Thursday, July 6, 2023

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 313: DR KLUTCH

(Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942)


Dr Klutch is your basic criminal scientist. His major distinction is that he got beat up by the Tough Kid Squad in their only recorded outing, but there are a couple of other points worthy of discussion here.

The first is that we have a clear timeline for this guy. Many, many super-villains are clearly operating at a level that would require years of work to establish or have a lengthy if nebulous criminal record, but with Klutch here we know: in 1926 he murdered his research partner Dr Danger in revenge for not sharing his findings and in the subsequent 16 years he became a successful enough criminal scientist to be identified on sight by even beat cops.

(not sure how great of a scientist he was, given that it took the entire 16 years to track down the Danger Twins, one of whom was adopted by Danger's friend Professor Moxon - follow a few leads, buddy!)


Point two is merely that the idea of murdering someone and then perpetually electrocuting their twitching skeleton is fairly metal.


But the real kicker is that Klutch eventually gets ahold of Dr Danger's serum by extracting it from the blood of Danger Twin Wally. Klutch is a super-powered criminal scientist! The serum is a bit ill-defined but the gist of it seems to be that it enhances your trained abilities, and Dr Klutch is trained in fightin', science and EVIL.

Sadly, the closest we get to seeing the full chemically-enhanced might of Klutch's evil mind is a plan to rob several banks at once - mid-tier super-villainy at best, but perhaps he was working up to it. BUT, in an exciting turn of events, Klutch was captured at the end of the story, leaving the door open to my favourite potential BRUNG BACK scenario: the super-powered crook who gets out after 80+ years of cooling his heels in the klink. After all, he's full of serum! Who knows what that does to the aging process?

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