MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 333: THE FIVE FINGERS OF THE HAND

(Leading Comics 001, 1941)

As promised: the Five Fingers of the Hand! Though the Seven Soldiers would go on the fight more than a few teams of super-henchmen, the Fingers are distinguished by being (mostly) pre-established characters. Fun!

Big Caesar:

Big Caesar is whatever. A regular-style gang boss with a good name, elevated by being included in the gang. He appears just this once, in a scheme that involves cutting the power to Broadway and then doing a crimewave in the dark. The Crimson Avenger and Wing take him down without significant effort.

The Dummy:

Like Big Caesar, the Dummy appears for the first time in this issue. Unlike Big Caesar, the Dummy would go on to bigger things - so much so that I am declaring him a very marginal full super-villain, which makes this a cheeky Yearbook entry for his 1941. 

When first seen, the Dummy has two points of interest: 1. he is an "infamous kidnapper" and 2. he may or may not be a real, inanimate ventriloquist's dummy. Even his gang is convinced that he is a front for one of their number. 

Per his talents, the Hand sets the Dummy up with a sweet kidnapping job: he grabs various Hollywood types and leaves behind a lifelike statue in their place. The ransom is thus to "return them to life". Sadly, the sculptor that they must have had on retainer to produce the statues is not shown.

The Dummy is eventually revealed to be alive, though whether he is a very short human with a penchant for sitting still or some sort of animate wooden doll is not explored. Also unexplored: why the Dummy's back room is full of duplicates of the statues that he has already left in place of his victims, and why he has statues of the Vigilante and his second-best sidekick Billy Gunn - it's tough to imagine a scenario in which they might be useful (other than as a heavy object under which to trap the Dummy, of course).

Number of Episodes of the "Super-Villains of Hollywood" podcast: part of a compilation episode about villains who come to Hollywood to do crimes.

Body Count: 0

End-of-Year Status: Captured

The Needle:

The Needle is a recurring foe of the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripesy, a tall thin guy with a needle gun and a wild look in his eyes. Due to the fact that I only pay attention to the cover date on comics and that that never actually lines up with the release date, his first appearance in 1942 won't hit this blog for some time - he'll likely be Minor Super-Villain 555 or the like.

Anyway, he steals a ray gun and tries to blow up the Panama Canal for some reason.

Professor Merlin:

As with the Needle, Professor Merlin's first appearance doesn't take place until 1942. This is especially embarrassing because he actually dies before his first appearance, like one of those RPGs where you can die during character creation.

Merlin's scheme involves scamming gold out of a rich old prospector by exploiting his well-known fear of freezing to death, then managing to collapse a mine on himself when he uses dynamite to blow open a lock that looks like you could pick it with a small enough finger. Nobody comes out on top here: Prof Merlin dies a dummy despite ostensibly being a Smart Crook and Green Arrow and Speedy don't even play that much of a role in his downfall.

Red Dragon:

Our final Finger and the only one to have already shown up previously here, the Red Dragon is his usual terrible self: he takes advantage of an old myth in order to enslave a Native American tribe and force them to mine radium. Lucky for them that the Shining Knight turns up to actually fulfill the prophecy and  kick the Dragon's rear. It's a real evil comic book crime rendered a fair bit less enjoyable to read because of all the racism.

So: the Five Fingers of the Hand. Top notch themed name for a henchman group hampered somewhat by the ease with which they were all taken out. Any time the Hand shows up he should have a different iteration of the Fingers with him, and that's that. Bring 'em back, at least in name.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 332: THE HAND

(Leading Comics 001, 1941)

The Hand holds the distinction of being both the first foe of the Seven Soldiers of Victory (all 9 or 10 of them) and the person who organized them as a team in the first place, and all as a way to get attention, essentially. As first presented, he is a master criminal so successful that he is unknown to the world at large who has just received word that he is dying with no hope of a reprieve.

Somewhat understandably, the Hand decides to go out with a bang rather than a whimper, by recruiting five other super-villains to act as his "fingers" and carry out his most audacious crimes.

We'll get into the nitty gritty of the Five Fingers of the Hand in the next entry (because I have a system and I need to stick to it, okay?) but the long and the short of it is that the Hand gathers together pre-established supercrooks the Needle, Professor Merlin and the Red Dragon, never-before-seen supercrook the Dummy and lucky-to-be-considered schnook Big Caesar, outfits them with crime plans and sets them up in a classic Justice Society style "everyone split up and have a little adventure" adventure with what will become the Seven Soldiers of Victory.

Though this might be the most reasonable reason for sending a taunting note to the forces of Law I have yet seen (after all, how greater the crime if it is actively opposed?), it remains a bad idea to do so, categorically, as evidenced by the fact that every one of the Five Fingers is summarily captured (or in the case of Professor Merlin, exploded) mid-caper, leading to the traditional final act of the JSA-style story wherein everyone comes together to beat up the mastermind.

Who knows if the Hand could have handled them if he hadn't been informed that his condition was, in fact, treatable just before the fight. Could he have taken on seven super-heroes if he still thought he was going to die? We will never know. Instead, he almost gets them with a lightning cannon but ends up being electrocuted by it, ironically dying just as he learned that he might have a chance to live.

Or did he? No he didn't, it turns out, because years later Len Wein wanted to bring back the Seven Soldiers of Victory and concocted a story wherein they were blasted through time, and who better to be responsible than their very first foe? And since that caper involved the Nebula Man, one of Grant Morrison's favourite creeps, the Hand showed up in Seven Soldiers, too. He seems to have about a 30-year refractory period, so look for him on comic shelves sometime in 2036!

HONOURS - SUB-MARINER

(Human Torch v1 006, 1941) 

Just one issue after attempting to conquer the world (and sinking a US fleet in the process), Namor is commissioned as an honorary admiral in the US Navy (for saving a different US fleet from sinking).

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 331: THE LEGION OF DESPAIR

(Human Torch v1 006, 1941)

A fairly simple one today: am man named Haskell advertises for people with no hope in life, then selects the most desperate of them into a gang. Since they were all prepared to die already, the members of the Legion of Despair are prone to, say, blowing themselves up with grenades in order to see that their compatriots get away with whatever loot they're scampering off with.

Aside from this radical investment in the goals of the group, Haskell's other thematic concept for the Legion is the Dice of Death, which are used to determine who goes on these potential suicide missions by who wins a game of craps (I think? It's not exactly spelled out).

It all comes tumbling down once the Human Torch and Toro get involved, because even with five guys willing to blow themselves up to ensure success there's only so much you can do against a couple of fire men. Haskell turns out to have been cheating in order to avoid risking his life on missions but only after everyone has been captured, offering no real comeuppance other than, presumably, a bad reputation once they're all in prison. Unsatisfying!

MINOR SUPER-HERO 330: RATHIA

(Human Torch v1 005b, 1941)

Bit of an unfair one here: Rathia is a princess of a Baltic kingdom of Atlanteans who persuades the Sub-Mariner to attempt world conquest. She is unquestionably a bad egg but by far the worst crimes of the issue are perpetuated by Namor himself and include: imprisoning and nearly killing Toro, mind controlling the Human Torch, flooding Africa and NYC, sinking the Italian Navy, nearly destroying Moscow and various war crimes. Crucially, Rathia does not exert any influence other than puffing up Namor's ego - no mind control, nothing. Maybe a roll in the hay. Despite this, she is the one who stands trial as "World Enemy No. 2 - second only to Hitler!" while Namor just has to look contrite.

In conclusion, this should probably be part of a Yearbook post about Namor but I am aggressively disinterested in him so Rathia takes the hit once again.  

Seriously, look at this guy. Contemptible.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 329: THE MAD VIOLINIST

(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941)

The Mad Violinist! Not especially mad, aside from being a fascist fanatic. More of a fiddler than a violinist, too - perhaps Nazi Super-Agent HR got mixed up when assigning codenames and swapped his with the Fiddler and vice versa.

Name mixup or no, the Mad Violinist makes quite a splash when he attacks a military parade in NYC and kills potentially hundreds of soldiers and onlookers - it's always a real pain to estimate such things from context, but at least 40 people bought it based on the images provided.

Such crimes could not stand, of course, and the Violinist is swiftly tracked down by Jeff Mace, aka the Patriot, who learns that much like the Armless Tiger Man, the Nazis weaponized him after an accident that left him unstable and dangerous. 

In conclusion, the best part of this story is the fact that the Mad Violinist has to drink BONE SOFTENING CHEMICALS to keep from killing himself and I might just get that on a coffee cup.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 328: THE NAZOMBIES

(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941)

This is kind of a weird one in a few ways, the first being that the foundation of the plot is that a) Namor the Sub-Mariner and the Angel both own Caribbean islands and b) that they are good enough friends for Namor to pay the Angel a visit. During this visit one of Namor's servants bursts in and promptly drops dead in an effort to deliver a note cryptically warning of a zombie takeover.

Namor takes off on his own and indeed! Zombies have taken over his island! Kind of!

I mean, even by 1940s standards of zombie these are clearly either costumed goons or some sort of monstrous humanoid group. They're not explicitly identified as fancy dress Nazis until the third-to-last panel, but come on. Buncha goose-steppers establishing military bases and concentration camps across the Caribbean? That's Nazis.

The Nazombies mostly employ conventional weaponry but seem to have hit up the "underwater" section of the Comic Book Nazi Superweapon department, as not only are they fielding undersea tabks but these extremely cool personal shark submersibles

This is, by the way, your go-to comic if you have ever wanted to see the Golden Age Angel get crucified by a bunch of Nazi zombies. Not to worry though: Namor rescues him and from then on it's strictly Nazi-punching time.

I don't reckon that the Nazombies have enough potential to be BRUNG BACK but it really seems like the shark-sub tech is ripe for revival in the hands of coastal raiders or something. Once such a revolutionary technology is unleashed it can't be put back in the bottle.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 327: DR SMART

(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941)

I think I've mentioned the old three-act super-villain story structure of yore a couple of times, but there are a whole host of old comic book story styles that have fallen by the wayside and Dr Smart here stars in one of them: the book-length heist story. 

Three pages into our tale, Smart and his crew, posing as a funeral procession, rob an armoured car. The remaining 38 or so pages concern the efforts of the Human Torch and Toro to capture the slippery little devil because to his credit Dr Smart is a guy who reads the paper and knows that the Torch is a cop and will be guarding the money he is after.

Dr Smart's entire scheme hinges on anti-Torch technology: asbestos suits; grenades that explode into asbestos bindings; super-cold liquid air bombs and smokescreens; thermite ammunition that won't melt. The capper is a duo of tricked-out hearses equipped with asbestos linings and heatproof glass - a considerable portion of the issue is spent with Toro and the Torch either locked up in the back of one or fruitlessly trying to get Dr Smart and his henchmen out of the front. Smart might have gotten away with it if he hadn't tried to be clever and bury the heroes with the loot - it was one too many things to juggle and he got pinched.

FASCIST GOON CLEARING HOUSE 001

There are various groups of fascist goons in comics and doing an individual entry for each bunch would be a slog, so it's time for another grouping of jerks!

The Yellowshirts here put in a better showing than most and almost manage to take over NYC before they get beaten down by the Patriot. (Human Torch v1 004, 1941)

Do the Brown Hoods sound kind of like how the Mafia was described in the 30s? Yes. Is that going to stop me from including them here? No. (More Fun Comics 036, 1938)

The Yellow Battalion are most notable for their fancy hats, as they end up getting the tar beat out of them in roughly three panels by Red, White and Blue... (All American 005, 1939)

... who also obliterate the slightly-more-organized Black Cross a couple of issues later (All American 008, 1939)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 326: BLACKJACK

(Human Torch v1 004, 1941)

Blackjack is your regular style gang boss who is operating at a scale sufficient to be considered super-villainous: he has an ocean liner and a private island equipped with various anti-Human Torch measures, including a fleet of nitrogen bomb-dropping bombers, all in service to one of my personal favourite supercrime setups: the escape ring (which of course involves paying a portion of your take to a third party in order to be spirited away from the reach of the authorities).

Sadly for Blackjack the Human Torch has been a cop for a while now and he is gunned (well, fire-handed) dpwn while trying to escape.

HONOURS - SUB-MARINER

(Human Torch v1 003, 1940)

After helping foil a Nazi faux-Japanese* invasion of the US and only committing a few hundred war crimes, Namor is personally thanked by FDR and given a big parade.

*confusion arose from the fact that Namor had already tangled with a group of Nazis in NYC and a Nazi-analog invasion fleet in the Atlantic in the same issue, but the invasion fleet that he's receiving kudos for above was definitely in the Pacific.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 325: DOCTOR SENDACH

(Human Torch v1 002, 1940)

As our story opens, what is presumably New York City is under siege by a mysterious killer who drains their victims of their blood. Dr Jack "the Fiery Mask" Castle decides to get involved. He sets a trap by announcing to the paper that he has a lot of blood on hand and then waits for the fiend to show up - too bad for him it's not just one guy, as twenty blood-hungry maniacs show up and beat the tar out of him.

But! The Fiery Mask had cleverly doped the blood with florescent chemicals visible to his weird glowing eyes and he manages to track it to the castle district of New York State, where he finds them reporting back to famous missing stomach specialist Dr Sendach. None of this is tremendously exciting and Sendach probably would have ended up in the Mad Scientist Roundup but...

He's super cuckoo! Sendach, it turns out, has developed an artificial stomach and installed it in a series of unfortunates without considering what the side effects of such a procedure might be. Turns out: it's bad! They all lost the ability to produce blood and became science vampires! Now a reasonable man would take this as a sign that it might be time to revisit the drawing board, but not old "I shall prove my theories if I have to drain the world of its blood" Sendach, who determines that the Fiery Mask shall be his next subject. Somewhat predictably, the subsequent struggle ends with Sendach being devoured by his own minions.

I don't think that I would advocate for Dr Sendach to be BRUNG BACK, but the Sendach Artificial Stomach would be a fun thing for an aspiring villain to dig up at the US Patent Office as a way to control their minions via regular necessary transfusions.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 324: HITLER

(Daring Mystery Comics 008, 1941)

Hitler is going to show up more than a few times as you go through the history of comics, even if you set aside all the times he or a pastiche of him show up as the antagonist of a WWII comic you have reams of They Saved Hitler's Brain or I Recruited the Worst Men of History stories. This here is possibly the first of those and there's not a lot to it.

So: Hitler, Goering, Goebbels and a scientist named von Schalz, seeing the writing on the wall circa 1942, escaped by cryogenically freezing themselves until 3050 AD. Hitler being Hitler, he decides to make another attempt at world conquest. The story ends with von Schalz having hypnotized 3050's protector Captain Daring into leading their armies - presumably the comeuppance would have taken place in the next ish, but this was hampered somewhat by there being none. Hitler's destruction by Captain Daring has existed in potentia for 82 years and counting. Our only consolation must be that this Hitler's defeat in 1942 means that some of the excesses of the Holocaust must have been avoided. 

(and of course Hitler is only a minor super-villain in the context of being in the future fighting space men)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 323: GORE

(Daring Mystery Comics 008, 1941)

Like he says in his dying moments above, Gore is a weird-looking guy who lashes out at society via a series of radio-themed deathtraps, always preceded by a broadcast of the letter D in Morse Code. As a villain he's all right - he gives the Thunderer a run for his money at least. My major gripe with him is that there was ample opportunity for him to be called the D Killer or the Radio Killer or just D but no, he has to go by his stupid actual name. Bah.

This radio skeleton is partial compensation, at least.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 322: THE BARRACUDA

(Daring Mystery Comics 008, 1941)

A certain number of uboat captains are going to be written villainously enough to meet all of my criteria and Captain Erich von Wolff, AKA the Barracuda, is one such.

Like seriously a real stinker of the highest order. It's a good thing that the Fin is on the case to beat the tar out of him and deliver him to the British. I was going to say that hopefully he was tried and executed after the war but some cursory research suggests that u-boat commanders who weren't killed in battle largely weren't. I'm sure he had a long career as an investment banker or something.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 038: THE THUNDERER

(Daring Mystery Comics 007, 1941)

Lot to like about the Thunderer: great name, trend-based origin (ham radio enthusiast who finds crime on the airwaves/ rigs up a microphone to enhance his presence with a booming voice), nice-looking costume that was ultimately his downfall (because Marvel Comics 1000 established that virtually every Marvel character who wore a full-face black mask were wearing the same mask, and some of them retroactively had to have died for the chain of mask-wearers to continue). Lot to like.

Perhaps my favourite thing about him, however, is the fact that he turns down his amplifier in the 4th panel above, which heavily implies that he has been talking to himself at top volume while bounding over the rooftops. Just great stuff.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 321: THE BLACK ACE

(Daring Mystery Comics 006, 1940)

The costumed fighter pilot might just be one of the most basic levels of super-villain. Here we have the Black Ace, Nazi and foe of the Flying Flame. He has a tower with an anti-aircraft vibrational cannon in it and a plane with a skull and crossbones on it. He gets shot down at the end of the story. FIN

NOTES: AUGUST 2023

Pets:

Jerry "the Thunderer" Carstairs has a pet dog named Mike. (Daring Mystery Comics 007, 1941)

Cops Attempting to Murder Fleeing Suspects:

A really concerted attempt to murder the Challenger by the cops in this issue. (Daring Mystery Comics 007, 1941)

Legitimately surprised to see a reference to drinking a Zombie cocktail in 1941 but it seems that it dates from 1934 (Human Torch v1 005b, 1941)