DIVINE ROUND-UP 023

The gods they just keep on coming. 

Osiris: 

Ibis the Invincible's power levels get a bit of a nerf in 1941 when the caveat that his Ibistick is ineffective, variously, against magic, evil magic and in areas of ambient magic (just which is the case depends on the dramatic needs of the story). This forces him to come up with creative solutions to his problems, such as during this attack by a storm demon summoned by his arch-foe Trug, in which he summons the Ancient Egyptian god Osiris to act as divine muscle.

Osiris is one of the more humanoid of the Egyptian gods, so the only major critique to levy about his appearance (other than all of the stuff that any Egyptology nerds who read this are yelling about of course), aside from the fact that he's supposed to be green. I'm not sure if Osiris is the go-to god for demon-battling either. Maybe Horus would be a better choice?

Regardless, Osiris defeats the demon and then takes off. I'm sure that the above panel is meant to represent him returning to the land of the gods, but I get a real kick out of the image of him just wandering off into the California countryside, inspiring religious mania in the locals. 

God Style: Real (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)

Thoth: 

After yet another magical attack by his enemy Trug, Ibis again turns to the gods of Egypt for aid, this time appropriately from the ibis-headed god of wisdom, Thoth.

I appreciate that the artist made an effort, but while this version of Thoth looks reasonably cool that is absolutely not an ibis head. It's more like an angry and disturbingly flesh-toned duck. Duck head or no, Thoth comes through and supplies Ibis with a divination spell capable of locating the magically-shielded Trug.

God Style: Real (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)

the Man of the Mountain:

Once Ibis locates Trug he also has to contend with the Man of the Mountain, a guy with four arms who, appropriately, lives on a mountaine. 

While Ibis calls the Man of the Mountain an evil spirit, Trug insists that he is a "Great God of Revenge." The being in question remains silent, which is a shame because he really could have cleared up this taxonomic problem for us with a few words.

Whatever the Man of the Mountain is, he is also unable to withstand the fall off of his home mountain after Ibis tabletops him. He shatters at the bottom, revealing (to me at least) that he is in fact made of stone. RIP, Man of the Mountain.

God Style: Real (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)

the Snake-God: 

The subject of cult worship and human sacrifice in a cavern somewhere under NYC, this particular snake seemingly has a bit more of the divine about it than its fellow animal subjects of worship in comics. At the very least it is bulletproof, though this does not avail it against the raw might of Dr Occult's mitts. And as a bonus, its entire cult is crushed in its death throes!

God Style: Animist (Real?) (More Fun Comics 027, 1937)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 903: SMASHER SPY

(Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

As seen in his recent update, Spy Smasher's arch-foe the Mask eventually gets a bit too good at villainy for his own sake. While he succeeds at warping Spy Smasher's mind and turning him against the US government that he once sought only to defend, the Mask's enthusiasm means that he is a bit too loose with his commands to "Kill! Kill! Kill!" meaning that the first that Spy Smasher does is to kill the Mask.

Spy Smasher's fervour for his new mission is intense, driven as it is by the Mask's mind control. He starts blowing up arsenals and machine gunning defense meetings across the country, much to the despair of his erstwhile allies Eve and Admiral Corby.

Though he is mostly still called Spy Smasher throughout the four issues in which he is evilized, there are a couple of instances of "Smasher Spy" instead and so we shall be using that name for clarity's sake.

There's a lot of cool and interesting stuff happening with regard to Smasher Spy: having a hero become a villain, having such a huge change to the status quo persist over several issues, plus the fact that Smasher Spy is technically a Captain Marvel villain due to the fact that Whiz Comics 016-018 are in fact a crossover event! How very exciting! 

So: from Whiz Comics 016 to 018, both the "Captain Marvel" and "Spy Smasher" features are concerned with the ongoing efforts of the former to capture the latter and restore him to his heroic ways. A lot of it plays out like the above, with Captain Marvel showing up in time to foil but not capture Smasher Spy. Rather than detail each individual plot, here's a list of Smasher Spy's nefarious undertakings:

- Organizing a mass breakout of Federal Penetentiary

- Stealing plans from a defense committee meeting and leaving a bomb to kill the committee members

- Delivering those plans to a fascist submarine (and then sinking that submarine when Captain Marvel turns out to be on board)

- Stealing a super poison gas and attempting to wipe out the US Army with it

- Kidnapping and hypnotizing a busload of factory workers into helping him develop super-weapons 

- Building a fleet in order to conquer and destroy all national governments 

- Attempted murders: Admiral Corby x2, Captain Marvel x5, Eve Corby x4, Sterling Morris x1

- Misc destruction: one aircraft factory, two arsenals, two bridges, one dam, one train derailment, one warship sunk

Captain Marvel eventually allows himself to be captured by Smasher Spy as an intelligence-gathering exercise and so finds out about the Mask's hypno-chair/brain-o-graph when it is unsuccessfully used in an attempt to turn him evil too. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941) 

Smasher Spy is also the inventor of the nefarious Banana Bomb, which he uses in one of his attempts to murder Eve Corby. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)

Perhaps the Smasher Spy's greatest creation, this giant motorized lawnmower vehicle was intended to shred whole armies. Truly a magnificent entry into the ranks of the giant superweapon. (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)

There's only so long that even a crafty fellow like Smasher Spy can escape the World's Mightiest Mortal, however, and after a quick Billy Batson trip up the Gyro-Sub's torpedo tube he is in super-custody.

In a last-ditch effort to stay true to his programming, Smasher Spy destroys the hypno-chair, but Captain Marvel's determination to restore him is such that he unlocks a hitherto-unknown power of super-hypnosis and restores his mind by pure will alone.

 Smasher Spy is no more! A symbolic sunrise occurs as our heroes share a manly handshake! Huzzah!

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 032

A more fantastical bunch of genericos than usual! How fun!

Benjie Frazier: 

This mysterious cloaked figure hires femme fatale Sonia, aka Princess Cleo, to help him drive all of the inhabitants out of "center of New York society" Formal Park (99% certain that this is a substitution for former real-life society hub Tuxedo Park). To that end, the pair deploy such tools as squads of hooded goons, a mysteriously appearing brand to indicate that their victims have suffered "the Pharaoh's Curse", and a drug that drives regular people into a murderous frenzy. 

Things come to a head when the socially prominent Dudley "Mr Satan" Bradshaw and his scornful love interest Doris O'Day are invited out to a Formal Park event and end up unmasking their host Benjie Frazier as the mastermind behind the scheme. And just why has he been murdering people in such elaborate ways? A damn land grab, the most boring possible motivation for supercrime. He wanted to get rich by selling land to the state for a reservoir, folks. Shaking my damn head over here. (Zip Comics 008, 1940)

Unnamed Brain-in-Jar Men: 

Another cover illustration with no bearing on the story inside - very very sad. Are these headless men with their brains in little glass backpacks the creations of a mad scientist? Some sore of weird aliens? A transhumanist mafia? We shall never know. (Zip Comics 009, 1940)

the Lion-Man: 

This were-lion is remarkable not only for being in the Amazon (which I can only assume is way out of its natural range if we can apply such concepts to supernatural beings) but also because it only appears in the first half of a six-page story as an unrelated distraction while some crooks to steal diamonds from Doctor Voodoo's home village. Just tremendous disrespect on the writer's part for the gravity of a lycanthropic* foe. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941)

*yes I'm aware that the lycan part of the word is referring specifically to wolves but I'm being lazy about my language, okay? The footnote is still lazy because most of the words in it are short.

Queen Zoe: 

Queen Zoe is the ruler of a lost kingdom called El Casa del Oro deep in the Amazon whose culture appears to be a mixture of Inca and Conquistador and who is not overtly evil but who for instance threatens to throw someone into a volcano for interfering in her proposed seduction of Dr Voodoo.

Queen Zoe's secret is that she is actually thousands of years old thanks to the fact that she has the Fountain of Youth in her basement. She tries to sweeten her seduction of Dr Voodoo with the promise of eternal life but the Fountain is evidently a big prude because it chooses to stop working the exact second that Zoe makes her pitch and instead of getting some action she instead crumbles to dust. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 044 UPDATE: THE MASK 1941

Some highlights of the Mask's career c. 1941.

The Mask starts off 1941 with a bag, quite literally, as he attempts to blow up a munitions factory with FDR inside of it. (Whiz Comics 012, 1941)

He's at it again in the next issue, with another plot to kill FDR - this time by dropping a time bomb on the roof of the White House. He's an ambitious guy, the Mask. Fortunately for the President, he is also a guy who sets his bomb timers way to long, giving Spy Smasher plenty of time to defuse. (Whiz Comics 013, 1941)

In his second-to-last appearance, the Mask uses mind control technology in concert with a huge goon named Grosso, to capture US officials and force them to divulge government secrets before sending them off to kill themselves. 

This scheme is fairly air-tight and the Mask might have gotten away scot-free with a pocket full of secrets if he hadn't gotten too greedy and kidnapped Eve Corby in an attempt to learn Spy Smasher's secret identity from her. Spy Smasher shows up to prevent this and in the subsequent scuffle Grosso ends up in the hypno-chair, where he is given two commands: "kill Spy Smasher" and "Spy Smasher is the one in the white mask." The Mask is then seemingly flung to his death. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941)  

The next issue, however, we learn that he is alive after all! He is just very, very hurt! Despite this, the Mask captures Spy Smasher via ruse and finally learns his secret identity as Alan Armstrong! This is also incidentally the first time that we the reader learn that Armstrong is Spy Smasher, though as I have mentioned before he is literally the only possible suspect, assuming that he's not just some guy.

The Mask's next move must have felt like a real no-brainer at the time: using the new and improved mind control device (the Brain-o-Graph, natch) he turns the former champion of the US Government into its enemy. This works, and Spy Smasher becomes the wicked Smasher Spy (something he is only actually called a couple of times, but a useful way to differentiate the good and evil versions of the character so I'm using it), and will remain that way for a while. The Mask's triumph is tarnished somewhat by the fact that he went a little too hard on the brainwashing, meaning that he is the first victim of Smasher Spy's murderous rampage. Proper safety procedures while creating unstoppable killing machines: they're important. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)