MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 837: THE SKULL

(Top-Notch Comics 009, 1940)

 

The Skull is the recurring foe of the Golden Age Black Hood, and as is common for such characters he is a kind of generalist super-villain willing to dabble in everything from theft to kidnapping to espionage to murder as circumstances dictate. He even indulges in a little housebreaking on occasion, and it is while doing so that he is interrupted by police officer Kip Burland, who he frames for the crime and then eventually attempts to have murdered when he refuses to give up on proving himself innocent. 

This of course is the origin of the Black Hood, as Burland recovers and trains under the tutelage of one of the Skulls other victims. Accidentally creating your own nemesis is one of the occupational hazards of being a successful super criminal, after all, and the Skull is so successful as he kind of did it twice, as Kip Burland's mentor is a different lawman who the Skull framed and ruined who swore revenge on him but then took too long preparing and had to be content with weaponizing another to do the deed.

By the time that Kip Burland is prepared to go into action as the Black Hood, the Skull has devised the first of what I now recognize as his signature: an overcomplicated scheme. Specifically, he has targeted the debut/masquerade ball being held for wealthy socialite Barbara Sutton, and has not only informed all of the guests that they must show up in their best jewelry so that he can steal it but has also announced his plans in the papers. I think that the intent is to ensure compliance through fear, but it really seems like he's just introducing ways that his scheme can go wrong.

The Skull's instructions are clear: he will steal the jewels off of the guests during the party and they are to keep quiet about it. None of them manage this, and each victim ends up being killed via a blowgun dart tipped with a poison that turns the human head all green and corpsey. Plus - and this is hard to see but trust me - the dart leaves a little skull-shaped mark at the point of contact.

The Black Hood eventually works out how the Skull is doing all this: he has disguised himself as hostess Mrs Sutton and has been shooting the darts out of a blowgun shaped like a cigarette holder. One dunk in an oversized decorative vase later, the case is solved!

(also please note that the Black Hood is in attendance in costume as himself. It still counts even if this is his first public appearance in costume) 

After the Black Hood turns the Skull in to the police at the end of his first costumed adventure, his ally the Hermit predicts that they will be unable to hold him, and what do you know but he's right. The Skull dramatically breaks jail and immediately puts another overly complicated scheme into action. Major Quentin Duff has invented the unspecified-but-presumably-valuable Iota Ray, and the Skull wants it, but is not prepared to do anything so simple as to steal the plans. Instead, he implements a simple three-part plan:

Step One: ambush Major Duff at his house and murder him just after he hands the Iota Ray plans over to Mrs Duff for safekeeping. 

Step Two: While Mrs Duff and Barbara Sutton are taking the plans from Washington DC via train, kidnap Duff and gaslight Sutton into believing that she was never there. This requires at least a half-dozen confederates as well as an appearance by the Skull as a Dr van Luks, a backward name so annoying that I audibly groaned when I worked it out.

Step Three: Once the plan falls apart, just try to murder everyone and take the plans off of Mrs Duff's body. Please note that this step was an option from the start, and that the theft could have been committed using the Major's gruesome murder as cover.

As 1940 draws to a close, the Skull is left shaking his fist after a speeding train as the Black Hood escapes with the plans. We will see him again in 1941!

SKULL SCORE: A very generous 2/5, considering that this particular Skull isn't actually missing any facial features. The combination of his emaciated face, sunken eyes and perpetual rictus goes a long way nonetheless. Plus he's green.

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 057

Two MLJ Round-Ups in a row! They're just churning out the heroes! 

Galahad:

Hey, it's Galahad! Or rather a version of Galahad who is standing in for a pretty wide array of different Knights of the Round Table with lesser name brand recognition. It's some clean-cut knightly action. (Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940)

Shanghai Sheridan:

Jack "Shanghai" Sheridan, aside from having a sounding like a cheeky nickname for a POW camp, is notable mostly for the fact that he is one of many characters who have "the Batman origin but for...", in this case, the Batman origin but for the Japanese invasion of China. His adventures are nothing particularly special, alas. (Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940)

Firefly:

Oh hey, it's the Firefly, wearing one of the great super-hero costumes of the Golden Age!

The Firefly is really Harley Hudson, a young biochemist who sought to understand the tremendous proportionate strength possessed by insects and found that it was as a result of their "muscular coordination," and further managed to unlock that same power within himself! Now he's on an anti-crime crusade, and I'm not sure if he's able to glow because of his muscular coordination abilities or he just has some phosphorescent paint slapped onto the front of his costume - the brief appearance of the character in the 60s Mighty Crusaders comic suggests the former, but they were also trying to make him some sort of equivalent of the Fireball and Inferno, so I don't know if I'm going to take that as canon. (Top-Notch Comics 008, 1940)

The Firefly also gets around in a "combination airplane and glider" called the Fireflier (or Fireflyer), which is an objectively great name for a subjectively terrible-looking vehicle. (Top-Notch Comics 009, 1940) 

the Black Hood: 

The Black Hood is perhaps the Archie/MLJ super-hero with the greatest number of different versions, both legacy and reboot-style. He also bumps the Wizard out of the top spot in Top-Notch as soon as he appears - someone at MLJ clearly really liked this guy from the start.

This original Black Hood (and a pretty decent percentage of his successors) is named Kip Burland, and he was a New York cop until he attempted to arrest super-villain the Skull while he was doing some crime and ended up framed and then murdered for his troubles. Except the murder didn't take, and Burland was found by an old hermit who nursed him back to health.

In an amazing coincidence, the hermit in question turns out to be a former sheriff who was also framed by the Skull, and who took so long in training for his revenge/redemption that he grew too old for the job. This turns out to be a perfect combination: the Hermit teaches Kip all that he knows, and the Black Hood sallies forth to mete out justice to the Skull. (Top-Notch Comics 009, 1940) 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 638: THE BLACK HOOD

(Fantastic Comics 013, 1940)

Yank Wilson, Super Spy Q-4 (who started out as a near-future character and maybe isn't any more but until I see a clear sign otherwise still is to me) is after Prusslandic spies Karl Wolff and the Black Hood down in Florida and is going about his search with all the subtlety of a character in a point-and-click adventure game. It's his bad luck that the first person he asked was an agent of Prussland Intelligence but it was only a matter of time given his tactic of asking everyone he saw if they had seen any espionage going on.

Lucky for Wilson, the Black Hood is incredibly gullible and accepts him as a fifth columnist named Bruno Schmidt without question (don't worry: Yank crossed his fingers while swearing allegiance to the Fatherland - no need for a court marshal). I was going to make a crack about how even though it was nice to see the Black Hood dressed in what would become the conventional super-villain ensemble unlike so many of our recent entrants it was in fact completely unnecessary because he is obviously Karl Wolff, but I say was because Yank Wilson does not in fact put two and two together until he is told directly that it is four.

Yank is pretty swiftly uncovered as a US intelligence agent by Count von Heindorff, the one spy in the entire story who bothered to pay attention in espionage school, leading to a whole lot of malarkey and gunplay and a final airplane chase that spells the end of both von Heindorff and the Black Hood.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 358: THE BLACK HOOD

(Master Comics 018, 1941) 

Okay, I am a big fan of the Black Hood. Let's count down the reasons:

One: very exciting to see the classic super-suit being worn in the early days of suits and robes. This look won't take long to become ubiquitous once it catches on but it's still pretty rare in 1941.

Two: not only is he a fashion pioneer but he is a thought leader in the field of henchman couture. Dressing your guys in a slightly worse version of your own costume (in this case bright rather than dark blue) is a surefire move in the villain game and it's going to be a while before we see it with any kind of regularity.

Three: The Black Hood is introduced as El Carim's arch-enemy, despite never having appeared before' and there are allusions to El Carim having broken up "four of his best rackets" etc. Implied lore is admittedly an easy way to build up a story's interest but I guess I'm a sucker for it.

About the only real criticism I have for the Black Hood is for all that he has experience battling El Carim (potentially years of experience, depending on the rate at which he sets up rackets) he is entirely unprepared to deal with Carim's dank majiks. His approach is a completely straightforward trap and kill attempt and it goes very badly. A real shame.

Nonetheless. regular costumed crooks like the Black Hood are the backbone any supercrime economy and he or his heirs should be BRUNG BACK post haste.