MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 037

More cream rises from the milky depths of the Golden Age!

Red Roberts, the Electro Man:

It's unclear what Red Roberts' actual job is, but he is a guy who Knows Too Much about the corruption in the unnamed city he lives in and so he is framed for murder and fast-tracked to the electric chair.

Luckily for Roberts, this is a comic book universe and being an innocent person sentenced to be executed via the electric chair means that you get sick-ass electricity powers instead of dying like everyone else. Red Roberts quickly parleys these powers into revenge on the city's crooked mayor and his cronies and then cleans up crime around town for a couple of issues more for good measure. He doesn't bother with a secret identity because at least half a dozen people were there to witness his origin, which must feel quite freeing. (Rocket Comics 001, 1940)

the Phantom Ranger:

There's not much to distinguish the Phantom Ranger from his contemporaries in the ranks of Mysterious Cowboys Who Stick Around Just Long Enough to Help Out, but here goes: his horse is named Demon and he likes to ride around with his sleeves rolled up, which gives him a business casual look that I appreciate. (Rocket Comics 001, 1940)

the Defender:

Is the Defender (Robert Larson, who was scarred facially by criminals as a child and who now fights crime using a malleable rubberoid mask and two dedicated assistants) a take on pulp and comic character the Avenger (Richard Benson, whose face was rendered inhuman by the shock of losing his wife and child to criminals and who now fights crime using his own malleable face and 4-5 dedicated assistants)? I certainly think he is, but I don't know if you could conclusively prove it. (Rocket Comics 002, 1940)

Samson UPDATE:

Samson being descended from the long-haired Biblical figure of the same name is not a new origin for the character, but once he had his own series it was time to explicitly lay it out in the form of his mother telling him in plain English that he is. Frankly, I'd much rather learn how he managed to get away with  having shoulder-length hair as a teenager in the early 1930s, but it's just left as an exercise for the reader to figure out.

No such luck for David, however. He remains an orphaned Boy Scout who Samson just found and adopted one day. David is not his actual name and we do not know his actual name. There is some early effort to play up his Boy Scout knowledge as valuable to the crimefighting enterprise but that soon falls by the wayside. (Samson 001, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 716: DEVALO

(Rocket Comics 002, 1940)

"Rocket Riley, Prince of the Planets" was the namesake strip of Rocket Comics, about lab assistant and pilot Rocket Riley, his boss and amazing hair-haver Professor Sterling and Sterling's daughter/ Riley's fiance Griselda. While preparing for an official unveiling of Professor Sterling's new interplanetary rocket ship, the trio are accosted by spy Kurt von Stengle and his hireling and the whole bunch of them end up accidentally blasting off in the out-of control rocket.

After a brief stop on an unnamed asteroid where von Stengle's hireling is eaten by Octopus Men, Rocket and crew end up crash landing on Saturn, where things go even more pear-shaped as they are captured by the planet's dictatorial ruler, Devalo.

Devalo, also known as Divalo, has a real Satanic look going on and so I spent some time looking for a classical link between Saturn, Satan, the quality of being saturnine, etc., only to find very little. I'm sure that it's something I've encountered before if only due to a general linking of the more evil-flavoured bits of Greek and Roman mythology and Christian underworld imagery, but there doesn't seem to be an official-enough link to show up in places like Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, or indeed, Wikipedia.

Nevertheless, Devalo is both Saturnian and Satanic and I would bet a small sum of money that he won't be the last character we meet who fits both of those descriptions.

The Saturnian Saturnite society ruled by Devalo is caste-based, with the military at the top, supported by the enslaved scientist caste. All manual labour is done by the Zeroes, whose bodies have been enhanced and intelligences stunted for maximum efficiency.

Since von Stengle is the kind of villain who would, for instance, try to commandeer a spacecraft that is currently careening through space, he seizes the opportunity afforded him when everyone is rounded up by Devalo's men to suggest that they might team up to invade the Earth. Stupidly opportunistic in his evil, that's von Stengle for you.

Our heroes manage to escape Devalo's palace along with Saturnite scientist Xenox and his daughter Ladana, but after an encounter with some Sharkmen the group is scattered and only Rocket and Griselda manage to make it back to Professor Sterling's ship. And that's it! Rocket Comics ended with issue 3 and Devalo gets to remain not just uncaptured but firmly in charge. All we can do is rest assured that he would have been deposed in one to ten issues if the series had continued.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 715: THE STEEL SHARK

(Rocket Comics 001, 1940)

The Steel Shark has a couple of distinctive notes right off the bat. Firstly, he is part of the elite society of villains who star in their own series and secondly that series is set in the far future world of the year 1960 CE, for no particular reason as far as I can tell. Indeed, I suspect that the people working on the strip did not themselves remember that is was set in the future as early as the second instalment but without some explicit indication of such I'm going to assume that all Steel Shark stories are set in the Swinging Sixties.

The Steel Shark himself is a satisfyingly weird looking weirdo, right down to his weird green skin. After engaging in some submarine piracy using his vessel's high-powered heat ray, he sets upon the idea of abducting the daughter of the governor of Monango Island, and does so handily after using unspecified technology to put the entire island into a deep sleep.

(it's not quite a calling card but I must take a second to point out this whimsical little detail: after the Steel Shark attempts to bash in the sleeping head of Lieutenant Dick Jones, his future nemesis, he leaves behind a... bruise? scab? in the shape of a submarine. Does the Steel Shark have a cool raised carving of a submarine on the butt of his revolver or has Fate stepped in to mark the pursuer with the sign of the pursued?)

In a sad turn, the second and third instalments of the Steel Shark's adventures are illustrated by a different hand, and though he continues to be an unstable madman he no longer looks like someone 2/3 of the way through a zombie metamorphosis. By his third outing even most of the high-tech accoutrements have fallen by the wayside and Lt Jones is merely having to contend with ordinary run-of-the-mill submarine piracy. Still: good name, good MO (submarine pirates is one of the best kinds of pirates) and of course it's always fun when a villain's series ends before they themselves are actually dealt with. Somewhere out there in th 1960s the Steel Shark even now.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 714: SKLAR

(Prize Comics 006, 1940)

It's a regular day in Mongol-dominated New-New York City of the year 1982 CE: the people are oppressed in various ways and Power Nelson is around to help them solve some but not all of their problems. Suddenly! A space capsule lands and disgorges a trio of rampaging robots! This is a perfect task for Power Nelson to handle as it it a short-term solution to an immediate problem but very importantly does not require and attempt to change systemic problems. Smashy smashy!

Nelson's ally Zora Doone of the Interplanetary Red Cross soon informs him that the robots were sent to Earth from the planet Argus and he speeds there as past as possible, only to find himself outfoxed: Sklar, Lord of Argus has taken Zora hostage, necessitating an escape through the monster-filled Cave of Terror to remove her from danger and pad the pagecount.

Power Nelson decides that the best solution to Argus' and Earth's problems is to depose the unpopular Sklar by way of a revolution, and let me say that this is a very galling thing for him to do. I've been bitching and moaning about how Nelson never gets around to freeing the people of Earth from the despotic reign of Seng I, the thing he was created to do, by the way and here he is, 15 minutes into his stay on Argus and elbow deep in revolution? What a piece of work.

The revolution doesn't prove to be strictly necessary, as Nelson ends up confronting Sklar one-on-one and just kind of tips him off of his volcano lair into the fiery depths below. I suppose it's important for the populace to feel like they helped.

Inspired by this, Nelson bids farewell to Zora Doone and finally, finally heads off to depose Emperor Seng I, a character who, might I remind you, he could crush with one hand and who he stands within five feet of in every single issue of Prize Comics. FINALLY.

(this is very frustrating on a non-narrative level because the publicly available portions of Prize Comics 007 and 008 do not include the Power Nelson strip and somewhere in those two issues he goes from being a hero of the 1980s to one of the 1940s. Details are scarce, but it seems as though Nelson is flung back in time somehow, but does he actually depose Seng I first? No idea)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 713: MURDO

(Prize Comics 005, 1940) 

Having defeated the mad Racko over the course of three adventures, Jupiter and his pal Jim Johnson are ready for some variety in their lives. Well, too bad, because Racko's brother Murdo is out for revenge! His first move, kidnap Racko's former victim and Jim's current girlfriend Joan and put her in a test tube in her underwear.

ASIDE: I had been operating under the assumption that Racko was a last name but now I have to revise my worldview to include a set of parents who would name their children "Racko" and "Murdo".

Over all, Murdo is a lot less interesting than his brother, possibly because of his focus on revenge instead of wacky ways of harming NYC. If he does share one thing with Racko, it's a penchant for interesting hideouts - in his debut issue he is making his home under a lake in India that is stocked with octopuses, sharks and mermen. 

Murdo manages to capture Jim as well (and notably leaves him fully clothed when he puts him in a test tube) but turns out to be even less able to cope with an alien wizard than Racko was.

Jupiter doesn't even bother blowing Murdo up. He just piles some stuff on top of him.

Having not even been plausibly killed in his first appearance (and what an insult that is for the brother of the guy that Jupiter felt the need to blow up three separate times), Murdo is back next issue to try again, this time by using magnets to flip Jim Johnson's cab into a ditch. This is actually very advanced for a Golden Age villain - Murdo has learned that his chances of taking on Jupiter are low and so is starting out by getting the much easier revenge kill on Johnson. Sadly for both Murdo and Johnson's cab driver, the passenger compartment is the only part of the cab that survives.

Jupiter shows up and easily captures Murdo, but Murdo has had the good sense to have a henchman dress up as a cop and lurk nearby to "take the villain into custody." He then abandons his revenge plot entirely in favour of an attempt to take over the US by murdering the president. It's an astonishing display in light of the single-minded obsession that governs most super-villainous behaviour, folks. Unless world domination was Murdo's main thing to begin with and revenge was the distraction, of course.

Jupiter does not stand idly by and allow Franklin Delano Roosevelt to be murdered, of course, though he makes the unusual choice to destroy Murdo's henchmen and just... leave Murdo himself wandering around on the ground somewhere. It's a calculated insult!

The end-of-story blurb promises that next issue would see Murdo teaming up with his brother Racko and I for one think that that would be a fun time, as despite having chosen to go into the same field the two are actually quite different in their approaches to super-villainy, plus a little sibling rivalry never hurt the readability of any story. Sadly, though, Prize Comics 006 was Jupiter's final appearance, so while Murdo remains at large poor Racko is in a limbo-state, reportedly not dead but not confirmed alive. Very sad stuff.

REVENGE KILLING SCORE: 0/5 in two attempts each on Jupiter and Jim's lives and one on Joan's, Murdo got none of them. Abysmal.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 712: DR DEKKAR, MASTER OF MONSTERS

(Prize Comics 005, 1940) 

Comic book features with the villain as the lead were one of the rarer subgenres of the Golden Age, and so I must note that this is our third instance of one with a monster-maker as the lead. Fun!

We first encounter Dr Dekkar here after he has advertised for an assistant and thus brought one Diane Clark to his laboratory-castle on the English moors. There's a part of me that wants to get very critical of the concept of accepting a job whee you will be living with your boss sight-unseen but I know that that was a thing that many people did in fact have to do in the past - particularly women, who were making up most of the live-in childcare and nursing workforce. And there's a lot ove very harrowing fiction built around the premise of accepting one of those jobs and turning up only to find yourself in a Weird Situation, so this one checks out!

Case in point: Diane soon learns that the job in the isolated castle, that she was given sight unseen after answering a newspaper advertisement and which has her sharing a residence with two overtly creepy men and a third (unseen, screaming) presence, might just be a little sketchy. Specifically, she learns that the screamer is Dr Dekkar's last assistant, who has been turned into a kind of ape-man by Dekkar's experiments with hormone injection.

And to add insult to injury, it turns out that Diane hasn't been brought in as an assistant after all, but is simply the next experimental subject!

Luckily for Diane, her fiance Bob Trent has a poor sense of the boundaries between personal and private lives and shows up on her first day at her new job to see how she's doing. Chaos ensues: Dekkar's real assistant Wilkins releases and is killed by the ape-man; the ape-man makes off with Diane and is subsequently killed by Tom; the castle burns down and Dekkar is presumed dead.

You know what they say about presuming that a super-villain is dead, though: they always crawl back out of the woodwork to press U and ME in some sort of diabolical deathtrap. And indeed, Dr Dekkar is back again one month later with a collection of animal men and a thirst for vengeance.

In an impressive move for a comic book scientist, Dekkar has continued in his prior avenue of research instead of tossing it all and starting over in the field of robotics or making frankensteins. His hormone treatments have gotten precise enough that he is able to make humanoid creatures out of animal life, including an almost fully human Tiger Woman, with the dual caveats that a) the creatures must be given an injection every six hours or lose their human forms and b) human brain matter is an important part of the recipe and oh, look! Diane and Bob have human brains! What a wonderful coincidence!

As an aside, Dekkar sure has made some interesting choices here: make a woman out of a tiger, dress her in a fur bikini and teach her to smoke using a cigarette holder... I'm just saying that if this were a modern comic then Dekkar's search history would have some very specific booleans going on in it.

The Tiger Woman is of course horny for Bob and lets him free only to turn on him once he expresses some desire to leave with the date he came with. This leads to Bob being carried off by the amazing Condor-Man, who gets far too little on-panel time.

(shout out to Dr Dekkar for wearing something approaching proper attire for a surgical theatre: just look at that face mask!)

Bob manages to escape the Condor-Man and return just in time to see his plan take effect: he had somehow managed to replace the beast-men's hormone injections from the night before with water and now they were all reverting to their former states with remarkable speed. Bob and Diane haul ass out of there while Dr Dekkar is messily devoured by his own test subjects (there is a "will Dr Dekkar return next month?" caption at the end, but since he did not I guess the tigers really did do him in).