MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 117: THE SKULL

(Mystery Men Comics 015, 1940)

Yet another crypto-Nazi spy/saboteur with a skull face operating in the US, but this one has an electron-gun!

SKULL SCORE: 5/5 full skull; full marks.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 116: THE SKULL

(Mystery Men Comics 014, 1940)

Once more we meet a Skull, and this time he's a supposed-to-be-a-Nazi-but-it's-1940-so-we-won't-actually-say-it who spends his time bombing bridges in the Blue Beetle's eventually-just-going-to-be-New-York-City-but-we're-still-pretending-it-isn't-for-some-reason.

SKULL SCORE: 2/5 Pretty skully for an actual human but this is comics we're talking about. You're going to have to shave off that glossy black hair if you want to get ahead in this game.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 115: THE LIGHT

(Mystery Men Comics 011, 1940)

I just really appreciate the low-effort mystique that can be generated by sitting behind a bright light in a dark room. Of course, nothing prevents a foe from shooting into the light at roughly leg-height, as Lt Drake of Naval Intelligence demonstrates in this story, so perhaps the bright light shouldn'be your only line of defense should you choose to use it.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 016: THE MOTH

(Mystery Men Comics 009, 1940)

The Moth might just be the platonic ideal of a certain kind of super-hero. Specifically, the kind that would be equally likely to show up for three issues during the height of the Golden Age hero boom and also in a super-hero parody any time from the 60s to today.

I sincerely think that if I spent an afternoon looking through every issue of normalman and What The-! and so forth that I could find (or if I could ever track down a copy of The Mad Book of Almost Superheroes, for that matter), someone identical to the Moth would be hanging out in the background of a panel somewhere.

As far as the man himself goes: a perfectly decent regular Golden Age super-hero: no origin or secret identity, can fly, drops "egg bombs" despite a troubling lack of pockets... the complete package.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 114: THE WEATHER KINGS

(Mystery Men Comics 010, 1940)

It's the Moth vs. the Weather Kings, the very definition of a great name wasted on some run-of-the-mill weather controlling chumps and really I'm only bringing them up to roundly condemn the wasting of such a good name on such jabronis.

The only good thing about them really, is that they've remained unused for more than 80 years so the name is basically up for grabs.