(Mystery Men Comics 020, 1941)
He dressed his men like gorillas for no apparent reason. That, my friends, is the simple life hack that will take your regular villainy (such as stealing a device which reportedly forces criminals to confess) to a super level.
(Mystery Men Comics 019, 1941)
I'm not sure what the Sky-Ruler's deal is.
Scratch that - I know what his deal is. He rules the sky. He flies around in a big bomber plane and uses it to drop cars containing his enemies on the streets of New York City (he also tries to throw off the scent of the police by calling these the "Skyscraper Murders" in his notes but I have to imagine that this would only work as long as nobody noticed the enormous plane circling the city every time one happened).
I also know what the Sky-Ruler is doing: he's extorting inventors with the threat of being fatally deplaned in order to get ahold of their various formulae. But why does he want them? He claims that "now the city will be at my mercy," which could mean looting, destruction, ransom or conquest in equal measure. Serves him right that the Blue Beetle captures him by causing his lowly, ground-based car to crash.
Two more things about the Sky-Ruler: his henchmen are called the Sky-Raiders and I always appreciate a nominative flourish even when applied to no-name thugs, and also I appreciate that his character design seemingly involved giving him as many distinctive facial features as possible.
But what was his deal?
(Tip-Top Comics 054-056, 1940)
The only real weak point in the Brandons arsenal of abilities is in their faculty for naming: "Triple Terror" and "Chemix" are okay but "Lectra"? "Menta"? Even the family estate is called "Brandwell" which is frankly mid-tier.
(Star Ranger 001, 1937)
The Ghost Riders are just another gang of bank robbers but I just can't resist a good outfit, and a trio of hooded cowboys with tommy guns is a great visual if I ever saw one.
(Shadow Comics v1 004, 1940)
The Head is also Zovex, a bulletproof cube-man who is supposedly just a servant of the Head but is mostly just a pile of armour plating.
The way the Head operates both as Zovex and as the head-in-a-box oracle is that he is in actuality just a tiny little guy who probably didn't pose enough of a threat for the Shadow to have to gun him down like he does, even if he was wearing tiny little curly shoes.
This is all pretty standard fare as far as the comic book fake medium racket goes, but I appreciate a villain in a traditionally hands-off role getting out there in a suit of armour and mixing it up, you know?
(Shadow Comics v1 003, 1940)
-a dissolving gas called the Smoke of Eternity
-a diving bell repurposed as a deathtrap
-multiple pirate ships
-Thunder Island, a place with a prehistoric remnant ecosystem complete with dinosaurs
-Doc Savage
Here is how the story made me feel:
-bored
It's a real shame because love most of those things! I love Kar's look! I feel like I should love Doc Savage but I don't and it might be for the same reason I didn't like this: it was a slog to read just like any time I try reading Doc Savage. It's a real shame!
(Popular Comics 046, 1939)
The Phantom of the Sky (AKA the Phantom Sky Raider AKA the Black Phantom) is a mysterious pilot who has been flying around the American West, viciously attacking and shooting down civilian planes and painting a skull-and-crossbones calling card on them. He turns out to be a nameless French WWI flying ace, shot down and left for dead but actually just trapped in a delusion of an unending war in which he is essentially conducting guerrilla air combat. He proves elusive but eventually the Masked Pilot and his pal Tom shoot him down. He does manage to survive the crash, so hopefully he got some help for his nightmare existence.
Here's where I thought I might say something about the Masked Pilot but... he's just a pilot hero. He flies around with Tom and solves problems with his plane. You might think that he wears a face-concealing mask because he's horribly deformed but no, he wears a regular domino in his civilian getup so it's just an affectation. I suppose a pilot with a gimmick is technically better than one without, but only just.
(Popular Comics 046, 1939)
(Keen Detective Funnies 011, 1939)
The Conqueror is the major recurring foe of Dean Denton, Scientific Adventurer, about whom we will briefly aside: Dean Denton was created by Harry Campbell, who was also responsible for such characters as Ace of Space, Bruce Blackburn and the wretched Scarlet Seal, but also Wizard Wells and John Law, Scientiective, who form a kind of thematic triad of scientific detectives with Dean Denton.
Dean Denton is definitely the most entertaining of the three to read (with the unfortunate caveat that his are the adventures that are most riddled with racial stereotypes. The Golden Age, folks!) due partially to his former occupation as a well-known ventriloquist but mostly to his archfoe the Conqueror, who beats John Law's Avenger and Wizard Wells' collection of no-name goons hands down.
The Conqueror is actually rich guy Bolton Gates and over the course of a couple of dozen appearances he has my favourite villainous character arc: the villain of means with vast resources is foiled several times by Our Hero and ends up scrabbling around doing comparatively petty crimes for chump change.
In his first few appearances the Conqueror has a lavish estate under which is a technologically advanced lair filled with brainwashed minions. After Dean Denton blows all that up it seems like the Conqueror is forever seeking to recreate it with schemes that place him in positions of high status: not only does he pose as divine figures to dupe tribal groups in both Central America and Africa but he founds somewhere between two to three cults:
Somewhat surprisingly, the White Crusaders, over which the Conqueror presided as the Master Crusader/ the White Master, was not a racially problematic group.
The third example is somewhere between a cult and his old habit of minion recruitment through mind control: he takes advantage of the conflict between the countries of Namreg and Feltia (and in case "Namreg" was too subtle for you they clash near the "Tonigam Line") to capture and brainwash both Namreg and Feltian forces.
Even though the Conqueror gets away as per usual at the end of this scheme, it's his last appearance in comics (that I know of, natch). One can imagine his conflict with Dean Denton continuing indefinitely and why not. It's more fun than most things that might logically happen to a lone civilian trapped in the midst of two armies that he recently made enemies of. after all.
(Mystery Men Comics 016, 1940)
As our story opens, huge diamonds are raining down on Earth. Upon contact with a human, they expand to engulf and imprison them.
Earth authorities sensibly contact space hero Rex Dexter of Mars who has once again been sidetracked in his seemingly straightforward quest to travel from Earth to his home planet. In a nice change of pace from most Rex Dexter adventures, Rex and his pal Cynde have not stopped due to some mortal peril but for a romantic interlude on the hot and steamy planet Eros.
Setting aside my usual question of just where Eros is that it can be stopped off at between Earth and Mars, I want to get to the real point of this entry: digging into some speculative xenobiology! The native Erosite (nice demonym!) here only gets one panel to shine, but what an impression they make! How does a creature evolve to resemble a twee little Cupid-style bow and arrow? Could they be analogous to Earth insect life, with the "bow" as two whirring wings? Or are they a snakelike species equipped with tiny flying machines? Is the unnatural positioning of the bow relative to the plane of the ground indicative of a partially unseen structure like an air jellyfish, or that the bow is an extrusion into three dimensional space by a higher-dimensional creature? I love it! More outlandish aliens in fiction, please!
Moving on. Here we meet Emro, Lord of Diamonds. Emro is pretty standard as far as mineral-based alien designs go: a faceted crystalline humanoid, though with a really terrific skull face. I do however appreciate the mention of his home planet of Gemro having left the Solar System. As Emro's plan is to annex the Earth so that the Gemrovians (another nice demonym!) can have sun access again it seems as though the planet's departure was fairly recent and not some prehistoric event, this adds weight to the theory that all of the extra planets that Rex and Cynde are visiting are in fact asteroids and not additional planetary bodies that have joined the solar system in the 60-400 years between 1940 and Rex Dexter's time.
But enough forensic future astronomy - this post is about speculative xenobiology! And here we have a real development: though Emro is a crystalline humanoid with a cool skull face, his fellow Gemrovians are revealed to be shaped vaguely like bacteriophages, all big heads tottering around on a couple of spindly legs. This suggests a couple of possibilities: Gemrovians could operate in a eusocial caste system, with the humanoid form being reserved for breeding castes. Or they could have a more mutable form than organic life - Emro might have chosen to be humanoid as part of his scheme of conquest or for some personal reason.
The key to defeating the Gemrovians lies in the fact that Earth paralysis weapons are deadly to them. When tested, this effect applies to the diamonds used in the initial attack on Earth as well, indicating that those were, in fact, Gemrovians. This suggests another possibility: that the Gemrovians have a complex life cycle like that of an insect or amphibian, with several morphologically different stages. Perhaps the person-absorbing diamonds are analagous to eggs or pupae and the absorption behaviour is a passive predation tactic!
Anyway. Emro, Lord of Diamonds, I salute you.
(Mystery Men Comics 007, 1940)
I can't help but love this guy: yes he's a cheap extortionist who gives himself a scary name to enhance his death threats but he goes to the trouble of dressing up in a devil outfit even while sneaking around so that nobody can see him. And since he's the antagonist of a Wing Turner story and Wing Turner is a pilot-detective, the Devil is flying around in a fighter plane dressed in little horns and red briefs (and appears to be barefoot, which must be uncomfortable if flying a plane involves working any pedals). There's just something about a costumed pilot that is wildly endearing.
The Devil of course turns out to be Baldy Barry, a regular extortionist who jumps into a lava pit rather than be caught. Over the top for an extortion charge I reckon, but at least he was on brand to the end.
(Mystery Men Comics 004, 1939)
The real appeal of Lord Marvel is his design sense: just look at this amazing robot!
And this one! This robot is actually originally from Mars, which leads to Lord Marvel's downfall due to Rex Dexter being able to communicate with it in Martian and turn it against him.
Even the controls of his doomsday devices have little skulls on them. Good job, Lord Marvel. You weird creep.
(Mystery Men Comics 001, 1939)
I have made an error! Two errors! The first was in skipping the Blue Beetle's very first foe, and it was because of the second, that I had the antagonist in this story marked down as the White Face Gang rather than the White Face, plus his gang. If it was the former, the best their unnamed leader would get was a place in the Generic Costumed Villain Round-Up, but no, he has a special name!
Mind you, he's still a very unremarkable guy: a banker's personal secretary gone bad, ho hum. Much more interesting is the Blue Beetle's original suit-and-tie-vigilante costume and modus opperandi, down to a Green Hornet-like facade of criminality, the better to lure crooks into his confidence. It was gone by his next appearance, but he had it and that's all that matters.
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 022, 1940)
I want to be clear: there is very little to talk about re: the Tusk. I just find his weird face fascinating. Eponymous tusk plus weak chin plus huge eyes plus bonus enormous combover makes this guy a visual feast! Plus he's a Masked Marvel foe and I love that guy.
Just look at the faces he ends up pulling to highlight the tusk! Real great stuff.
Oh, and as for the villainy: the Tusk has a super accurate bomb sight that allows him to blow up banks from super high altitude. I guess these mystery explosions cause enough confusion that his men can swoop in and loot unchallenged. The Masked Marvel also ends up being blamed for his crimes but the Tusk doesn't have anything to do with that.
I don't know the context in which the Tusk could be BRUNG BACK but I wholeheartedly support and advocate for it. He would be a perfect addition to any rogues gallery that regularly gets together to kvetch about their foe. Just glaring in the back, tusk gleaming...
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 021, 1940)
A simple but effective origin story: The captain of a German Mergan submarine becomes obsessed with death and destruction and goes rogue, preying on Axis and Allied shipping alike and replacing the flag of Nazi Germany Zani Mergany* with the skull and crossbones. Suddenly, the threat of war is a threat to all seagoing vessels!
The Red Raider (technically the name of the submarine but I stand firm in my conviction that the name of a super-vehicle can logically be applied to its owner if they have no codename of their own) has a relatively short reign of terror before he is socked in the jaw by the Masked Marvel and hot damn is "So, you think you can machine gun the Masked Marvel?" a cool toughguy line to say just before taking down the villain and his whole operation.
*okay I made up Zani but the rest is real
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 019-020, 1940)
It's a shame that for all their skill at recruiting, the three leaders of the One Thousand and One were unable to secure the services of a decent tailor. The sheet ghost look is surely in the F tier of villain costumes (unless your theme is sheet ghost, of course) but a little love and it could be made to work a lot better than it is here.
The One Thousand and One are of course taken down, but not entirely by the hero of the piece, G-Man TNT Todd. No, he is bailed out of a real jam at the last second by an eerie figure called Mr Death. There's a promise that Mr Death will return in Keen Detective Funnies 021 but that story is instead devoted to TNT Todd getting explosion-based superpowers and the opportunity never arises - Mr Death will forever remain a mystery.
(an informed guess based on my knowledge of the genre: Mr Death would either turn out to be a criminal rival of the One Thousand and One or a hypercompetent female vigilante. If a mysterious figure bails out the hero at the last second it's almost always one of the two)
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 011, 1939)
The Fiend is a mad scientist/ musician who has developed a supercharged organ capable of destroying structures such as the Brooklyn Bridge. And he does so, ostensibly as a showcase of his power in aid of his conquest of the world but possibly just as a whim - he's your classic erratic comic book madman. G-Man Dan Dennis tracks him down with relative ease and the threat of the Fiend is ended forever.
OR IS IT? No, it isn't, because the next issue features something that is missing from a lot of Golden and Silver Age comic books: geopolitical ramifications. Specifically, all the nations of the world prick up their ears at the potential acquisition of a powerful new weapon of mass destruction and start mobilizing spies and secret agents to get after the Fiend's technology. Including the US, whose attempt to negotiate with the Fiend for his schematics is foiled when some crooks make off with him.
What everyone forgot, of course, is that the Fiend is a raving megalomaniac who turns on all of them at the first possible moment. Dan Dennis has to catch him all over again! Sadly for me, this is the end of the tale - I know that I would love to discover a long serial comic about the FBI managing negotiations with an erratic organist over his WMD but it seems like the good people at Centar Publications weren't writing comics with me in mind.
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 008, 1939)
There's no bones about it: the Hawk looks like a guy who has a pretty extensive model train setup down in the basement. And he may just! But he's also a master thief who stashes his loot inside an active Mexican volcano. But the volcano has a tram running up the side, so perhaps his inner train enthusiast is expressing itself in different ways.
As always: you live by the volcano lair; you die by the volcano lair.
Much more interesting than the Hawk is his foe, the Masked Marvel, a mysterious man with generic mental powers (sense the presence of evil, eg) and enhanced physical traits (walk unshielded into an active volcano; hold a steel cable at sufficient tension that an airplane can land, etc), as well as a surprisingly useful ability to project a red shadow. There's just something about this grim dude with a receding hairline, unremarkable costume and three shlubby assistants that really speaks to me. Lucky for me he's one of Centaur's longer-running features, hey?
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 002, 1939)
The most important thing about the Master is his shirt. It's like, a sweatshirt with attached cowl? Obviously other villains have been doing similar things with robes for years at this point but I feel like this was something special even if my knowledge of the future of super-villain costume design tells me that it is an evolutionary dead end.
Anyway, he dies in an explosion but his contributions to villainous fashion will live on.
(Jumbo Comics 020, 1940)
What a cool-looking villain! Suit and cape combo? Blood-red eyes? Great stuff. He's got a cool mask and a wavy dagger and he goes on an enormous spree killing in NYC while Our Hero Inspector Dayton tries to figure out just how he's going to stop the Red-Eyed Killer.
But they spend too much time in the setup! Dayton stumbles into a doctor's office on the last page and the resolution happens in an instant - the Red-Eyed Killer is Dayton's work pal, police scientist Doc Black and he gives up... pretty reasonably, I guess. Being pinned to a door by a half dozen of your own daggers will inspire compliance.
So, the Red-Eyed Killer. Good but not great; a lesson in leaving enough room for the end of your story to have some stakes in it. Also: tell us how he get those red eyes!
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