MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 989: THE ARTIST

(Jackpot Comics 004, 1941)

An otherwise-unnamed portraitist, the Artist finds himself down on his luck because he refuses to flatter his clients by painting them in anything but complete realism. After his latest client, a banker, literally kicks him out onto the street, he continues to work on the man's portrait in a hate-fueled haze until he unlocks a power within himself: once he has painted someone's portrait realistically enough, their soul becomes trapped inside and the husk of their body is forced to do the Artist's bidding. It's the ultimate service worker power fantasy!

As befits a power born out of hatred and frustration at being rejected, the Artist sets out to enrich himself at the cost of others. He begins with the banker, who he forces to rob his own bank and then allows to be carted off to jail. And he still has his soul stuck in the painting, so in a way he's in double jail.

If the Artist's first crime was at least a little bit justified (I personally would not say that a rude client should be sent to jail for twenty years but I know a fair few artists who might disagree), his subsequent crime spree is exclusively aimed at making money and damn the consequences. In short succession he: forces a woman to kill her husband and then fork over the insurance money, enslaves the leader of Tomania to enable a Nazi invasion of that country, and sells his services as a trial fixer (by way of a desouled District Attorney) to gangster Knuckles Werner.

You just can't get away with this kind of thing forever, and especially not in Mr Justice's unnamed town. Thanks to a little ghostly trickery, the Artist is forced to paint own portrait and confess to his crimes, and I guess that the jury was in a mood to accept the existence of the supernatural because he is found guilty and executed. Perhaps targeting the District Attorney like he did was not the best long-term strategy for the Artist.

Categorized in: Accessories (Henchmen (Mind-Controlled Thralls), Power (Magic (Soul Theft)), Profession (Artists)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 967: THE FANG

(Fantastic Comics 017, 1941)

The Fang is a recurring villain in the mould of his Fox Features contemporaries the Rook and the Beast: you can knock him down and seemingly kill him as much as you want but he's just going to keep on coming back to do more crimes.

When he first appears, the Fang's major goal is to acquire the Burma Emerald from its caretaker Princess Kava, in order to decipher the secret of invisibility that has been carved into its surface. His initial attempt to snatch the emerald leads him to murder Police Sergeant Marley of the Princess' protection detail, which directly inspires Marley's son Chuck to become a costumed crimefighter under the tutelage of the Black Fury.

Perhaps because Black Fury scribe realized that a series of comics about a man trying and failing to achieve invisibility would be less interesting than one about an invisible crook, the Fang breaks prison in his second appearance and gets ahold of the emerald almost immediately. So what does he use his newfound powers of invisibility for?

- bank robbery (Fantastic Comics 018)

- framing a man for murder in order to buy his house that has an ideal smuggling setup in the form of a secret tunnel to the coast (Fantastic Comics 019)

- sabotaging arms shipments to Allied Europe on behalf of the Axis (Fantastic Comics 020)

I judge these... okay criminal uses of invisibility. Nothing spectacular.

Though I set up the comparison between the Fang and the Rook/the Beast myself, I must now point out the way in which he differs from them: he doesn't seemingly die at the end of every appearance. Instead, he alternates seeming to die being caught: he's caught in Fantastic 017, crashes into an oil tank in 018, caught again in 019, and does a header into a well full of slime in Fantastic Comics 020. 

If there's one thing that invisibility powers are extremely good at it's in helping to fake one's own death, though how they help to get out of an ooze pit is beyond me.

Sadly and annoyingly, the final page or two of the Fang's last appearance is not currently available. He is in the process of planting a bomb at the end of the portion that we do have, which makes it highly likely that he went on to be blown up, and that death finally claimed him. Alternately, perhaps he was arrested again and just treated with the appropriate amount of care by the authorities. It is my hope that we will someday learn the truth.

Categorized in: Body (Nonhuman Parts - Fangs), Narrative Footballs (Origin Story Guys), Powers (Invisibility)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 958: THE YELLOW HOOD

(Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

In probably the cheekiest campaign of terror ever, American defense officials are being murdered and then their shrunken skulls are being sent along to places where people are waiting for them with notes reading "Don't wait for me any longer, here I am."

You may have noticed that all of the skull deliveries involved a man named Professor Curran, and being seasoned comics readers you rightly would have suspected that he was involved in the scheme somehow. It can't be him, however, as Curran is one of the victims, murdered just out of sight of a captured Major Victory.

Just kidding: the Yellow Hood and Professor Curran are one and the same, and the murder was staged to throw suspicion off of him. Curran's role as a Chief Air Warden meant that he was in a prime position to facilitate a Nazi invasion of the United States, and the murders were designed to weaken US defenses further. It's a high risk/ high reward endeavour, as evidenced by the fact that Curran chucks himself off a cliff rather than be captured by Major Victory.

Categorized in: Accessories (Calling Cards), Colours (Yellow), Objects (Hoods)

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 039

Those who also ran, we salute you. 

Karl the Hermit:

Karl, as his name implies, is a mean ol' hermit who lives atop a mountain. He has has got himself a critter called the Thing that Walks Like a Man that he uses to act out his misanthropic impulses, such as when he sends it to kill his cousin Rushman. What is his motivation for doing all this? Don't worry about it - he's a crazy old hermit!

Karl's actions attract the attention of the Silver Streak and Meteor, and both he and the Thing end up doing a header off of a cliff. (Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

Lord Garnett:

Lord Garnett, English MP, engages in a little pigeon-based espionage on behalf of the Nazis and gets socked by the Silver Streak for his efforts. As can be deduced by his trademark braying laugh, this is the guy who later pivots into propaganda broadcasting as a Lord Haw-Haw analog, but here we are only concerned with his foray into masked spymanship. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

Anders:

When a masked arsonist starts burning down all of a company's buildings in a comic it's equal odds on whether it's corporate sabotage, extortion or insurance fraud. I guess those are the main choices in real life as well, now that I think about it. In this case it's some pretty solvable insurance fraud, as the Anders Warehouse Company is being burned down by Mr Anders for the money. (Dynamic Comics 001, 1941)

Mr Black:

Mr Black, Art Supervisor of the Municipal Museum in the undefined city that Lucky Coyne calls home, has happened upon a foolproof scheme: kidnap a painter and force him to create forgeries, then sell those forgeries for beaucoup bucks. There are only two problems with this scheme: 1) Black loses his job immediately for spending museum funds on one of his own forged paintings and 2) both the museum and the painter's daughter come to Lucky Coyne for help, leading on a severe blow to the head for Mr Black. (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

FASCIST GOON CLEARING HOUSE 011

The fools! The fascist fools.

the Steel Guard: 

The Steel Guard are a home-grown fascist group in the Balkan country of Murania, who plot to sell out their country and its oil wells to the Nazis. They fail to recognize the threat inherent in leaving a camera in the hands of crack magazine photographer Fran Frazer and she ruins their entire setup with a few evidence-heavy snaps. (Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940)

the Redshirts: 

The Redshirts are a homegrown US fascist group whose ideology is unexplored in their sole appearance, as some of their members have already been captured as the story begins and thus their focus is on freeing them via a quick gubernatorial kidnapping. The Dart, as can be seen above, does not take this lying down. (Weird Comics 006, 1940)

the Termania Bund:

Yet another German-American Bund stand-in, the Termania Bund has the temerity to appropriate the flag of Switzerland (or possibly the Red Cross) as their symbol before being destroyed by the Flame. (Wonderworld Comics 018, 1940)

the Gnatzis: 

It's not quite the same as our usual collection of subversives and bundists, but I simply had to highlight one of the most dismissive stand-ins for the Nazi Party I have ever encountered. Gnatzis, heh. Plus a lot of them get beaten up by Captain Marvel, which you always like to see. (Whiz Comics 012, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 548 UPDATE: MADAME DOOM (1940)

When we last saw Madame Doom, she had been bested at the game of espionage by the Black X and was fleeing the US for friendlier shores at the end of Smash Comics 004.

Madame Doom returns with a fresh new attitude for 1940 in Smash Comics 008, as now she is not just working for an analog of the Axis powers but explicitly for the Nazis. It's a lateral move at best but an important one nonetheless. She only actually appears for a page or so and acts as an obstacle to Black X's escape from Germany rather than a full-fledged villain, and is then left in his dust as he takes off into France.

In Smash Comics 012, Black X accompanies US Ambassador Blank to Paris as part of an attempt to initiate peace talks in Europe. Madame Doom is there too, attempting to disrupt the process by manipulating the Hunchback of Notre Dame into assassinating Blank. It's not explicit that she is still working for the Nazis on this, but c'mon. 

This issue also marks the zenith of Madame Doom's investment in the will they/won't they relationship with Black X, but her plea to him to run away with her is an interrupted first by the Hunchback and then by the French authorities and so it is not to be.

Madame Doom returns in Smash Comics 014 with some snappy new henchmen, the Legion of Living Bombs, who have: a. very cool costumes (that they don't actually wear while they're outside of the house), b. a very cool name (as long as you don't think too hard about it in any context other than aesthetic).

More importantly, this story features the zenith of Black X's investment in the relationship between himself and Madame Doom, to the extent that he resigns from the Espionage for her.

This proves to be what's known as a Bad Decision, as Black X soon learns that while Madame Doom is not working for the Nazis this time around (that's good), that is because she has teamed up with a fellow named Count Mirov in a bid to conquer South America (that's bad), and that to that end she is dosing her fanatical minions with a fluid that eventually causes them to explode and sending them out to disrupt the Pan-American diplomatic talks (that's even worse). If there's a positive to this dastardly plot, it's that it seems to kill the romantic tension between the two once and for all.

(Madame Doom's height, hair colour and general appearance are fairly mutable during these appearances, as is not unusual for reoccurring female villains. I mention that here because in order to say that her height had fluctuated I felt compelled to comb through this issue like a foot pervert to see if she was wearing anachronistic 90s stiletto heels, but as you can see above she is not)

After some hijinks involving Black X's aide Batu stealing back his letter of resignation so that his boss can get back on the case, Black X returns to Madame Doom's underground HQ and proceeds to beat ass, and the ease with which he does so to an entire roomful of guys might just be another indictment of selecting your minions for their willingness to die over any other useful quality.

Defeated, Madame Doom decides to take what I would call "the cool way out" and guzzles some of her own explosive brew rather than be captured. It's a heck of a way to leave a final impression.

SPOILER: Madame Doom will return!