not a good one, but one with a lot of thematic resonance and which uses a lot of close-at-hand resources: he has access to mummies and a ready-made HQ in the depths of the museum. He never really states it outright, but by stealing a bunch of mummies and then dressing his henchmen up like them he seems to be going for the same sort of shock factor as Herr Skull got with his Skull Men.

The first Dollar-a-Year Man on the Mummy Master's list is even kidnapped with the same mummy DIY philosophy: he receives a mummy case in the mail, is disturbingly cavalier about going to bed with it sitting about five feet away and is then captured by the very alive mummy inside and taken away in its former home.

I would say that the first indication that Kolb/the Mummy Master is not a criminal genius comes at the culmination of the Henderson kidnapping. Surely the move is to dress up like movers and stick the mummy case in a truck, but the Mummy Master and his Mummy Gang just schlep the thing through the city streets. It's like the idea of maintaining the theme is interfering with Kolb's ability to do risk management.

The abduction of the second man, Billings, is comparatively simple: just a bunch of fake mummies storming the guy's office and grabbing him. It's a dumb meathead plan, but it's less dumb than the first, ostensibly clever plan so I must give it some credit.

By this point, the Mummy Master's haphazard approach to super-espionage has caught up to him and not only Captain Battle but Hale Battle and Battle associate Jane Lorrain are wandering around inside his lair - his capture is a foregone conclusion.

Hale Battle of course takes a souvenir of the battle with the Mummy Master, in the form of a little mummy doll made out of some of his wrappings. Of note is the fact that Hale's collection contains only the souvenirs that we have seen him collect, in contrast to other trophy displays like Green Arrow's that are already stuffed full of trash upon their first appearance.

Categorized in: Day Jobs (Museum Director), Fraud (Fake Mummy), Supranormal Beings (Mummies)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 940: THE PARSON

(Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941)

The Parson is a weird little dude who takes over a gang of opportunistic London-based looters who have been taking advantage of the ongoing Blitz to make big bucks off of the misfortune of their fellows. Though the gang is initially against the notion of, again, a little weird dude muscling in on their racket, the Parson presses the issue with his powers of hypnotic domination, the source of which is as mysterious and unexplained as the reason for his nom de guerre. 

(note the backward-speak in the above panel - this is the only instance of him using Zatara-style "magic words" in the story. After this it's just big-eye hypnotism)

We do, however know the Parson's motivation for taking over the gang: he is in fact a Nazi agent working to destabilize London by encouraging the gang to greater and more violent crime, and he reports directly to - a very rude - Adolf Hitler.

This is a Daredevil comic, which means that the Daredevil has to be in it, which means that he has to get to London somehow. This is achieved by having Bart "the Daredevil" Hill fly a bomber across the Atlantic to the British on a lark. Once he is on the ground, his super-hero intuition is strong enough that he immediately tracks the gang to their bunker lair.

Though the Parson gets briefly gets the upper hand with a little quick hypnotism, the Daredevil's willpower proves too great to be suppressed for long and he swiftly batters the whole gang into submission.

A final note: though the Parson's men are low-down dirty thieves and murderers, they are still unwilling to work with a Nazi, to their moderate credit.

Categorized in: Ideology (Nazis), Power (Mind Control), Professions (Religious)