MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 806: THE SCOURGE

(The Funnies 050, 1940)

The Scourge is a bandit chief operating in the nonspecific Medieval-pastiche England of the Black Knight, and let me tell you, he is a terrific villain. His amazing look is one thing - just how many Golden Age villains have the confidence to use eye makeup to accentuate their air of menace? - but on top of that I have seldom seen a villain so eager and joyful to torture a peasant woman. Just an amazingly hateable guy, with a really top-notch crew of evil oafs to boot.

Though the poor woman's husband and sons set out to avenge her, they prove no match for the Scourge and his band of ruffians, and it falls to the Black Knight and a local hunk to get the job done. 

It does of course turn out that a good look and a bad attitude will only take you so far, particularly when your follow-up to a a successful heist is to get drunk in the woods for a week straight. The Black Knight and his unnamed and shirtless assistant make quick work of the lot of them once they are able to approach them on equal footing, and the Scourge meets his end by the Black Knight's Blade.

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 053

They really do just keep coming. 

**Update** The Arrow:

While the Arrow has always been portrayed as a mysterious seven-foot-tall physical prodigy, this particular adventure really goes all in on his being super-humanly strong. This seems significant somehow, even if it is is second-to-last appearance, by my reckoning. (The Arrow 002, 1940)

**UPDATE** the Flame: 

This is the first actual version of the Flame's origin that I've encountered in a comic book, so here it is. This is actually the first time that I've encountered the notion of baby the Flame being proclaimed as the Grand High Lama. It's a weird detail! (The Flame 001, 1940)

Phantasmo: 

And speaking of the ancient secrets of Tibet...

Phantasmo! He spent 25 years in Tibet learning mystic secrets and now he's returned to the US to mete out supernatural justice! Phantasmo! His main deal is that he can project his astral body and that in that form he is basically omnipotent! Phantasmo! He can grow, shrink, heal, kill, he is an invulnerable and infinitely strong magic man! Phantasmo! He does have one key weakness: while his astral form is out and about, his physical body is vulnerable, so teenaged Whizzer McGee tags along on his adventures to watch over it! Phantasmo!

Thanks to a combination of an already fairly minimal costume combined with his transparent nature and some odd colour choices, Phantasmo is possibly also the nudest Golden Age super-hero, at least in his cover appearances. (The Funnies 045, 1940)

the Black Knight: 

A young village blacksmith who first helps the Good King Victor of England when his leg is broken in a boar hunt and then goes on to foil several simultaneous attempts on the monarch's life, the unnamed youth receives the customary reward for doing an excellent job: additional responsibilities. The Black Knight acts as a sort of state-sanctioned vigilante, rooting out evil among the chivalry of England.

And speaking of England, the more history-minded of you might have noted that "Good King Victor of England" I mentioned as being very much not an actual British monarch. This raises the question of just when the Black Knight stories are set: it's broadly Medieval (5th to 15th Centuries), operating under the Chivalric Code (12th to 15th Centuries), the King has a Damascus steel sword (post 10th to 11th Century), there is talk of doctors being fairly available (13th Century at earliest)... so what does all this add up to? Absolutely nothing. The Black Knight exists in a pastiche of knight-haunted England that is as historical as your average retelling of the Arthurian mythos, and in fact the whole thing would be a lot neater is Victor were actually Arthur. We must work with what we have, I suppose. (The Funnies 046, 1940) 

ADDENDUM: I wrote this before I had read the last couple of Black Knight stories for 1940, and immediately after posting it I cracked open The Funnies 049, featuring a tale in which the Black Knight helps defend Cornwall (becomes part of England proper around the 10th to 11th Century) from a force of Huns (4th to 6th Centuries) and their enslaved Viking (8th to 11th Centuries) crew, and let me tell you I was relieved. 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 402: THE BLACK KNIGHT

(More Fun Comics 073, 1941)

As our tale begins, a figure in black knight's armour roams New York City, destroying statuary seemingly at random.

Johnny Quick soon gets involved and ferrets out a link between the destroyed pieces: they all once belonged to a man implausibly named Black Knight, who went bankrupt and was forced to sell them. The statues turned out to be worth a great deal more than Knight paid for them and the prevailing theory is that he has returned for revenge.

In actual fact it was the art dealer, Sam Kirby, who was behind the attacks. He had swindled not only Black Knight but his customers as well, by selling them fakes, and was now trying to cover up this fact via what turns out to be a remote-controlled automaton. 

QUESTIONS NOT ANSWERED IN THE TEXT:

Was the guy's name really Black Knight? The Golden Age Comics Style Guide usually recommended signposting nicknames quite heavily and since he wasn't referred to as "Black" Knight we just have to assume that one or both of his parents were real pranksters.

What was Sam Kirby's deal? As presented, he didn't fleece Knight so much as not retroactively compensate him once the real value of the statues came out. But why did he sell the collectors counterfeits? Why destroy the counterfeits and keep the originals? Did he just want to own the real ones or was he planning to sell them a second time? Why go to all of this trouble? And speaking of that...

What's with the robot? I tend to go on about villains using technology that could make them a large fortune in order to acquire a small fortune but this is really egregious. I'm not even going to look up how much you could get for a really good statue before saying that a bipedal remote-controlled robot with full human articulation is orders of magnitude more valuable to industry. Mining! Manufacturing! Hazardous materials handling! The applications are endless!