MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 168: DR KRUG

(Blue Beetle Comics 008, 1941)

Dr Krug! I cannot tell you his motives, because he never goes into them! Dr Krug! He wants to destroy NYC York City , and he's going to do it with gorillas! Dr Krug! Specifically, explosive gorillas! Dr Krug!

That's really all there is to the guy. He somehow figured out how to make time-bombs out of gorillas and went from there. As far as I can tell from the action of the story his plan is to have the gorillas get arrested and then blow up the police stations they are taken to. This is simultaneously one of the weirdest and least cost-effective ways of destroying a city that I have ever encountered - I think he may have started with about eight gorillas, to boot. If he hadn't fallen in the gorilla pit and exploded he would have been having a long hard talk with his gorilla supplier before long.

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 001

I feel a little bad about what I said in the Armo post. The generic masked guys are, after all, trying their best, even if they aren't quite measuring up to my standards. So while I can't quite bring myself to write an individual post about each one, there's no harm in doing a roundup of them every now and again, starting with the guys that Blue Beetle fought in 1941:

This guy had a lieutenant named the Wart and a dirigible that he eventually fell off of! (Blue Beetle v1 006)

This guy sabotaged his own construction company for convoluted reasons! (Blue Beetle v1 007, 1941)

This guy killed his own father for not that much money, honestly! (Blue Beetle v1 007, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 167: ARMO

(Blue Beetle v1 007, 1941)

What makes them a super-villain? It's the helmet! That kind of welder's mask-looking helm is the key to my super-villain-appreciating heart. Otherwise, Armo is a gang boss who robs armoured cars and ends up launching himself into the sea while trying to run down the Blue Beetle.

Honestly, Blue Beetle antagonists in this era are almost all guys in suits wearing masks but otherwise acting like standard gang bosses. If I didn't include the filter of having to be just a leetle bit interesting this blog would be a parade of unnamed guys with brown/ white/ blue masks for weeks. Just chumps for days.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 166: LUGO, THE HARPIE OF HORROR

(Blue Beetle Comics 006, 1941)

I skip a lot of generic villains from the non-Marvel or DC families of comics, because everyone existing together in a big shared world is the thing about comics that makes me get out my spreadsheets and my extensive tagging system. A guy like Lugo, though, demands at least a little attention.

One thing to know about him off the bat is: he's an underwater guy. This happens a lot in comics starring underwater heroes such as Sub Saunders - just an surface thing transposed 1:1 to the depths. So Lugo is a bird-man, but he flies underwater and steals women to be his undersea brides off the coast of Florida. I really love his design, particularly his chicken feet and umbrella wings. Not so hot on the woman-kidnapping, but he gets his ass kicked successively by a snake-dragon, a stalactite and Sub Saunders before he gets the chance to take it any farther than abduction.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 165: THE EEL

(Blue Beetle v1 006, 1941)

What makes them a super-villain? I'll be honest. The Eel's initial plot - take over NYC York City 's shipping industry in order to starve and thereby ransom the city - was, while ambitious, a bit old hat and I was going to write him off as another jagoff gang boss with a decent moniker. But then! He reveals his Room of Horrors(!) where he pickles his enemies alive(!!), and, well, how could I not?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 164: THE MASKED MAN

(Batman Comics 008, 1941)

I got pretty excited when reading this story, as it concerns murders among the cast and crew of a play called the Superstition Murders and there's a lot of kerfuffle about bad luck and jealousy and drunk has-been actors and I was hopeful that it might boil down to my favourite motive for supercrime: mad art. Just as mad as mad science but it really makes you think, you know?

Sadly, the real motive for the crimes is simply base capitalism: if playwright Johnny Glim (good name) can tank the production, rights to the script revert to him and he can sell it to Hollywood for beaucoup bucks. But while you know I am all in favour of creator-owned properties I cannot stress enough that multiple homicide is not a good way to go about securing them and his capture by the Batman is a righteous one.

Number of Episodes of the "Super-Villains of Hollywood" podcast: Part of a poorly-received later season attempt to profile villains who almost got to Hollywood.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 163: PROFESSOR RADIUM

(Batman Comics 008, 1941)

Professor Henry "Radium" Ross has things stacked against him from at least three different angles by my count. First, he's a classic Victim of Orthodoxy as his research is rejected as too fantastic by a stick-in-the-mud institute director and he feels compelled to test his radium-based cure for death on himself. It works, but turns him into a radioactive man in the process, and he starts to go mad from a combination of radiation poisoning and (presumably) grief after he accidentally kills both his partner and his sweetheart (that's angle no. 2, by the way).

The third misfortune to strike Professor Radium is Batman, who is much more of a protector of capital than he will be later and consequently is more concerned with preventing Ross from stealing the valuable drug that he need to treat his condition than with helping him get better. They fight and Prof Rad goes into the harbour, presumably to drown. OR DOES HE, the final caption box asks? No, depending on which comic book reality you live in. He makes an appearance as part of a squad of radioactive bad guys in Infinite Crisis, so at least one version of him evidently hangs out for up to 70 years before getting motivation to do some evil.

They should have brought him back beforehand (or used him since). He's neat.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 162: THE CLOCK MAKER

(Batman Comics 006, 1941)

A few different longstanding comic book bits make early appearances in the tale of the Clock Maker. First, Bruce Wayne has to go to a boring old board meeting at one of the many companies that he has an stake in, but that meeting sows the seeds of crime. Specifically, they all go to a clock store together afterward and Atkins, the evil board member who wants to gain sole ownership of the clock company for some reason, meets Elias Brock, an unhinged old man who loves clocks so much that he gets violently angry at the thought of wasting or killing time.

Which leads to the second recurring comics motif: the calculating villain convinces an unstable person to do their killing for them. Brock takes out two board members and almost gets Bruce Wayne before Batman works out the plan, then kills Atkins and almost blows up a decent part of Gotham before being pitched out a window by Robin.

A side note is that the comic itself seems to somewhat agree with the clockmaker with regard to the precious nature of time - the man himself is a bit of an anticapitalist...

... while Batman expresses more of a rise and grind mentality, completely unsurprisingly.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 161: THE BLACK WITCH

(Batman Comics v1 005, 1941)

Batman and Robin's first interdimensional jaunt took them to Fairyland, where they were tasked with rescuing the daughter of one Professor Anderson, who it seems he was using as a test subject for his narrative-dimensional travel device? There they face off against sundry giants and dragons and so forth before confronting the top evildoer of the realm: the Black Witch.

One could argue that a villain whose existence is defined by peasant morality tales that have been passed through a series of bowdlerizations is not necessarily completely responsible for their evil nature, but Grant Morrison didn't write this one, so Batman beats her up and she commits suicide.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 160: THE FOUR CARDS

(Batman Comics 005, 1941)

A while ago I decided that groups were going to go into my lists (and charts and graphs) of super-villains. After all, if I was willing to accord one fellow who went around as the Masked Bandit, why should I spurn four guys who do exactly the same, only pluralized? Accordingly, masked gangs get as much credit as masked crooks, if they fulfil enough other criteria. The Four Cards, however, introduce a new wrinkle.

Simply put: if any other four people with card-based nicknames had formed a card-themed gang I'd count them as minor super-villains, but one of them is the Joker. So the group is minor and three quarters of its members are - is that enough? Evidently!

Aside from my categorization panic, the Four Cards are a bit basic: they operate a semi-legal gambling ship in international waters off Gotham and a disguised Joker, seductive Black Queen and socially adroit Jack of Diamonds line up wealthy targets for the King of Clubs to beat up and rob.

Inevitably, Batman and Robin step in. The Black Queen falls in love with Batman and she and the Jack of Diamonds bump one another off over him. Meanwhile, the Joker has pulled his inevitable double cross and left (having set the ship on fire as he went), leaving poor Clubbsy as the only one left to be hauled away to jail.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 159: MISTER X

(All-Star Comics 005, 1941)

Mister X is another team comic overboss, like the Leader before him. Outwardly an unassuming little man, he has managed to gather a wide range of organized crime under his control while remaining completely anonymous, even to his own underlings. His only mistake (and the inciting event of the story) is being so threatened by the crimefighting activities of the Justice Society that he mobilizes his forces in an attempt to kill them even though they have no idea that he actually exists.

Even after they are variously attacked by gangsters, gamblers, car thieves, muscle men, criminal scientists, arsonists and magicians, the Justice Society doesn't actually end up catching Mister X. As seen above, he chooses to turn himself in rather than, say, relocating to South America or attempting to go into finance.

I quite like Mister X. It's hardly a novel idea for a meek little guy to be a secret criminal mastermind - like old ladies, guys like Mister X were accorded so little respect in the popular culture of the 40s that the idea of them being in some way formidable was a cliché long before this comic came to be. It's well executed here, with X being so unassuming that criminals and crimefighters alike are merely nonplussed when he shows up at the scene of crime after crime.

Absolutely the best thing about Mister X, though, is this bit about the moment of silence every time his name comes up around a bunch of crooks. They do it throughout the issue!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 158: THE LEADER

(All-Star Comics 004, 1941)

What makes them a super-villain? Sheer scale! The Leader AKA Fritz Klaver is the top spy for the "dictator nations" in America, commanding units of his subversive Grey-Shirts as well as other less blatant agents in numbers estimated at 30 000. They come real close to saying he's a Nazi, too, but it's about a year out from comics folks being willing to actually do that.

What makes them interesting? The real deal interesting thing about the Leader is that he's the first foe that the Justice Society tackle as a group, establishing the split-up-to-take-on-all-of-the-minions-before-coming-together-to-fight-the-overboss paradigm that would rule team super-hero books for decades to come. Other than that he's your typical fascist spy chief.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 157: THE WIZARD

(All-Star Comics 003, 1940)

This is the kind of super-villain that you see magical heroes taking on a lot more often than other types: the preemptive striker. The likely cause of this is the status of so many magical heroes as the de facto head of Earth's magical security, someone that a bad actor can take out and then be free to act with impunity.

What's interesting about this super-villain? The thing that appeals to me about this guy, who is primarily a user of illusion magic, is the variety of things he throws at Dr Fate: you got your crazed unicorns, some undead Egyptian warriors, a weird tentacle monster and the "Three Witches of Endor" who themselves cast spells at him. It's a nice bit of variety!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 156: OOM THE MIGHTY

(All-Star Comics 003, 1940)

Oom the Mighty is, by his own description, a sort of low-rent Gozer the Gozerian: a murderous entity of the ancient past who has returned to kill again. Only instead of whole civilizations boiling in his belly or what have you, Oom kills a handful of people every full moon - still bad, but not quite as much cosmic terror.

The original appearance of Oom (involving a dimension-hopping battle with the Spectre) maybe kind of implied that he was a spirit that was possessing a bronze grotesque, but later appearances - Oom, like Nyola before him, was Roy Thomased into the Monster Society of Evil in the pages of All-Star Squadron - treat the body as his own, thus introducing the question of why the city of Cliffland New Jersey was festooning their buildings with prehistoric statuary. Whichever is the case, possibly the most interesting thing about Oom is the fact that sometime in the last 30ish years he seems to have made the leap from Justice Society/ Spectre villain to Marvel Family foe, presumably via the Monster Society link.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 155: MAZDA THE GREAT

(All-Star Comics 003, 1940)

Much of the information that we have on Mazda the Great comes from the mouth of one of his dying henchmen at the end of the story, but what reason would he have to lie? According to this man, Mazda was a scientist (I assume a vulcanologist. An enormous one!) who developed both technology to control/ redirect the energies of a volcano and also volcano-proof suits. Thus equipped, he set up shop in the crater of Mount Krakatoa along with his minions, dubbed the Fire Ghosts.

It's a bit unclear whether Mazda actually planned on taking over the world or destroying it - he said destroy while his minion said conquer - but either way, he was chucked into the volcano for his troubles, once Hawkman showed up on the scene.

A lot of reasons to like this fella - I love a huge guy and I love a skull hat, and on a scientist? Beautiful. He also manages to maintain enough gravitas that I always remember him as having a pseudo-noble goal for his conquest/destruction but on further examination it seems that he just has volcano-weaponizing technology and wants to use it.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 154: THE YELLOW-FACED TERROR

(All-Star Comics 002, 1940)

What makes them a super-villain? He's a money-mad maniac who murdered his own brother to steal a radiation-orb called the Life-Taker, which he uses to rob by the simple act of lobbing it into an area and waiting until it has killed any resistance. He also has a pretty great look, achieved via a crust of a sulphur/lead compound which shields him from his own orb's radiations. What he doesn't really have is a name, so I snitched the one used in the above text box.

What's interesting about them? Well, it's a bit debatable but the Sandman might have murdered him. He discovers Wesley Dodds' secret in the course of the adventure and then in the final struggle... it kind of looks like the Sandman arranges for him to be shot through the head a bit more enthusiastically than needed. Maybe.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 153: KULAK

(All-Star Comics 002, 1940)

Kulak is the High Priest of Brztal, which is originally implied to be an ancient lost civilization but I believe is later defined as extra-dimensional in some way. His deal is ostensibly that he is upset that his tomb was disturbed so he is going to destroy humanity, but I don't know that he wasn't just looking for an excuse to flex his magical muscles. He gets up to a lot of fun stuff with disasters - worldwide flooding and riots, plagues of lucusts etc - and summons armies of ancient Brztalan dead to smite his enemy but ultimately is put down again by the Spectre.

In what is going to be an ongoing theme with these one-off All-Star villains, he eventually gets Roy Thomased into the pages of All-Star Squadron to mix it up with the Spectre one more time.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 152: NYOLA

(All-Star Comics 002, 1940)

Nyola is an Aztec priestess of Yum-Chac, the god of rain. As you might expect, the indigenous religions of the Americas are treated with utmost dignity and she is not portrayed as a fanatic who, for example, would kidnap a woman for human sacrifice based on tangential offense done to her faith. Also, Hawkman doesn't then follow her back to Mexico and bring the might of the authorities down on an indigenous religious group that is, yes, killing people but still doesn't quite seem like the right call. Or wouldn't if he had. Which he didn't.

Despite her seeming death at the end of her first appearance she later shows up in the Roy Thomas version of the Monster Society of Evil in All-Star Squadron with actual powers! Guess Yum-Chac is on the list of legit deities in the DCU!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 151: THE GREAT REMEMBO

(All-Star Comics 001, 1940)

100% included here because I enjoy his name. A Vaudeville memory expert turned spy, captured by minor Golden Age adventure guy Biff Bronson.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 150: BELDAME GAFFY & TRYGG

(All-Star Comics 001, 1940)

A couple of magic users, Beldame Gaffy (curse-caster) and Trygg (necromancer) team up to steal the lands that rightfully belong to Trygg's niece and nephew so that he could get rich via a zombie-staffed mining operation. Things go well until Hawkman shows up to explode them to death. Also, these are the first (only?) Welsh super-villains we have (will ever?) encountered!

Ordinarily in a two-person set-up like this I would designate one as the boss and the other as a lieutenant or minion but Gaffy and Trygg really do seem like an equal partnership. Sadly however, only Trygg has made any subsequent appearances, specifically in the 2000s-era Hawkman series. I guess it makes sense that the necromancer would be the one to return from the dead but one must nonetheless mourn the dearth of Beldames in this modern world.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 149: KING COBRA

(All American 029, 1941)

A simple first costumed foe for Dr Mid-Nite: a mine owner founds his own secret society in order to control public opinion about such things as unionization and also to have a ready-made lynch mob if needed. Really appreciate how on-theme the Cobra Kingdom - wearing a version of King Cobra's own costume, natch - were at all times, down to referring to their enemies as "mongoose." It wasn't a big shock that they almost killed King Cobra himself when it was revealed to them that they had been duped into doing his bidding.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 148: THE SPIDER

(All American 028, 1941)

Just a weird little creep with a drug that can mind control someone and then kill them. The Spider hits on a scheme where he is paid by ne'er-do-wells to have their rich relatives write them back into their wills and then mysteriously keel over - and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for Green Lantern and his pesky pals.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 147: THE LEADER

(All American Comics 025, 1941)

A masked man running a gang of saboteurs to ruin production of war goods as a US steel plant in the name of a vague Cause - at this time most likely fascism - is pretty run-of-the-mill for 1941, but it turns out that the Leader's real scheme is to drive down the steel mill's stock price so that he can gain a controlling interest and make big bucks! He's just duping the fascists-or-maybe-anarchists-or-communists into doing his bidding! The real villain was capitalism all along!

Sadly for the Leader, his tale of villainy ends like so many that take place in steel mills: with him plummeting into an open vat of molten metal.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 146: THE RED DRAGON

(Adventure 069, 1941)

An early example of quite a few villain tropes, the Red Dragon is a guy who turns to evil because he was rejected by society due to his deformed face (1). He then decides to set himself up in opposition to the heroic Shining Knight, choosing to become the Red Dragon - less dramatic than a Bizarro-style evil opposite situation but still an evil opposite situation (2).

After his first (unsuccessful) foray into crime, he is recruited by the Hand to battle the Seven Soldiers of Victory as part of one of the earliest examples of a super-villain team-up (3), some years before the Injustice Society and such became commonplace.

Pretty good for a fairly ordinary hooded villain.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 145: THE MASK

(Adventure 068, 1941)

An orchestra conductor who goes off the deep end when he gets fired. Not a terribly deep concept, but he kills his replacements with an electrified conductor's baton trap and he leaves comedy and tragedy mask symbols to show his involvement so there's a lot for me, a themed crime enthusiast, to enjoy.

NOTES - SEPTEMBER 2022

Places: 

The Chandler Building, seen here, is "half a mile high". In other words, about the same height as the Burj Khalifa! What a win for not-yet-Fawcett-City-but-not-quite-New-York-City! Even if the top does get blown off in this story! (Captain Marvel Adventures 003, 1941)

Decoration:

Really really excellent custom motivational poster hanging in Dr Sivana's hideout. (Captain Marvel Adventures 005, 1941)

WWI vets: Richard "Madam Fatal" Stanton (Crack Comics 002, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 144: PROFESSOR DOOMBIE

 (Adventure 067, 1941)

Sometimes you have to admit to yourself that your judgement is subjective enough that you're going to count an ordinary "I invented a shrinking formula and shall now crime" scientist as a super-villain just because you like the name "Doombie".

HONOURS - CAPTAIN MARVEL

(Captain Marvel Adventures 002, 1941)

Captain Marvel gets a statue!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 143: THE CAMERA EYE

(Adventure 066, 1941)

Mr Cuthbert Cain, the Camera Eye (and I call him that because it's what he himself signs on an ominous note - at various points in the story he is called the Camera Fiend and the Camera Criminal) is part of a long tradition of super-villains who take a recent technological or cultural trend and extrapolate it into a criminal gimmick - in this case, candid photography.

Using black magic and photographic equipment, Cain captures souls and enslaves folks to his will, embarking on a minor crime wave. He falls afoul of Starman when he enthralls his friend FBI agent Woodley Allen and subsequently dissolves into the netherworld after a struggle that ends with him accidentally taking his own picture with his black magic camera.

SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? Absolutely! Not only is Cuthbert Cain exactly the kind of smug little shit that makes a perfect villain but the idea of a black magician who faces the price for their power and then comes back is a really great seed for a story. Particularly as the last time he was seen he had become a photo negative version of himself.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 142: DR DARRK

 (Adventure Comics 065, 1941)

Another in a long line of scientist-villains faced by Hourman, Dr Darrk has a moderately cool name, a lighthouse HQ and an invisibility ray but ultimately is overshadowed by his really excellent robot goon, Giganto:

Just look at that cool robot!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 141: THE UNSEEN MAN

 (Adventure 064, 1941)

The Unseen Man, aside from his pretty great name, is fairly run-of-the-mill: an art supply owner or employee who somehow develops an invisibility paint, he subsequently turns to crime and is captured by the Sandman.

The reason that the Unseen Man gets such short shrift is that a lot of story real estate is taken up with a subplot of Dian Belmont wanting to be in on the adventure and generally getting in the way, despite discovering at least one key clue. It's all fairly depressing, especially as her earlier, hypercompetent self was still showing up only a few issues prior and she mostly gets pushed out by Sandy the Golden Boy going forward.

Anyway, a shame that the Unseen Man didn't get more to do.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 140: IKER

 (Adventure 064, 1941)

Yet another Hourman mad scientist foe, Iker (properly Dr T.Z. Iker, but the only time that shows up is on a mailbox) is a classic Victim of Orthodoxy, having been kicked out of the Science Club by the hidebound Dr Orr for espousing "fake theories".

Said fake theories enable Iker to build a machine capable either of creating lifeforms out of energy drawn from the 5th Dimension or of drawing lifeforms from the 5th Dimension and giving them form - it's explained in a bit of a rush in the second-last panel - and he uses them for a bit of crime and revenge before being driven mad by his technology's destruction in the climactic battle of the adventure. The important part is that some of them are knife-wielding dwarves and one of them is a giant version of himself named Normo.

SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? is a moot question as I discovered when I did my customary check: he already has, in JSA v1 005, 1999, as a rehabilitated employee of Tylerco!