CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 004

More wounds for the wound god!

American Ace:

Minor Marvel adventure hero Parry Wade, aka the American Ace, is riddled through the torso and crashes his plane after a dogfight. He gets better. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 003, 1940)

Black X:

Shot in the left shoulder by agents of Vlamir Koran, then nearly dies of exposure while seeking aid. (Smash Comics 001, 1939)

Black X's aide Batu gets shot in the left shoulder on his next mission, while Black X himself gets his skull creased by a bullet. (Smash Comics 002, 1939)

Finally, Black X gets his right arm broken by a guy named Taneo. (Smash Comics 005, 1939)

Clip Carson:

Shot in the left shoulder by the dastardly Mister K. (More Fun Comics 068, 1941)

the Devil's Dagger: 

The Devil's Dagger's aide Pat Gleason is shot in the right leg by the dastardly Mr H. (Master Comics 015, 1941)

Jim Dolan: 

Two-fisted magazine editor Jim Dolan is not only thrown off a bridge to drown but machine gunned on the way down. Thankfully they only get his left shoulder. (Wow Comics 002, 1941)

Ka-Zar:

The Golden Age Ka-Zar is covered in shallow cuts as torture. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 005, 1940)

A few issues later he gets shot in the (left? side by an unscrupulous hunter. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 011, 1940)

And a few issues after that, the same unscrupulous hunter shoots him in the (left?) arm. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 016, 1941)

Tiny: 

The Ragman's sidekick Tiny is shot in the right arm by a Nazi. (Cat-Man Comics 005, 1941)

REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 013

Yet again we have a selection of comic book appearances of real-style people for you to enjoy.

Adolf Hitler:

Warak, dictator of Barbaria is a bit generic as far as pseudo-Hitlers go, but a pseudo-Hitler he is. (Smash Comics 017, 1940)

Scraggs, leader of the Green Shirts, is very much a "make the leader look like Hitler as shorthand for These Guys Are Fascists" character, a subspecies that will nearly die out some time in 1941 but survives in small numbers to this day. (Startling Comics 001, 1940)

Devil's Island: 

Black X has himself sent to, and then escapes from, Devil's Island in order to secure a fellow prisoner with valuable US defense secrets in his head. (Smash Comics 013, 1940)

FDR:

An off-model Roosevelt visits Carterville and is kidnapped by Devil's Dagger nemesis Jeff Marlowe (and thus retroactively by Marlowe's boss Mr H). This is a wild move for a regional crime boss to pull! (Master Comics 006, 1940)

Gill Fox:

Probably a different guy to the last "Gil Fox" to appear in a Clip Chance comic - this one is just a small town baseball player. (Smash Comics 015, 1940)

Groucho Marx:

Goucho's look lifted wholesale for this unnamed comedy character. (Star Comics 010, 1938)

Hollywood:

Autograph hound adds Shock Gibson to her collection along with "Cary Trooper" and "Glark Cable," aka Gary Cooper and Clark Gable. (Speed Comics 009, 1940)

Joe Devlin: 

Given the prior instance of Joe Devlin being referenced in a Clip Chance story I must assume that the "John Devlin" mentioned here is another. (Smash Comics 014, 1940)

Joseph Stalin:

The Three Aces (but not the DC Comics Three Aces, the Harvey Comics ones) transport three anthropology-minded sisters to Paraguay to study the Guató people and stumble upon a plot by the sinister witch doctor Ni Lats to bring all under his sway via hypnotic mind control, for which crime he is drowned in a swamp.

(slight aside: the Guató are a real people being used as set dressing for an exotic locale, and weirdly, in checking to see if that was the case I'm pretty sure I stumbled across the exact reference that Klaus Nordling drew from - every detail in the brief entry on the Guató in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica is reflected in the story. The mind control thing is added plot) (Speed Comics 010, 1940)

Samuel Goldwyn:

Is this movie producer named Sam meant to be Samuel Goldwyn or merely a lookalike reference to him? Regardless, this is clearly Samuel Goldwyn. (Speed Comics 010, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 363: MR H

(Master Comics 001 (behind the scenes) or Master Comics 007 (first mentioned) or Master Comics 008 (first appearance on-panel)-Master Comics 020, 1940-1941)

 

Mr H, the mastermind behind all crime in the city of Carterville and its unnamed state, gets up to all kinds of schemes through his proxies. For example:

-running an illegal casino in a hard-to-catch gambling blimp

-robbing a munitions plant in order to outfit a small army of gangsters and enact a criminal takeover of Carterville

-stealing an experimental bomber from the US Army and attempting to sell it to crypto-Nazis

-having his gang murder random Carterville citizens in order to drive down confidence in the police

-stealing an experimental paralysis gas in order to disable and rob the entire population of Carterville 

-attempting to destroy all public transit in Carterville for unclear reasons

-attempting to blow up the Carterville Dam for unclear reasons

-sundry murders and robberies

At first, Carterville's major crime figure and the inspiration for regional super-hero the Devil's Dagger is a guy by the name of Jeff Marlowe, but he falls off of a roof in Master Comics 007, necessitating the introduction of his boss, Mr H. Over the course of his 12-odd appearances Mr H has a variable amount of hair and a selection of different cloth masks. The consistent aspect of his adventures (aside from his orange suit) is his habit of getting away in some sort of motor vehicle at the last second.

Then, in Master Comics 018, Ken "Devil's Dagger" Wyman gets a new coworker, police reporter Holfax. I won't beat around the bush: Holfax is Mr H - introduced, I suspect, because the feature was coming to an end and they needed somebody to be the villain. The great thing about this is that Holfax/ Mr H thus becomes an evil equivalent to Wyman/ the Devil's Dagger, something that I'm always excited to see.

And the piece de resistance is of course the capture of Mr H and the subsequent retirement of the Devil's Dagger in Master Comics 020, a rare ending not just for a Golden Age super-hero but for any super-hero ever.

Mr H might not be terribly exciting in and of himself but I would still love to see a legacy Devil's Dagger BRUNG BACK and who better to act as his foil than an ancient Holfax, out of prison and running Carterville once again.

ADDENDUM: I almost forgot to highlight the fact that Mr H employs one of my favourite costume elements: the mask with attached bald cap.

ADDENDUM II: I just read the long-unavailable Master Comics 006 and in it Mr H, through his proxy Jeff Marlowe, kidnaps the President of the United States for ransom. This is a very big crime not to have been aware of!

MINOR SUPER-HERO 039: THE DEVIL'S DAGGER

(Master Comics 001-020, 1940-1941)

Devil's Dagger! I love this guy. He has a lot of familiar things going on: a wealthy young man named Ken Wyman who works as a reporter in order to get the latest crime news and heads out at night in his souped-up car (the excellently named Speed Ghost) to kick butt accompanied by Pat Gleason, ex boxer and member of the surprisingly large Chauffeur/ Sidekick club.

There are two really interesting things about the Devil's Dagger: 1. really good costume. 2. he's a mission-driven vigilante. Once he rids Carterville of the sinister Jeff Marlowe... he finds out about Jeff's boss, Mr H. But once he gets rid of him, that's it! Wyman unmasks, retires, maybe takes the job at his father's bank, who knows? It's so rare for a super-hero to have a finite career, not just in the Golden Age but any time! How refreshing!

Of course after saying that I would be a monster to suggest that the Devil's Dagger be brung back, and I am not! I do however think that the identity would make for quite a fun legacy hero! Picture it: Carterville has once again become a crime-ridden hellhole, perhaps even under the thumb of a superannuated Mr H (or a corrupted Ken Wyman!), and someone stumbles across the unpublished memoirs of Ken Wyman and takes inspiration from them - maybe an underpaid employee at the Daily Blade, now stripped of assets by venture capital and printing a ten-page synopsis of the top clickbait of the week? Heck, maybe this time it's a whole group of dagger-wielding vigilantes. Fun!