MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 083

Oh boy! Minor super-heroes!

13: 

13 (aka Thirteen, although the numerical version of the name is the official one) is the alias of Harold Higgins, whose life has been haunted by a series of misfortunes related to the number thirteen. A timeline of some of them:

February 13, 1940: Harold's brother Bob dies in a plane crash.

March 13, 1940: Harold loses his life savings in the stock market.

May 13, 1940: Harold's sister Margy is paralyzed in a car accident.

July 13, 1940: Harold's father is lost at sea.

September 13, 1940: Harold's fiance is killed in a hit and run.

April 13, 1941: Harold loses his job as a reporter to a crooked editor looking to cover up a story. 

All of this (and more! A text story in Daredevil Comics 005 adds the facts that he was born on Friday the 13th, that minor tragedies like a broken leg or academic failure had frequently befallen him on the 13th of any given month and that at his thirteenth birthday party his childhood sweetheart Helen was killed by a falling chandelier) has clearly preyed on Harold's mind, to the point that he is finding the number everywhere including his own name.

Rather than, say, moving to a small shack in the woods to keep others safe from his constant misfortune, Harold decides to weaponize his bad luck by bringing it to criminals via his fists. Does this work, logically? Not really, but it's a decent enough comic book origin.

Like many super-heroes and villains, 13 flirts with the idea of leaving a calling card in his first adventure but doesn't maintain the practice. In this case, it's a calendar page with the 13th of the month circled. (Daredevil Comics 003, 1941)

Finally, a couple of minor things about 13: In Daredevil Comics 004 we learn that like many of his peers he wears his costume under his clothes for quick-change action. Intriguingly, the above panel seems to imply that this includes his mask, which appears to be either acting as a liner for his hat or worn as a kind of bandana under it.

Finally, in Daredevil Comics 006, 13 moves from the super-hero crammed streets of NYC to the lesser-served Boston.

Categorized in: Abstract Concepts (Luck), Accessories (Calling Cards), Alphanumeric (Thirteen)

Jinx: 

Recently orphaned Darrel Creig has just inherited the family steel fortune, something that rankles his guardian, uncle and the only other potential heir Moldon Creig. Thus, a family outing to the Statue of Liberty, where Moldon and Darrel's tutor Travers expedite the inheritance process by tossing him off the statue's torch.

Luckily for young Darrel, 13 happens to be present to stop an unrelated attempt to bomb the statue, and after saving the lad the two of them beat up Moldon and Travers and hand them over to the authorities.

As we all know, if a costumed vigilante happens across an orphaned boy who can throw a punch they are allowed to keep them, which is just what happens with 13 and Darrel, and though Darrel's connection to the bad luck theme is much more tenuous than Higgins (he is an orphan, if a wealthy one, and he is the very spooky age of thirteen years old) he is promptly given a slightly worse costume than 13's and anointed as his sidekick Jinx. (Daredevil Comics 005, 1941)

Categorized in: Abstract Concepts (Luck), Day Job (High School Students), Origin (Sidekicks)

the Ghost: 

The Ghost is a super-hero who seemingly exists solely to combat the menace of the Claw as he troubles America's shores once more, Daredevil having moved on to less stressful pursuits.

Though presented as a normal human man, the Ghost not only has the acrobatic prowess necessary to fight a giant across the rooftops of New York City but enough stamina to do so for seven hours straight. In their first encounter he manages to drive the Claw away by simply punching him thousands of times.

The Ghost's origin is unrevealed as of his final 1941 appearance but rest assured: we will learn it in 1942 (spoiler: it is not very interesting). (Daredevil Comics 005, 1941)

Categorized in: Origin (Unknown), Supranormal Beings (Ghosts)

the Fiery Mask: 

The Fiery Mask! A hero whose modern depictions have consistently involved a morning star despite only ever actually wielding on on this cover. I'm not complaining, mind you - it's just interesting to note where things come from.

The Fiery Mask is in reality Jack Castle, a young doctor who accidentally tracks down the lair of the villainous Zombie Master and is in quick order captured and subjected to the fiend's mind control device. Jack manages to resist the device long enough to enrage the Zombie Master, and in an effort to boost the power and overcome this resistance he causes it to explode.

The strange energies given off by the device cause Jack to develop strange abilities, the most striking of which is a fiery glow that plays around his face when he is worked up, and which gives him his super moniker. He also has an invulnerability to heat and flame, a fiery touch and a range of non-heat-related powers like super strength, super breath and a hypnotic gaze. Also his origin is later heavily revised, but we can save that for the hundred years or so it will take to get to The Twelve. (Daring Mystery Comics 001, 1940)

Categorized in: Elements (Fire), Objects (Masks), Origin (Radioactive Mutate)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 325: DOCTOR SENDACH

(Human Torch v1 002, 1940)

As our story opens, what is presumably New York City is under siege by a mysterious killer who drains their victims of their blood. Dr Jack "the Fiery Mask" Castle decides to get involved. He sets a trap by announcing to the paper that he has a lot of blood on hand and then waits for the fiend to show up - too bad for him it's not just one guy, as twenty blood-hungry maniacs show up and beat the tar out of him.

But! The Fiery Mask had cleverly doped the blood with florescent chemicals visible to his weird glowing eyes and he manages to track it to the castle district of New York State, where he finds them reporting back to famous missing stomach specialist Dr Sendach. None of this is tremendously exciting and Sendach probably would have ended up in the Mad Scientist Roundup but...

He's super cuckoo! Sendach, it turns out, has developed an artificial stomach and installed it in a series of unfortunates without considering what the side effects of such a procedure might be. Turns out: it's bad! They all lost the ability to produce blood and became science vampires! Now a reasonable man would take this as a sign that it might be time to revisit the drawing board, but not old "I shall prove my theories if I have to drain the world of its blood" Sendach, who determines that the Fiery Mask shall be his next subject. Somewhat predictably, the subsequent struggle ends with Sendach being devoured by his own minions.

I don't think that I would advocate for Dr Sendach to be BRUNG BACK, but the Sendach Artificial Stomach would be a fun thing for an aspiring villain to dig up at the US Patent Office as a way to control their minions via regular necessary transfusions.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 320: THE LEGION OF THE DOOMED

(Daring Mystery Comics 006, 1940)

There's not much substance to the Legion of the Doomed, but there's a lot of cool ideas, so lets knock them out.

a) a weird figure imposes a baby on a couple dwelling in haunted hill country. The baby, it is later revealed, cries with the voice of a man.

b) subsequently, a killer begins stalking the streets of a nearby city, probably New York. Panic ensues! The Fiery Mask is on the prowl.

c) somewhat unsurprisingly, the killer and the baby turn out to be one and the same! There's a missed opportunity for more creepy adult-acting baby, one of my favourite comics tropes. The Fiery Mask witnesses this transformation and manages to stop the next murder...

d) ... and pursues the killer back to whatever level of Comic Book Hell they came from. The Legion of the Doomed are slain! The city is safe! No questions have been answered:

Why do these killings? Not sure.

Why the whole ruse with the baby? No idea.

Has the Legion of the Doomed actually been stopped? Not saying.

Which actually opens the possibility of these guys being BRUNG BACK. I mean, supernatural killers are a dime a dozen, but these guys bring a creepy baby to the mix, plus they're very easy to kill. Say they're on some sort of ~80-year sacrifice cycle and you're good to go. And it's a perfect chance to bring the current Fiery Mask out of limbo!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 318: DORK

(Daring Mystery Comics 005, 1940)

There's a great temptation when dealing with an evil scientist named Dork to focus on easy, puerile humour rather than appreciating the other things that make him a good super-villain.

I had a whole bit about how his big plan was to flood the city with white goo (hur hur) and kidnap women to experiment on their bodies but it wasn't sustainable. Ironically, I would have had to jump through more hoops to obliquely reference his monster looking like jizz than if, as here, I just said it.

Good costumes on the henchmen!

This is where the joke fell apart, by the way. There was no good way to link this guy with the jizz jokes that wasn't a huge stretch. Appreciate the cool monster, I guess.

And then he was killed by his own jizz!

Excuse me. He was dissolved by his own blob-monster in a classic example of irony.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 315: THE ZOMBIE MASTER

(Daring Mystery Comics 001, 1940)

The Zombie Master has layers. Top level is deeds: he is a scientist who kidnaps people on the fringes of society and uses a combination of hypnosis and radiation to turn them into bright green mind controlled thralls - fairly standard stuff for a mad scientist. Next though, is his origin: he felt rejected by society because of his great height - something like 20 feet tall, according to some sources - and so moved underground in order to work in isolation (and as a side note he mentions that he's been working for about 50 years, so he's a rare Golden Age character who we have an approximate age for: somewhere in his late 60s or early 70s seems reasonable). A giant scientist!

The next layer is only interesting to me: he is not given a name in the story. Luckily, the Zombie Master moniker is later assigned to him because there's no really good option in the text and I'd've ended up calling him something like Unnamed Giant Scientist.

For our final layer we must note that the Zombie Master is a part of the origin story of the Fiery Mask, and that the Fiery Mask was one of the characters who appeared in J. Michael Straczynski's The Twelve, wherein it was revealed that he had not received his powers due to an explosion in the Zombie Master's lab but essentially by murdering the previous Fiery Mask - the Zombie Master was just a story he made up in order to cover for himself/ assuage his guilt. The greatest trick the Zombie Master ever pulled, it seems, was to have never existed at all.

(which of course makes him a perfect candidate to be BRUNG BACK - what better foe than a nonexistent giant science man?)