Tuesday, January 16, 2024

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 425: THE ONE THOUSAND AND ONE

(Keen Detective Funnies v2 019-020, 1940)


Love a number name, particularly one so precise as the One Thousand and One. It's tied to the number of criminals in their employ, but does it go up and down as they gain or lose members? Is the One a very harried HR guy frantically filling positions as they are vacated? Is it just a nice-sounding number and the actual staffing is a bit more loose? These are the important questions.

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)

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