GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 007

The hits keep on coming:

This Fellow's name is Becker and he and his wife run a gang while pretending to be among its victims. An okay scheme, but not really up to foiling Bulletman and Bulletgirl. (Master Comics 014, 1941)

This guy here is why I have such a hard time relegating masked Western bandits to the dregs of the generic costumed villains: he's as by-the-numbers a bandit as they come, he robs one stagecoach total, he ends up dying because he falls off his horse... but he is frequently and consistently referred to a "Alkali, the Scourge of the Plains" which is as endearing as it is possible to be. (Master Comics 019, 1941)

I'm overlooking the fact that this bundist-style not-exactly-German spy encountered by Miss America doesn't actually wear a costume because a) he's called the Leader, b) he lives in a wax museum and c) he has a pet gorilla named Gargo. (Military Comics 002, 1941)

Captain Rajah, AKA the Master, was a jewel thief who ran up against Captain Desmo, in a story even more weirdly pro-colonial than Captain Desmo stories usually are - Captain Rajah is immediately suspicious for being an Indian officer in the Bengal Lancers, continued to be suspected throughout and then turned out to be the Master. The story is from before the invention of "defying expectations". (More Fun Comics 065, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-HERO 043: MISS AMERICA

(Military Comics 001-007, 1941-1942) 

I am not the first to note this by a country mile but it must be said every time she comes up: she wishes to have all of the powers of the Statue of Liberty and then the Statue of Liberty visits her in a dream and gifts them to her. If USA didn't exist then this would be a shoe-in for "most outlandish patriotic hero concept" but as it stands I reckon that they're tied.

Those powers, by the way, aren't "being enormous and made of bronze" like you might expect but rather a host of generic Golden Age magical abilities such as teleportation, telekinesis and transmutation - particularly of goons into birds and trees and such.

Miss America gets brought back every once in a while but the most noteworthy thing about her, her wild origin, was retconned in the Eighties. Now instead of wishing for the powers of the Statue of Liberty and then getting them (absurd, laughable) she wished for the powers of the Statue of Liberty near the entrance to a secret government project underneath the statue and was given powers by them (high concept, realistic).

In conclusion: I quite like Golden Age Miss America but find it hard to get excited about her later incarnations.