MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 466: THE MAD-MAN

(Amazing-Man Comics 010, 1940)

I am heartbroken. 

Here's a bit of trivia: most of the 465 entries before this were written about characters in comics I had already read and if there was something in them that made me feel particularly strong emotions then I had had time to process it and mull it over. Going forward, however, we're looking at a lot of comics that are brand new to me.

In that spirit, I must admit: the first few pages of this Shark adventure had me. I was all in. A non-human villain? An octopus, no less? A well-drawn octopus?! Move over Robin because Cephalopoda the Murder Octopus was all set to be my sensational character find of 1940.

I should have known that it was too good to be true when Cephalopoda and the Shark squared up on page 2. Rather than engage in Exciting Combat Between Demigod and Octopode, Cephalopoda flees into a crevice and when the Shark follows he is swept deep into the bowels of the Earth. And that's it! That's a wrap on Cephalopoda! Sadness reigns!

The Shark wakes up in a cavern deep under the Earth and is subsequently gathered up by a weird sub-Earth goon (trivia: those weird Bart Simpson head lumps this guy has instead of hair are very unsettling to me) and taken to a cool walking building.

There he meets the Mad-Man (unofficial name), who I would normally think was pretty neat: a psychic megalomaniac who came to the centre of the Earth (so-called) to capture the lumpy-headed folk who live there and use them to conquer the world, plus the same high pressure environment that makes the lumpy-heads so strong has also crunched down the Mad-Man into a wee little fella.

As I said, a guy like this is good, to me. A fun antagonist to have in your super-story! Sadly I cannot fully enjoy his villainy as he reveals that my beloved Cephalapoda was in fact being remotely controlled as a lure for the super-durable Shark. All of my dreams of an octopus super-villain have been dashed to pieces. I'm sure I'll encounter one some day, but for now it's just dreary old humans and humanoid aliens and extradimensional humanoids and humanoid robots. Plus a few more kinds of humanoids.

The Mad-Man's plan is to incapacitate the Shark, then implant the knowledge of how to perform a brain transplant into his lumpy-headed thrall. This all goes roughly to plan until the lumpy-head actually removes the Mad-Man's brain, at which point his mental domination ends, the thrall runs off and the Shark is free to go. The Mad-Man's brain moulders on a table under the Earth forevermore.