(Super-Mystery Comics v1 002, 1940)
In terms of crime, the Blue Spark is ambitious but not extraordinary: a little corporate extortion, some bank robbery, a few kidnappings. Nothing we haven't seen a few hundred times by now. When it comes to the trappings of super-villainy, however, the Blue Spark is on the cutting edge.
Just look at that costume - it's not quite the standardized super-villain getup we will eventually see on so many one-shot Batman villains but it's pretty damn close, and particularly in an era in which most villains are still pairing a mask with a suit and tie or a robe. Even more impressive and ahead of its time is the Blue Spark's choice to dress his henchmen in a simplified version of his own uniform. Just really impressive stuff.
The Blue Spark's main gimmick, a heat ray cannon mounted on a truck, isn't quite as remarkable but it is a pretty sweet bit of gear. Plus he has another one mounted on a cool-ass drilling machine!
(it is somewhat unclear if the Blue Spark has a second ray that allows him to mind control people or if his heat ray doubles as a mind control ray, and determining this is not helped by the fact that he clearly has an aesthetic fondness for that particular style of scientific greebling on the outside of the rays. It's a good clean visual on the mind control ray, I will say that)
The Blue Spark's henchmen (called the Blue Rubber Men at one point, btw) are not just well-dressed: their costumes have little nozzles in the chest that lets them be inflated like a balloon to render them immune to fisticuffs - another idea that sounds like something out of a Silver Age comic, twenty years early.
Technology or no, inflation fetish suits or no, the Blue Spark vs Magno is your classic case of a villain who is so little of an even match for the hero that the plotter's concern must lie in keeping them apart for as long as possible because the instant they meet up, something like the above happens. Magno didn't even give him a chance to blow up his suit, the poor guy.
No comments:
Post a Comment