MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 855: GORE

(Weird Comics 009, 1940)

Gore, a mad scientist, has just escaped from an unspecified facility in an unnamed city in whatever part of Africa that Marga the Panther Woman hangs out, and while I appreciate how he looks like a little scamp while he's stealing an airplane from Marga's pal Ted, this young fellow would be heading straight to the next Mad and Criminal Scientist Round-Up if not for two fun things that he does and that I want to highlight:

1. while siccing a gorilla on Marga isn't the most original thing a villain has ever done I appreciate both that he has trained apes littering the jungle around his compound and that the ever-resourceful Marga just goes ahead and tears out its throat with her teeth.

2. And speaking of jungle compounds, Gore has one and it's surrounded by an acid moat, and unlike a lot of other acid moats out there this one actually sees some use, as Gore uses it to gruesomely dispose of his assistant Travers. 

Gore's real goal in escaping was to take revenge on that unnamed city for having the gall to lock him up. It's no acid moat, but his long-range water evaporation ray is pretty fun, and stealing the city reservoir is a both more restrained and effective a way to harm a city than many we've seen.

Acid, gorillas and ray cannons or not, Gore is still a weedy little nerd, and there's only so long that he can get away with not being beat senseless by Marga the Panther Woman and shipped back to the Unnamed City Insane Asylum. 

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 016

Can't keep 'em down for long, these guys.

Look, breeding up a giant amoeba in order to use it to spread terror and conquer the world is one thing, but deliberately going out of your way to feed it "pretty girls" is some real twisted incel shit. It's a wonder that Dr Jorgen here just ends up in jail and not in the belly vacuoles of his creation. (Science Comics 006, 1940)

Dr Borgia is a weird creep who becomes... infatuated? obsessed? with Marga the Panther Woman during a period in which she is working at a circus in the US. Stung by her rejection of his creepy overtures, Borgia conspires with the owner of a rival circus to kill Marga by using the same technique that von Dorf used to give her the power of a panther to give a tiger the added power of a lion, thus making it too powerful fro her to defeat.

(and how galling for the ghost of von Dorf to see that Borgia knows his secrets after dying in a fire he caused while trying to burn that very information)

Marga is of course more than a match for even a tiger with the proportionate strength of a lion and proceeds to murder not only it but Borgia and his associate Randler. She also gets so fired up by this process that she acquires a kind of feral vampire-from-Buffy look that may not ever appear again.  (Science Comics 006, 1940)

With a thesis like "I reckon that humans won't do well when deprived of water," Bulvo here isn't exactly pushing the boundaries or even basics of science. It's just as well that the Eagle ends up blowing him up as he tries to destroy NYC's water supply, as he would have been eviscerated in court, not to mention the mad scientist trade shows. (Science Comics 008, 1940) 

Like his nemesis Iron Vic, Dr Spagna here suffers from the fact that the sole story in which he appears is incomplete. What we do know about him is that he used to work with Vic's benefactor Professor Carvel and possibly even on the very serum that Carvel used on the near-corpse that would become Iron Vic, but Spagna was too eager to share his findings and ended up being laughed out of scientific society. This is a common origin story for evil scientist types, but Spagna seems to have taken it harder than most and has been sowing murder and chaos throughout New York City even before the plot outlined in his letter to Vic above.

Iron Vic manages to foil 2/3 of Spagna's plot before the adventure is cut off, never to be resumed (as far as I can tell). Presumably, Vic prevented the bombing of Jefferson Square Garden and brought Spagna to justice somehow, but if that involved further hints or revelations about Vic's past, we will seemingly never know. (Single Series 022, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 726: PROFESSOR MEIER

(Science Comics 005, 1940)

Professor Meier, a scientist, seeks to conquer the world by unleashing an ever-growing horde of mutated life forms from his jungle HQ. This is all pretty regular stuff and he probably would have been tossed into the regular science round-up, only there are a couple of fun things that Meier brings to the table that I would like to highlight.

First off, the mutated beasts themselves are a pretty fun design, a sort of lion/monkey/caveman/eagle chimera, plus green. What really sells them for me, though, are the dramatic shadows that they are covered with, and which usually obscure their face like they're in a 50s horror comic and have visages too terrible for the human mind to comprehend (*CHOKE!*). Plus, they all have fun little bowl cuts.

Professor Meier also has a fantastic look. Like, yes, most of the characters tagged "scientist" and/or "mad science" here are wearing some sort of labwear, but the whole 1940s surgical outfit complete with head mirror and black rubber gloves is a real banger of a costume. And he wears it to bed in his Safety Bedroom. Armed, of course.

New Power Alert: Marga the Panther Woman is already too mutated to be turned into a creature by Meier's janky serum but she does get even stronger than she already was.

And finally, once Marga and Homer (the one friendly beast) get Meier out of the way, all of his creatures are given an antidote and turn out mainly to be small animals like rabbits and ducks - shades of Sonic the Hedgehog! - which is pretty fun. Homer turns out to be a German Shepherd, and it looks like Marga will have a fun canine companion going forward but sadly he never returns. Professor Meier's fate is a bit more ambiguous, but I reckon he's dead.

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 015

They can't help themselves and/or they're choosing to be horrible.

Dr Zynnon has been asked along to help Dr Curan, his daughter Sandra and protagonist Buzz Crandall in their mission to prevent the Moon from exploding, presumably dooming us all. This turns out to be a Bad Choice, because unbeknownst to all, Dr Zynnon harbours a deep misanthropy and would love nothing more than for the world to be doomed.

Despite the fact that I love not being scoured from the face of the planet by hurtling lunar debris I must give Zynnon credit for one of the most adorable doomsday devices ever conceived of: tiny moon lizard carrying vials of acid powerful enough to bring down the roof of the lunar cavern the bulk of the adventure takes place in. Powerful enough, that is, if they were delivered to the correct location. Which they weren't, presumably because Zynnon didn't bother to train or condition them in any way and just let loose as many lizards as he could smuggle onto the moon bathysphere under his coat. In the end, the only casualty of Zynnon's plot was Zynnon himself. (Planet Comics 004, 1940)

Tobor the Evil is a Plutonian scientist who has been using an army of child-sized robots to steal Martian gold, with the end goal of conquering Mars and making it a Plutonian territory. With the help of Captain Nelson Cole of the Solar Force, he learns two important lessons about fielding robot armies: 1) don't leave robot shells that can be repurposed into armour by your foes just lying around, and 2) if your robots have an "indiscriminate murder" setting, make sure to build in a failsafe that excludes yourself from the list of viable targets. (Planet Comics 008, 1940)

Von Dorf, a mad physiologist and asylum escapee, was so singularly obsessed with the hybridization of humans and panthers that he kidnapped a nurse and turned her into Marga the Panther Woman. It's likely that he would have his own numbered entry on the Minor Super-Villain list if literally the only other things he ever did weren't a) get his ass kicked and b) blow himself up. Truly being part of an origin story is the most hazardous job in comics. (Science Comics 001, 1940)

Dr Passendorf here managed to perfect the quite respectable criminal science inventions of a mind control device and a paralysis ray and then had to lower himself to using both in the employ of a shifty Wall Street jerk named Augustus Elba who needed to cover up some light embezzlement. Just as well that he ends up riddled with shrapnel after the Eagle blows up his machine - the roasting at the next Criminal Science Convention would have been severe. (Science Comics 005, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 038

Second- and third-tier Fox Features heroes: ACTIVATE

Dynamo:

Jim Andrews is an electrical scientist who heroically risks his own life by using his own body as a conductor to prevent some crazy bit of machinery from blowing the whole laboratory he works at to high heaven. And since he lives in a comic book world, the reward for his bravery is some super powers! He can now emit electricity, create an electrical forcefield, kind of fly by throwing a lightning bolt and then riding it through the air and even be super strong, with the minor caveat that he has to charge himself up from time to time (over time and for narrative convenience he also develops the powers to freeze water, to repair smashed up items by shooting electricity at them and to travel interstellar distances under his own power).

Andrews originally calls himself Electro but swaps that name out for Dynamo in his second appearance. There is some speculation that the name change comes about because there was already an extant Electro over at Marvel.

Dynamo's costume choices over his two years of adventuring range from "generic" to "kind of dumb-looking," and the real kicker is that the Fox Features cover artist consistently puts him in this incredible red number. (Science Comics 001, 1940)

ADDENDUM: In Science Comics 005, Dynamo, already wildly powerful, invents a device with the fairly ominous name the Brain-Wave Trap which allows him to read the minds of everyone on Earth and indeed for hundreds of light years around. Ir's a significant power boost for something that is mainly used to keep the plot chugging along.

UPDATE: Weird Comics 1940

the Eagle:

The Eagle is Bill Powers, a wealthy young gadabout who has developed an "anti-gravitation fluid" which allows him to fly when applied to his wing/flaps.

 

The Eagle might just have the greatest number of costume variations before finding his groove, though I suppose a number of them can be ascribed to the whims of the colourist on any given day. While the flying squirrel style flaps are fun for their uniqueness and that fourth version has far nicer-looking wings than Hawkman was sporting at the same time I can absolutely understand the impulse to move toward a more traditional super-hero costume without a bunch of fiddly little feathers all over it. BUT! the Eagle's costume has not reached its final form - something to look forward to once we get to Fox Features' 1941 offerings. Or just look up on your own, I suppose.

I don't think that it's intentional so much as a product of many busy hands being involved in making most if not all Fox Features comics, but Bill Powers is one of the better realizations of the "wealthy young playboy" super-hero alter ego. He really and truly comes off as someone who is just kind of doing things, including fighting crime, to keep himself occupied and the greatest example of that is all the little projects such as his "crime cartoons" or his "book on crime" that he keeps mentioning once and then never ever returning to. Plus he has a butler named Jason, whom I love.

Finally, the Eagle might just have the most mysterious of all calling cards, an unseen "mark like that done by an eagle." (Science Comics 001, 1940) 

UPDATE: Weird Comics 1940

Marga the Panther Woman:

Marga, formerly a nurse at the asylum housing the mad physiologist von Dorf, finds herself kidnapped and made into a panther/ human hybrid. Is there just a hint of weird race science in the way that Marga going from blonde to black haired is a sign of her primitive nature being brought forward? Maybe just a skosh.

Marga adapts fairly well to her new situation, even when it means that she is now an obligate carnivore. She just kind of accepts that her life is no longer that of a nurse but that of a jungle predator.

Marga's first few adventures take place in what is pretty clearly the future but a series of comics with different creative teams ends with her being a contemporary 1940 figure. (Science Comics 001, 1940)

Navy Jones:

Navy Jones (and let me tell you I groaned audibly about two hours after I fist read that name, when I figured out that it was a pun on Davy Jones) is a submarine commander of the future who meets with disaster when his submarine hits a free-floating mine and everyone on board but him is killed. Lucky for Jones, he is picked up by some passing Fish-Men and taken to their city, where he befriends their king.

Things take a turn when the evil Prime Minister uses the presence of this outsider in the halls of power as a catalyst for rebellion, and Navy Jones is almost killed. In another stroke of fortune, the king happens to be a skilled surgeon and saves Jones' life at the cost of his ability to breathe air. Jones rescues the kidnapped Princess Coral from the Prime Minister and puts down the rebellion, becoming the city's champion (and in a final stroke of luck, the Fish-Men are the kind of comic book species where the more aristocratic you are, the more human you look, so Jones' new Princess love interest is barely a fish at all!). (Science Comics 001, 1940)