MINOR SUPER-HERO 047: THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN

(Amazing Mystery Funnies v3 003, 1940)

Just a cheeky super-hero for you today: the Headless Horseman! The Headless Horseman is an utterly standard western hero except for their lack of a head. They made maybe two appearances in Centaur comics before fading into the mists of history. A shame, because I really like the simple spin a fake supernatural Western hero gives things - I can't think of too many of them other than the various Ghost Riders. The cowboy ones, not the motorcycle ones.

You may have noticed a cheeky gender neutral pronoun or two up above and that's because the Headless Horseman... is actually a Head-Having Horsewoman! Her name is Betty and in addition to having no assigned last name she is pretty scantly characterized outside of her vigilantism - she was educated Back East, she runs a saloon along with her... mother? and is friends with the doofus sheriff's deputy, who functions as her source of breaking crime information.

Utterly charming concept. BRING her BACK immediately, someone.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 411: SATAN REX

(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939)

We've all read a comic in which a scientist is rejected for his wild-but-true theories and goes a bit bonkers and criminal, but Satan Rex really went for it. Originally Eric von Hochwalt, who developed the Theory of Relativity ten years before Einstein and dealt with his subsequent rejection by disappearing into the Himalayas, founding a city full of people who worship him as a god, conquering the aging process and eventually taking a few stabs at destroying the world that wronged him, in the far-off year 2009.

Everything Satan Rex does is over-the-top and baroque: his minions have cryptic science tattoos on their foreheads, for example.

And his doomsday device is incorporated into the Temple of the Golden Man, the state religion of his City of the Mists. If there's a choice to be made, Satan Rex will go with the fanciest option. He makes at least three passes at destroying the Earth and/or humanity before his heroic foil Jon Linton accidentally travels to the far corners of space and time. Did Satan Rex try again, unopposed? It shall remain a mystery!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 410: THE BRAIN OF THE ROBOT

(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939) 

I've started reading Mystery Men Comics, as seen at the top of the Sphinx entry, and the thing about Mystery Men Comics is that although it features the Blue Beetle, who by a circuitous chain of publication rights changing hands is now a DC Comics character, it also has a lot of other characters that aren't currently owned by a media conglomerate! And although I mostly write about DC and Marvel characters because I have a fixation on continuity and its implications, I love all oddball comics characters! So I'm taking advantage of the holiday season to revisit some minor super-villains who got overlooked back when this blog was just a baby Twitter thread.

The Brain of the Robot is a so-so villain - he takes control of a robot exhibition at the New York World's Fair and causes a moderate amount of havoc before being brought to justice - made interesting by two things: 1. he is given absolutely no motive and 2. he is the only super-villain faced by early comics hero the Fantom of the Fair (the only one in my notes, at least).

The Fantom of the Fair, now there's an interesting guy! Some facts:

- Almost exclusively operates out of and protects the New York World's Fair

- His haircut is fully discernible through his mask

- In one adventure it is heavily implied that he is mentioned in an ancient Icelandic texts

- In another, an escaped ancient snow beasts recalls battling him on the tundra a thousand years earlier

They cram a lot of weird lore into the Fantom's handful of adventures, which makes it all the harder to take how dirty he got done by DC Comics when Roy Thomas brought him back as "the Phantom of the Fair", a villain whose exploits might just have been inspired by the Brain of the Robot. He inspires a Crimson Avenger/ Sandman teamup while using a World's Fair robot exhibit to, among other things, attempt to assassinate the King and Queen of England before escaping. He was then brought back and done even dirtier in Sandman Mystery Theatre, as a self-loathing serial murderer of gay men.Sad sad stuff.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 409: THE SPHINX

(Mystery Men Comics 018, 1941)

The Sphinx is (somewhat appropriately) a bit convoluted? Or maybe disjointed? It's hard to put into words but there is a weird dreamlike quality to some Golden Age comic books and the Blue Beetle stories from Fox Features often have it.

To begin: the Sphinx is a mysterious figure who causes subway accidents and then utters threats and pronouncements in a booming voice, seemingly from nowhere. The Blue Beetle swiftly discovers that one of the Sphinx's minions is in fact crouched nearby with a phonograph, and after some shenanigans and booby traps manages to track down the man who purchased the phonograph's needle: Mr Ivan. 

But Mr Ivan is dead, according to his burly identical sister who drives like a maniac. He can't be the Sphinx!

Or can he? Yes he can, because Mr Ivan and Miss Ivan are in fact the same person! A person who is getting revenge on the subway company for firing them. And look, I know that reading into past media can be a rocky road but... this cemetery fight sequence rules. If the Sphinx's whole deal was being a crossdressing man or a trans woman seeking revenge on a former employer for wrongful dismissal I would love it and in my little heart I will believe that that is the case rather than that this is a standard comic book trope of a large man dressed up as a woman for larfs.

Gender nonconforming icon or no, the Sphinx proceeds with the attempted ruination of the subway company while dressed in a moderately cool set of Sphinx-themed armour. I'm honestly not sure how the story resolves - the gruesome caption about the Sphinx melting inside his armour is followed by some discussion of his being captured by the Blue Beetle. Is "captured" a euphemism for "horribly killed"? Maybe!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 408: MR WHO

(More Fun Comics 073, 1941) 

It's Mr Who! You know, from comics! I was very excited for this guy to turn up, as he's one of those comic book characters I had heard about but never really read about, and... he's okay.

See, Mr Who was born all scrawny and seems to have been a weird kid (and to have had a shitty dad, jeez), so he channelled all of his efforts into science, and more specifically into developing a way to be big and strong and handsome. He ended up with Solution Z, a super-power drug that allowed him to alter his size and shape seemingly without limit, to recover from any injury, camouflage himself like a chameleon, etc. It's a cool suite of powers that are somewhat undercut by his all-brown wardrobe (including cape!) accessorized with a single dark green neckerchief.

In his first outing, Mr Who is on a campaign to steal beautiful things such as paintings and gems to surround himself with so as to leave behind his own perceived ugliness. Dr Fate gets involved and seemingly drowns him in the Hudson River for his troubles.

But of course you can't keep a good man with complete control over his own biology down, and Mr Who is soon making his way to shore as a highly unsettling fishman. (More Fun Comics 074, 1941)

This time out, Mr Who sets his sights on power rather than material beauty - he uses his shapeshifting abilities to kidnap and replace... a mayor. I'll be honest: the prior issue was, like a lot of Dr Fate stories, very much set in NYC and this guy is almost certainly supposed to be a generic off-brand version of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, but they changed him just a little too much and he's falling into the uncanny valley for me. I think this would only affect someone who spends a fair amount of time squinting at old pictures of politicians to see if they're being alluded to in comics art but unfortunately I'm someone who does that.

Dr Fate of course foils this plan as well but we'll be seeing Mr Who again as the Golden Age progresses, and then he's one of the villains that Roy Thomas brings back in All-Star Squadron. I like Mr Who - he's a good foil for half-helmet era Dr Fate, who is more of a wisecracking roughneck than the full-face version, which means that a moderately crafty fella can outfox him for a while.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 407: DR CLEVER

(More Fun Comics 074, 1941)

I have taken an immediate liking to Dr Clever. I mean, just look at the guy: the classic tuxedo-and-cape combo, the rictus grin, the bald pate with two little hair-horns, the tiny skull-and-crossbones pin... he's really a triumph of design when you think about it. Lucky for us he's a recurring foe of Johnny Quick so we'll be seeing him again.

Somewhat strangely for a man with such an overall villainous look, Dr Clever's major line is in con artistry: he manages to pull off three schemes in short order in this issue and the only impediment to their success is the involvement of Johnny Quick. Maybe people just love a smiling man. In order then:

1. Under a fairly flimsy pretense he gives away free food that contains a chemical that turns the eater blue, then sells an antidote for big bucks. This one might be a warm-up as he only seems to get about ten people.

2. He advertises his new invention: a machine for extracting gold from seawater. Dr Clever sells the gold from this machine for 50 cents on the dollar, but really it's just a way to launder stolen gold.

3. He creates a service whereby he will register your patent for you but really he just keeps them for himself.

It's all almost wholesome, crime-wise. Don't worry though: Dr Clever is actually an evil wretch of the highest order as evidenced by the above panel in which he murders two henchmen for essentially no reason.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 406: CAPTAIN BLACK JACK

(More Fun Comics 074, 1941)

Captain Black Jack is your typical modern pirate, albeit a very charmingly-written one. He took a look at the nautical landscape of the early 40s and saw a niche that he could fill: that of the buccaneer. He raids a yacht and comes into conflict with Aquaman and almost comes out on top but makes the key mistake of trying to drown an amphibious man and ends up blown to Kingdom Come for his efforts.

OR DOES HE? No, he doesn't - he makes it to shore and swears revenge against Aquaman and actually carries through with it! I'm pretty sure that he's Golden Age Aquaman's major recurring foe! WE WILL SEE CAPTAIN BLACK JACK AGAIN!

MEDIAN SUPER-VILLAINS: WHAT TO DO?

What is a Median Super-Villain? It's a made-up category of character that doesn't fit into either of the other two made-up categories that I've been working from up til now, the Super-Villain and the Minor Super-Villain. 

By my definition, Median Super-Villains are all actually Minor Super-Villains: they have a limited number of appearances and your parents have never heard of them. So what gives them the extra zazz that makes them Median? It's that they keep on appearing, mostly. Some, like Wotan or Ian Karkull, manage to elevate themselves to the status of Super-Villain, but as time goes on we will be encountering more and more characters who recur for a few years or a decade or to this day but are objectively still minor - your Signalmans, say.

Since this blog started out as a Twitter thread, my original mandate was to condense things down as much as possible - that's why the early entries are so short and poorly written, because I was adapting a couple hundred tweets into blog posts (the later entries are longer and poorly written because I barely edit). This led to a habit of trying to condense every villain's career into a single post, but no longer! Since I read comics one year at a time that's how we're dealing with villains' careers as well, and we'll offer updates as they appear in subsequent years. Huzzah!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 405: THE VOICE

(More Fun Comics 074, 1941)

"The Voice" is such a cool and evocative name that I have a real bias in favour of it but I have to say that this guy leaves me cold. Basically, he's some sort of science man who has invented a "sound destroyer" capable of dampening all noise in an area the size of Manhattan. His crime-gambit involves employing this device and deploying sign language fluent gangsters to cause mayhem during the resultant confusion, then threatening to continue doing so until the city pays him ten million dollars. Not a bad plan but it does nothing for me.

(He does pull the requisite guy-called-the-Voice trick of only being present vocally by faking out Green Arrow using a radio and a sheet, so there's that)

Ultimately though, the Voice pushes his luck one too many times and is foiled by a simple application of visual signals - flare arrows, in this case. Good riddance to bland voices, I say.

BONUS TROPHY ROOM CONTENT: This is the second recorded adventure of Green Arrow and Speedy and the second time that they add to their trophy case, and this time it's the sound destroyer itself! Always a more satisfying move than destroying (ha ha) the villain's tech.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 404: THE AVENGER

(More Fun Comics 074, 1941)

Another day, another Avenger. This Avenger is a disgruntled scientist named Mortimer Crandall who is seeking revenge on his old bosses for firing him because of his wacky scientific theories that, you guessed it, turned out to be correct. He uses his working technology to kidnap the men responsible in preparation for their murders.

This Avenger also demonstrates a flair for comic-book style hypnosis sufficient to place the Spectre himself under his power, which is impressive even in the Golden Age, before the whole "the Spectre is literally an angel" thing.

The Avenger ultimately fails in his bid to exact revenge and instead is given that most rare of choices for a Spectre foe: the chance to reform (with a little help from the mystic radiations of the Nebula of Truth, of course). Is it because he had genuinely been wronged? Because he had not yet taken a life? Or is the Spectre just a capricious guy? Regardless, the Avenger will venge no more.

This issue also marks the first appearance of Spectre sidekick Percival Popp, the Super Cop and I find myself in a familiar place: here is a charming oddball character that I like, being treated like an unbearable pain by all the other characters that I like. It's one of the more annoying literary dynamics! Hope it doesn't stick around!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 403: THE AVENGER

(More Fun Comics 073, 1941)

Just a Central American general trying to overthrow his government with crypto-fascist backing, foiled by Clip Carson because he and his men were covered with rice from their rice warehouse HQ. Much more interesting is the fact that this is one of the occasional comics set in a real country but with off-the-cuff, made-up information. In this case, it's the fact that Clip is in Honduras at the behest of its president, who is a man named Campano, and not the real-life in-office-for-more-than-eight-years Tiburcio Andino.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 402: THE BLACK KNIGHT

(More Fun Comics 073, 1941)

As our tale begins, a figure in black knight's armour roams New York City, destroying statuary seemingly at random.

Johnny Quick soon gets involved and ferrets out a link between the destroyed pieces: they all once belonged to a man implausibly named Black Knight, who went bankrupt and was forced to sell them. The statues turned out to be worth a great deal more than Knight paid for them and the prevailing theory is that he has returned for revenge.

In actual fact it was the art dealer, Sam Kirby, who was behind the attacks. He had swindled not only Black Knight but his customers as well, by selling them fakes, and was now trying to cover up this fact via what turns out to be a remote-controlled automaton. 

QUESTIONS NOT ANSWERED IN THE TEXT:

Was the guy's name really Black Knight? The Golden Age Comics Style Guide usually recommended signposting nicknames quite heavily and since he wasn't referred to as "Black" Knight we just have to assume that one or both of his parents were real pranksters.

What was Sam Kirby's deal? As presented, he didn't fleece Knight so much as not retroactively compensate him once the real value of the statues came out. But why did he sell the collectors counterfeits? Why destroy the counterfeits and keep the originals? Did he just want to own the real ones or was he planning to sell them a second time? Why go to all of this trouble? And speaking of that...

What's with the robot? I tend to go on about villains using technology that could make them a large fortune in order to acquire a small fortune but this is really egregious. I'm not even going to look up how much you could get for a really good statue before saying that a bipedal remote-controlled robot with full human articulation is orders of magnitude more valuable to industry. Mining! Manufacturing! Hazardous materials handling! The applications are endless!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 401: THE MASKED MAN

(More Fun Comics 073, 1941)

This is not a new development but having Johnny Quick and Green Arrow's debuts so close together made me realize that a minor sea change had happened some time in 1941: whereas the earliest super-heroes would start out collaring regular crooks we're entering an era in which super-villains are the norm! (that said, Aquaman's debut is in this issue as well and he just blows up a few Nazis).

As for the Masked Man (our fifth! Even if more than half of them are unofficial), he's another themed deathtraps guy, killing members of the extremely tryhard History Club (members must have the same last name as a famous historical or mythological figure, but sometimes it's the figure's first name as their last name and also there's a member named Frank d'Arcy who is a member under the extremely slim pretext of sharing a name with Joan of Arc AKA Jean d'Arc. Maybe it's a club for guys too uninteresting to belong to any of the other weird themed organizations in comics). Needless to say my interest was piqued: themed deathtraps are a classic villain trope! These, however, are extremely perfunctory - shooting a guy named Lincoln but not in a theatre, stabbing a Caesar in his sleep... a little more theatricality would have gone a long way.

More halfassed deathtraps: Ezra Samson is tied up next to a bomb that will collapse a building on him, Frank d'Arcy is tied up in a burning building, Amos Socrates is forced to drink poison at gunpoint and Leonard Achilles (great name!) is warned about his heel being targeted so he wears metal boots and is then killed via electrified mat. It's all moderately thematic but feels perfunctory.

And it is, in fact, perfunctory! The Masked Man is not killing the members of the History Club out of hatred or because of a weird compulsion but as a distraction! He's actually club treasurer Ezra Samson attempting to cover up his long-term embezzlement of club funds by murdering everyone who would care, culminating in a fake attempt on his own life and a staging of Amos Socrates' poisoning so that he would look like a guilty suicide. And he might have gotten away with it if Green Arrow and Speedy hadn't been there to kill him with a car wreck at the end of the story.

BONUS TROPHY ROOM

Green Arrow and Speedy add the Masked Man's fake round bomb to their already overstuffed trophy case.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 400: THE HOOK

(More Fun Comics 072, 1941)

The Hook is in reality cannery cwner Rand Greer, who has a lucrative sideline in smuggling jewels inside of frozen fish (and a less lucrative hobby of murdering FBI agents).

To justify the name, Greer has a hook hand concealed under a fake plastic hand (a pretty good one honestly - I reckon he's holding a fish with it in the first image). There's really nothing to this guy and I'd ordinarily banish him to the ranks of the generic villains if only to have a bit more excitement in entry number 400, but this marks the last appearance of Captain Desmo and I must say I'll miss him. Truly he was the best of the pilot/ adventurers, even if his foes weren't always worth writing home about.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 399: THE MURDER MAESTRO

(More Fun Comics 072, 1941) 

The Murder Maestro comes out swinging with a rapid-fire campaign of musical murder. Over the course of two days he delivers five musical warnings followed by song-inspired deathtraps to members of the Tin Pan Alley Club, e.g., "I'm Walking on Air" delivered via singing telegram followed by an attempt to hang the recipient from a light aircraft.

This of course leads to one of my favourite setups: a collection of possible suspects. Not as much as could be is done with this bunch - two are almost immediately targeted by the Murder Maestro, leaving only two actual suspects - but I still appreciate the effort.

The Murder Maestro of course is Blind Harry Thorpe, the least likely of the suspects, who turns out to have Dr Mid-Nite-style "can only see in complete darkness" blindness. His murder spree was inspired by the fact that the Tin Pan Alley Club was a collective enterprise in which royalties were pooled and shared among the songwriter members, and of course fewer members meant more royalties for the survivors. Whether Thorpe had an excuse ready for when he was the only one left alive was left unexplored.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 398: THE DARK VAPOR

(More Fun Comics 072, 1941)

The Dark Vapor (one of my trademark Unofficial Names) is just that: a misty entity that emerges from an old jar of mysterious provenance and possesses simple farmer Hiram Spiezel.

The Vapor-driven Hiram immediately heads for the big city of Cliffland NJ and starts wheeling and dealing, becoming a stock marked player and a real estate tycoon almost overnight. And soon after that, he starts evicting tenants, bilking people and falsifying records: capitalism to Mega-Capitalism, all in a few short days.

All this unwholesome business draws the attention of the Spectre, who quickly discovers that a) he cannot influence "Hiram Spiezel" like he could a normal man, b) "Spiezel" can see him, c) "Hiram Spiezel" is actually a banished evil entity from an ancient civilization picking up a bid for world conquest where it left off and d) the Dark Vapor entity is much more powerful than the Spectre. 

The entity swiftly runs off the Spectre and gets back to the business of enacting a hostile takeover on the world. As an aside: I really appreciate the adaptability of this being - I mean, I assume that whatever civilization it originated in was not organized along the same lines as 1940s US capitalist society and yet it is perfectly comfortable in its new role as business mogul rather than Thunder Warlord or Priest-King or Grand Art Critic. Good job, Dark Vapor!

Too bad for the Vape that the Spectre has an unspecified, vaguely Christian entity on speed dial, a literal deus ex machina for just such occasions. It supplies him with a power-boosting red aura, with which he in short order evicts the Vapor from Hiram Spiezel, hunts it down and imprisons it at the bottom of the sea, presumably to someday bedevil a civilization of intelligent octopuses with its preternatural pebble-stacking prowess.

AND SPEAKING OF OCTOPUSES! I enjoyed the Dark Vapor's machinations but absolutely the greatest thing about their adventure is this illustration of them as a metaphorical octopus ensnaring the US in their horrible flesh-toned tentacles. Always a delight!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 397: ADAM IGOROVICH

(More Fun Comics 071, 1941)

Adam Igorovich! Your typical scientist unhinged by his treatment by the scientific community, who deemed his theories impractical and/or dangerous and/or insane, so now he is striking back at the world using those selfsame theories to get his back. If we've seen it once we've seen it a million times.

There's one important difference between the machinations of Adam Igorovich and those of, say, the Master (the last Russian-ish scientist we saw battle Dr Fate): while the master's sonic death weapon was a finely tuned device capable of targeting everything from a person to a building, Igorovich's technology is a solar magnet capable of stopping the rotation and orbit of the Earth and moving it closer to the Sun. The willingness to use apocalyptic technology like this in a simple worldwide extortion scheme is the difference between science and Mad Science. Take note, undergraduates!

After he roasts portions of the Earth's surface for a while via manipulation of it's orbit (and what a wild thing to never be mentioned again, the fact that the whole world stopped moving for half a day. Twice!), Igorovich attracts the attention of Dr Fate and gets so thoroughly foiled that he chooses the classic mad scientist's exit of blowing up his entire compound around him.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 396: THE CIPHER

(More Fun Comics 071, 1941)

The Cipher is a fairly unremarkable oceangoing spy with a really great name. He attempts to extract some information on winter warfare tactics from a friend of Clip Carson (on behalf of unspecified employers - somewhat interestingly, the Cipher is explicitly a freelance spy) and gets blown up for his efforts.