(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939)
I've started reading Mystery Men Comics, as seen at the top of the Sphinx entry, and the thing about Mystery Men Comics is that although it features the Blue Beetle, who by a circuitous chain of publication rights changing hands is now a DC Comics character, it also has a lot of other characters that aren't currently owned by a media conglomerate! And although I mostly write about DC and Marvel characters because I have a fixation on continuity and its implications, I love all oddball comics characters! So I'm taking advantage of the holiday season to revisit some minor super-villains who got overlooked back when this blog was just a baby Twitter thread.
The Brain of the Robot is a so-so villain - he takes control of a robot exhibition at the New York World's Fair and causes a moderate amount of havoc before being brought to justice - made interesting by two things: 1. he is given absolutely no motive and 2. he is the only super-villain faced by early comics hero the Fantom of the Fair (the only one in my notes, at least).
The Fantom of the Fair, now there's an interesting guy! Some facts:
- Almost exclusively operates out of and protects the New York World's Fair
- His haircut is fully discernible through his mask
- In one adventure it is heavily implied that he is mentioned in an ancient Icelandic texts
- In another, an escaped ancient snow beasts recalls battling him on the tundra a thousand years earlier
They cram a lot of weird lore into the Fantom's handful of adventures, which makes it all the harder to take how dirty he got done by DC Comics when Roy Thomas brought him back as "the Phantom of the Fair", a villain whose exploits might just have been inspired by the Brain of the Robot. He inspires a Crimson Avenger/ Sandman teamup while using a World's Fair robot exhibit to, among other things, attempt to assassinate the King and Queen of England before escaping. He was then brought back and done even dirtier in Sandman Mystery Theatre, as a self-loathing serial murderer of gay men.Sad sad stuff.
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