MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 010

We have mad scientists at criminal scientist prices.

Dr Koch is one of the many people hungry to get their hands on the secret vitamin supplement that turned the Champ (derogatory) into the Champ (aspirational) after its creator Dr Marlin is murdered. Koch's mild claim to fame is the fact that he's the first one to get ahold of the formula long enough to do anything with it. What he did, specifically, was to mix up a big batch and pump it directly into a poor guy named Cris, thus turning him into a lumpy rage-filled monster-man.

Koch gets away at the end of his encounter with the Champ and his little pal Henry (Cris sadly does a header off a cliff) but characters later in the story talk about him as if he's dead. Dead or hiding out in a cave in Mexico: either way he's not bothering the Champ any more. (Champ Comics 011, 1940)

Dr Bolms (excuse me, Doktar Bolms) here is a mere gangland plastic surgeon, which was enough to draw the attention of Secret Agent Z-2 here but not necessarily enough to draw ours. What really sets him apart from his peers is the fact that he has captured a government agent named Monty Wood and has been practising facial surgeries on him. Horrible! (Crash Comics Adventures 001, 1940)

Dr Sax is a doctor/spy who needs Tornado Tom's good good blood to rejuvenate his spy chief, but since he's an evil man he is determined to take all of his blood instead of just some of it. (Cyclone Comics 005, 1940)

These youngsters are the Space Rovers, Jane and Ted, a coupla youths who were forced to flee in Jane's father's spaceship rather than have it and its ray cannons fall into the hands of enemy spies and now just kind of ping pong around the Solar System in the hopes of getting home. Their first port of call is Mercury, where they have the misfortune of meeting the Mercurians of Thian, who only live twenty years, are mad about it and thanks to their head scientist Flaedo here have exactly one proposed solution: capture longer-lived beings and vivisect them.

I love his little mustache! Don't worry, he gets electrocuted in the Space Rovers' escape. (Exciting Comics 002, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 571: THE YELLOW SPIDER

(Champion Comics 004, 1940)

Champion Comics 003 featured the murder of the Champ's mentor Dr Marlin and at the conclusion of that adventure the blame for Marlin's death seemed to rest squarely on the shoulders of his assistant Dr Katsu. Champion Comics 004, however, introduces a further development: Katsu was in fact working for a greater mastermind, the Yellow Spider!

(and here I'm going to contrast my usual delight at a villainous note signed with a little cartoon with my deep sighs as I say that yes, the Yellow in Yellow Spider is 100% a racist thing. Early Champion Comics issues are even more comfortable with using racist tropes for their villains than the rest of the comics industry, and that's saying something)

The Yellow Spider is big on indirect action. Beyond employing goons to do his dirty work he also uses engine-killing rays and cuts in on radio and telephone signals to orchestrate events at a distance, such as his successful kidnapping of the Champ here, followed by his doing a solid for the unnamed police officer who was supposed to be driving him around.

The Champ is brought to the Yellow Spider's dirigible/ base, where he eventually learns that the Spider is in fact this one little guy who has popped up a couple of times previously as an agent of what turns out to be himself. It's not explicit but quite possible he wants formula because he is puny (spoiler: much later it turns out that Dr Katsu pulled a double cross and had the formula all along. This Yellow Spider/ Champ beef is all a huge waste of everyone's time).

As the Champ was summarily evicted from the Yellow Spider's dirigible at the end of issue 4, Champion Comics 005 is almost entirely concerned with busywork. To whit:

-the Champ learns to fly a plane

-the Champ and his pal Bird Kelly attack the dirigible, too late remember about the engine killing ray and are knocked out of the sky

-the Champ travels back to Midwest University to talk to a ray expert

-the ray expert is stranded on a mountain; the Champ must go rescue him

-in consultation with the expert, the Champ crafts ray shielding for his plane

-the Champ and Bird Kelly go back up in a now-shielded plane

-the Champ STILL has to go on the dirigible and wreck the ray because it also explodes gunpowder and they only brought grenades for some reason

-the Champ hops back over to his plane and explodes the dirigible, killing the Yellow Spider

I will say that the Champ expressing some remorse over having killed an evil man (or at least not being up to watching the carnage) is a real departure for the Golden Age. Lotta righteous killing going on back then.

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 012

They just keep on coming.

the Champ:

The Champ is Captain America if Dr Erskine was a nutritionist rather than a... biologist? Biochemist? Whatever Dr Erskine was a doctor of. A sickly, bullied boy, the Champ (no other name given) was so-called by his bullies because he won at nothing. Scientist Dr Marlin, pitying the Champ, provides him with an experimental food supplement that over a period of seven years transforms him into a physical and mental paragon, the Champ of everything. (I really appreciate the writing on the description of the supplement - one could almost suspect that someone behind the scenes was considering a merchandising spin-off)

Though the Champ tangles with spies and the like he is at his essence a college athlete character and so a lot of his stories are concerned with the surprisingly high-stakes world of betting on and rigging varsity level athletics, which is... not the most exciting subject matter for a comic. (Champion Comics 002, 1939)

the Golden Knight:

The Golden Knight is a heroic Crusader, a fairly popular genre of historical hero in the Golden Age and one that is very much out of favour now. He'll probably come up again because he operates in an even more heightened comic book reality version of the Crusades than most of his peers, as evidenced by his first adventure, in which he stumbles upon what amounts to a group of Saracen Fifth Columnists lurking in an underground fortress in the English countryside.

The Golden Knight (aka Sir Richard of Warwick) is also notable for the nonchalance with which he receives a vision of a sword-bearing lady in a one-piece swimsuit telling him to go to war. Unflappable, we call it. (Fantastic Comics 001, 1939)

UPDATE 1940

the Arrow:

The Arrow, a very early costumed hero indeed, is simply an enormous guy in a hoodie (I mean, it's basically a hoodie) who alternately kills criminals with a bow and arrow and threatens to do so to get what he wants. I have a slightly outsized level of affection for him because he approaches superheroics like I do an open world game like Skyrim.

The Arrow does eventually get a more super-heroic look (roman sandal style lacing on his shins, a belt) and about the same time he gets shunk down to more average human proportions, possibly because the idea of a roughly seven foot guy with a carefully guarded secret identity was getting hard to write around. (Funny Pages v2 010, 1938)

UPDATES: 1940 

Mister Midnite:

Mister Midnite is Neal Carruthers III, a wealthy sportsman who dresses up in a tuxedo and domino mask to fight crime, with a watch face set to midnight as his calling card and the police on his tail. The only thing that really sets him apart from the horde of other besuited vigilantes is his weirdo power, which is that he can shout "stop, time!" and cause clocks to stop. Although in rereading the first Mister Midnite story again... he might just be able to stop that one clock in that one clock tower? It's a dumb and bizarrely specific power and Mister Midnite is just lucky that I find that kind of thing charming. (Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)

UPDATE 1940 (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)