MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 208: THE TERROR

(Crack Comics 018, 1941)

Not too much to distinguish this guy: he's Bumps Bale, a former pinball racketeer (you're just as likely to see Batman smashing up a bunch of pinball machines as an underground casino or a slot machine in the 40s. Gambling is Bad and Pinball is Gambling, was the attitude) who had hit hard times and decided to go into extorting mayors as a second career. Accordingly, he poisoned city comptroller Ezra Daves and promised Unnamed Mayor here some of the same if one million dollars in small bills was not produced post haste. Sadly for the Terror, the Clock got involved.

I do have to say that I appreciate the cowl-style mask that the Terror is sporting. Personally I find it far more aesthetically pleasing than the executioner's hoods and cloth draperies that have been more the norm thusfar.

(also for those keeping track this is presumably the mayor who took over after the Big Shot was ousted, placing him somewhere on a very spicy alternate Wikipedia page for List of Mayors of New York City)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 201: THE WEREWOLF

(Crack Comics 015, 1941) 

I love the Werewolf, and here's a list of the things I love about him:

-His name: He has the unlikely handle of Prescott Taunton. A minor point but a good one.

-His motivation: Prescott is a writer. Specifically, he wrote a book about lycanthropy and then shopped it around enough to get rejected at least seven times. And then he started murdering the people who rejected his work.

-His ambiguous lycanthropy: Is he a werewolf or just nuts? In the real world the answer would be the latter, but in a comic book universe there's room for the kind of low-grade feral human style of lycanthropy that appears to be on display here, which I love. He does seem to have undergone some minor physical changes so I'm inclined to believe that he's the real deal.

-His ease of capture: Though he puts up a bit of a fight and manages to flee his penthouse lair when the Clock and his pal Pug show up, it's a very short reprieve as he doesn't even make it to a proper second location, being knocked out in one punch on the street below.

It's been a while since I said that a villain should be BRUNG BACK but I'm saying it now - homicidal sensitive-to-rejection possible werewolf writer is a fun villain hook! Lift the story entirely and give it to the Creeper or someone!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 199: THE CRAB

(Crack Comics 013, 1941)

The Crab here is a prime example of the gang boss who goes just over the top enough - and has a good enough moniker - to make the jump to full super-villain.

His plan - hold the city to ransom for 5 million bucks, then blow up the first ambush the cops set for him to show he means business - is sufficiently out there, and he adds some flourishes like taunting the police via skywriting, but the thing that really does it is his signature: 

It's a little crab, oh my god

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 002

Another collection of those middling muddlers who didn't quite make it to the minor leagues: the generic costumed villains!

Silas Greer here tried to kill his own nephew to get his fortune but was walloped by the Clock (and the Orchid!) for his troubles. (Crack Comics 002, 1940)

A gentleman with the unlikely name of Trag dressed up in this unusual mask in an attempt to frame a guy with the only slightly less unusual name of Doctor Prowl before Madam Fatal put the kibosh on him. (Crack Comics 008, 1940)

This here fella was the secret head of a protection racket shaking down all of the laundries in town. Scientific sleuth Wizard Wells knew it was one of the laundry owners behind the mask but not which one. Surprising nobody, it was the one named Natas. (Crack Comics 009, 1941)

Behind this mask is one General Korn, who responded to the US government not buying his remote bomb detonator by first blowing up part of Washington DC and then trying to explode the US Senate itself. But little did he know that Black Condor was on that senate, so he got caught post haste. (Crack Comics 013, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 194: THE SCREW

(Crack Comics 009, 1941)

I'll be honest: the Screw is about as generic as it gets. He's a hooded gang boss who runs a protection racket and just so happens to turn out to be the very head of the Chamber of Commerce who has been pressuring the police to take care of this awful Screw Gang. Pretty regular costumed villain stuff: his only real point of distinction is his fairly cool name.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 192: STUPORMAN

(Crack Comics 008, 1940) 

Kind of a weird and somewhat problematic case - Stuporman, like the Largest Man in the World before him, is a superhuman man of limited intelligence who is used as a living weapon by crooks until being killed by the hero of the piece, in this case the Clock. He comes from Mongolia, which is, like, the most remote and mysterious place that 1940s comics writers could think of.

Frankly, the only real reason I include Stuporman is his name, which is clearly a dig at Quality Comics' Distinguished Competition, particularly in an adventure of the Clock, occasionally advertised as the "oldest and best comic book character." And now he has defeated the big dumb strongman! He has won!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 191: THE DEVIL

(Crack Comics 007, 1940) 

There is no textual evidence for this, but since this guy is dressed exactly like the unnamed boss of the Skull Gang (plus some rad horns) and uses the very similar tactic of dosing his minions (the Robbers from Hades - good name) with toxins that make them all shriveled and weird (and in this case more pliable and obedient), I like to think that it's the same guy back for another shot at making his fortune in the crime boss game, albeit without taking the very sensible precaution of, say, switching cities or otherwise trying to avoid the Clock. This time, alas, he meets his end, so we won't be treated to a green-hooded man with a tail leading squads of Demonic Monkey Marauders, or a green-hooded man with a tinfoil halo commanding his Larceny Angels. Sad days.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 188: THE SKULL GANG

(Crack Comics 006, 1940)

What makes them a super-villain (group)? They're a gang of thieves who are so devoted to this generic hooded guy that they all take small doses of arsenic to give themselves an emaciated skeletal appearance! The penalty for not thieving enough is death! What a dumb thing to dedicate your life to! Absolutely they qualify as a team of very stupid super-villains.

SKULL SCORE: 1/5 Bald guys with gritted teeth just don't cut the mustard, I'm afraid.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 186: THE JAY BIRD

(Crack Comics 005, 1940) 

The Jay Bird is one of my favourite minor super-villains of all time, I reckon. He's just a guy in a bird mask with a gimmick that is simultaneously very simple and far too complex and dangerous: he simulates flight via a very long tether that is dangling him from a plane. Thus equipped, he swoops down and robs various targets on the streets of New York City, quipping all the time. He's great!

The real unsung hero here has to be his pilot, Spike, for managing to not smear the Jay Bird across a skyscraper the first time they tried this. What a guy! Sadly he was killed in the Jay Bird's encounter with the Clock.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 184: THE ASP

(Crack Comics 004, 1940)

What makes them a super-villain? Any number of things! The Asp is a jewel thief who taunts his victims/ the police ahead of time and then arranges for seemingly impossible murders using time-delayed poisons. He's a weird creep who hisses all the time and almost manages to kill the Clock. And yet... it's all a little perfunctory. I saw someone on the DC wikia editorialize about how the Asp's MO was similar to the Joker's first appearance, and they aren't wrong, but where the Joker had a little room to breathe and establish himself over the course of 3 or 4 crimes, the poor Asp is dead and gone after just one.

NOTES: OCTOBER 2022

The Clock flatlines himself in order to solve a murder by speaking to the victim in the afterlife. (Crack Comics 010, 1941) 

Decoration:

Jaspar Crow's got a monogrammed wastecan! (Crack Comics 016, 1941)

Dr Foster's got a monogrammed lampshade! (Crack Comics 017, 1941)

Names: Tor the Magic Master encounters a counterfeiter with the unlikely name Phrogg Zaarn.

One of the victims of Clock foe the Werewolf is named A.B. Ceedee.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 019: THE CLOCK

(Funny Picture Stories/ Funny Pages/ Feature Comics/ Crack Comics, 1936-1944)

The Clock has the distinction of probably being the earliest masked crimefighter and definitely that of being the earliest one to stick around, which would make him the earliest super-hero if Dr Occult hadn't made his debut in 1935. A lot of the details about him are fairly cliché, both because they were cribbed from existing pulp clichés and because the Clock helped define the clichés of the genre.

So: Brian O'Brien is a wealthy playboy who puts on a tuxedo and mask and fights crime at night. He leaves calling cards for his foes, is often thought to be a criminal himself and is friends with police Captain Kane in his civilian identity while enjoying a somewhat fraught relationship with him while masked.

Over the years the Clock has a few different associates - above find Pug Brady, a down-on-his-luck guy who happens to look just like Brian O'Brien. They team up for a couple of years until Pug is unceremoniously chucked for a tough orphan girl named Butch about whom I know almost nothing, so it's a bit of a qualified statement when I say that by far my favourite member of the Clock family is the Orchid:

The Orchid appears a handful of times and her gimmick is that she is also a crimefighter, and one who is slightly more on-the ball than the Clock: she may know his secret identity, she can always get a message to him and most of the time she disappears at the end of a case, with the exception of the time she was distracted by her own kidnap-victim father. The Orchid only makes a handful of appearances but she's a winner in my books: bring her back, I say - fold her into the backstory of the Black Orchid!

So: the Clock is a solid Golden Age strip. Sadly, he will likely never see the light of day again. DC owns roughly seven dozen masked adventurers in suits and included in that number is Midnight, who would be a straight palette-swap of the Spirit if they had bothered to give him a different-coloured suit. Thusfar, he's the one they pull out in the rare cases that a suited crimefighter who isn't early Sandman is required, while the Clock and the Mouthpiece and Destiny and Just n' Right and Devil's Dagger and Diamond Jack and Cosmo, Phantom of Disguise all twiddle their thumbs in purgatory.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 182: THE BIG SHOT

(Crack Comics 001, 1940)

A series of facts about Golden Age super-hero comics:

-most of them take place in cities

-they are either set in a specific location (e.g. Wonder Woman being in Washington DC or the Red Bee in Superior City) or an unidentified large city

-in the latter case, over time the city acquires characteristics that either lead to it becoming its own thing (e.g. Batman's unidentified large city becomes Gotham) or being identified as New York City

Now there are plenty of exceptions to this (Superman starts out in Cleveland which quickly becomes Metropolis; plenty of Golden Age heroes didn't stick around for their location to gel, etc etc) but it does happen a fair amount and it leads to situations like the above, wherein the Clock, who lives in an unidentified large city clearly based on NYC, arrests crimelord the Big Shot and learns that he is in fact Mayor Kozer! And then over the years it becomes more and more clear that Clock stories are set in New York and you end up with an alternate history of the office of Mayor of New York City in which Fiorello la Guardia is presumably repeatedly ousted from office only to be reelected following the various Evil Mayor Arrested by Vigilante scandals. This is the sort of thing that really gets my heartrate up!

Anyway: the Big Shot, folks.

EDIT TO ADD:

This isn't even the first Mayor of NYC that the Clock is responsible for the arrest of: one year earlier he helped send Mayor Tull up the river! (Feature Comics 022, 1939)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 099: THE REAPER

(Feature Comics 029, 1940)

What makes them a super-villain? The Reaper is another just-scraping-into-the-ranks gang boss. Between his cool name and a setup where he gives his gang orders through a closed-circuit TV and microphone, he makes that final leap, presumably into a slightly higher security prison cell.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 018: THE OWL

(Feature Funnies 007, 1938)

Our first Quality Comics super-villain! Otherwise, not very interesting - he doesn't even wear the mask in the story, just tries to frame the Clock and finds out how far that kind of thing gets you in the comic book game.