MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 226: THE BLACK BAT

(Feature Comics 043, 1941) 

Another example of the classic combination of someone posing as a spooky local legend-figure in order to scare folk away from a valuable area. In this case one Jean Dupre and his mother are trying to use the legend of the giant Black Bat (that they might have just made up) to scare their step sister/ daughter Marie away from the family ranch, which is just lousy with radium ore.

It's a good attempt, foiled by only a few factors: 1) Marie won't leave and instead calls in the RCMP; 2) Reynolds of the Mounties and his guide/ skáld the Old Timer show up and basically immediately unravel the plot; 3) they both end up dead, from a rock to the head (Madame Dupre) and glider malfunction (Jean Dupre). As usual, the less profitable option of splitting the proceeds of your find with the rightful owner would have been the way to go.

Unless I've been grossly negligent, this mother/ son duo is our first French Canadian representation on the list, so there's that at least.

MINOR EDIT: This is touted as Reynolds' first case in the previous episode, but also he's already a sergeant at the beginning of the story so I don't know when it happened. Some time in the past!

RANKING PATRIOTIC HEROES BY DEGREE OF UNHINGED PATRIOTISM INHERENT TO THEIR CONCEPT

Thinking about this thanks to USA, the Spirit of Old Glory. Will probably add to this as time rolls on: 

TOP UNHINGED PATRIOTISM

-Inherently tied to the Myth of their Nation: USA, the Spirit of Old Glory

-Embodies the spirit of their nation: Uncle Sam, John Bull, Captain Britain

-Draws power from a symbol of their nation: Liberty Belle, Miss America (Quality)

-Obnoxiously talks about patriotism all the time and is a jingoistic xenophobe: Don Glory, the Ghost of Flanders

-Inspired to embody the values of a nation: Wonder Woman

-Obnoxiously talks about patriotism all the time: Secret Stamp

-Dresses in patriotic colours to advance patriotism: Captain America, Minute-Man, Mr America, Miss America (Marvel), Star Spangled Kid and Stripesy, the Boyville Brigadiers, the Patriot, the Defender and Rusty

REGULAR COMIC BOOK PATRIOTISM

MINOR SUPER-HERO 028: USA, THE SPIRIT OF OLD GLORY

(Feature Comics 042-048, 1941)

USA, the Spirit of Old Glory might just be the most overtly patriotic super-hero concept ever, which is saying something. Especially as she is a Quality Comics character, a company that also featured Uncle Sam (the literal Spirit of America) and Miss America (literally given her powers by the Statue of Liberty) in their roster.

USA was originally a little girl who saw Betsy Ross sew the first American flag and was just so friggin' jazzed about the whole thing (and by that locket full of threads) that she immediately ran out into the rain and died. Betsy Ross dropping that last stitch was so metaphorically powerful that an anime dust ring blew out from it and knocked that kid into the Spirit Realm.

Then, in 1941, she returns! Conspicuously aged up about a decade so that she can fly around with her back arched all the time without it being weird! And she uses her magic flag and torch of liberty to kill lots of spies and traitors!

Cards on the table: I'm a Canadian, so I'm always looking at American patriotism through an anthropological lens - Canadian patriotism is mostly about being quietly smug about not being American. Like I said before: this is possibly the most ultrapatriotic origin story of all time: the creation myth of America, as it is happening, is so powerful that it creates this super-human. Uncle Sam might be the spirit of America, but the other countries all have spirits too - John Bull shows up once or twice to help beat ass and all of the Nazi-occupied countries languish in a sort of mystic otherworld waiting to be liberated. Uncle Sam being an unstoppable juggernaut is just American exceptionalism, while this here is the mythologization of America.

ADDENDUM:

USA's second appearance introduces perhaps the most on-the-nose weakness for a patriotic hero:

Yes, all one must do to thwart her is to literally hide behind the flag. These men are kidnapping a man's child in order to prevent him from testifying about their spy activities, and she knows that. Remarkable!

ADDENDUM II:

Surprising nobody, when USA adopts a secret identity in order to do defense work, she goes by the name Usa.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 027: THE DESTROYING DEMON

(Feature Comics 039-040, 1940-1941) 

This is a bit of a complicated one. So: "Captain Bruce Blackburn - Counterspy" was a strip that started in Feature Comics 032 in media res with the cover of the titular Captain and his colleague Lieutenant Jackson having been blown. The two then fake their deaths and a government plastic surgeon alters their appearances so that they are virtually identical, thus allowing them to operate as an incredibly efficient spy team with a flawless ability to generate alibis.

Then, in Feature Comics 038, Blackburn, posing as a man named Black, joins the Un-American Band, a thinly-veiled analog of the German-American Bund, a group whose shadow loomed much larger in the pages of the comics than they ever did in history. And in Feature 039, Blackburn, as Black, encounters this guy:

"Colossal Guy" here does two things: 1. prove my thesis that kids playing super-heroes in comics is always great and 2. give Bruce Blackburn a good idea.

See, the Un-American Band, being pseudo-Germans, are all intensely superstitious. This is a known thing about Germans and pseudo-Germans! Thus, the simple application of a cheap devil costume and a bungee rig is enough to throw their entire plot into confusion.

Sadly, Blackburn only wheels out the Destroying Demon (AKA the Destroying Devil, AKA the Avenging Demon) rig one more time, to contend with a force of crypto-Nazi dwarf saboteurs posing as refugee orphans. He does borrow a technique from the Jay Bird and dangle perilously from a plane for this one, though. I really wish he'd kept it up and that this strip had just kept adding more and more layers: government agent who faked his own death and was surgically altered to look like another guy posing as a bundist who is also a super-hero and then the other guy ends up posing as his arch-enemy and then they both pretend to be space aliens battling for control of Earth's water and then...

The Destroying Demon is one of the few Golden Age hero identities that I wouldn't like to see as a returning legacy character. Rather, I want it to reappear as an officially sanctioned super-hero identity for government agents in the DCU - just agent after agent complaining about having to dress up like a pantomime devil in order to infiltrate a super-hero fight club or whatever. Fun!

MINOR SUPER-HERO 026: ZERO, GHOST DETECTIVE

(Feature Comics 032-074, 1940-1943)

Eyyy, it's Zero the Ghost Detective!

I have a blanket love of the psychic detective genre and unusually for the Golden Age Zero's cases almost always end up being actually supernatural as opposed to being a crook in a sheet - the above panels are from a case wherein a bitter old man dies and comes back as a three-fingered ogre to drag the rest of his family into death with him. It's usually something gruesome and lots of people get killed by ghosts. What fun!

Zero himself is a bit of a cypher as his adventures never really dip into his private life but does that really matter? He should absolutely be brought back as a foil to Dr Thirteen. Oh how they would annoy one another!

MINOR SUPER-HERO 025: ACE OF SPACE

(Feature Comics 038-041, 1940-1941)

Pretty fond of the Ace of Space. As you can see above he has the fairly common origin of finding an alien spaceship and [getting powers accidentally from alien technology/ getting powers as a reward for helping the alien/ looting the deceased alien/ taking on the dying alien's mission and technology]. In this case, he has to defend the Earth from invading Slogoms. 

Also, I demand that you appreciate that cool looking alien. What a cool guy!

 

The alien's power belt gives A.C. "Ace" Egan the standard power array of enhanced flight, strength and speed, plus telepathy and, best of all, makes him 9 feet tall. He also inherits the alien's spaceship, which can usefully turn invisible. 

As with most forgotten DC/ Marvel super-heroes I reckon that Ace of Space should be brung back as a legacy hero (or as himself after having relativistic adventures in his spaceship! I'm easy!) because if there's one thing that I love about a sprawling shared super-hero universe it's all the weirdos and obscurities. Any group shot at a super-meeting would only be enhanced by a 9 foot tall dude in jodhpurs and a flight helmet. Or his great grand-niece who is still 9 feet tall but dresses like a rockabilly lady - as I said, I'm easy.

(the Slogoms are also very cool aliens)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 225: SPEED INC

(Feature Comics 040, 1941)

It's a common enough story in comics: a patriotic scientist (Dr Devlin) develops a bit of cool super-science (a speed serum) and his treacherous (and possibly dangerously Foreign, if his occasional Yoda-isms are any indication) assistant (Karl) appropriates it for criminal purposes. Karl's real innovation here is that he's prepared to scale up his operation beyond what a treacherous lab assistant usually does - per the panel caption above he has at least 30 super-fast men in his employ.

But even 30 guys with dangerously accelerated metabolisms (at one point it's asserted that they have only 2 years to live! Hopefully there's a counter serum) are no match for the jodhpur-clad giant Ace of Space. Still, I can only admire Karl's effort to achieve something greater than the usual penny-ante antics of the crooked lab assistant. Good job, Karl!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 224: THE BLACK GONDOLIER

(Doll Man 001, 1941)

I truly love the Black Gondolier, as he is to my mind the Platonic ideal of the kind of crook that every super-hero universe should be crawling with: a guy who gets together some gadgets and works out a little scheme and very briefly becomes the scourge of shipping in New York Harbor.

Why's he got a motorized gondola? No idea! Where did he get his climbing gear? Doesn't matter! What does matter is that in a world with a Doll Man, of course there's a guy in a motorized gondola scurrying up the sides of ocean liners to rob them. And it absolutly does not matter that he's gunned down by the cops at the end of this story - I am of the staunch opinion that there should always be a Black Gondolier in the (now) DC universe, showing up in the background at villain get togethers or super-prison scenes or getting whaled on by the Creeper in a big event. Bring back the Black Gondolier!

MINOR SUPER-HERO 024: JUST 'N RIGHT

(Doll Man 001, 1941)

Just n' Right is perhaps my favourite forgotten Golden Age super-hero, or at least the one I've thought about the most. I'm not sure I can adequately explain why but since he only ever appeared in a single six-page story I can at least present the entire thing to you and note the things that prey on my mind in the wee hours.

So: the setup. Justin Wright is a lumberjack and an orphan who has just come of age and inherited his parents' monies. Please note that he is such an orphan that he can't even conceive of having parents. 

It's the old Batman-style "crime orphan vows revenge on crime" origin, only this time it's an adult man rather than a child making the vow.

And in keeping with the Batman-style origin, Justin takes inspiration from a totemic object: sheer fabric, which he had evidently neither encountered nor conceptualized in his former life as a simple lumberjack.

Two things to point out on this page: 1. here's where it's revealed that Justin Wright has chosen Just n' Right as his vigilante name, which is about as extreme as nominative determinism ever gets in comics, I reckon. Take a seat, Edward Nygma.

2. the 'Wayne Reid' credit on the first page is a nom de plume for George E. Brenner, who did a fair amount of work for Quality Comics. I'm generally a fan but this is the perfect page to complain about how many people in his comics have these gaping toothless maws that I can't look away from.

Also the "frame Just n' Right for murder" plot never pays off.

Appreciate a calling card.

And finally: my theory on why Just n' Right never appeared again is that he was immediately arrested for vigilantism after antagonizing this poor police captain who just wanted a nice door. 

So there you have it: Just n' Right. The only explanation for the frequency with which I think of him is that he was a one-and-done. If he'd had a dozen or so mediocre adventures and appeared long enough to get killed in an issue of All-Star squadron he'd be trivia but as it stands he's a weird mystery.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 223: THE VULTURE

(Doll Man 001, 1941)

The Vulture! Flying thief extraordinaire! Terror of NYC for about a week!

In reality the Vulture if a very weird looking guy named Aylmer who is predictably upset at his treatment by an uncaring world but seemingly mostly about being short. Hey, if Quality Comics New York is an accepting enough place that that's all this guy gets bullied about then I have to give it to them, honestly.

The really interesting thing about Aylmer/ the Vulture is not his technology (impressive as a homemade flying suit is) but the fact that he gets away at the end of the story and never appears again. Now, Doll Man comics aren't quite as obsessively catalogued online as, say, Batman comics but as far as I can tell, this dude never ends up paying for the theft of millions of dollar worth of jewelry, the kidnapping of Martha "will someday be Doll Girl" Roberts or the murder of his own father, and in the Golden Age of Comics, motto Crime Does Not Pay, that is a wild and wooly thing to happen.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 222: THE PHANTOM DUELIST

(Doll Man 001, 1941)

The Phantom Duelist is and example of a couple of my favourite comic book story setups: 1. the eerie local legend used as a basis for crime and 2. the murder mystery with a whole passel of suspects. Plus there's a dose of "aren't Hollywood people weird!" for flavour.

So: movie producer Reynolds decides to drum up a bit of publicity by buying a haunted castle and importing it to Hollywood. The only problem: Reynolds is a bit of a shitheel and so is promptly murdered by someone posing as the castle's resident ghost, the Phantom Duelist.

The suspects: 

-Rocky Perrone, gangster who Reynolds refuses to pay off a gambling debt to

-Pierce, Reynolds' leading man who he antagonized and threatened to blacklist

-Marrow, who wants to marry Reynolds' leading lady but is unable to because of her contract

The murder happens at a costume party and Pierce is almost a self-frame due to showing up as the Phantom Duelist. In the end though, the murderer is revealed to be... a fourth guy! Steve Morton the publicity agent who Reynolds has apparently been blackmailing for the past 25 years!

So a couple of points off for presenting an unfair mystery (and another couple for so many of the characters not having first names) but over all top notch comic book tomfoolery.

Number of Episodes of the "Super-Villains of Hollywood" podcast: One episode only. SOme prurient attention paid to Reynolds' shitty doings.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 221: PROFESSOR KYLL/ MINOR SUPER-HERO 023: TRIX

(Doc Savage Comics v1 004, 1941)

Professor Kyll is your regular-style scientist who develops a working humanoid robot and immediately starts thinking in terms of world conquest. My eyes might have glazed over and completely missed him if not for the fact that in the very same town was another scientist, a benevolent one, working on a humanoid robot made of rubber!

Now, Flexo the Rubber Man has not come up on this here blog yet because I've fallen behind on my Golden Age Marvel reading but know ye this: I love me a weird rubber robot and am absolutely thrilled that there are two of them, even if poor Trix here never made a second appearance as far as I can tell. It's enough that they existed and beat the tar out of Kyll's metal guy.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 220: THE IMP

(Doc Savage Comics v1 004, 1941)

An unnamed dwarf performer at the Famous Three Ring Circus, billed as the Smallest Man in the World, the Imp is even more remarkably able to secretly build himself a robotic gorilla-shaped exoskeleton in secret while travelling with said circus.

As is so often the case when a comic character becomes a villain in response to societal scorn and rejection, the Imp ends up taking things too far by using his gorilla suit to rob banks and kidnap the object of his affection, ultimately leading to a confrontation with generic superguy Ajax the Sun Man and one of the more graphic on-panel suicides of the Golden Age.

NOTES: DECEMBER 2022

(Detective Comics v1 058, 1941)

 

Comic book character of the year Claudia Carol, folks.

Names: (Doc Savage Comics v1 003, 1941)

Bit of nominative determinism going on. The protagonist of this piece is Brad Marshall:

Marshal Brad Marshall:

Crook name of Bat Crawley (Feature Comics 040, 1941)

I'm only mostly certain, but I think that "Fasdick" here might be subbing in for "fascist". The government in question does bear all the hallmarks of being a stand-in for one of the Axis powers, but it's a wild stretch, even so. (Feature Comics 040, 1941)

SUPER-VILLAIN YEARBOOK: THE PENGUIN 1941

What was the Penguin up to in 1941?

(Detective Comics v1 058) 'Untitled' **First Appearance**

Heeeey, it's the Penguin, the perennial second-tier Batman villain!

The Penguin really hits the ground running: he's already got his look and his suite of trick umbrellas, so all he really needs is his weird bird-obsession, which kicks in in 1942. 

As is frequently the case with a recurring villain, the Penguin's first outing is one of his most successful: he takes over a gang using his gift for planning crimes and then when Batman starts to butt in he frames him but good.

To really stick the landing, Penguin's men kidnap Batman while he's being transported to jail - Gotham's finest are convinced that he is a crook! The Penguin is getting ready to bump him off! 

Too bad for the Penguin that Robin shows up and the whole plan comes crashing down. Too bad for Batman and Robin that the Penguin actually manages to get away. The next story picks up where this one left off but that's in 1942 so I'll be telling you about it in like six months.

BODY COUNT: 2

END-OF-YEAR STATUS: At large.