Monday, April 14, 2025

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 767: THE COUNT

(Speed Comics 009, 1940)


The Count is a fairly by-the-book pseudo-Nazi spy with a very audacious plan for acquiring US military secrets: kidnap the US Secretary of State (a moderately off-model Cordell Hull) and extract them from him via gear-based torture.

Unfortunately for the Count his plans were anticipated by the US Secret Service, who proactively substituted Ted Parrish, aka the Man With 1000 Faces, for Hull. Led to the spies' farmhouse hideout by a special radium tracking device, the agents gun down the Count and his hirelings with some degree of prejudice, while Parrish just kind of looks on from his torture machine. An unusually passive role for a super-hero but I suppose here he is about three to five identity levels deep, so perhaps he 's just confused.

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