Saturday, December 28, 2024

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 692: THE MASTER

(Pep Comics 008, 1940) 


It's an old story, even this early in the history of comics: someone has developed a method for mass murdering people and is attempting to use it to extort money from a city, or else. In this case that person calls himself the Master and that method is some sort of electrical wave.

The Comet of course is not cool with this kind of blatant super-villainy, particularly as he is still trying to rebuild his reputation after murdering dozens of people while hypnotized that one time. Lucky for him, the Master's electric wave is vulnerable to the Comet's disintegration ray for some reason - maybe it's a Rock Paper Scissors situation and there's a third form of energy that counters the Comet but can be defeated by the Master.

Not content to admit defeat, the Master tries another classic gambit: he captures newswoman Thelma Gordon after correctly surmising that her repeated Comet-related front page scoops might indicate that she has some sort of connection to the man himself. And it works! The Comet is lured to a selected location and trapped in a glass net (because glass is the only material left unharmed by the Comet's deadly eye beam and the Comet has had zero success in keeping that information under wraps). Unfortunately for the Master, catching someone in a glass net is not quite the checkmate move he assumed it was and he ends up on the wrong end of a death ray blast.

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