MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 675: THE EYES

(Miracle Comics 002, 1940)

The Eyes is a spy chief (singular) who has a cool gimmick (contact lenses or similar which can emit powerful light beams to spooky effect) and goes all in on it as a theme. Specifically, the Eyes is all about destroying eyes via blinding light, acid or simple traumatic injury - honestly a pretty effective thing to threaten most people with, even if they are for example very loyal to the aircraft company they work for. It ultimately takes Dash Dixon, whose eyes are presumably three times as powerful as the average man's, to take him down.

One more thing about the Eyes is that his henchmen all have their own gangster-style nickname - variously Finger, the Switch and Trusty - and that's pleasing to me.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 674: THE SCALENE ANGLES

(Miracle Comics 001, 1940)

"Police athlete" Dash Dixon's first super-heroic adventure involves him travelling to the small European Republic of Scalene in search of the murderers of several US exporters. Turns out that they were killed to prevent arms and other supplies from being brought into the country, because the Scalene Angles, a group of wealthy jerks, were looking to conquer it.

The most important thing about the Scalene Angles is of course their name. It's fun, but it also depends on their country being named Scalene and once you consider that you have to imagine the whole nation being lousy with places like Triangle Square and Three Sides of Different Lengths Locksmithing and the Pythagoras Doesn't Know Us Bakery (and maybe a few places talking about the neck in some way). It's still a great name but it's also probably the name of a triangleball team that one of their kids plays on so no points for originality here.

(they do leave a note with a little triangle signature and I always like that, so one point to them there. But Dash Dixon does find and destroy them because of that note so the point is a treacherous one)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 030

Some real obscurities from the Hillman House of Ideas:

the Sky Wizard:

The Sky Wizard is an otherwise-unnamed super-scientist who seemingly dresses in his futuristic super suit 24/7. There's not too much else to him other than that because he's one of those characters who has so many gadgets and gizmos that all the narrative focus goes to them rather than him. A partial list: wing suits, super planes, super strength serum (the amazingly named "powerstrength formula"), a paralyzing Q-Ray gun...

... and by far the coolest of the Sky Wizard's accessories, his laboratory base, the grounds of which are composed of the elastic metal rubberium and which can be filled with helium so that the entire estate becomes a mobile floating island. (Miracle Comics 001, 1940)

Dash Dixon:

Dash Dixon works for an unnamed police department in an unnamed city in an undefined role (he is described only as a "top athlete with the police force" in his first appearance), Assigned to protect one Dr Lorenz and succeeding in doing so, Dixon is rewarded with a chance to be the subject of an experiment in which he is injected with "perpetual life rays" which render him super strong, at least partially invulnerable and presumably immortal.

To counter the fact that the ray would seep out of Dixon's body within 24 hours, Lorenz equips him with a suit of pliable metal that he will presumably have to wear for the rest of his presumably immortal existence. Two things about this suit:

1. Dr Lorenz has a fantastic look with his lab getup and green dome helmet. Why Dixon's suit is charitably Very Bad Looking is beyond me.

2. It might not be clear from this picture but the suit includes a haircut-shaped black helmet held on by a strap. It can thus be implied that the ray will leak out of Dash Dixon's scalp but will not do so from his face and hands.

Frankly the whole suit thing gives me mild anxiety. If I were Dash Dixon I might just opt to receive my immortality treatment daily.

One last thing about Dash Dixon is that the first issue seems to imply that he exists in a near future world with air taxis and commuter rockets but it doesn't really come up otherwise. A mystery for the ages. (Miracle Comics 001, 1940)

the Scorpion:

A regular-style two-fisted vigilante, hated and feared by the underworld, occasionally wanted by the police, etc. The real thing that makes the Scorpion (aka Hal Ward) stand out is that he doesn't really bother with a mask or any other way to not be immediately recognized by all of his mortal enemies. (Miracle Comics 001, 1940)

Blanda the Jungle Queen:

Blanda the Jungle Queen really lives up to her name by being the most by-the-book version of the White Goddess style of jungle adventurer, right down to the fact that she immediately abandons her adoptive people and their ways in a wave of horniness the second that a mediocre white guy hoves into view. (Miracle Comics 001 1940)