Friday, August 28, 2026

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 1001: BARON KRAWMAN

(Lightning Comics v1 005, 1941)



Whiz Wilson and his Futuroscope are once again engaging in the Doctor Who style of time travel, in which you just kind of pop into a random time and place and ask a bystander how things are going. In this case he has ended up in Florida in the year 3000, and the vest-wearing Florida Man he speaks to is pretty smug about how great things have been for the past thousand years. Perhaps he is rounding up or thinking extremely locally, because previous Whiz Wilson stories have established a general civilizational collapse in 2040 CE and a more localized one in South America around 2500 CE.

More importantly, as if summoned by the words "these are wonderful times," this is the moment that a squad of giant robots attack the city.



Whiz Wilson is as ever a man of action and takes advantage of a poorly-secured access hatch on the back of one of the robots to get inside and beat up the pilot. This in turn causes the over-cautious leader of the robot pilots, now revealed to be a man named Baron Krawman, to recall his forces.



Joining the queue of robots in his newly-commandeered ride, Whiz follows them to a domed underwater city "about ten miles" off the Florida coast.


A quick and stealthy search of the city leads Wilson to an imprisoned woman who introduces herself as Betty Walters, Krawman's former assistant. She tells him that a) the city is part of the lost continent of Atlantis that Krawman stumbled upon (though how it was missed during a thousand years-plus of intensely ocean-facing Florida life is beyond me) and b) that he is bent on destroying civilization because they laughed at him. Annoyingly, she does not explain why all of Krawman's minions are nigh-identical bearded beefcakes, because that is all that I am asking about. Was he experimenting with cloning? Are these the descendants of lost Atlantis? Does he just have a type? 



Whiz and Betty return to the commandeered robot and engage Krawman in thrilling robot-hand-to-robot-hand combat for the future of Florida, a combat that ends with Krawman dead and his city flooded. Once again Whiz Wilson has saved the people of a time period so far in his own future that his bones are naught but dust. Hooray!

Categorized in: Accessories (Giant Robots), Origins (Villains of the Future), Royalty (Barons)

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 1001: BARON KRAWMAN

(Lightning Comics v1 005, 1941) Whiz Wilson and his Futuroscope are once again engaging in the Doctor Who style of time travel, in which you...