MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 146: THE RED DRAGON

(Adventure 069, 1941)

An early example of quite a few villain tropes, the Red Dragon is a guy who turns to evil because he was rejected by society due to his deformed face (1). He then decides to set himself up in opposition to the heroic Shining Knight, choosing to become the Red Dragon - less dramatic than a Bizarro-style evil opposite situation but still an evil opposite situation (2).

After his first (unsuccessful) foray into crime, he is recruited by the Hand to battle the Seven Soldiers of Victory as part of one of the earliest examples of a super-villain team-up (3), some years before the Injustice Society and such became commonplace.

Pretty good for a fairly ordinary hooded villain.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 145: THE MASK

(Adventure 068, 1941)

An orchestra conductor who goes off the deep end when he gets fired. Not a terribly deep concept, but he kills his replacements with an electrified conductor's baton trap and he leaves comedy and tragedy mask symbols to show his involvement so there's a lot for me, a themed crime enthusiast, to enjoy.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 144: PROFESSOR DOOMBIE

 (Adventure 067, 1941)

Sometimes you have to admit to yourself that your judgement is subjective enough that you're going to count an ordinary "I invented a shrinking formula and shall now crime" scientist as a super-villain just because you like the name "Doombie".

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 143: THE CAMERA EYE

(Adventure 066, 1941)

Mr Cuthbert Cain, the Camera Eye (and I call him that because it's what he himself signs on an ominous note - at various points in the story he is called the Camera Fiend and the Camera Criminal) is part of a long tradition of super-villains who take a recent technological or cultural trend and extrapolate it into a criminal gimmick - in this case, candid photography.

Using black magic and photographic equipment, Cain captures souls and enslaves folks to his will, embarking on a minor crime wave. He falls afoul of Starman when he enthralls his friend FBI agent Woodley Allen and subsequently dissolves into the netherworld after a struggle that ends with him accidentally taking his own picture with his black magic camera.

SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? Absolutely! Not only is Cuthbert Cain exactly the kind of smug little shit that makes a perfect villain but the idea of a black magician who faces the price for their power and then comes back is a really great seed for a story. Particularly as the last time he was seen he had become a photo negative version of himself.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 142: DR DARRK

 (Adventure Comics 065, 1941)

Another in a long line of scientist-villains faced by Hourman, Dr Darrk has a moderately cool name, a lighthouse HQ and an invisibility ray but ultimately is overshadowed by his really excellent robot goon, Giganto:

Just look at that cool robot!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 141: THE UNSEEN MAN

 (Adventure 064, 1941)

The Unseen Man, aside from his pretty great name, is fairly run-of-the-mill: an art supply owner or employee who somehow develops an invisibility paint, he subsequently turns to crime and is captured by the Sandman.

The reason that the Unseen Man gets such short shrift is that a lot of story real estate is taken up with a subplot of Dian Belmont wanting to be in on the adventure and generally getting in the way, despite discovering at least one key clue. It's all fairly depressing, especially as her earlier, hypercompetent self was still showing up only a few issues prior and she mostly gets pushed out by Sandy the Golden Boy going forward.

Anyway, a shame that the Unseen Man didn't get more to do.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 140: IKER

 (Adventure 064, 1941)

Yet another Hourman mad scientist foe, Iker (properly Dr T.Z. Iker, but the only time that shows up is on a mailbox) is a classic Victim of Orthodoxy, having been kicked out of the Science Club by the hidebound Dr Orr for espousing "fake theories".

Said fake theories enable Iker to build a machine capable either of creating lifeforms out of energy drawn from the 5th Dimension or of drawing lifeforms from the 5th Dimension and giving them form - it's explained in a bit of a rush in the second-last panel - and he uses them for a bit of crime and revenge before being driven mad by his technology's destruction in the climactic battle of the adventure. The important part is that some of them are knife-wielding dwarves and one of them is a giant version of himself named Normo.

SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? is a moot question as I discovered when I did my customary check: he already has, in JSA v1 005, 1999, as a rehabilitated employee of Tylerco! 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 139: IVAN BORLOFF

 (Adventure 061, 1941)

Ivan Borloff is a strange combination of things: a scientist with a super airship (the Cylindecraft) and a metal-destroying ray, he rains destruction down on New York City in pursuit of his goal of conquering the US (and by implication, the world), but also, it's implied that he is affiliated with *foreign powers*, ie, fascists - possibly ones who didn't quite know what they were getting into. 

His name ringing more Russian might mean that he is a rare pre-Cold War Commie villain, but a more likely explanation is plain old lazy naming - German, Russian... it's all basically the same, right?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 138: DR DOOG

 (Adventure 061, 1941)

Starman's first foe is also his first super-foe: the diabolical Dr Doog. Doog (and nothing is ever made of his name being Good, backward) has stolen a device called to Ultra-Dynamo from Professor Davis (above right) and is using it to disrupt electrical power across North America in service to his dreams of world domination.

Doog brings in deathtraps, a hollowed-out mountain base and perhaps most importantly, a group of henchmen with the excellent name the Secret Brotherhood of the Electron. It's small wonder that he's already been brought back once or twice, a decision that I wholeheartedly endorse.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 136: THE LEGION OF THE MASKED

(Adventure Comics 058, 1941)

The Barry O'Neill serial in Adventure Comics had basically been about Barry battling the dastardly villain Fang Gow (Minor Super-Villain 001) from its inception in 1935 to his death by sea mine six years later and evidently someone thought that it could continue as more of a free form adventure strip despite losing that structure (as well as its setting, having started as a comic set in Paris that had quietly moved to London about the time that the German Army marched in). In fact, it lasted for two issues before Barry and his pal Inspector LeGrande retired to New York City and Starman took over the page real estate.

The Legion of the Masked are the one other super-foe that Barry faced after the death of Fang Gow and... they did okay, getting up to a little arson, a little insurance fraud and a fair bit of theft and murder. Why they chose to dress like they are in the Klan while doing it, we will never know.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 075: "UNCLE"

(Adventure Comics 057, 1940)

As I've said before, sometimes a character is very clearly a super-villain but chooses no name for themself, in which case for administrative purposes I pick something that the text boxes or other characters refer to them as and go with that. Scientists are usually easy - they just go by their name. This fellow, on the other hand, is basically only ever referred to as "Uncle," so Uncle I call him.

And Uncle is a credible threat! He tries to ransom the world by threatening to destroy it by knocking it off of its orbit, then actually tries to do it in a fit of pique - it's only the timely intervention of Sandman that saves the day.

In the last entry, when I was talking about mad scientists as perfect characters to bring back as reformed? This is the kind of guy I had in mind. What a gift to a cast!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 074: DR TOGG

(Adventure Comics 057, 1940)

Yet another Hourman science-villain. Dr Togg was really into hybridizing dogs and buzzards in various fun ways. Such a cool guy was he, in fact, that he was brought back as an ancillary character in the 90s Hourman series, himself mutated into a partial dog/buzzard in a retconned final encounter with Hourman before he was sent to prison.

Thinking about him (and fellow Hourman foe Iker in about 50 entries or so), has made me realize just how much I love the concept of the reformed mad scientist with their struggles to comprehend scientific ethics and their weird little mutations and leftover minions. A few recent Marvel series have featured the concept but I would still consider it to be underutilized.

There's our guy.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 073: DR SLIGHT

(Adventure Comics 056, 1940_

Dr Slight is similar to Dr Snegg, in that he is a scientist-villain with a method for bringing inanimate statues to life for crime purposes who is stopped by Hourman. But Dr Slight brings *plaster* statues to life, not wax ones.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 072: THE GREAT I

(Adventure Comics 052-054, 1940)

A properly fun invisible villain, finally! In order:

-great hat, great mustache

-has to get nude

-filled with hubris vis-à-vis just how much you can get done just by being invisible (world conquest?)

Although to that last point they (they being heroic boxer Socko Strong) had to set a trap to electrocute him in order to stop him.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 071: DR SNEGG

(Adventure Comics 051-052, 1940)

Snegg's your classic villain who can't handle the thought of revising a plan. In his first appearance he animates a trio of crime boss statues from a wax museum to serve him as henchmen and then, having been foiled once by Hourman, he tosses the whole idea of animated wax out the window to indulge in hypnotism-based crime. If he hadn't died in a car accident he might be thinking up new implausible schemes to this day.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 070: THE TIGER-MEN

(Adventure Comics 049, 1940) 

The Tiger-Men are... contextually villains, I guess, in that they do arson and murder and are opposed by hero Steve Conrad. They are ALSO part of a pattern that emerges if you read a lot of old comics that take place in international locales: the hero rocks up and helps solve a problem between colonizers and the native population and the narrative frames what are usually pretty reasonable demands by the latter as rank villainy.

In the case of the Tiger-Men, their whole deal is that they are Indians who would please like their land back, if the English plantation owners could be bothered to leave (great violence is meted out to them for this).

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 069: THE COIN

 (Adventure Comics 046, 1940)

The Coin is a few different super-villain clichés rolled into one. Firstly he's an old college chum of Wesley "Sandman" Dodds, and "old schoolmate of hero turns out to be villain" is as much a recurring thing in comics as an old friend showing up and immediately dying. Which the Coin also does.

Finally, the Coin is a man who dresses up as an old lady to do crime, which is a super-villain bit and also something that regular-style crooks are apt to do in the Golden and Silver Ages. Old women are such unlikely villains that everyone else poses as them - even Catwoman, in her first appearance.

Anyway, he's a counterfeiter.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 024: THE FACE

(Adventure 044, 1939)

Another early Sandman villain. A fairly standard master of disguise who was later reworked into an axe-wielding maniac in Sandman Mystery Theatre.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 023: MOBRUNE

(Adventure 041, 1939)

A fanatic radio preacher of no specific religion, Mobrune bolsters his reputation by predicting disasters that he then causes. SPECIFICALLY, Mobrune seeds snow clouds with nerve toxin, completely wiping two small cities off the map. A bad dude!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 022: THE TARANTULA

(Adventure 040, 1939)

Standard masked crook, remarkable only for being the Sandman's first foe. Shows up later in one or two crowd scenes.

This story is also notable for being the only time Golden Age Wesley Dodds tucks in a little doll version of himself before heading out as Sandman, a charming bit that was later adopted as an ongoing thing in Sandman Mystery Theatre.