MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 400: THE HOOK

(More Fun Comics 072, 1941)

The Hook is in reality cannery cwner Rand Greer, who has a lucrative sideline in smuggling jewels inside of frozen fish (and a less lucrative hobby of murdering FBI agents).

To justify the name, Greer has a hook hand concealed under a fake plastic hand (a pretty good one honestly - I reckon he's holding a fish with it in the first image). There's really nothing to this guy and I'd ordinarily banish him to the ranks of the generic villains if only to have a bit more excitement in entry number 400, but this marks the last appearance of Captain Desmo and I must say I'll miss him. Truly he was the best of the pilot/ adventurers, even if his foes weren't always worth writing home about.

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 008

 

The Scar was a spymaster encountered and captured by adventurer Biff Bronson and maybe if he dressed like that all of the time he'd have an entry of his own but no, he had just left the opera. (More Fun Comics 067, 1941)

This bunch work for the villainous Count Parla and his pal Eddie in a classic case of "work your way into polite society in order to set up a big score". If there's a non-evil Count in comics I have yet to encounter him. Beaten up by Captain Desmo in a rare unhelmeted appearance. (More Fun Comics 069, 1941) 

This unnamed fellow got up to all kinds of hijinks on a train, including murder, espionage and impersonating a conductor. Seen here inadvertently unmasking a crossdressing thief - it was a very busy adventure for Captain Desmo. (More Fun Comics 070, 1941)

Johnny Quick's first outing features one of my favourite comic book things: a series of vignettes of prior cases to establish Johnny's bona fides vis-a-vis crimefighting. Two of the adventures in question involve what would almost certainly have been Minor Super-Villain entries if they were featured players, so here's to you, the Pharaoh's Mummy and the Murderous Musician (and the Money-Mad Miser, not pictured) (More Fun Comics 071, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 390: DR MAUSE

(More Fun Comics 067-068, 1941)

On paper I should love Dr Mause, a weird little creep who preys on Allied shipping for his legally-distinct-from-German masters using not only an "electroblast ray" but a cool floating island base, but in practise he leaves me cold. I'm glad he gets captured by Captain Desmo, see if I'm not.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 383: THE VOODOO KING

(More Fun Comics 066, 1941) 

The Voodoo King is nothing special: a colonial administrator in the the Kangean Islands of Indonesia (meaning that he is probably our first Dutch super-villain), he uses his weird getup and knowledge of chemistry to scare off iron miners so that he can steal the diamonds that are also abundant in the mine. Too bad for him that the mine owner is friends with pilot/ adventurer Captain Desmo and so he gets his clock cleaned.

By far the best thing and also the biggest disappointment about the Voodoo King are the spooky speaker-equipped scarecrows that he uses to scare off the miners - they are very cool looking but I keep thinking that they are weird wicker robots and then getting sad when I remember that they are inanimate.

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 007

The hits keep on coming:

This Fellow's name is Becker and he and his wife run a gang while pretending to be among its victims. An okay scheme, but not really up to foiling Bulletman and Bulletgirl. (Master Comics 014, 1941)

This guy here is why I have such a hard time relegating masked Western bandits to the dregs of the generic costumed villains: he's as by-the-numbers a bandit as they come, he robs one stagecoach total, he ends up dying because he falls off his horse... but he is frequently and consistently referred to a "Alkali, the Scourge of the Plains" which is as endearing as it is possible to be. (Master Comics 019, 1941)

I'm overlooking the fact that this bundist-style not-exactly-German spy encountered by Miss America doesn't actually wear a costume because a) he's called the Leader, b) he lives in a wax museum and c) he has a pet gorilla named Gargo. (Military Comics 002, 1941)

Captain Rajah, AKA the Master, was a jewel thief who ran up against Captain Desmo, in a story even more weirdly pro-colonial than Captain Desmo stories usually are - Captain Rajah is immediately suspicious for being an Indian officer in the Bengal Lancers, continued to be suspected throughout and then turned out to be the Master. The story is from before the invention of "defying expectations". (More Fun Comics 065, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 106: THE SOCIETY OF ASSASSINS

(More Fun Comics 053-057, 1940)

Comic books love the Order of Assassins - it's a ready-made group tough enough to tackle most heroes, plus they're all foreign and such. They crop up all over the place - it's like that thing where so many remnants of Atlantis exist that it's hard to imagine that anyone died, but instead when the power of the Assassins was shattered each individual member went off and founded their own new Order.

This bunch of Assassins operated out of Algiers (but also Bombay, because as noted previously the creative team behind Captain Desmo had a fairly shaky grasp on the geographical distinction between India and North Africa) and caused a lot of trouble for Captain Desmo and his pal Gabby until, in a moment of poor judgement, they captured them and took them to their HQ.

If I was the Grand Assassin of Algiers I simply would not rig my mountain fastness with explosives and leave the trigger in an easily accessible location.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 001: CAPTAIN DESMO

 (New Adventure Comics 026-More Fun 072, 1938-1941)

Captain Desmo is a pretty standard Golden Age adventure character: together with his pal Gabby McGuire, the Brooklyn Terror, he jaunts around the world (mostly in Asia), getting into scraps with colonized people on behalf of white folks. 

The only thing that really makes him stand apart (aside from the fact that he's a WWI vet, making him a generation older than most Golden Age protagonists) is illustrated in the moderately homoerotic exchange above: Captain Desmo is kind of always in costume, which kind of makes him part of the "bridge between pulp hero and super-hero" crew, like early Crimson Avenger, early Sandman or the various guys like the Clock or the Mouthpiece who ran around in suits and domino masks in the early days.

The final interesting thing about Captain Desmo is that he never actually got around to explaining just why he wore his goggles an helmet at all times, which I respect.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 011: THE MASKED MAN

 (Adventure 032, 1938)

British Army officer who lined his own pockets supplying rebels in India. Fought Captain Desmo, a masked aviator whose comics were on the whole drawn as if they took place in North Africa even though quite a lot of them were set in India - not so uncommon a type of thing to happen in all the various times before reference materials became as easy to access as they are now.

Anyway: the Masked Man. Fairly unremarkable, although it is interesting to note just how unsettling a domino mask can be when it's made out of what looks like leather.