MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 873: SATAN

(Zip Comics 003, 1940)

Zambini (the Miracle Man) is on his first vacation in years and Satan, presuming that his guard will be down or that he left his magic amulet at home I guess, decides that this is the perfect time to attack and murder him for being such a thorn in the side of Evil. 

(Please note the near-identical guy kind of capering behind Satan's throne up there, as he represents my favourite thing about this adventure, that Satan rules over a nation of devils (the Devil Men) who all look pretty much exactly the same as him. Some of them have red hair or different beard styles, but over all they are the most homogeneous demon army I have ever seen,

Also, I know that trying to formulate a coherent cosmology out of any comic book company's output will be a fool's errand for some time yet, but it's interesting that Satan and the Devil appear to be two seperate entities in the MLJ/Archie afterlife) 

In case it wasn't clear up above: I don't think that this is a very good plan on Satan's part. Like, why not attack Zambini while he is tackling another problem instead of while he is having a nice rest? Why attempt to kill him with a tidal wave, the well-known slow and ominous disaster, rather than something quick and sudden that he doesn't have time to react to by, as in this case, freezing the ocean?  

Satan's next move is to send some Devil Men to attack Zambini directly (and looking at them here I must say that there are two faces in the devil nation: the classic devil face of the black haired Devil Men and the more cavemanish look of the red haired ones). They fare no better than the tidal wave and are transformed into a flock of presumably infernal penguins that presumably must be bedevilling the seas to this day.

Zambini decides to take the battle to Satan, and here's where I'll give the ol' Prince of Lies a little credit: he did plan for this eventuality, in the form of a really horrible cage that takes advantage of Zambini's weakness to human touch by being made entirely out of human hands. It's honestly one of the worst things that I have seen in a depiction of comic book Hell!

Satan of course follows this up with the worst plan ever devised: he has his guys push the cage into a big fire in an attempt to kill Zambini, without reckoning with the fact that the unprotected human hands will probably be destroyed more quickly than the asbestos suit-clad magician. Sure enough: Zambini emerges from the flames unharmed and strikes Satan dead.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 598: THE DEMON

(Fantastic Comics 003, 1940)

The Demon is a pretty straightforward Stardust enemy: he thinks that there are too many people on Earth and so is going to destroy cities until he gets that number under control. Exactly why he thinks that there are too many people (fear of overcrowding? an ahead-of-his-time radical environmentalist? simple misanthropy?) is not explored.

This is of course exactly the sort of thing to draw Stardust the Super Wizard like a magnet. Importantly, this happens before the Demon manages to destroy NYC but after he has wrecked an ocean liner, so that he might be punished in an appropriately Stardustian manner. The apprehension of the Demon is also notable for being the first time that Stardust performs his signature move of picking up a villain in one hand and having them crumple up like they're made of sponge rubber, though this is presumably a stylistic choice rather than an actual effect that Stardust's big mitts have on the criminal fraternity.

Stardust... I was going to say "of course does not allow NYC to be obliterated" but in a different Fletcher Hanks comic it might have happened. But no. He throws the Demon into the wave to be killed by roiling water, then disintegrates both Demon and wave. He also says a famous line, from the title of that one Paul Karasik book about Fletcher Hanks!

The Demon's assistant Max, oddly, seems to get away scot-free. Stay out of trouble, Max!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 061: THE DEMON

(Action Comics 022, 1940)

Whether the capital-D Demon is actually a lowercase-d demon is never actually resolved, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. He shows up when a friend of Tex Thomson's named Cary James ignores local superstitions to visit an island in the Indian Ocean, where he is quickly captured and murdered by the Demon, who then assumes his appearance and identity via fell majicks.

The Demon's only goal seems to be to murder everyone who knew the original Cary James, but whether there is a further motive to his actions is left unexplained, as one of James' friends happens to have a mystic amulet that is the only thing capable of defeating him. The amulet must be applied directly to the forehead, like so:

Love that bop on the head action. I also love that though this is ostensibly a Tex Thomson adventure, he basically acts in the role of observer, as the locket-thrower Dr Drummond drives much of the action of tracking, trapping and ultimately destroying the Demon. Huzzah for competent non title characters!