(Mystic Comics v1 001, 1940)
The Green Terror gets off on the right foot with me, let me tell you. Sure he's a mysterious figure who sends goons out to kidnap healthy young New Yorkers for unknown but surely sinister purposes, but those goons are dressed in green costumes and drive around in a green car with a green smokescreen and if there's one thing I love, my friend, it's a villain who sticks to a theme.
The Green Terror is opposed by super-sleuth trio the Three Xs and well... I groused a while back about Marvel Comics fans constantly overwriting their own history and the Three Xs might just be the best recent example of that. Up until 2019 this was their only appearance and their entry on any given fan website probably read like that final panel: 1X is the leader, 2X the brains and 3X the muscle. Then Marvel Comics #1000 came out and did a really great, fun job of bringing together disparate and unconnected bits of Marvel Universe lore - the Three Xs were also the Scientists' Guild from the Human Torch's origin were also the Enclave who created Adam Warlock etc, and they were engaged in a generations-long scheme involving the Eternity Mask which was, it turns out, worn by everyone from the Operative to the Thunderer to the Masked Raider.
And like I said: this is all great! It's a fun way for a forgotten bit of comics lore to come back into focus! I just wish that there wasn't such a tendency for more recent information to overwrite what came before.
Grumbling aside, the Three Xs get jumped by a bunch of the Green Terror's goons, then track them to an ocean liner and get jumped again, leading to them being captured. On purpose, or so they claim.
(the Green Terror's lieutenant really going for it here "Ah! More guests for the blood feast!" indeed)
The blood feast in question involves draining the blood out of the kidnap victims in order to... inject? feed? it to this tall green hunk of jerky. Honestly, most information about the Green Terror is going to be speculative due to the fact that he's a classic blowhard of a villain who yammers on and on about how great he is. If you take him at his word he's an immortal superman who absorbs strength from the blood of his victims. On the face of the evidence, he's a green guy with a blood fetish. The truth lies somewhere in between.
Obviously any villain who can convincingly deliver the line "the Green Terror will always be the strongest man in the Universe!" about half a page before being punched out and apprehended is my kind of bad guy and should be BRUNG BACK post haste. Is he exactly the same or is he a withered green husk after 80-odd years in prison? Just how much blood will he steal and how much trash will he talk while doing so? I want to see it!
OR! Since the Three Xs eventually became the Enclave etc of Adam Warlock fame perhaps they acquired the Green Terror from the authorities as part of their research into superhumanity. He's floating in a tube in an abandoned lab right now after having his weird hair harvested to make cocoons or something and all he needs is for the right dummy to break in to steal the copper wiring to set him free!
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