MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 539 UPDATE: THE CLAW (1941 PART 1: THE CLAW VS DAREDEVIL)

The Claw simply has too many appearances in 1941 and if we covered them all in one post it would be exceptionally long. Thus, we are breaking things up into three chunks. The first and longest of these chunks concerns the Claw battling his most famous opponent, the Daredevil, across five issues of Silver Streak Comics.

The Claw is now firmly established as being based in Tibet and he has a brand new headquarters: a cool skull-shaped castle. He also has a new goal, to invade and conquer the United States, and to that end he uses a combination of a drilling machine and the labour of his horde of undifferentiated fanatical Asian followers (a hoary old racist trope when this comic was published in 1941 and one that crops up again to this day). I was all set to clown on the Claw for going under the Atlantic rather than the Pacific but then I checked on a map and it seems that it is in fact 5000 km shorter to go that way.

The Claw's initial approach to conquering the US is to use simple shock and awe to cow the nation into surrender. He attacks New York City in his giant form and employs an underground generator to fire lightning bolts from his fingers in a way that I don't quite understand. Is the Claw shooting lightning and the generator merely draws it downward or is the generator solely responsible for the bolts? Either way, New York takes a real beating - so much so that the next issue features a short segment on how it gets put back together again.

It is at this point that the Daredevil, long established as a New Yorker, steps in. He busts up the lightning generator and beats up the ground troops that the Claw had sent in to pillage the town, then engages the Claw himself. This first battle between them ends when a temporarily-ingested Daredevil drops a stick of dynamite down the Claw's throat and the villain retreats in a puff of smoke.

The Claw returns Silver Streak Comics 008 with the maximum degree of subtlety that he appears to be capable of exercising. In an excellent initial plan, he mind control the President (and possibly other government officials) and begins shaping government policy through him. The only major flaw in this plan is the fact that the Claw is constitutionally unable to operate at anything but full throttle, and so he essentially speedruns totalitarianism with a series of reforms designed to impoverish the nation and curtail personal freedom.

It is only at the point that armed guards are preventing people from going to church that the Daredevil once again takes a hand and exposes the fact that FDR is a mind-controlled thrall. The reins of government are passed off to the Vice-President - presumably Henry A. Wallace, given the publication date - and the Claw is so annoyed by this that he has his men begin to systematically loot US cities including Boston, Philadelphia and Washington.

Daredevil manages to play on the Claw's pride and goad him into single combat at a normal human size, which ends in the Claw being beaten up so badly that he is no longer able to access his powers and is easily slung into jail.

Silver Streak Comics 009: With the Claw in jail, powerless and scheduled for execution in one week's time, Bart "the Daredevil" Hill decides that, having saved the entire nation on two separate occasions, it's high time that he take a vacation. So resolved, he hops a yacht for the South Seas and some fishing.

This proves to be a grave mistake, as the charge of the electric chair is just what the Claw needs to be revitalized. In short order, he breaks jail and sets out with his fellow prisoners, now joined up with him as a criminal army, to make yet another attempt to take over the US. 

The Claw and his new followers retreat to an extinct volcano in the Rockies and there found a criminal city, which is a concept that I personally have a great deal of affection for and am very pleased whenever I encounter. There, the Claw develops another comic book classic, the engine-killing ray, and uses it to systematically lure and capture US military aircraft until he holds absolute air superiority over the North American continent.

(about here is when Daredevil II, aka Bart Hill's unnamed and unmourned brother, makes his run at the Claw and is moderately ceremoniously killed)

Using his overwhelming air might, the Claw forces the US - possibly still under Vice-Presidential control, which would go far to help FDR's legacy in light of what happens next - to surrender to his rule. The newly-proclaimed Emperor of America is without effective opposition, having captured the original Daredevil when he deigned to return from his vacation. The modest crime city in the Rockies grows into a bustling new capitol city of the USA over the multiple months that the Claw is in control of the country.

Having achieved his goal, the Claw enacts a nationwide search for an appropriate consort, finally settling on a luckless young woman to be his unwilling Empress of America. This backfires almost immediately, as the new Empress uses the freedom of her position to sabotage the execution of Daredevil and then escape with him on a handy motorcycle.

Daredevil returns, of course, and in swift order tricks the Claw into stomping his foot hard enough to set off the dormant volcano under his city, thus destroying it, his criminal army and seemingly himself (and probably a lot of political prisoners and rejected Empress of America candidates, too). The Nation is safe!

Silver Streak Comics 011: Having repeatedly met defeat at the hands of one man, the Claw grows somewhat discouraged and so turns to the dark arts for aid, and specifically turns to the "genii" Lucifer, to whom he claims to have already sold his soul. A few things about all this:

Why call him a genii and not a demon? No idea. If this comic were produced in the mid 50s or the mid 80s I might say that it was an attempt to avoid the scrutiny of moral crusaders, but nobody else in 1941 is shy about calling a demon a demon.

Did this Lucifer stuff ever come up before? It did not and furthermore will not come up again. The Claw has used magic in the past, however, so I guess we must assume that he gained that power through selling his soul.

If Lucifer already has the Claw's soul then what's in this deal for him? Lucifer seems to accept the Claw's proposal out of mere caprice. Perhaps he looks forward to seeing more chaos being inflicted on the world. The only payment he extracts from the Claw is a stipulation that if he does not defeat Daredevil this time then he will be "banished to Asia," which I read as some sort of mystic travel restriction.

Flush with new power, the Claw challenges the Daredevil to a battle to the death and enhances the challenge by attacking the country with various demonic genii entities. How can Daredevil hope to prevail?

With relative ease, as it turns out. The Claw's monstrous minions might be dangerous but, like all of us,  are vulnerable to the awesome might of an avalanche, while the Claw, weakened and abandoned by his demonic genii ally, once again falls prey to a Daredevil right hook. The Daredevil and the USA are free of the Claw forever!

(in actuality the Claw and Daredevil meet up one last time, in Daredevil Comics 001, aka Daredevil Battles Hitler, though the Claw never knows that Daredevil is there. In the story, the Claw has made a pact with Hitler to aid the Japanese in their conquest of China and Daredevil employs subterfuge and sabotage to set the two villains against one another. Also, the Claw absolutely returns to the US - I guess that's what comes of going with a genii instead of a demon for your fell curses)

And one last thing that didn't fit anywhere else: though the Claw is a long-time size changer, this is the year that he demonstrates the ability to selectively grow parts of his body, seen here in Silver Streak Comics 009.

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 079

Look anywhere and you won't find finer minor super-heroes. That's our guarantee!

Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor **UPDATE**: 

Dickie Dean, Boy Inventor, continues to live up to his moniker and churn out the boy inventions in 1941. Some highlights:

- several different models of remote controlled robot

- an autopilot for ships

-a code-breaking machine

- a device for viewing the past

- force rays

- a drilling machine

- a rope that is attracted to hair

- indestructible metal

- an invisibility device

- both a lightning cannon and a means of making natural lightning strike at specific targets 

- an oil detector

- a vertigo ray 

To facilitate his boundless inventive genius, in Silver Streak Comics 015 Dickie salvages a bunch of treasure from the ocean floor and uses it to build and staff a laboratory complex with one security guard and such features as a huge uncovered pit of lye. The plot potential is enormous.

This actually happened in Silver Streak Comics 006 in 1940 but I neglected to note it: Dickie Dean no longer lives in the real New Castle, Pennsylvania but the fictional Castleton, presumably also Pennsylvania. This also prompts him to change the "N" on his shirt to a "C". For about five issues until someone forgot, that is. 

Categorized in: Accessories (Various), Location (Castleton, Pennsylvania)

the Daredevil II:

After the second engagement between the Claw and the Daredevil in their ongoing battle for the future of the United States (watch this space), the Claw ends up in jail, unable to use his powers and one week away from execution. This, reasons Daredevil, is the perfect time to go fishing in the South Seas. And as soon as he leaves the Claw breaks jail and threatens the sovereignty of the nation once more. This is just basic narrative causality, friends.

The Claw then has a series of triumphs, culminating in him capturing and killing what appears to be the Daredevil! It's an ignominious end for the hero, so it's a good thing that it wasn't really him: the dead Daredevil turns out to be the original's never-before-seen-or-mentioned, unnamed brother, who tried to stand in for his sibling in his absence despite not having been raised by boomerangs or whatever Daredevil's current origin is, and paid the ultimate price for it. 

"Daredevil II" Hill is not only never given a first name but is never mentioned and certainly never mourned after the above panel. It's very sad, really. (Silver Streak Comics 009, 1941)

Categorized in: Catalogue of Wounds, Origins (Legacy Characters)

Secret Agent X-101: 

Secret Agent X-101 is actually newspaper publisher Bart Benson of the Daily Record, and while he doesn't bring anything too unique to the secret agent comics genre in his two appearances he is the first example I am aware of of the secret agent/ civilian life divide being treated like a super-hero and their secret identity, so that's something. (Silver Streak Comics 008, 1941)

Categorized in: Day Job (Newspaper Publisher), Profession (Espionage), Team Membership (US Secret Service)

the Pirate Prince: 

A pompadoured pirate captain who, along with a crew of lovable rogues named things like Merry, Flip and Gilly, battles against the slave trade and other sea-borne evils of the Age of Sail. Given that he robs Jean Lafitte of his ill-gotten booty in his first appearance, I'd wager that he operates somewhere around 1810 CE or so. 

While this strip is pretty consistent in its anti-slavery, pro brotherhood-of-man stance, it is also a 1940s comic, so it features quite a lot of comic relief racial humour. It's a real mixed message! (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)

Categorized in: Origin (Heroes of the Past), Profession (Pirate), Royalty (Princes)