Saturday, January 14, 2023

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 228: THE PURPLE MONSTER

(Feature Comics 049, 1941)


The Purple Monster is a pretty lacklustre super-villain. He ticks all the boxes: volcano lair on an island somewhere off BC, army of costumed henchmen, subjugated population of poor island yokels to exploit complete with fake human sacrifices and an unexplained sinister use for the sacrificial victims... it's a complete checklist of features designed to qualify him for this list. He even draws his name from a local superstition, albeit one he started himself by projecting a monstrous face on the purple clouds that billow from the volcano.

It's all so... low-rent. He's set himself up with all of this super-villain infrastructure to what? Extort resources out of a small community? Maybe organ harvesting or something? If he plans on moving on to greater things he doesn't get around to saying it on-panel - just as well he suffers the fate of most volcano-dwelling crooks: death by exploding volcano.

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 665: THE WIND GOD

(Jungle Comics 007, 1940) Not quite a normal super-hero/ super-villain interaction, this. Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle intervenes to stop the ...