MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 159: MISTER X

(All-Star Comics 005, 1941)

Mister X is another team comic overboss, like the Leader before him. Outwardly an unassuming little man, he has managed to gather a wide range of organized crime under his control while remaining completely anonymous, even to his own underlings. His only mistake (and the inciting event of the story) is being so threatened by the crimefighting activities of the Justice Society that he mobilizes his forces in an attempt to kill them even though they have no idea that he actually exists.

Even after they are variously attacked by gangsters, gamblers, car thieves, muscle men, criminal scientists, arsonists and magicians, the Justice Society doesn't actually end up catching Mister X. As seen above, he chooses to turn himself in rather than, say, relocating to South America or attempting to go into finance.

I quite like Mister X. It's hardly a novel idea for a meek little guy to be a secret criminal mastermind - like old ladies, guys like Mister X were accorded so little respect in the popular culture of the 40s that the idea of them being in some way formidable was a cliché long before this comic came to be. It's well executed here, with X being so unassuming that criminals and crimefighters alike are merely nonplussed when he shows up at the scene of crime after crime.

Absolutely the best thing about Mister X, though, is this bit about the moment of silence every time his name comes up around a bunch of crooks. They do it throughout the issue!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 158: THE LEADER

(All-Star Comics 004, 1941)

What makes them a super-villain? Sheer scale! The Leader AKA Fritz Klaver is the top spy for the "dictator nations" in America, commanding units of his subversive Grey-Shirts as well as other less blatant agents in numbers estimated at 30 000. They come real close to saying he's a Nazi, too, but it's about a year out from comics folks being willing to actually do that.

What makes them interesting? The real deal interesting thing about the Leader is that he's the first foe that the Justice Society tackle as a group, establishing the split-up-to-take-on-all-of-the-minions-before-coming-together-to-fight-the-overboss paradigm that would rule team super-hero books for decades to come. Other than that he's your typical fascist spy chief.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 157: THE WIZARD

(All-Star Comics 003, 1940)

This is the kind of super-villain that you see magical heroes taking on a lot more often than other types: the preemptive striker. The likely cause of this is the status of so many magical heroes as the de facto head of Earth's magical security, someone that a bad actor can take out and then be free to act with impunity.

What's interesting about this super-villain? The thing that appeals to me about this guy, who is primarily a user of illusion magic, is the variety of things he throws at Dr Fate: you got your crazed unicorns, some undead Egyptian warriors, a weird tentacle monster and the "Three Witches of Endor" who themselves cast spells at him. It's a nice bit of variety!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 156: OOM THE MIGHTY

(All-Star Comics 003, 1940)

Oom the Mighty is, by his own description, a sort of low-rent Gozer the Gozerian: a murderous entity of the ancient past who has returned to kill again. Only instead of whole civilizations boiling in his belly or what have you, Oom kills a handful of people every full moon - still bad, but not quite as much cosmic terror.

The original appearance of Oom (involving a dimension-hopping battle with the Spectre) maybe kind of implied that he was a spirit that was possessing a bronze grotesque, but later appearances - Oom, like Nyola before him, was Roy Thomased into the Monster Society of Evil in the pages of All-Star Squadron - treat the body as his own, thus introducing the question of why the city of Cliffland New Jersey was festooning their buildings with prehistoric statuary. Whichever is the case, possibly the most interesting thing about Oom is the fact that sometime in the last 30ish years he seems to have made the leap from Justice Society/ Spectre villain to Marvel Family foe, presumably via the Monster Society link.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 155: MAZDA THE GREAT

(All-Star Comics 003, 1940)

Much of the information that we have on Mazda the Great comes from the mouth of one of his dying henchmen at the end of the story, but what reason would he have to lie? According to this man, Mazda was a scientist (I assume a vulcanologist. An enormous one!) who developed both technology to control/ redirect the energies of a volcano and also volcano-proof suits. Thus equipped, he set up shop in the crater of Mount Krakatoa along with his minions, dubbed the Fire Ghosts.

It's a bit unclear whether Mazda actually planned on taking over the world or destroying it - he said destroy while his minion said conquer - but either way, he was chucked into the volcano for his troubles, once Hawkman showed up on the scene.

A lot of reasons to like this fella - I love a huge guy and I love a skull hat, and on a scientist? Beautiful. He also manages to maintain enough gravitas that I always remember him as having a pseudo-noble goal for his conquest/destruction but on further examination it seems that he just has volcano-weaponizing technology and wants to use it.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 154: THE YELLOW-FACED TERROR

(All-Star Comics 002, 1940)

What makes them a super-villain? He's a money-mad maniac who murdered his own brother to steal a radiation-orb called the Life-Taker, which he uses to rob by the simple act of lobbing it into an area and waiting until it has killed any resistance. He also has a pretty great look, achieved via a crust of a sulphur/lead compound which shields him from his own orb's radiations. What he doesn't really have is a name, so I snitched the one used in the above text box.

What's interesting about them? Well, it's a bit debatable but the Sandman might have murdered him. He discovers Wesley Dodds' secret in the course of the adventure and then in the final struggle... it kind of looks like the Sandman arranges for him to be shot through the head a bit more enthusiastically than needed. Maybe.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 153: KULAK

(All-Star Comics 002, 1940)

Kulak is the High Priest of Brztal, which is originally implied to be an ancient lost civilization but I believe is later defined as extra-dimensional in some way. His deal is ostensibly that he is upset that his tomb was disturbed so he is going to destroy humanity, but I don't know that he wasn't just looking for an excuse to flex his magical muscles. He gets up to a lot of fun stuff with disasters - worldwide flooding and riots, plagues of lucusts etc - and summons armies of ancient Brztalan dead to smite his enemy but ultimately is put down again by the Spectre.

In what is going to be an ongoing theme with these one-off All-Star villains, he eventually gets Roy Thomased into the pages of All-Star Squadron to mix it up with the Spectre one more time.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 152: NYOLA

(All-Star Comics 002, 1940)

Nyola is an Aztec priestess of Yum-Chac, the god of rain. As you might expect, the indigenous religions of the Americas are treated with utmost dignity and she is not portrayed as a fanatic who, for example, would kidnap a woman for human sacrifice based on tangential offense done to her faith. Also, Hawkman doesn't then follow her back to Mexico and bring the might of the authorities down on an indigenous religious group that is, yes, killing people but still doesn't quite seem like the right call. Or wouldn't if he had. Which he didn't.

Despite her seeming death at the end of her first appearance she later shows up in the Roy Thomas version of the Monster Society of Evil in All-Star Squadron with actual powers! Guess Yum-Chac is on the list of legit deities in the DCU!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 151: THE GREAT REMEMBO

(All-Star Comics 001, 1940)

100% included here because I enjoy his name. A Vaudeville memory expert turned spy, captured by minor Golden Age adventure guy Biff Bronson.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 150: BELDAME GAFFY & TRYGG

(All-Star Comics 001, 1940)

A couple of magic users, Beldame Gaffy (curse-caster) and Trygg (necromancer) team up to steal the lands that rightfully belong to Trygg's niece and nephew so that he could get rich via a zombie-staffed mining operation. Things go well until Hawkman shows up to explode them to death. Also, these are the first (only?) Welsh super-villains we have (will ever?) encountered!

Ordinarily in a two-person set-up like this I would designate one as the boss and the other as a lieutenant or minion but Gaffy and Trygg really do seem like an equal partnership. Sadly however, only Trygg has made any subsequent appearances, specifically in the 2000s-era Hawkman series. I guess it makes sense that the necromancer would be the one to return from the dead but one must nonetheless mourn the dearth of Beldames in this modern world.

TROPHY ROOM - FLASH

(All-Star Comics 002, 1940)

Not terribly fantastic as trophies go - a run-of-the-mill political boss tries to kill a newspaper publisher - but if the Flash wants a filthy old bullet, he can have it.