Monday, March 4, 2024

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 467: DRAGO

(Amazing-Man Comics 011, 1940)

On the surface Drago seems to merely be a guy who looks like an evil cat and shoots his henchmen rather than paying them (not only a nightmare for HR but a bad financial decision as you'll be spending more in headhunting and training new goons than you will save in salaries), and that's just what he is. There are no hidden depths. He kidnaps world-class scientists and sells them to the Axis-equivalent belligerent governments of the far-off year of 1971.

But though one-dimensional villain he may be, Drago has a lot of accessories. For instance, his henchmen are either drawn from or organized into a secret society named the Devils Cult, seemingly to promote fanatical loyalty (and this is perhaps why he can get away with bumping them off willy-nilly). Naming a group of henchmen? Why, that's one of the keys to my heart, Drago.

Other accessories include:

Robot guards with charmingly doofy faces!

A deathtrap that was demonstrably not custom-made to kill the Iron Skull because it commits the cardinal sin of allowing him to smash the spiked parts with his head before they kill him.

And a dead man's switch time bomb just in case one of his treacherous over- or underlings manages to bump him off (which is in fact what happens - his employers do unto him as he does to his own henchmen). 

Drago: unmourned, unloved, well accessorized.

No comments:

Post a Comment

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 665: THE WIND GOD

(Jungle Comics 007, 1940) Not quite a normal super-hero/ super-villain interaction, this. Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle intervenes to stop the ...