MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 780: THE MUMMY

(Funny Picture Stories v3 002, 1939)

Like every other of my long-term projects, writing this blog has been an exercise in taking a simple premise (writing fairly succinctly about minor DC Comics super-villains) and expanding the scope until the seams start to creak (writing somewhat extensively about all super-villains and super-heroes and a bunch of other comics things and also maintaining a set of variably-useful indices about them all). This is all to lead into the fact that a comic I was just reading (Super Spy 001, 1940) contained a reprint of a story from a comic I read back when I started doing this and I was absolutely flummoxed that I had not written about the Mummy.

We open in the palatial home of amateur Egyptologist Professor Stone, just in time to see him get murdered by someone with a creepy hand.

Cops are soon swarming over the Professor's residence, but that doesn't stop the culprit from creeping back in to eliminate a potential witness in the victim's niece and incidentally give us our first look at his mummy outfit. Not the most convincing getup with that huge exposed swath of visible and well-moisturized head, but I appreciate the green.

This particular fake mummy also has mind control abilities thanks to the copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead that he stole after murdering Professor Stone. These allow him to abduct Miss Stone and Police Detective Bull with ease.

The super powers weren't even the motivation for the murder of Professor Stone, it turns out. No, Stone was killed when he figured out that his fellow Egyptologist Dr Carver had been using Stone's regular shipments of mummies from England as a way of smuggling drugs into the US, possibly because Carver's plan doesn't seem to include replacing the fake mummy after he steals and hollows it out each time.

Also, Carver has built an entire acid pit in Stone's basement, which is impressive but must have provided plenty of opportunities for Stone to cotton on to the fact that something was going on.

Ultimately it all comes down to that old adage: no matter how well-prepared and capable of performing Ancient Egyptian mind control you are, you're never ready to be shot in the back by a cop and dumped into your own acid pit.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 751: THE MUMMY

(Smash Comics 015, 1940) 

Strange things are happening at the museum: knives are flying through the air, suits of armour are wandering around in a menacing fashion and things are getting pretty spooky. Head Curator Robbins asks his pal Kent Thurston (aka the Invisible Hood) to check things out, at which point the Mummy enters the picture, knocks out Thurston and kidnaps Robbins' plucky daughter Betty.

After grabbing Robins as well, the Mummy reveals his devious plan: Robbins must resign as curator. And that's it. Unsurprisingly, the Mummy turns out to be Nolan, the Assistant Curator, who has admittedly hacked the whole promotion process with this bold scheme but who also has not done a particularly great job of deflecting suspicion from himself as the only person who is going to benefit from the scheme.

As usual, the Invisible Hood's power of invisibility is a real asset and he cleans up the gang with relative ease. He even does a bit of a challenge run by initially approaching dressed up as a second mummy, with a spooky twist once he removes his wrappings to reveal the nothingness within.

Not the greatest fake mummy in comics history, but I'm happy to get any fake mummies.