MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 292: ARMLESS TIGER MAN

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 026, 1941)

Armless Tiger Man! A minor classic in the Characters With Goofy Names category and almost certainly a Wizard Magazine Mort of the Month some time in the late 90s. Also: he wears stirrup pants.

Unfortunately there's not a lot going on in the story: Armless Tiger Man is a Nazi saboteur who murders a man in order to save a few bucks on bribes, which leads the Angel to get involved. He ends up getting tracked down due to his taste for hard-to-find Chateau Quim wine (I checked and yes, it absolutely meant the same thing in the 40s as it does now, so this is very cheeky). As seen above he manages to escape only to be apprehended mid-sabotage.

His origin is a bitt more interesting: after losing his arms in an industrial accident he obsessively trains to use his arms and legs as replacements and develops an unsettling appearance due to his massive jaw muscles. He also develops a hatred of industrial machinery which is the reason that the Gestapo mobilizes him to the US.

You can't keep a weird fella like this down forever - Armless Tiger Man is our first properly brung back Marvel Villain, appearing in a Captain America WWII-era comic in 2010, in which he died, then gets to show up in hell! I mean, it's not illustrious but it's better than the Vampire Killer got.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 291: QUEEN JARNA

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 025-026)

Jarna here is Queen of the Lavarites, a group of aliens from Venus who coordinate with the Nazis (shown here as a chunky guy in his pyjamas about to be punched out by the Sub-Mariner). This is all regular comics stuff but there's some fun highlights:

a) the main Lavarite force is composed of these little roughnecks who talk in their own untranslated language and are clearly having a ball at all times. If your aliens have to look like humans they should absolutely look like fun humans.

b) Lavarites have some extremely fun sexual dimorphism going on! Some wags over at the Marvel Wiki are of the opinion that Jarna here is a member of a second Venusian species who has become ruler of these little guys but that removes the much more fun option of them being some sort of eusocial species like bees  and that these are all her worker drone children. Or that Lavarite women are just fifty times larger than Lavarite men!

(this is the first of two times that we cross over into Sexual Kink That I Don't Fully Get territory)

As with any good story involving a bunch of little guys, Namor gets Lilliputianed. (and there's the other one!)

Jarna is also surprisingly merciless in her attempt to do away with Namor - it's just her bad luck that he's also amphibious.

Despite the fact that Namor lets her off with a warning in her first outing, Jarna is immediately back to her old tricks in the subsequent issue She's working with the Nazis to build an underwater staging area for the invasion of the US, but good news: she's planning on turning on them just as soon as they do the dirty work for her. Attempted world domination I can forgive but Nazi collaboration is a harder pill to swallow.

Unfortunately it's just Jarna in this issue - the Lavarites all seem to have gone back to Venus and I guess she hasn't had time to hatch out another generation of them. I miss them.

For some reason probably related to her status as a pretty girl Namor lets Jarna go at he the end of this story as well, and she's stayed away ever since, possibly because he came very close to killing her on a couple of occasions there. I of course would love to see her BRUNG BACK, particularly if she is actually portrayed as the queen of a eusocial species of little guys that she gives birth to, and particularly if they aren't defaulted to the insect version of such but reflect something more like naked mole-rat society or some other, weirder, model. Have 'em come back for revenge on the Sub-Mariner some time when he's vulnerable!

BONUS: this is perhaps the most perfectly drawn "amused disbelief" face I have ever seen 

(said in a room with two people who had been surgically altered to be amphibious by the Antarctic-dwelling people of lost Atlantis, by the way)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 290: THE PARROT

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 024, 1941)

There are two different comic book tropes that come together in the Parrot. The first is simple: the weird-looking guy adopts a criminal persona based on their appearance -. So: the Penguin, the Vulture, the Chicken, the Platypus, the Skull etc. This is basic stuff, but generally fun.

The second thing has to do with the nature of super-powers, that by their very nature they require countering Just as every penny-ante gangster who faced Superman in the 50s seemed to have gotten their hands on a chunk of kryptonite, the well-informed criminal in a Human Torch story will at the very least have asbestos clothing and some form of fire-suppressing chemical liquid or spray. In extreme cases like the Kryptonite Man or the Torch's own Asbestos Lady the counter-weapon becomes the entire theme, but the Parrot here represents an intermediate step that I find quite compelling.

See, a while back the Human Torch encountered a Tibetan cult called the Fire-Men who had fire-powers that they used to fight fire-monsters. One of those Fire-Men, named Culflam, was a crook who got sent to jail at the end of the story, where he shared a cell with the Parrot and taught him all the secrets of the Fire-Men Cult (unfortunately for Culflam, as the last part of the Learn Mystical Secrets in Jail trick is to murder your teacher on the way out). 

So the Parrot is fireproof. He's also something like seven and a half feet tall and completely ruthless. All of this makes for a very fun villain, even if all he really does is try to rob an opera crowd. I was pretty jazzed to read his second appearance, two issues later!

Very sad times had by all: all he does is escape from jail again and then accept a contract from a man with  a German accent to blow up a strategic sulphur supply - his flame immunity doesn't even come up! And then he dies in a car crash! Truly this is an example of squandered potential.

Clearly the Parrot should be BRUNG BACK in some form - unfortunately the only hook I can think of are his stolen Fire-Man powers perhaps coming with some sort of curse for shirking the duties of the cult and he comes back to haunt the California desert as a fiery ghost? Or a modern incarnation of the cult needs access to lost teachings and mistakenly resurrects him instead of Culflam?  Or maybe the US government just keeps the bodies of deceased super-villains in cold storage somewhere and he just gets mad scienced back from the dead, I don't know.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 289: PROFESSOR ENRIC ZAGNAR

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 025, 1941)

Enric Zagnar is your classic Victim of Orthodoxy. His beliefs (mankind will someday be able to control the weather) clash with the view of the establishment (that is wrong) and so he is left adrift.

He of course goes off into the mountains to learn how to control the weather and dream of revenge.

Harnessing the power of black magic, he attempts to flood and drown the entire town and is opposed by everyone's fave smoke-dweller the Vision.

Finally, in his moment of triumph, nature itself seems to take a hand and he is incinerated by lightning.

Honestly the most interesting part of this guy's story aside from his wild-haired Jack Kirby Draws a Madman design is the specifics of the conflict between Zagnar and his unnamed university. "Mankind will learn to control the weather someday" is not a particularly outré belief, particularly in comics - we're probably less than a decade away from the heyday of cloud seeding as a go-to solution, for instance - so I reckon it's the hubris of it all, the Victor Frankenstein "we will be as gods" of it all that narratively seals Zagnar's fate.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 288: THE KING

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 025, 1941)

The King is your regular old gang boss who decides to pivot from running a numbers racket to selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and if that was it he wouldn't be listed here. The dang guy just wasn't content to be regular, though. Some salient features of his crime time:

-he made the fake drugs in a sprawling underground lab using kidnapped doctors

-recalcitrant doctors ended up in a giant vat of boiling acid

-he has a full suite of gadgets including acid, gas and regular bombs and a remote controlled exploding car for blowing up excess henchmen

-he leaves a king playing card at the scene of his crimes

-he uses a cigar holder, which isn't villainous per se but always stands out so much to me that I must make note of it.

He's also very dumb? Like, the calling cards tie together various crimes in a way that they might not otherwise have been, and he leaves a license plate that's registered in his name on the bomb-car. Plus he does a lot of unnecessary murdering and kidnapping that does a lot less to make people respect him and more to make them want to stop him, or, as in the case of the henchman he fails to fully blow up, kill him.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 287: DR HYDE

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 024)

A simple if gruesome one: Dr Hyde steals the eyes of wealthy men and then ransoms them back. One expects there to be some sort of ultra-technical removal process but no, he just yanks them out - the secret must be in the replacement.

He is of course undone by the fact that the Angel is a rich guy and has rich guy friends. Once their paths cross in the person of artist Keene, Dr Hyde is not long for life as a free man.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 286: GROSSO

(Marvel Mystery Comics 024, 1941)

It's been a while since we've had a proper evil equivalent, so here's Grosso to show us how it's done! Golden Age Vision, see, is from an extradimensional realm usually called Smokeworld that's full of smoke and that the Vision travels to and from via (you guessed it) clouds of smoke. Smoke is kind of his whole deal. Grosso, by contrast, is from the World of War-Dust, with war-dust being defined as clouds of metallic particulate like aluminum. Whether the dust strictly has to have been generated in the production of armaments isn't really addressed - Grosso is a vocal enough fan of war as a concept that I reckon he wouldn't appear in the dust produced by,  say, an electric fan factory even if he had the option.

The fact that Grosso know the  Vision by sight raises further questions about Smokeworld and the World of War-Dust existing in some sort of particulate-based continuum - perhaps the aforementioned dust from electric fan production would open a portal to a world of morally neutral people obsessed with moderate breezes.

The fact that Grosso's hinder is so juicy merits further study.

The back half of the story is taken up with a big fight between Grosso and the Vision where it becomes clear that Grosso is either made of metal dust or manifesting a body on Earth using metal dust: his primary attack (other than big punches) is firing busts of aluminum dust and his arm is disabled when Vision squirts some water on it. The full ramifications of this are left unexplored because the Vision subsequently ups the ante and employs the Ultimate Liquid: molten lead. Grosso hasn't been seen since, probably due to being dead.

Obviously I'm totally into this guy and  think he or some other representative of the World of War-Dust should be BRUNG BACK - it's not like we up and stopped making weapons of war, after all. Having alien warmonger frat bros pop up in your factory from time to time should be a thing in the Marvel Universe. There should be insurance for it!

THE FATE OF RUDOLF HESS

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 024-025, 1941)

Rudolf Hess, a major figure in the Nazi party, flew to Scotland in May 1941, probably without authorization and probably in an attempt to broker some sort of peace treaty. As you can see from the previous sentence, even today the whole thing is pretty murky, and in 1941 it was a tantalizing enough mystery for Hess to crop up in a fair few comics either as himself or as a thinly-veiled stand-in.

This here is "Herr Huss," who flew from occupied France to New Jersey as part of a scheme to draw the US into WWII and who was foiled by future Captain America #3, the Patriot. He ends up killing himself rather than be captured.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 285: DAKA

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 024, 1941) 

Daka is Namor the Sub-Mariner's uncle who is the first of many to usurp his throne while he's off adventuring. He allies with the Nazis and the Seal People in a scheme to invade Argentina and it's a testament to how little I can bring myself to care about Atlantean political drama that not even the Seal People can inspire me to write more about this guy.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 284: KAI-MAK, THE SHARK-GOD

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

Kai-Mak here (AKA God of Sharks, Lord of Sharks, Lord of the Deep, Master of the Deep, the Man-Shark) is one of my very favourite things in comics: a weird monster pretending to be a god in order to score power or riches or, as in this case, snacks.

I'm so fond of this trope, in fact, that I have to make sure to frontload the acknowledgement that it is predicated on the idea that a lot of the varied people in the world are credulous primitive savages with no critical thinking skills or I'll focus too much on the monster and gloss over the racism. Someday we'll get to M'nagalah the Cancer God, who at least has the decency to manifest in small mining towns and suburbs.

That having been said, we must acknowledge how great both Kai-Mak and his high priest look. Jack Kirby's finest shark-based work, I reckon. Just look at his nose and his greasy hair!

The Vision shouts a bunch of guesses at what Kai-Mak is that are neither confirmed or denied - he could be right and Kai-Mak could be the last remnant of a race of sharkfolk, sure. He could also be a mutant, an Inhuman, a Deviant, some sort of alien or science experiment or heck, a demi-god spawned by Poseidon in a moment of weakness. Rather than spell out his origin, Kai-Mak opts for a no-holds-barred underwater deathmatch.

After a cool battle under the waves, Kai-Mak is killed and both his worshippers and a selection of human sacrifices are free to go.

Now, if there's one thing that any super-hero universe is simply crawling with, it's humanoid sharks. On a strict market saturation metric there's no logical reason to campaign for the return of Kai-Mak. Too bad for Adam Smith that I think the free market sucks eggs: BRING BACK the Shark-God! There's always room for another giant shark-man! Particularly one who's been nursing his wounds at the bottom of the ocean for 80 years and is after a new community to subjugate. Have him pop up in New England, Deep One style! The old fish-for-sacrifice trade! It literally can't go wrong!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 283: N-4

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

N-4 is the kind of Nazi spy that really reminds one that the swastika was a costume design go-to for a while there. Gonna be swastikas cropping up basically forever, aren't there. Like Captain Nazi still shows up from time to time, doesn't he.

More interesting than N-4 being one of our earlier costumed Nazis is that they're a trend-based crime villain! The trend: highways! Their whole scheme revolves around the recently-completed Pennsylvania Turnpike and involves a trick switcheroo tunnel that they use to steal tanks in a complicated scheme that foolishly includes framing the Human Torch and Toro for some reason and of course leads to them being caught.

And of course I was using neutral pronouns in that last paragraph because I wanted to obfuscate the fact that N-4 was your old classic female agent posing as a male agent for unclear reasons. Also she got caught because of a deus ex bear trap.

Not a lot to say about N-4, it seems! I'd say sorry N-4 but you are a Nazi, so go rot somewhere.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 282: KHOR, THE BLACK SORCERER

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 022, 1941)

Khor, the Black Sorcerer is one of those magical generalists I was talking about back when I wrote about the Mor the Mighty, with a diverse range of magic abilities including stun bolts, paralysis spells, teleportation spells and shrinking spells. He's a Jack Kirby troll-man special who comes to the attention of the Vision when he kidnaps a whole-ass Antarctic science expedition because he's a lonely immortal who doesn't know how to make friends normally.

By far the most interesting thing about Khor is that his home in the Antarctic tropical paradise the Land Where Time Stands Still has since been retconned as part of Marvel's main Antarctic tropical paradise the Savage Land. This a fun bit of trivia, but more fun is the idea that throughout the whole convoluted history of the Savage Land (or at least from 1245 AD onward) an immortal French wizard is holed up in a little cave in the one location in the whole dang place not overrun with swamp men or ape men or dinosaurs, missing all the fun. Dante Alighieri is fighting literal demons in an alien amusement park while Khor spends the afternoon washing his robe. Delightful!

It all ends with the Vision pitching Khor into a lava flow and freeing his collection of beefy old men. I won't say that I won't miss him, but I'll always know that in any story set between 1245 and 1941 AD he's there, in the Savage Land, bored out of his mind, and that's enough.

COUSINS OF THE WAR-WHEEL

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 022, 1941)

During the Human Torch and Toro's time foiling the Nazi invasion of clear-stand-in-for-Yugoslavia Aslavia they encounter and sink this submersible fortress:

But FAR more importantly they encounter what may be the best ridiculous Nazi superweapon I have ever seen:

The German Invasion Wall! The superweapon so ridiculous that even in a comic book it has to have bits of wood propping it up so that it doesn't fall over when firing its cannons! I love it.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 281: THE WEIRD GHOST OF AMBER SWAMPS

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 021, 1941)

I got lazy here and clipped the setup, sorry. In brief, the story takes place at Chellcroft, the swampland mansion of wealthy Georgian C.J. Miller (just one letter off from being quite funny), formerly a centre of art and society but now fallen into disrepair.

To make things worse, the Weird Ghost of Amber Swamps has started haunting the property and killing people, including Norton, the poor butler pictured fleeing the house in the above image.

You can't have a murderous ghost, even a weird one, in a super-hero universe without someone showing up to check it out, and in this case it's the Angel who turns up to pretty quickly discover that the Weird Ghost of Amber Swamps is in fact a Weird Living Man of Amber Swamps, albeit a huge one.

More specifically, it's the owner of the house, C.J. Miller, armed with a rubberoid mask and a wild razor blade/ fishing rod weapon that allowed him to kill at a distance. The fact that C.J. Miller was a celebrated angler (and built like a brick shithouse, let's not forget) makes for a quicker unmasking than usual - a bit of a flaw in the old ghost routine.

Turns out that Miller is broke and that committing a series of gruesome murders and then killing himself and pinning it all on the ghost is preferable to anybody finding out that he's broke. Real rich guy shit that us poors wouldn't understand. Sadly, he does not get his wish, as not only does he trip and kill himself with his own gimmicked fishing rod like a clown but he does so in front of a reporter. Haw haw haw, says I.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 280: PRINCE ITOR

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 021, 1941)

I like Prince Itor because he's a weenie. Not enough of those in the Golden Age. He's not even really the focus of this story, which ain't called "The Idol of Death" for nothing.

So: Morrison here owns the titular Idol and is loaning it to the Egyptian Museum, but the transfer process and time was leaked in the papers, which leads to at least half of he story being taken up with a heist that Prince Itor has absolutely no involvement in.

Itor himself doesn't get a lot of backstory: his family are presumably like those deposed European royals who are always mooching around high society, but for thousands instead of hundreds of years. Unless of course there is an ancient prophecy about the power of the pharaohs awakening in a completely unrelated family. Either would be good!

Itor does eventually get ahold of the idol, by the simple method of having his men take it off of the crooks who went to the hard work of actually stealing it. That pharaonic power turns out to have a kick to it, in the form of a bad case of monster-face. 

Whatever powers the ancient monster-Pharaohs wielded do not get a full exploration, as Itor discovers pretty quickly that he can control the people around him. What follows is a pretty brief and unsuccessful attempt to destroy the Human Torch using a subwayful of commuters that ends when  the Torch melts the idol and a fleeing Prince conveniently flings himself onto the third rail - no fuss, no muss.

But why did I call Prince Itor a weenie? Very simply it's because he's the kind of villain who hangs back and lets his employees do all of the work, whether it's stealing the idol or marching in mind-controlled lockstep against a man of living flame. He's the kind of bumbling aristocratic oaf who can't even escape without accidentally electrocuting himself - I love to loathe him. And as with every other good aristocratic oaf, he has a highly-competent aide to take care of all of the nitty-gritty for him

Nalda! The Jeeves to Itor's Wooster, if Jeeves was a pistol-wielding femme fatale in a cape and a pair of buccaneer gloves. Nalda! The kind of second-in-command that is clearly the power behind the throne. Nalda!

I was going to say that it's sad that Nalda only appears on a single page but no, I'm glad. That means that she survived the adventure and likely got away to empty Itor's bank accounts and set herself up in Madripoor or the like. She's probably still there, something like 105 years old, running her underground casino/ assassination service/ chain of cat cafes like a ruthless raisin. Godspeed, Nalda.