GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 037

For the first time in a very long time: the generic costumed villains all have costumes! 

Unnamed Costumed Gang: 

This unnamed gang has gone to a heckuva lot of trouble to steal the Kalaka Emerald from millionaire Byron Nelson: they've dug out a secret lair under his weird mesa-top home, murdered several of his guests in order to create terror and of course dressed up like the background characters in a costume party scene, presumably also in order to create terror.

Sadly for them, they have failed to reckon with two important facts: 1) that Nelson has already stolen his own gem in order to do a little insurance fraud and 2) that he has hired adventurer Lance Rand to protect the emerald and throw a bit of suspicion off of himself. Rand cleans up the costumed crew with ease, and bags Nelson to boot. (Cat-Man Comics 003, 1941)

Puggsy Sloane: 

When famed gorilla Monstro escapes from the Jenks Bros. Circus, the unnamed city is gripped with terror. And the terror is seemingly justified, as citizen after citizen is murdered by an ape and the police are unable to prevent it despite expending all of their manpower in order to do so. Lance Rand is once again on the case, however, and thanks to a tip-off that Monstro is in fact harmless from the circus owner is able to piece together the fact that it is not the gorilla doing the murders but gorilla-suited gang boss Puggsy Sloane. Why is he doing so? Why, to stretch the police force to the limit and distract them from all of the robbing that his gang was getting up to, of course. (Cat-Man Comics 004, 1941)

Categorized in: Accessories (Style (Gorilla Costume)) 

Dr Carl Resdale: 

Dr Resdale, a famous plastic surgeon, has been operating a face-changing service for criminals out of the old disused family manor for the last twenty years and NOW the rest of the family is looking to use the manor and he has to scare them off by sneaking around in a mask and getting up to spookiness. And not only does he have to keep his young relatives from living in his place of work but he must conceal the fact that he killed his own brother in the manor twenty years before (this is why it's disused). 

Fear not for the younger Resdales, because Dr Miracle is on the case, the villain is soon deprived of his low-effort mask.  (Champion Comics 012, 1941)

Brady: 

A masked killer working for a gambling syndicate active in the Florida horse tracks, Brady's signature weapon is a club with a horse shoe nailed to it to simulate a deadly horse kick to his victims' heads. While a neat little murder weapon, this isn't quite enough to help him when he comes up against Johnny Fox. (Champ Comics 015, 1941)

Categorized in: Accessories (Weapons (Clubs)) 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 574: DUKE DAROLDI

(Champion Comics 007, 1940) 

Someone is kidnapping foreign dignitaries and then hanging their skeletons in public spaces! Weird! Sinister! Diplomatically complicated!

The culprit turns out to be gang boss Duke Daroldi, who is killing the diplomats as part of an attempt to involve the US in WWII and then step in and take over once the combatants are all sufficiently weakened. This is a stunningly hubristic plan, especially considering the maybe five other guys in Daroldi's gang. I assume that the steps goes something like:

1. kill diplomats

2. draw the US into the war in Europe

3. ????

4. profit

We never get to see Duke Daroldi's plan come to fruition, because Johnny Fox is on the case. He infiltrates Daroldi's yacht using the surefire "get captured" method, escapes, is recaptured, learns that the diplomats are being skeletonized using the old classic method: a school of piranhas, escapes again and finally engages Daroldi in a high-stakes fistfight in the yacht's crow's nest. 

Daroldi ultimately meets his end, not in his own piranha tank as would be narratively satisfying, but in a simple fall after being uppercutted out of the ship's rigging by Johnny Fox. No followthrough. No commitment to the bit. Finis.

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 018

More of these guys and their antics.

Johnny Fox:

Johnny Fox is a guy* from the Florida Everglades who visits his grandfather one day to find him the victim of a treacherous murder. And what's worse, the murderer, one Peter Pokane, did so in order to steal a supply of "sun-shots", i.e., invisibility pills.

*and by "guy" I mean "Native American guy of the Seminole Tribe of Florida" but it's a tricky thing to work into a concise sentence. Also tricky: the racial politics of the Johnny Fox comic! Johnny is a college-educated Seminole and thus free of a lot of the overt stereotypical behaviour of the day but also is a near-superhuman even without the invisibility pills, explicitly due to his Noble Savagery. Plus Peter Pokane's major villainous trait is that he's a "half-breed" which... must I explain why that sucks? What I'm saying is that it's complicated.

Johnny gets the sun-shots back by yeeting Peter Pokane out a penthouse window and begins fighting crime, invisible-style. Keeping in mind, of course, that he has to take a pill to turn invisible and another to turn back. Unless he gets hurt, which will turn him back immediately. Which happens a lot, because Johnny may be invisible, but his shadow never is. As far as invisibility goes, this version might have the most caveats I have ever seen. At least he doesn't have to be nude.

After a while the writers seem to get tired of the invisibility gimmick and have Pokane return just long enough to take the sun-shots to a watery grave (and it's a rare villain who gets killed by the same hero twice). Johnny Fox is now just a regular bow-wielding New York City Private Detective... for about two issues, after which Johnny's grampa's ghost returns to teach him how to make them again. (Champion Comics 006, 1940)

the Human Meteor:

Duke O'Dowd was just a regular Texan serving as a French Foreign Legionnaire until a couple of issues in, when his writers presumably realized that comics about the French Foreign Legion are boring, repetitive and usually pretty racist (though they probably cared more about the first two reasons). So they made Duke homesick, had him earn an honourable discharge and sent him on his way in a plane piloted by fellow Texan Kerry Flynn - an unlucky break for Flynn as it turned out, because somewhere over the Himalayas the two were caught up in a mysterious tornado and blown to the hidden city of Bayakura, a journey that only Duke O'Dowd survived.

Hailed as the Great Deliverer, O'Dowd is introduced to Bayakuran scientist Dr Wah Le, who outfits him with the Wonder Belt, a superscientific device which provides him with super-strength, the power of flight and invulnerability to metal. Plus he gets a stun ray gun! And a very fun and goofy outfit!

Duke puts down a rebellion by the very low-achieving heir to the throne of Bayakura (his aim was to take the riches of Bayakura to the outside world and live like a king but he decided to do so via a huge heist rather than the traditional and much safer option of embezzling from the kingdom while in power) and installs Wah Le in his place before heading to the outside world himself.

Sadly, once O'Dowd rejoins the outside world he trades in the amazing Bayakuran national costume for a more traditional super-hero getup (though the Bayakurans seem to have varied up their outfits as well - perhaps their fashion industry was revitalized by O'Dowd's fresh new looks). He also switches names from the Great Deliverer to the Human Meteor, which is admittedly more snappy. 

The Human Meteor is also the first character we have encountered who will someday be done dirty by Roy Thomas in 1993's Invaders v2. Briefly, Thomas had the idea to field a team of super-heroes who had defected to the Nazis against the Invaders and since he wasn't allowed to use any actual Golden Age Marvel characters he instead opted for the public domain. 

While my initial instinct is to reject this idea... I must admit that it's not without merit. Plenty of otherwise rational people were also charmed by the fascists - it's unreasonable to think that no superfolk would ever compromise one aspect of their morality for another (it is however a badly-written comic, because it's a very 1990s comic). So what we're going to do is not assume that we'll get to it later (three years into this project and I still haven't gotten to 1942, after all) and instead we're going to evaluate just how much of a stretch it was for each character to end up as a Nazi.

While Duke O'Dowd is an adventurer and thrill-seeker who joined the French Foreign Legion for a larf and never really expresses complex morality as opposed to simple justice-seeking, his stated reason for joining the Battle-Axis is that his Boston Irish blood demanded it, which... is plausible as a motivation for attending a few meetings but a huge stretch when it comes to attempting to kill Captain America. (Champion Comics 008, 1940)

Robinhood Jones:

"Rich guy who gives it all up to become a do-gooder hobo" wasn't the most popular trend in early comics but I can conjure up at least half a dozen examples. Robinhood Jones has the added distinction of being a pretty direct pastiche of - you guessed it - Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Some highlights:

Robin Hood - Robert Harrison Jones III

Friar Tuck - Fry Tucker

Little John - Little Jack Lee

Will Scarlet - Bill Scarlet

Alan-a-Dale - some guy named Allen

There's also a fairly delightful swap of archery for horseshoes as an all-purpose solution. Funnily enough, though Robinhood Jones squared off against the same crooked Sheriff of Sherwood City on thereabouts on two separate occasions he never encountered a clear Prince John analog. Or a Maid Marion, for that matter. (Champion Comics 007, 1940)

the Black Ghost:

AKA the Black Rider, the Black Ghost was an alternate identity adopted by cowboy hero Bronc Peeler (himself the character prototype for the slightly less outlandishly-named Red Ryder) on one of the many occasions in which he was framed as a crook and had to prove his innocence. Of note mostly for his very cool outfit consisting of jet black cowboy gear with a white bandit mask. (Popular Comics 039, 1939*)

*Originally a comic strip that was reprinted in Popular Comics, if you're truly interested.