MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 528: THE BLACK HAND

(Blue Ribbon Comics 016, 1941) 

There's a quality that some comic book characters have and some do not and I never knew about it until I started writing this blog. That quality is called Standing in Clear View So That I Can Get a Screengrab of Them, and buddy, the Black Hand does not have it. This is about as good of a full look as you get of the guy in his first appearance.

Enough complaining! The Black Hand is a spy of the Unaffiliated Freelancer subtype, which since he operates out of the US means that he steals US secrets for sale to the Nazis. Is a character who does business with Nazis better than one who is a Nazi? Marginally. The Black Hand is also the recurring villain of Captain Flag, who he is also responsible for becoming a super-hero due to his murder of Flag's father and failure to proof his lair against narratively significant eagles.

The Black Hand is called the Black Hand because of his black hand, which he usually conceals beneath a black glove and which is riddled with a deadly disease that the Black hand can transfer to a victim via a simple scratch of his horrible fingernails. It's definitely a useful power (affliction?) for a villain to have but not one that has a chance of coming up in anyone's super-power wishlist.

Throughout his five appearances the Black Hand sports three distinct looks: the initial iteration (either afflicted with a deathly pallor or just overenthusiastic when applying foundation), a sort of suave mustachioed cat-burglar getup with no hint of the grave and then back to the deathly complexion with an added skull-like quality to the face. Realistically this can be put down to Captain Flag being a secondary character without a dedicated artist, but if that was the point of this blog then it would swiftly cease to be much fun.

Notably, the suave version of the Black Hand wears his glove on the opposite side - could this indicate that he and the corpselike Black Hand are different characters? Perhaps the disease that gives them their name is also slowly killing them, which could account for the more ghoulish appearance of the original Hand over time?

These questions will never be answered, sadly, as in-universe the Black Hand made a transition from spy the thief to pirate and Captain Flag was quick to invoke the Law of the Sea to hang him from the nearest yardarm. Out of universe, Captain Flag's feature didn't survive the cancellation of Blue Ribbon Comics and so the Black Hand had nobody to come back from the dead to torment.

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 005

All Columbia Comic Corporation edition!

Skyman: 

Skyman (properly the Skyman but it just doesn't scan for me) is a pilot hero, normally a ho-hum sort of character for me. But between his sci-fi super plane (the Wing), his blood-freezing stun ray (the Stasimatic) and his cool on-the-edge-of-being-too-busy costume there's just enough super-hero peanut butter mixed in with the pilot chocolate to make it appealing (bonus running list of Skyman's super science: atomic explosives, invisible glass phonograph, disitegrator ray, explosives-detonating ray and a ray that fuses gun barrels shut)

After a few issues we learn that the Skyman is actually Allan Turner, wealthy good-for-nothing playboy who lost his parents to a plane crash when he was a child. If the Bruce Wayne parallel was 1:1 he would have grown up to become a noted slayer of planes, but that's a villain's origin. Instead, Allan Turner dresses up as a plane to fight criminals. It doesn't make quite as much narrative sense as Batman does but it's probably more fun to read than the other way around.

Early Skyman also might just hold the record for the most overinflated torso in comics outside of parody characters. He gets a bit more proportional eventually but for a while there you're concerned for his ability to live a normal life.

the Face:

The Face, like a lot of early comics heroes, draws a lot of elements from the pulps: a tuxedo-clad hero drives around in a souped up roadster fighting crime with his fists and an automatic - a pretty regular early super-guy. Even his secret identity of Tony Trent, radio station owner/ radio announcer is in the pulp-adjacent character wheelhouse.

It was very exciting to me when I realized that the Face's face is frequently referred to as a rubberoid mask, my favourite term for the kind of masks that only exist in comic books - perfectly realistic and naturalistic but also very easy to don and doff. This particular mask was made specially for Tony Trent by someone whose other major characteristic is being dead, which is apparently a combination that makes Trent feel quite jolly.

Weirdly, in Big Shot Comics 006, the Face has a new, slightly less grotesque mask. No word on where he got this one but he goes back to the original pretty quickly.

Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians:

Created by Fred Guardineer, who also created Zatara over at DC Comics, Marvelo is... extremely similar to Zatara. Aside from their different approaches to dressing like a stage magician, I'd say that there are two slight differences between the characters: 

1. Rather than speaking backward to cast spells, Marvelo shouts "Kalora!" as an all-purpose magic word.

2. Marvelo's manservant Zee is just a hair more racist than Zatara's manservant Tong. It's pretty close but I reckon Zee takes it.

Big Shot Comics 017 reveals that Marvelo is the son of the ruler of the generically foreign South Pacific island of Brahama (hell on autocorrect). This doesn't seem to have anything to do with him being a magic man but it's nice to know. (Big Shot Comics 001, 1940)

the Cloak:

Jeff Cardiff, Spy Chief was a feature in Big Shot Comics from issue 1 (well, it was Jeff Cardiff, Spy-Master for the first issue or two but the point stands) with all kinds of foiled plots and plans and spies of both the vaguely fascist and vaguely communist varieties. In Issue 15, however, the spies adopt the reasonable policy of attempting to shoot on sight the man who has foiled so many of their plans and a wounded Jeff Cardiff goes to recuperate at his brother's house.

Long story short, Jed Cardiff is a coal magnate with a collection of "adventure curios", including the namesake cloak of Revolutionary War-era costumed spy the Cloak and it being 1941 and a comic book, Jeff immediately adopts the Cloak identity as his own. It's a fairly basic costumed hero shtick but I appreciate the effort and it's always nice to see a more elaborate cape and cowl getup now and then. (Big Shot Comics 015, 1941)

The original Cloak eventually shows up in a flashback and it turns out that his impact on the history of the American Revolution is only slightly less impactful than Superboy's in the 1949 story in which he goes back in time and takes part in about half the major events of the war. I must say that I do love a retcon of a historical event. (Big Shot Comics 021, 1942)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 314: THE RED TERROR

(Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942)

A fairly undistinguished costumed gang boss, the Red Terror has three things going for him:

1. he gets around in a very cool rocket-powered dirigible

2. he is the only super-villain to face Golden Age underachiever the Human Top

3. he really goes above and beyond in his attempt to rid himself of the Top, hitting him with, in quick succession: mountain lions, flame throwers, an avalanche and a bursting dam. That's the kind of thoroughness that more villains should aspire to, although of course if it's not enough to do the job you risk getting thrown from your own rocket-zep in retaliation.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 313: DR KLUTCH

(Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942)

Dr Klutch is your basic criminal scientist. His major distinction is that he got beat up by the Tough Kid Squad in their only recorded outing, but there are a couple of other points worthy of discussion here.

The first is that we have a clear timeline for this guy. Many, many super-villains are clearly operating at a level that would require years of work to establish or have a lengthy if nebulous criminal record, but with Klutch here we know: in 1926 he murdered his research partner Dr Danger in revenge for not sharing his findings and in the subsequent 16 years he became a successful enough criminal scientist to be identified on sight by even beat cops.

(not sure how great of a scientist he was, given that it took the entire 16 years to track down the Danger Twins, one of whom was adopted by Danger's friend Professor Moxon - follow a few leads, buddy!)

Point two is merely that the idea of murdering someone and then perpetually electrocuting their twitching skeleton is fairly metal.

But the real kicker is that Klutch eventually gets ahold of Dr Danger's serum by extracting it from the blood of Danger Twin Wally. Klutch is a super-powered criminal scientist! The serum is a bit ill-defined but the gist of it seems to be that it enhances your trained abilities, and Dr Klutch is trained in fightin', science and EVIL.

Sadly, the closest we get to seeing the full chemically-enhanced might of Klutch's evil mind is a plan to rob several banks at once - mid-tier super-villainy at best, but perhaps he was working up to it. BUT, in an exciting turn of events, Klutch was captured at the end of the story, leaving the door open to my favourite potential BRUNG BACK scenario: the super-powered crook who gets out after 80+ years of cooling his heels in the klink. After all, he's full of serum! Who knows what that does to the aging process?

MINOR SUPER-HERO 036: THE TOUGH KID SQUAD

(Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942)

I occasionally opine about the relative obscurity of one super-hero or another and it's tricky to judge such a thing objectively, especially when it's about a suite of characters who are all 100% unknown to the world at large. Despite this I am confident in my assertion that the Tough Kid Squad are the most obscure Marvel characters ever to receive their own title, even if it did only last one issue.

The Tough Kid Squad is an obvious attempt by Marvel to replicate the formula of the Young Allies, but the technology to boil down a concept and recast it misfired somehow. The real key to a 40s kid gang is the mix of personalities - as seen in the Young Allies' Smart Kid, Fat Kid, Tough Kid, Racial Stereotype and two Super-Hero Kids. The Tough Kid Squad on the other hand, is as follows:

Wally Danger: Together with his brother Wally forms the Danger Twins, the Super-Hero kid Element of the team. Orphaned at a young age, the twins were raised separately after Tom was stolen by a crook to be his protege. They both benefit from a serum that their father gave them as infants which enhances their trained abilities. Wally mostly acts as the Smart Kid.

Tom Danger: Raised to be a crook but his better nature shone through when he met his long-lost twin, Tom is a Tough Kid to his core.

Derrick Dawes: A former school bully who was befriended after a beating from Tom. Tough Kid.

Butch: A guy on the school football team who is befriended off-panel. Supposedly a Fat Kid based on the action but is drawn as and acts like a Tough Kid.

Eagle: The football team also had a Racial Stereotype to befriend, albeit one who mostly acts like a Tough Kid. Eagle also presents the conundrum common to comic book racial stereotype characters: that because part of the joke of them is that they are acting against stereotype by being the hero of the piece they are often driving the action in the most interesting ways. 

The main point of this breakdown is that true to its name the Tough Kid Squad is a real one-note kid gang. It is in fact weirdly tough to figure out if there is a true knockoff kirby in the bunch, in fact - they're kind of all part of one gestalt knockoff kirby, with Eagle looking most the part and Tom acting it.

Obviously I think the name should be brung back, and I'm kind of disappointed in Marvel for not dredging it up during the 50-State Initiative time - it might have been the only thing to make the fact that Hellcat was the entire Alaska Initiative team all by herself more fun. As for the members themselves... they are a bit generic, but the fact that the Danger Twins are all hopped up on serum offers the easy possibility for a couple of unaging characters to have been secretly operating for the last 80+ years, which is always fun.