Thursday, October 17, 2024

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 643: THE MASTER

(Fight Comics 003, 1940)

Kinks Mason is back on the case! And just what sub-oceanic mystery is he attempting to solve by just wandering around underwater? Why, it's Just Where is All the Salt Going? And somewhat astonishingly, he figures it out almost immediately: it's going into this building.


The building turns out to belong to a race of ocean-dwelling humanoids referred to only as the Amphibians, though I can't imagine that that's what they call themselves. I kind of appreciate how generic their design is, like a greatest hits of underwater humanoid features with the single eye added on for flair.

The Amphibians are ruled by the Master, who similarly is a fairly generic comic book undersea ruler villain: he and his people have developed some cool offensive technology and are now out to conquer the surface world. The most intriguing thing about this whole setup is just what all the salt is for - I kept hoping that everything would be powered by a big glowing salt crystal but no such luck. 

(Also the Amphibians refer to their tech as a "poison ray" but later it seems to be a generic ray gun, and while I of course appreciate an evocative name I would much prefer to see a ray gun - preferably salt-powered -  poison a guy)


Kinks Mason is of course not going to stand for this sort of nonsense and so for the second time in as many issues he possibly wipes out an intelligent underwater species, this time using stray torpedoes from all of the partially-destroyed submarines littering the seafloor around the Amphibians' base. Do adventure heroes ever have crises of conscience about this kind of thing?

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 643: THE MASTER

(Fight Comics 003, 1940) Kinks Mason is back on the case! And just what sub-oceanic mystery is he attempting to solve by just wandering arou...