Saturday, May 27, 2023

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.

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