Friday, June 30, 2023

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?

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