Roundup of terminology and personal shorthand:
Capitalism: All kinds of crime is done due to a love of money but the capitalism tag is for when it gets real.
Civic Reformer: Common civilian identity for costumed crimelords. Loudmouth do-gooders who turn out to be corrupt and frequently end up motivating the hero to track down the villain by playing the part too well.
Cluester. A super-crook who leaves cryptic clues or taunting notes about their next crime etc., either compulsively or out of a sense of arrogant superiority.
Communications Cut-In: This is the tech that lets a super-villain appear on any TV screen or radio broadcast whenever they want. Along with generic ray guns and the rubberoid mask (qv), the communications cut-in is one of the foundational and most frequently developed super-technologies.
Colonialism: Why is the colonialism tag not in the villainy categories? Because the people who in real life were often the victims of colonialist violence are portrayed in fiction as the aggressors and so strictly speaking very few comic book villains are engaging in colonialism. THAT'S COLONIALISM FOR YOU
Created by Committee: Mostly a hero thing - when someone is painstakingly selected and then trained for many years by a secret order or cabal.
Crime Community: A community for criminals, by criminals. Whether it's taking over a small town or establishing a brand new island nation, the crime community is a recurring theme in comics.
Crime Overlord: More than just a gang boss, the crime overlord has consolidated all organized crime in a city or larger area.
Crossdress: There's a conversation to be had about whether some, the majority or all of the crooks (and occasional heroes) who crossdress as part of their deal are expressing a trans identity in a world that doesn't have much in the way of language to talk about such things. I try to raise the issue if it seems to be there but I am a fallible human.
Crypto-Fascist: Pre-1942, the US was officially neutral, so it was very rare for even an obvious Nazi to be called a Nazi. The term crypto-fascist is used differently in modern discourse but it's a nice compact way to describe "meant to be a Nazi and is obviously a Nazi but is not actually called a Nazi"
Dates: comics have ever had a disconnect between their cover date and date of release and because this is a hobby and don't want to constantly do research on the release dates I go by the cover date
Escape Ring: A supercrime scheme whereby crooks pay a fee or percentage of their take in order to be hidden from the authorities, often vie relocation to a Crime Community (cv)
Evil Equivalent/ Evil Opposite: An evil equivalent is basically the same as the hero but evil, while an evil opposite has a clear thematic opposition to the hero.
Fake Old Lady: Old ladies get very little respect in old comics, to the point where any old woman who has a major part in a plot (other than victim, of course) is pretty reliably a gangster or younger woman etc. in disguise.
Fake Undead: There are far, far more fake ghosts, mummies etc. in the Golden Age than real ones. Whether it was a societal thing or just the portion of society that wrote comic books I don't know but there is a real knee-jerk disbelief in/ contempt of the supernatural that permeates things into the 60s and means that the Scooby-Doo style ending is much more likely than otherwise, even before the Comics Code set in.
Fate of...: A lot of comics exist in retroactive shared universes, and because nobody was thinking about nerds like me reading them in the future, famous lost places and things get used as plot fodder a lot over the years and when you note them all down it's pretty fun to see, for example, the sheer number of people from Atlantis who escaped to found isolated communities all over the world.
Friendly Enemy: A handy shorthand for the kind of relationship that Batman has with Catwoman or the Spirit has with half his villains: suffused with romantic tension.
Generic Costumed Villain: Poor shmoes who put on a mask to do some crimes but just aren't interesting enough to get to the status of minor super-villain.
Great Folk: I have not yet found a convenient short phrase to describe the kind of one- or two-panel throwaway character who you end up thinking about more than the hero or villain so until I do they shall be tagged as Great Folk.
Honours: From parades to medals to honourary degrees, it's fun to add up all the various rewards that a hero accumulates.
Jekyll/ Hyde: This type of character very specifically undergoes a mental change and does not remember what they did in the other state when they change back. Marvel's Mr Hyde ironically does not qualify while DC's Rose and Thorn does.
Kirbies: The Thing, Brooklyn, Slugger etc. Jack Kirby characters that are at least somewhat based on Jack Kirby.
Knockoff Kirbies: Characters based on kirbies. Any good Fantastic Four pastiche has a knockoff kirby - the First Family has two!
Lycanthropy: The chances are slim that I'll ever get called out for this but I'm putting this here as insurance: yes, I know that the lycan part of lycanthropy specifically means "wolf" and yes I use it to refer to all werewolf-like shapeshifters, even if they're weretigers or werecows. It's a choice.
Mad Science/Mad Art: The distinction is somewhat arbitrary but the "mad" in mad science and mad art (and in a kind universe mad humanities and mad social sciences someday) is a general mania with regard to results without regard to the cost in human lives, personal safety or anything else.
Master Criminal: A criminal polymath - not just a killer but a thief and a spy and a master of weapons. The kind of crook who is described as "the most wanted man on Earth" or "the most dangerous woman alive."
Memes of Yore: Memes in the "cultural idea" sense, but also the "endlessly iterated joke" sense - all the things that were accepted stock gags of the past but have faded away over time, like Women Are Obsessed With Hats and Pretzel Bending is the Funniest Profession.
Minor Super-Hero: A pretty loose term around here. If they fought a super-villain and only one in ten thousand people has ever heard of them, they qualify.
Minor Super-Villain: defined here and supplemented here.
Reel, the: A narrative technique for getting location-specific characters to visit different locales. If you want Superman to leave Metropolis and visit a desert, have a desert villain send some of his desert men to Metropolis for some reason, where they will encounter Superman and entice him to trace them back to their place of origin.
Roy Thomas. Roy Thomas is a comics writer and editor who came up from the fan community and has a similar interest in old comic book stuff to folks like me, and thus a tendency to bring back Golden Age characters in the Bronze Age and later comics he has written. If I occasionally speak derisively of him it's because I disagree with some of the ways he uses such characters, e.g., bringing them back in order to kill them off. A more complete overview of him here.
Rubberoid Mask: This is the kind of mask that is easily pulled on and taken off, is extremely realistic and moves convincingly with the face underneath. It's the first supertech that a lot of villains develop. The name comes from a 40s Batman comic and is pleasing to me.
Skull Score: This is the scale by which we rate villains named Skull. A rating of 1 is for a person with a cadaverous face, while a 5 is someone with a bare skull for a head. Intermediate scores are assigned to Skulls missing features such as skin, eyes, lips and nose - this means that the Red Skull has a Skull Score of 3, btw. Skull helmets are scored at one point lower than the equivalent.
Thematic Index: It's a bit of a larf. Names first, then any kind of general outfit or style theme, then barring anything else general stuff like being a scientist or a gangster.
Trend Based Crime: Candid photography, video games, CB radio/ trucker culture, disco or punk or any other musical genre - most any trend that has captured the public's imagination for longer than the amount of time it takes to produce a comic book has produced a one-off themed super-villain (or crime spree by a Batman villain).
Trophy Room: Super-heroes (and super-villains!) accumulate a lot of cruft. These entries keep a running tally.
Undead Types: Skeletons, ghosts, mummies etc are pretty standard, but there are a couple of trickier types:
-revenant: an intelligent living corpse - lots of these in old EC comics
-science variants: an undead brought back to life by science rather than the supernatural.
-zombie types: there are of course science zombies, but also voodoo zombies, living zombies (which may have been zombified by a voodoo practitioner but are not actually undead), radioactive zombies etc. Mindless shambling goons, regardless of origin.
Unofficial Name: Sometimes a very compelling villain doesn't call themself by any kind of name at all, so you have to cobble one together from dialogue and text boxes.
Victim of Orthodoxy: A common origin for heroes and villains: the experimenter who has discovered a radical new technology but is ridiculed or even punished for their claims.
Wax Museum Killer: There's something that comes over a person who owns a wax museum. "Why not just coat people in wax?" they think.
WWI Vets: A certain percentage of Golden (and even Silver) Age characters are World War One veterans, and such is the nature of comic books that characters come back again and again. The nature of time is such that any time the original version of one of these characters appears in a modern comic book, they are automatically the oldest (and only) living WWI vet, so it's helpful to keep a list.
Yellow Peril: The scheming Fu Manchu-style underworld figure of the pulps was eventually pushed out by the Japanese menace during WWII, then inexplicably enjoyed a nostalgic revival during the Silver Age.
If there are further terms that require definition, just fire up the ol' comment box below.
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