MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 149: KING COBRA

(All American 029, 1941)

A simple first costumed foe for Dr Mid-Nite: a mine owner founds his own secret society in order to control public opinion about such things as unionization and also to have a ready-made lynch mob if needed. Really appreciate how on-theme the Cobra Kingdom - wearing a version of King Cobra's own costume, natch - were at all times, down to referring to their enemies as "mongoose." It wasn't a big shock that they almost killed King Cobra himself when it was revealed to them that they had been duped into doing his bidding.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 148: THE SPIDER

(All American 028, 1941)

Just a weird little creep with a drug that can mind control someone and then kill them. The Spider hits on a scheme where he is paid by ne'er-do-wells to have their rich relatives write them back into their wills and then mysteriously keel over - and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for Green Lantern and his pesky pals.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 147: THE LEADER

(All American Comics 025, 1941)

A masked man running a gang of saboteurs to ruin production of war goods as a US steel plant in the name of a vague Cause - at this time most likely fascism - is pretty run-of-the-mill for 1941, but it turns out that the Leader's real scheme is to drive down the steel mill's stock price so that he can gain a controlling interest and make big bucks! He's just duping the fascists-or-maybe-anarchists-or-communists into doing his bidding! The real villain was capitalism all along!

Sadly for the Leader, his tale of villainy ends like so many that take place in steel mills: with him plummeting into an open vat of molten metal.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 080: THE EMPEROR OF AMERICA

(All American Comics 021, 1940)

An old man who lives in a cave outside of Calvin City, the Emperor of America takes a bunch of Al "the Atom" Pratt's classmates prisoner as potential mind-controlled minions. Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that he already has a cadre of identical huge men in his employ he might be more believable as a delusional hermit than a credible threat - and since he never actually gets to demonstrate his mind control techniques before dying in a cave-in, the jury is and will always be still out. He's the Atom's first super-villainous opponent, though, so we'll allow it.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 005: RED, WHITE AND BLUE AND DORIS WEST

(All American Comics 001-071 plus appearances in All-Star, World's Finest, New York World's Fair Comics and Comics Cavalcade, 1939-1946)

They keep coming up, so I might as well spare a word for Red, White and Blue. The concept is simple: three childhood friends, each of whom went into a different branch of the armed forces (and each of whom has a convenient nickname) work for G-2/ US military intelligence to root out enemy plots, most often in partnership with G-2 operative Doris West. Red Dugan (Marine) is their leader, while Whitefield "Whitey" Smith (Army) provides muscle and Heermance B. "Blooey" Blue (Navy) is mainly comic relief.

Their stories are great looking and generally pretty entertaining but if they have one great flaw it's in the character personalities: Whitey and Blooey are both complete comic relief dum-dums, which leaves Red and Doris to do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of moving the actual plot forward, which theoretically works great because they're both portrayed as quite competent, particularly Doris. What really drags a lot of the stories down, though, is Red's constant macho assertions that Doris shouldn't go into danger and his pooh-poohing of her hunches etc as mere womanly fabulation. So many Red, White and Blue stories have an interminable middle portion in which Doris has basically figured everything out and Red refuses to listen to her.

I'm less familiar with the RWB stories that take place after the US enters the war and the boys are deployed. The few I've read from that era take the form of letters home to Doris or one of their parents telling of their war exploits. I'll check back in if there's anything worth writing about there (especially if we eventually learn Red's real first name - secret knowledge).

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 079: THE WASP

(All American Comics 016, 1940)

What makes them a super-villain? He's a master spy called the Wasp who engages in submarine espionage while wearing a tuxedo - basically a checklist of qualifying traits. Unfortunately, that's also the answer to the second question - he's only interesting because of his checklist, just a fleeting antagonist for a throwaway story.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 078: MR GLIB

(All American Comics 011 & 013, 1940)

What makes them a super-villain? He's a guy who kind of looks like Satan (named I.M. Glib, natch) who uses such as invisibility fields and food spoiling chemicals to ransom cities and US Senators. A slam dunk, definitional villain.

What about them is interesting? He's a Golden Age scientific villain who made two appearances and used the same technology in both of them. This is almost unprecedented, I assure you - ordinarily someone who made their first foray into crime with invisibility tech would be sporting a time machine or an army of robots in their second.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 077: THE MASTER

(All American Comics 010, 1940)

The Master, in one of those escapades that causes a lot of trouble for folks who feel compelled to work out what's in continuity and what isn't, briefly took over NYC using an electricity projector, killed hundreds if not thousands of people, and mobilized a full fascist organization before being stopped by G-2 operatives Red, White and Blue and Doris West.

Which, to be fair, is the answer. You have to explain whether or not Namor actually sank the Italian fleet or Batman killed Carl Kruger but there are legions of Golden Age characters whose troublesome exploits can be excised willy-nilly and Red, White and Blue are some of the most thoroughly forgotten of the bunch for all that they appeared in four or five different books at various times during the early 40s.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 002: THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

(All American Comics 025-028, 1941)

On the list of Obscure Comic Book Characters, Hop Harrigan doesn't rate very high. Any discussion of Golden Age comic books will eventually mention the teen aviator whose feature was popular enough to support a fan club, radio serial and movie and also ephemeral enough to have completely disappeared from public consciousness around 1948 CE.

Most writeups of Hop will mention that he adopted a couple of costumed identities over the years, and while I have yet to read any comics featuring him as the Black Lamp, here's the lowdown on his brief time as the Guardian Angel: his pals Prop Wash and Ikky Tinker are recruited by the US Government to act as deniable assets/ air pirates in situations where direct action would cause diplomatic complications, such as a Nazi-coded ambassador fleeing the country with an attaché of documents that the CIA would like to look at, please. Hop is deliberately left out of this scheme because he is a minor.

Inevitably, they get in over their heads on these missions and are recued by the Guardian Angel, who is in reality Hop in disguise, flying an experimental VTOL seaplane that the other two... just forgot that they owned? In any case, the ruse only lasts for a few issues.