MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 820: THE MYSTERY MAN

(Thrilling Comics 002, 1940) 

Metropolitan Hospital* is in trouble! A mysterious masked figure dubbed the Mystery Man** has been conducting a campaign of terror against the august institution that includes both seemingly random and seemingly targeted murders, the installation of a gang boss and his henchmen in one of the wards, and the theft of $100 000 worth of radium! It's the perfect case for the Woman in Red to make her debut, as undercover police officer Peggy Allen is sent to the hospital as a nurse.

* I was prepared to do my usual song and dance about how this comic was probably set in NYC but that there was no way to really be sure, but danged if I didn't check and to my surprise there seems to be exactly one Metropolitan Hospital in the world. 

** And speaking of rare names, I was certain that we already had a Mystery Man on the books and that there would be all kinds of one shot Mystery Men in comics, like how there are dozens of guys named the Mask and the Masked Man and the Hood, but all we have now is Zoro the Mystery Man and all I can find otherwise is the time that Commissioner Gordon dressed up like a super-hero and called himself Mysteryman. Colour me surprised.

The Mystery Man is ultimately undone by his radium-thieving ways, as the Woman in Red is able to track it down with a radiation detector and pull the old "coat the loot in a florescent chemical gag" to expose the person who had been handling it (the fact that she was initially able to find it by feeling "an odd burning sensation" through both its container and a reasonably thick wall may be a bad sign for everyone involved, however).

The Mystery Man turns out to be Dr Billings, the Assistant Superintendent of the hospital, and all this murder and mayhem was just a very extreme attempt to get a promotion. This kind of works, because he kills Hospital Superintendent Thorndyke about halfway through the story, but he doesn't manage to stick the landing and dies in a fiery car wreck while fleeing the scene.

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 023

Some real gems here tonite. 

Executed gangster Black Morger's four identical sons reconvene twenty-five years after their father's execution to seek revenge on the four people who they consider to be responsible for his death (and for that of their mother, who had some sort of rage-induced heart attack at the instant of Black Morger's demise). To their credit, they manage to kill two of them before the Spirit butts in and foils their plot. 

REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 2/4 (The Spirit, "The Morger Boys", 18 August, 1940) 

Waxy Morgan is a gang boss with the bright idea to commit crimes while dressed as the Spirit so as to throw suspicion off of himself and his men. This goes poorly for him. (The Spirit, "The Spirit! Who is He?", 13 October, 1940)

 

This unnamed villain deduces Lady Luck's secret identity by the simple trick of being the only one in the city capable of visualizing a lady in a hat. But though he has this unimaginable deductive power his people skills are lacking, and he fails both to convince Lady Luck to help him kill rich guys and to predict that his huge servant Tortu might eventually tire of being beaten with a whip and subsequently totally pulverize him. (The Spirit Section, 3 November, 1940)

When Mr Mystic has a ski accident in the Carpathian Mountains, he ends up being cared for in an idyllic village that has been cut off from the outside world for 700 years, but which has one major problem: a horrible ogre who lives in the mountains above and demands the sacrifice of one maiden per year or else he will wipe the place off the map with a well-placed avalanche. What's worse, this year the Ogre has demanded a red-haired maiden and the village is fresh out. And what's worse, Mr Mystic's red-haired friend Penny Douglas has just wandered into town. 

Anyway, the Ogre turns out to just be some creep hermit who likes making the village kill women for some reason. He manages to yeet himself off the side of a mountain while trying to murder Mr Mystic. (The Spirit Section, 29 December, 1940) 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 819: THE MASK

(Thrilling Comics 002, 1940)

He may just be the leader of a gang of kidnappers, but the moment this fellow put on his nice blue mask and got all confident, he became special to me. This particular Mask (our ninth!) is brought in without too much fuss by short-lived Nedor Comics group the Three Comrades.

DIVINE ROUND-UP 005

Once again we add to the scriptures. 

the Shadowman: 

 

Like his predecessor/inspiration Yarko the Great, Mr Mystic also has a semi-friendly/ semi-adversarial relationship with the personification of death. In this case, Death is a guy in a cool suit with a half-cape, and he is called the Shadowman, presumably because of his perpetually-in shadow face.

The Shadowman's first couple of appearances cast him as a mysterious stranger who helps Mr Mystic in his battle against various evils (including scientist Ghantse, who the Shadowman seems to work for in his initial appearance). At this point the Shadowman is merely a mysterious man who has a miraculous ability to survive the most deadly of situations.

In the 17 November 1940 Spirit Section, Mr Mystic ventures into the Land of Mythology on a quest for the Ring of the Gods, which turns out to be held by Death. This version of Death is a traditional Grim Reaper style skeleton in a robe, and he swears vengeance on Mr Mystic for the theft of the ring. 

The Grim Reaper version of Death is never explicitly tied to the Shadowman, and it's possible that they were intended to be different in some fundamental way - different aspects of death, perhaps. The Whole Ring of the Gods incident is not brought up by the Shadowman the next time he meets Mr Mystic (1 December 1940), so Mystic might be off the hook for that. It's a bit of a moot point, however, as this installment of "Mr Mystic" is all about him saving the life of a little girl named Joan Barton, and it allows us to get more of a grip on the Shadowman's code: he objects to bot murder and life-saving interventions as equally disruptive to the natural order. Mr Mystic now has two threats from Death hanging over him. 

(this episode also establishes the deal with the Shadowman's shadowy face: if you look at it sans shadow, you die) 

The second-to-final Mr Mystic comic of the year (22 December 1940) features the Shadowman's revenge on Mystic: he is going to seduce/kill his fiance Elena.

While the Shadowman seems to have access to some sort of primordial seductive power relating to the inevitable entropic march toward the grave, he is not above employing cheap romantic comedy plot devices to drive a wedge between the lovers.

Death is the inevitable winner of the contest, of course, and Elena goes off with him to... the afterlife? His home? Are they married now or is she just dead? We shall never know, alas, though we will see the Shadowman again.

God Style: real anthropomorphic personification (The Spirit Section, 22 September, 1940)

Jwang Tyoy:

We don't get a lot of the teachings of Jwang Tyoy beyond the fact that he is the god of a South American "anti-civilization" cult. The focus of the comic is much more focused on the very off-model pterodactyls that the cult leader uses to do he bidding, and for good reason!

God Style: idol (Shadow Comics v1 004, 1940) 

Kutu: 

Kutu, aka Tuku, is possibly a moon god, definitely South American, and has the traditional jewel socketed into his idol for adventurers to steal and get into Big Trouble. 

God Style: idol (Comics Magazine 002, 1936)  

Nahapatan: 

Nahapatan, the Golden Idol, is housed in a hidden Aztec city, where it is the subject of active worship. Does this stop Professor Roberts, his nephew Tim and adventurer Ken Masters from barging in and stealing it to put in Robert's museum? It does not.

God Style: idol (Masked Marvel 001, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 818: THE FACELESS PHANTOM

(Thrilling Comics 001, 1940) 

Here's a nice picture of the Faceless Phantom from his second appearance, before we delve into the muddy fiche images of his first.

Scientific hero Doc Strange is just walking down the street one day when he hears a cry for help that leads him to an encounter with his first super-villain (the Faceless Phantom) as well as his long-term love interest (Virginia Thompson). The Faceless Phantom, it turns out, has just kidnapped Virginia's father Professor Thompson in an attempt to get him to reveal the secret of his Delta Ray gun, which is a good old-fashioned sci-fi death ray.

What follows is an astonishingly long (for a Golden Age story - 37 pages!) chase sequence, as Doc Strange, Virginia and New York Police Commissioner Baxter pursue the Faceless Phantom and Professor Thompson to the Central American republic of San Pedro and back. Along the way both Virginia and Baxter are captured and rescued and captured again, Doc fist fights multiple animals (a shark, a boa constrictor, crocodiles, a tiger, a pit full of cobras, an octopus and a gorilla), and Doc acquires several temporary companions, including:

-Togo, hired as a bodyguard for Virginia; ultimately revealed to be an agent of (implicitly) the Chinese government looking to acquire the Delta Ray

-Parker, a seaplane pilot who shuttles Doc around for the middle part of the story until he is almost killed in a plane crash and left behind in Florida

-Jerry Adams, a newsie who Doc helps with his mortgage during a brief spell of train crash-induced amnesia

Things eventually come to a head back in NYC where they started, with the Faceless Phantom armed not only with the Delta Ray but a stolen supply of Alosun, the "distillation of sun-atoms" that gives Doc Strange his super powers. Thus equipped, the Phantom and his men have effectively taken over the city.

In order to combat a gang of death ray-wielding gangsters all hopped up on super serum, Doc really hunkers down and gets inventing. He comes up with two key bits of technology: suits of death ray-proof armour for a special detail of police officers to wear and a gas that neutralizes the effects of Alosun (something which one might reasonably expect to crop up to bite him in the ass in the future but not so, as far as I can tell). The subsequent gang round-up is almost 100% effective, with the exception being that the Faceless Phantom pulls his signature trick and disappears in a cloud of purple mist.

Thanks to his Alosun-enhanced senses, this time when the Faceless Phantom disappears Doc is able to identify that he is doing so using an Ancient Egyptian alchemical preparation called Kalodin, and thanks to his well-stocked library he is then able to find a book that tells him how to counter Kalodin's effects. Thus, the next time the Phantom tries to do a runner he gets a face full of reagent, followed by a sock to the jaw.

The Faceless Phantom is unmasked, and surprising no one with any degree of genre savvy he turns out to be Police Commissioner Baxter, the character who tagged along with Doc throughout the adventure and mostly got kidnapped over and over again while the Phantom somehow learned all of Doc's secrets. But he's been caught and the long nightmare is finally over.

OR IS IT? No, it isn't, because Baxter still had some Alosun hidden away for a rainy day and he gets ahold of it just in time to ruin is own execution, thanks to a crooked prison guard. Side note: Baxter's tattered clothing in the above panels is not as a result of his escape attempt - he was dressed in them already when he was led in. Was this some sort of attempt to save money on prison uniforms by giving condemned men the worst one or something?

Baxter resumes his life as the Faceless Phantom, pledging to make the whole country pay. Thanks to his Kalodin-derived invisibility and his residual Alosun strength he is able to form a gang and start up a crime spree with great alacrity.

As is often the case, a successful crimewave becomes a systematic campaign of terror and looting becomes a plan to take over the US by kidnapping the entire Senate. This is the point at which Doc Strange catches up with the Phantom - that's him in the lower right in gangster cosplay - and strikes back by packing the Senate galleries with gun-toting lawmen who engage the Faceless Phantom gang in what I would call an irresponsibly large gun battle. No senator catches a stray bullet on panel though, so I guess you could call the operation a success.

Things come to a head on the wing of a plane in which the Faceless Phantom is escaping with a re-re-re-kidnapped Virginia. Though both hero and villain are juiced up on Alosun, Doc wins out in the end and punches the Phantom clean off of the plane, at which point he dusts off his hands and declares that the Faceless Phantom is finally dead, despite the fact that his own Alosun-powered body has survived similar falls on many occasions. Will this come back to bite Doc Strange in the ass? Only in that he will be more surprised than he should be when the Phantom returns in 1942.