MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 312: PLUTO

(Red Raven Comics 001; Captain America Comics 001-003, 1940-1941)

As originally presented, this is the literal Roman god of the underworld come down (up?) to Earth to stir up trouble as Rudolph Hendler, dictator of Prussland (mild aside - recently saw a fascist complaining about Nazis being vilified like it was a new thing, but we've always known that you suck, bro).

 Jupiter and the other Roman gods aren't so hot on this plan and send Mercury down to Earth to combat cousin Pluto. A simple tale. The very mild complication comes from Marvel's fondness for retcons and rcontextualizations. After the Enernals were introduced in the 70s, a number of characters from the 40s and 50s were retroactively said to actually be the Eternal Makkari, including Mercury here.

He was also said to be Hurricane, the near-identical hero who faced Pluto in his next couple of appearances. But if Mercury/ Hurricane was not actually a member of some godly pantheon, who was Pluto?

In an unsurprising twist, Pluto was revealed to be Kro, a villainous member of the Deviant race who features in the same 70s series as Makkari. I don't know a lot about Kro but I guess that it's in-character for him to (in order) start a version of WWII, run a murder-for-hire gang, unleash a plague in the Amazon and attempt to take over a place called Groton City via the medium of repeated subway accidents.

The really important thing is that his first couple of appearances were drawn by Jack Kirby so he looks like a perfect evil creep. Of course there might be an argument that he no longer qualifies as a minor super-villain because the Pluto identity has been rolled into the larger Kro identity but where's the fun in that?

MINOR SUPER-HERO 035: THE HUMAN TOP

(Red Raven 001, 1940)

The Human Top is a guy who gets spinning powers after a science accident. The only really noteworthy things about him are that cool collar on his costume and the fact that he's one of the very few Golden Age Marvel characters to have never had any sort of modern appearance. Spinning powers aren't cool, I suppose.

It's kind of a shame that this is the first of only two appearance of the Human Top and the only one written by Dick Briefer - I really like the weird hyperbole and turns of phrase. Ah well, there's always Frankenstein to look forward to.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 311: THE GOLD LEECHES

(Red Raven Comics 001, 1940)

The Gold Leeches are not terrifically interesting villains, but there are precisely two interesting things about them and that's enough for me. Uninteresting preamble: Zeelmo, the Gold Leech (unofficial name) is a gold-obsessed gang boss with a few super-scientific gadgets (the Gazegrapho Machine for remote  viewing and the Trembling Death gas which kills via accelerated aging) and a birds-and-skeletons decorating motif that I wish had come up more often.

Zeelmo attempts to recruit B-tier Golden Age Marvel hero the Red Raven as a minion and ends up chucked into the Trembling Death gas and then blown up for his efforts. That's interesting thing 1, by the way: being the only Golden Age foes of the Red Raven.

Interesting thing 2 is that Ratoga, one of Zeelmo's lieutenants, immediately takes over his organization as Gold Leech II (name still unofficial) and I love it. I know that it can be a bit of a slippery slope from "what happens to the villain's organization when to villain is killed?" or "who builds all those villain hideouts?" to deeply unfun comics about logistics but I love this sort of thing - more second fiddles should step up like this. 

Anyway, Ratoga gets smothered by Red Raven in a huge pile of gold.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 310: ZARPO

(Captain America Comics 009, 1941)

Zarpo is a classic example of why if you are a government or large business, etc,  you should have a process for vetting wild crackpot claims from scientists who come to your door. When a man says to you, for example, "my name is Zarpo and I have invented a bomb that blows up after spending a certain amount of time near a human being," perhaps consider not calling him a crackpot and throuwing him out of your office. Because: what if he's telling the truth? You just might get blowed up is what.

Zarpo is himself blowed up in a confrontation with very minor scythe-throwing Marvel character Father Time, shown here sporting the rare nose-forward style of super-hero mask. Love that nose!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 309: THE WHITE DEATH

(Captain America Comics 009, 1941)

Like the Black Witch before him, the White Death is inspired to murder by a kooky clause in a recently-deceased's will, and it's one I forgot to mention then: if any of the heirs dies before the money is divvied up then their portion is divided among the rest. This clause! More fictional bloodshed has resulted from it than can be counted.

This time, the culprit is one of the heirs rather than the lawyer, but the lawyer is crooked as well. And yes, we are in the age of costume design where a KKK-adjacent look can be used without comment by anyone in the story.

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 005

They're back! They're insufficiently interesting! They're costumed! For the fifth time! 

This fella is just a regular degular Nazi spy, but I like his confidence, even if Super Spy G-5 does wrangle him almost instantly. (Hit Comics 015, 1941)

These fellas are a rare example of subway pirates, who derail and loot in the New York underground. My delight in this is dampened somewhat by their habit of carrying off ladies for unspoken but surely unpleasant reasons - happily the Human Torch gets 'em pretty quickly. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 013, 1940)

This here fellow is another Nazi, operating out of London. His plan to simultaneously turn the US against England by pinning the murder of a movie star on an Englishman and also enrich himself by making that Englishman his wealthy cousin is overturned by reporter 'Headline' Hunter. I do appreciate how grotesque his weird mask makes him look. 

If I was feeling a bit more generous some of these guys would get entries of their own under the name the Leader, but low-effort Nazi spies can be happy with a tag and go screw. (Captain America Comics 007, 1941)

This trio of bank robbers might not have made the cut if they weren't constantly hamming it up like this while battling Father Time. Mike, Mugsy, Other Guy: welcome to the club. (Captain America Comics 008, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 308: THE BLACK WITCH

(Captain America Comics 008, 1941)

So: the Black Witch is a witch's ghost that supposedly haunts Hagmoor Castle, one of the many castles that dot the landscape around Camp Lehigh (and don't imagine that it's the same on from the Hunchback of Hollywood case, because that was called Ebony Castle). Hagmoor Castle, coincidentally, is the subject of an eccentric will that sees one Karin Lee having to spend three nights there alone in order to  inherit her uncle Jonathan's estate. Perhaps you see where this is going.

Predictably, the castle is crawling wit spooks, spectres, walking suits of armour and garden-variety thugs. Karin's chances of getting her inheritance would be slim indeed without the intervention of Cap and Bucky. What's worse, Uncle Jonathan's will not only stipulated that she would lose out if she didn't stay three nights in the castle but also laid out a contingency for what would happen if she died before inheriting. The only thin missing in the trifecta of Plot-Inspiring Will Shenanigans is the one about her having to be married by a certain age. 

As is often the case in these will-related tales, the lawyer done it. Yes, Mr Feritt, Karin's lawyer and the only other named character in the story, was the Black Witch all along. Why? Because the land Hagmoor Castle sits on is chock full of oil, of course. More than enough reason for an elaborate charade that ultimately leads to your own death!

THE ULTIMATE WEAPON

(Captain America Comics 008, 1941)

Comic book Nazis mobilized an awful lot of devious superweapons, but the machine gun tractor might just be the greatest one of all. 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 307: RA THE AVENGER

(Captain America Comics 008, 1941) 

Ra the Avenger is actually Henry Sanders, an explorer who discovered and eventually sold the fabulous Egyptian Ruby of the Nile, then dressed up in faux Ancient Egyptian gear to murder all who stood in his way on a quest to steal it back again.

That is, unfortunately, about all we can say about this guy because he's one of those fellas who gets punched out and hauled off to jail without really spelling out the Why of their turn to costumed villainy.  An educated guesser might suppose that he sold the gem unwillingly due to some critical need and was determined to get it back. Or maybe the gem holds some sort of  curse that drives him to recover and return it? That's fun, let's go with that! It even clears up some of the fuzziness about the distinction between Ra  the god and the pharaoh who was buried with the gem: they must be the same, a magician powerful enough to be conflated with a god and to impose his will on a tomb robber thousands of years in the future. What a cool story I've read into this (though a bit of a bleak future for Sanders, possessed and locked up in a US prison)!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 306: THE FIDDLER

(Captain America Comics 007, 1941)

The Fiddler, being a man who can play his violin at special pitches in order to hypnotize or kill, has the dubious honour of being our first super-powered Nazi villain. 

The Fiddler is an overplanner, no bones about it. His mission in the US is to kill anti-Nazi politicians (specifically senators, or maybe he's working up  to governors etc). Here's his process for doing so:

-become an acclaimed musician with regular radio gigs

-establish an employment agency for butlers

-have butlers placed in his victims' homes

-have the butlers install music-activated bombs in the victims' radios while simultaneously fixing it so that the radio can only be tuned to the station that the Fiddler is going to be appearing on

-hope that the victim will be listening to the radio at the right time

-hypnotize the crowd at the performance for some reason, play the Melody of Death to trigger the bomb, et voila

And it works three times! He bumps off two senators, and would have gotten a third if Captain America hadn't figured out his plan via one of the one million suspicious things about it.

It's frankly a mercy that the Fiddler ultimately melts his own brain while trying to kill an earplug-equipped Bucky via sonic attack, because this is the kind of thing that embarrasses you for life.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 305: THE BLACK TOAD

(Captain America Comics 007, 1941) 

Here's the problem with the Black Toad: he looks great. A really top-notch costume, like something Batman would have worn in a stage production in the 30s. No notes. And that's the only interesting thing about him. He's a baseball manager who wants to buy into the team and is killing players in order to drive the price down. HO HUM.

(I guess he does use a bomb hidden inside a baseball at one point. That's a bit interesting, I suppose)

SUPER-VILLAIN YEARBOOK: RED SKULL 1941

(Captain America Comics 007, 1941)

What was the Red Skull up to in 1941?

As mentioned in the Red Skull II entry, this here is the real deal bad guy we all know and love to hate, still running around being a total stinker to this day. In-comic there is of course no indication of this, as the decision to differentiate the two was made years later when someone figured that the top Nazi villain worked better as a German guy than an American fascist. Consequently this is a pretty scant Yearbook entry, as most of the Red Skulling for the year was done by another guy.

Intended or not, this Red Skull has it a bit more together than his semi-predecessor: for one, he has a much creepier mask and has supplemented the red skull calling card with an audible element: Chopin's Funeral March. AND! He engages with that finest of comic book traditions by wearing a rubberoid mask over his regular mask! Batman eat your heart out.

As far as actual crimes go... he kills a couple of guys and briefly frames Captain America for kidnapping a General. Mediocre.

SKULL SCORE: 3/5, just like the other guy. It ain't gonna change until he melts his face off in... I want to say the early 80s?

RED SKULL 1941

BODY COUNT: 2

END-OF-YEAR STATUS: Presumed dead

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 304: THE MENACE

(Captain America Comics 006, 1941)

The Menace is a dude who uses secret tunnels and the power of fear to advance his fairly low-stakes plot to steal $50 000 worth of bonds from his elderly sister. Some might argue that that is far too little money to put murder on the table for but those people aren't super-villain material.

Unfortunately for the Menace, he happens to catch the attention of Hurricane (later retconned as Makkari, one of the Eternals), so his reign of terror is short indeed. And since his crimes all took place inside a single boarding house he might just be the villain least likely to ever make a second appearance.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 303: THE HANGMAN

(Captain America Comics 006, 1941) 

There are three big reasons that I like the Hangman:

1. It's hard to beat a Golden or Silver Age story that revolves around a group of suspects who might be the villain. Just a series of fun character sketches followed by (in this case) the character's grisly murder.

2. The Hangman isn't actually supposed to be a luchador but he sure does look like one, and that's one of the top super-hero/ villain looks.

3. The Hangman is in reality... Dr Nicolai Vardoff, the supposed victim! Always a fun twist. His motivation? People kept bothering him when he was trying to work, so he faked his death and killed all the botherers, plus his best pal Ludwig. What a wacky dude.

NOTES: JUNE 2023

Where is Camp Lehigh?

As noted previously, Camp Lehigh has been assigned a retroactive location of Virginia, but when that happened is hard to pin down-- the earliest citation on the Marvel Comics Wiki is Captain America: White in 2008, which is recent enough that I'm surprised that the MCU location of New Jersey didn't take precedence when the 2011 movie came out. Was it in fact established earlier? More notes follow:

-nothing in the various Handbooks of the Marvel Universe

-nor any issues of What If?, which I thought might have added a little detail like that to the scene-setting portion at the beginning of a Cap issue

-various officers stationed at Camp Lehigh are shown to live in NYC

-travel between the camp and NYC is frequent and speedy. Bucky's class visits New York Harbor on a lark

-BUT Captain America Comics 006 places Camp Lehigh within a similar distance of San Francisco, leading me to conclude that it's the Brigadoon of army camps, popping up where it's needed.

At this point I guess it's just a matter of watching out for the word "Virginia" to be explicitly written next to the words "Camp Lehigh" because that's all we can really hold onto.

EDIT: A late addition to the fun confusion: Captain America Comics 009 introduces "Lehigh City" as the nearby urban area that Cap and Bucky visit and it's clearly one of your classic NYC stand-ins, down to the lions on the Lehigh Public Library:

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 302: THE FANG

(Captain America Comics 006, 1941)

Comics history seems to have taken the Fang as a Japanese agent but I'm pretty sure that as written he's a Chinese American gang boss who's working for the Japanese against the Chinese government. Either way, he's your basic pulp holdover Asian gang boss with swarms of fanatical hatchet-man and a pronounced lack of humanity down to his namesake fangs. Part of me always wants to skip guys like this but they're just as much a part of comic book history as the Big Wheel or the Hypno Hustler.

EDIT: Just noticed that he wasn't even actually technically hired by the Japanese! His employer was "an Asiatic aggressor nation" - Marvel seems to be a bit less inclined to name  and shame them than they were the Nazis.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 301: THE CAMERA FIEND

(Captain America Comics 006, 1941) 

The  Camera Fiend is your regular gimmicked-up gang boss who parlays the classic comic book camera gun into a modestly successful career in theft that sees him almost getting away with the British Crown Jewels before being beaten down by Cap and Bucky. He is of course playing off the idea of the rabid photography fanatic from the advent of cheap personal cameras.

I was going to criticize him for having such a grotesque costume while attempting to do stealth assassinations with a poison dart-firing camera but now that I think of it I guess the point is that the Fiend is so wild in appearance that nobody would suspect  Bucky Barnes' high school teacher Professor Hall of being the killer in question. I will however critique his choice to attempt to kill Captain America in front of about 20 witnesses as seen above. Still, this is exactly the sort of low-level crook I'm always in favour of being BRUNG BACK, even if it's a legacy-of-a-legacy-of-a-legacy character: the Camera Fiend begat the Home Movie Murderer begat the Home Movie Murderer II (this time it's on VHS) begat Selfie Stick or the Gram etc.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 300: THE RINGMASTER OF CRIME

(Captain America Comics 005, 1941)

Finally, FINALLY, after 300  of these guys an arbitrary milestone lines up with a reasonably cool character: the Ringmaster of Crime AKA the Ringmaster of Death. Compounding the fun of the circus of crime aesthetic is the fact that some of that good-style retconning has been going on and the Ringmaster in this tale has been made the father (and presumably later grandfather, per Marvel's sliding timeline) of the mid-level super-villain the Ringmaster! Uh, if saying that someone is someone else's grampaw is a retcon, that is.

The practical upshot of this is that this Minor Super-Villain writeup also functions as Super-Villain Yearbook, 1941 for the Circus of Crime, which, as a family-owned business entity, is contiguous with the version that reappeared in the 60s even though no individual members reoccur.

All that said, the Ringmaster himself is a fairly regular Nazi creep super-villain. Sure he's got the Jack Kirby villain snake-man look that we all love to hate but compared to his descendant (or, indeed, a regular circus ringmaster) he's a positively dour dresser - his actual theming is pretty weak, when you get right down to it.

Although we must not neglect the Wheel of Death, a perfectly cromulent random victim generator that the Ringmaster presumably stole from one of the sideshow games and spends hours/day applying all the little faces to.

The real star here is the burgeoning Circus of Crime. Not all of the classic archetypes are present (no tall man, no fat guy) but it's a pretty good criminal circus lineup already. To whit:

Omir the Snake Charmer

the Missing Link putting in an appearance for the sideshow folk

Tommy Thumb the circus dwarf who might be held against his will? He definitely does not want to be there

the Trapeze Trio

Zandow the Strong Man

various unnamed clowns, roustabouts and elephant handlers

It's not quite Princess Python levels but it's a good showing.

The Ringmaster of course gets trounced by Captain America, and then according to lore he gets murdered after the war by Nazi loyalists for his failure. His circus endures to this day, however, so that's something. Speaking of which:

CIRCUS OF CRIME 1941 

Body Count: 2

End-of-year Status: Captured/ Defunct

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 299: DOCTOR GRIMM

(Captain America Comics 004, 1941)

Doctor Grimm is your regular-style mad scientist, subtype Owns a Private Hospital and Conducts Unethical Experiments on the Inmates and Staff. He comes to Captain America's attention when Bucky gets bashed on the head real good (teen sidekick head trauma is no laughing matter and I hope we never get an earnest comic about it) and has to be admitted for observation. Things get predictably creepy, with disappearing nurses, strange cries in the night and deformed patients.

The real star of the story is Gorro here. Just look at him! A real classic Kirby man-monster with a thirst for human blood. I love him, and mildly begrudge Bucky for shooting him in the face about a page later. At least I can rest easy in the knowledge that Kirby never met a comic he wouldn't draw a monster in, so we'll be seeing guys like this for years to come.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 298: THE UNHOLY LEGION

(Captain America Comics 004, 1941)

This is one of those moments where the first examples of a thing that shows up here is not a great example of the thing. Blame the tyranny of alphabetical order, I suppose, because I know for a fact that Star-Spangled Comics will feature the Ring of Rags when I work my way down my list to it, and that is a good example.

The thing in question is of course Poor People as a Horrifying and Existential Threat, and it's going to crop up periodically. The poor end up as a creeping horde without real agency of their own who can be mobilized in service to some evil end, in this case the destabilization of the American military/ industrial complex.

The reason that this is not the best example of the type is that the people in question are probably not actually poor beggars but Nazi spies. I mean, they are absolutely Nazi spies. The probably is in regard to the fact that there's no indication that any of them are anything else. Actual poor people being portrayed as monsters will have to wait.

(bonus: the thing that gets Captain America and Bucky on this case is that they give a guy money and then he turns out not to be disabled enough for them to have done so)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 297: THE BUTTERFLY

(Captain America Comics 003, 1941)

The Butterfly is great. You just can't beat a guy in a semi-accurate butterfly outfit (I mean that head is a bit of a mashup) who robs museums. He's got a glider rig and a weaponized proboscis! The only really problem with his operation is that he is in reality museum curator Doctor Victroli, both because he is a fairly obvious suspect and because he is an old man who ends up biting the dust after falling maybe 10 feet off a rope.

Still, the Butterfly is a perfect candidate to be BRUNG BACK. After all, it's a guy in a suit - someone else can wear it, and this is precisely the kind of low-level supercrook that the Marvel Universe should be awash in.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 296: THE HUNCHBACK OF HOLLYWOOD

(Captain America Comics 003, 1941)

The Hunchback of Hollywood is a villain in the same classic vein as Clayface: dressing up like a horror character and using murder and fear tactics to shut down a movie production. Also like Clayface, the production is within the hero's range due to the studio taking advantage of the castle-rich landscape of the Eastern US 

(the castle in question is said to be near Camp Lehigh, home base of Steve "Captain America" Rogers and Bucky "Bucky" Barnes so this isn't one of the famed castles of New York State. But it might have been originally - Camp Lehigh's official location is in Virginia, now, but a lot of the stories imply that it's closer to NYC, with officers commuting to homes in Manhattan, soldiers casually visiting Coney island etc. I have no idea when the location was finalized and it's very frustrating!)

Much as Clayface was actually Boris Karloff-adjacent horror star Basil Karlo, the prime Hunchback suspect is the even more on-the-nose Goris Barloff.

Unlike Clayface, the Hunchback is not Barloff at all, nor any other crazed horror actor. Rather, it's Craig Talbot, star of the film and dues-paying American Nazi, who objects to the film's anti-authoritarian allegory, ad that's why unlike Clayface you've never heard of him: because he's a filthy Nazi.

Number of Episodes of the "Super-Villains of Hollywood" podcast: A two-part episode structured like a whodunnit, with the first running down the careers of Barloff and Talbot and a few other weakly defended suspects and the second detailing the actual crimes.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 295: RED SKULL II

(Captain America Comics 001 & 003, 1941)

When I started this here blog I tried to put a little bit of thought into the tagging system, and specifically tried to work out how to deal with the fact that a lot of super-villain types have the same names. The solution I came up with is that everyone named, say, the Skull gets the same tag but legacy characters who are adopting a specific persona that another has used get appended with Roman numerals (skull II, Skull III, etc). And here I am breaking that rule the very first time I have the chance.

Well, kind of. See, this is the original Red Skull so far as appearance in print is concerned. About 4 issues after he dies in his second appearance, the Red Skull returns, but a different Red Skull. This second Skull is the one that continues to appear to this day and the fellow I'm writing about here has been retroactively relegated to the status of Regional Franchise Red Skull. It's all about not having to bother typing that extra 'II' in the tags for the next 80 years worth of appearances, honestly.

So: the Red Skull (II)! Pretty much the perfect Nazi creep villain complete with a red skull calling card, taunting notes and a gimmick wherein he convinces his victims that he is killing them with his stare when in fact he is sneakily injecting them with poison. Why does he do this? For his own Nazi creep pleasure I guess.

And just who is this retroactive knockoff? Why, it's none other than George Maxon, aircraft manufacturer, who sold out the US to Hitler for the promise of high office. Boo this man!

Maxon seemingly kills himself with his own syringe at the end of his first appearance and his body is shown being examined by the FBI afterward, they evidently just... left him to rot in his secret lair? Which works out pretty well for him, to be honest, since like any good poison-user he is immune to his own weapon.

This time around, the Skull goes for a touch of death rather than a gaze, which involves a) an electrified costume and b) getting punched in the face a bunch. He seems to enjoy it, so I guess winning is worth a sock in the jaw to him.

This second adventure sees this Red Skull's greatest triumph as he steals the designs for a drilling vehicle and uses it to smash up part of NYC in one of those huge cataclysms that happened so often in the 40s. Marvel Universe New York must be simply awash in commemorative plaques detailing them all.

Unfortunately for George Maxon and his super-villain legacy, this issue also sees his lowest moment, as he mistakes a couple of con artists for the real Captain America and Bucky despite one million signs that they aren't. Frankly getting blown up with a round bomb a few pages later must have been a bit of a relief from the embarrassment of it all.

(Maxon also shows up in Young Allies 001 the same year but it's a weird appearance that has since been retconned pretty thoroughly for good reasons but in a way that has caused me a lot of annoyance when reading fan wikis. An ignominious end to be sure)

SKULL SCORE: It's just the eyes, which merits a healthy score of 4! Minus one point for being a mask makes the total come to 3.