MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 951: THE DEADLY DOZEN

(Daredevil Comics 005, 1941)

We open on a demonstration by one Dr Roe of his invention the Death Detector, which he purports is able to determine if someone is incapable of murder (yellow light displayed), potentially capable of murder (red light) or has in fact murdered someone (blue light). 

While the implications and legalities of this device are legion (e.g., how does it determine this, does it distinguish between killing in self defense and manslaughter and premeditated murder, would widespread adoption of this technology create a semi-criminal class of Red Light People who are discriminated against despite having done nothing wrong, etc, etc), the really important thing about this demonstaration is that Bart "Daredevil" Hill taunts mobster "Nat" Nattony into going up on stage, whereupon he murders Dr Roe. Would the machine give Bart a blue light for being directly if inadvertently responsible for Roe's death, I wonder.

Daredevil makes off with the device in order to keep it safe, but the upside of whole sordid affair was that it provided a means of proving the machine's efficacy, as before taking off he had used it to search the crowd for Nattony and instead turned up a different wanted murderer. Now the FBI wants the Death Detector and the Daredevil aims to get it to them.

Nattony's boss Curly is understandably concerned about this development and calls the nation's gang bosses together in Atlantic City for a Crime Convention to discuss the matter. After a lot of goofy business with gangsters picking each others' pockets and so forth, the assembled ranks of crimedom take a vote and determine that the best way to deal with the Daredevil is to pick out twelve of gangland's most proficient killers and send them after him. Thus: the Deadly Dozen!

The members of the Deadly Dozen are: the Crusher, Egg Head, Snake Eyes, Skully, Benito, the Butcher, the Giant Killer, the Owl, Satan, the Sniffer, the Turk and Lady Killer, and though I love the idea of this group on many levels (gather together a bunch of vicious assassins! With diverse and distinct idiosyncrasies and fun names! Yes please!) there is one notable flaw with the concept of the Deadly Dozen, and that is that every single one of its appearances takes place in an anthology comic in which there is simply not enough room to spotlight every member of a twelve-strong team. 

This might be the only story in which each member of the Dozen gets even a token shoutout, rather than mooching around in the background while a couple of highlighted characters get on with the action. As such, we'll take a quick look at them in the order that they appear in-story:

the Sniffer:

The Sniffer stands out from the moment that he appears in that initial group shot, and it's no surprise that he is the breakout star of the bunch, with his own ongoing feature starting in Daredevil Comics 008. A rough, crude, hairy, flat-headed brute who wears rough clothes and rope belt while everyone else is in a suit or tuxedo, the Sniffer is a real rough-and-tumble rowdy boy. As his name suggests, he also has a superhuman sense of smell, capable of locating, for example, the Daredevil in a warehouse full of criminals.

Lady Killer: 

Lady Killer doesn't even get a line before he is beaten up and hung from the telephone pole he was lurking behind for the Daredevil. Hopefully his name derives from the fact that he is a handsome man and not from the fact that he tends to kill ladies, like his recent fellow Lev Gleason character, but it is possible that we will never know.

the Crusher and Egg Head: 

The Crusher and Egg Head fall prey to the ol' duck-out-of-the-way-when-they're-about-to-shoot-you-from-two-sides-so-that-they-shoot-one-another trick, but don't worry, they survive. I'm no gun expert but I'll bet that they specifically tell you not to shoot at something that's in front of someone you don't want to shoot for exactly this reason.

Both Egg Head and Crusher are mainstays of the Deadly Dozen, with speaking lines in just about every story I scanned through just now. With Egg Head this is likely because of his visually distinct bald dome, while Crusher has the distinction of becoming known as Sniffer's best friend over time. He even appears in the very last Sniffer story in the far-distant future of 1956!

Snake Eyes, the Owl and the Turk:

Snake Eyes, the Owl and the Turk make a decent attempt at ambushing the Daredevil while pretending to be FBI agents, only to be beaten up in pretty short order. I haven't read through every Deadly Dozen appearance, but I reckon that this poor showing is also their career highlight, which is a real shame in the cases of the very visually-interesting Owl and Snake Eyes.

Skully and the Butcher: 

Skully and the Butcher get tricked into shooting and knifing one another, respectively, with embarrassing ease by the Daredevil. Once again they are retroactively fine due to the demands of future stories, though this does call their competence as killers into question somewhat.

Though the Butcher seems to be just another face-in-the-crowd member of the Dozen, Skully gets a fair number of speaking roles going forward.

(Skull Score: 1 - just an emaciated face on ol' Skully I'm afraid)

the Sniffer (again), Satan, Giant Killer, Benito: 

Here we have a very contrasting group, with Sniffer and Satan (de facto leader, visually interesting, always in a speaking role) alongside Benito (most boring member, couldn't even muster up a nickname, I'd be surprised if he ever gets another line of dialogue) and Giant Killer (solid middle of the roader, not just bald but short, probably gets a line now and then). All four of them get tossed off the train, and that's it for the Deadly Dozen.

Like I said, I love the Deadly Dozen conceptually and I love the Sniffer specifically, and it's nice to have those feeling about characters who will be returning, for once. I don't think that the problem of one dozen being too damn many members to showcase in a single comic, but who knows? Maybe I'm wrong and some hidden Golden Age gem awaits me still.

As for the Death Detector, not only does it get safely delivered to the FBI so that they can start planning out the dystopian society they're going to form around it (Gattaca meets Minority Report, I reckon), but the Daredevil is able to lead them back to Atlantic City to round up the whole Crime Convention for use as test subjects. 

(almost forgot to include this terrific pic of Daredevil vs the Sniffer from the cover)

Categorized in: Alphanumeric (Twelve), Language (Superlatives - Deadly), Team Index

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 026

Just look at all these guys.

Power-Man:

Power-Man, aka Rip Regan, private detective or possibly just nosy guy, gets his powers in one of the classic ways: his friend Dr Austin gives him a special suit. It's the simplest of origins and also one that puts a lot of weight on Austin's assessment of Regan's character.

The Power-Man suit is one of the more hand-wavy bits of comic book super-science I have encountered, when you get down to it. Billed as chemically-treated metal woven into cloth, the suit simultaneously makes the wearer light enough to perform superhuman feats of jumping, grants super strength, provides total protection against penetrating weapons like bullets and knives but also crushing damage from a collapsing building and also somehow protects the wearer's head despite it not being covered. It truly is a miracle of science. (Fight Comics 003, 1940)

Mantoka, Maker of Indian Magic:

Mantoka is a comic book magic user, with all of the nigh-omnipotent power that that entails: manipulating the elements, transforming humans to animals, giving himself superhuman attributes like flight, intangibility, size control, etc. It is slightly unclear if he receives his powers from being bitten by a magic snake or if the snakebite is merely a part of a ritual to transfer his father's powers to him. Either way, it's an extremely radical and cool as hell way to become a magic man.

I keep wanting to give the Mantoka strip credit for being a not-racist comic starring a Native American character but then I look at it again and it is in fact built on racist tropes. After a few cycles of this I realized that I was thinking this way because it doesn't go out of its way to be extra racist - the characters are being portrayed at about the racism level of a comical Cockney or a Chinese American c. 1943. Still not great but not as bad as it could be*. (Funny Pages v4 001, 1940)

*only one out of three Mantoka adventures is actually easily available, so all of this applies to that comic only. 

the Owl:

The Owl is a man named Jack (no surname given) who is on a quest for revenge against the gangsters who cost his father his legs and by extension against crime in general. To that end, the never-named father has invented an owl-themed flying suit capable of speed of up to 200 mph. Also, he invented himself what I can only describe as the most unstable looking motorized wheelchair I have ever seen.

The Owl and his dad live in a swamp near an unnamed city in the Southern US, and Jack spends his days working at a library under an assumed name and sweeps up any dirt that falls off of anyone's shoes so that he can take it home to be analyzed in their swamp shack/laboratory. Presumably this is part of some sort of organized plan relating to the leg-revenge quest but the Owl only ever had one adventure and so in effect it's just the weirdest version of Clark Kent working at the Daily Planet or Bruce Wayne palling around with Commissioner Gordon to hear about crime. It does work in this issue though. (Funny Pages v4 001, 1940)

the Green Giant:

The Green Giant! Cover model and namesake for the one and only comic put out by Pelican Productions! Thanks to me spending my formative years with my nose buried in a copy of Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Superheroes that image of him bounding over those buildings was forever seared into my brain as the definitive non-Marvel/DC Golden Age comic book cover, despite the fact that the actual comic probably wasn't really distributed.

I've never really found any information on the Green Giant beyond people pointing out that he wears pants on the cover but not in the actual story, so I kind of went in assuming that he was so bare bones as to be unremarkable but no, the Green Giant is as fleshed out as any single appearance character of the time.

The Green Giant's real name is Brentwood (no first name given), the owner of both a Wall Street Hall Street brokerage firm and a presumably high-tech belt, the latter of which allows him to grow to various enormous heights. I had kind of assumed that the fact of his sheer size and the problems it might cause was not really explored in-comic but there is a mention of the belt having anti-gravity properties as well. That's why he isn't, for example, crushing that building on the cover! How great and more well thought-out than I had assumed! This anti-gravity also explains how the Green Giant hops around like an off-brand Hulk even when at regular size.

One thing that really stands out about the Green Giant's sole appearance is that the problem he is dealing with is a targeted attack on his own brokerage firm. I reckon that an ongoing comic might have featured him acting in a more selfless light but as it stands all the evidence is of him being solely motivated by his own self interest. Do better, Green Giant, sheesh. (Green Giant Comics 001, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 573: THE OWL

(Champion Comics 005, 1940)

Journalist Penny Wright is on the trail of a notorious spy named the Owl! While I am of course broadly anti-spoilers I will give you a hint to the Owl's identity: there are four named characters in this comic and poor Hafiz Bey is murdered on the first page.

Setting aside the compelling and difficult mystery of the Owl's identity for a moment, we must consider the very concept of the notorious spy known for their distinctive appearance. I mean, yes, adopt a persona and stick to it while working so as to remove yourself from suspicion, but once you are known to be a man wearing thick glasses why continue to appear as such? Why is the Owl still running around as the Owl?

The Owl of course turns out to be Cora Zender[s], popular diplomatic hostess, because of course he does. OR DOES HE? I put it to you that Cora is just a decoy, sent to take the fall while the real Owl gets away. After all, the only evidence pointing to Cora was the piece of her dress found in the garden - circumstantial at best! If the Owl and Cora were in fact the same highly successful spy then she surely would have at the very least dropped the easily spotted disguise, if not swapped it out for another look altogether! No, the only conclusion that can reasonably be reached is that Cora is not the Owl, merely a pawn, and that the real culprit is long gone.

Or this was a throwaway story loosely plotted in haste in order to fill pages on an anthology book, but who's gonna believe that?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 211: THE MAD MADESPOS

(Crackajack Funnies 038-040, 1941)

It's my favourite Golden Age Batman knockoff the Owl again and this time he's up against the Madespos, a whole family of homicidal maniacs with their very own gorilla pal!

The Madespos had already been collared by the Owl (in an unseen adventure of his civilian guise of Nick Terry, PI) some time earlier, so our tale begins with their escape from Lenmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane with the help of their well-dressed gorilla friend. 

In addition to the gorilla the family consists of Ma Madespo and her four unnamed, nearly identical sons (one wears glasses and two are taller than the rest. This is not relevant). They're armed to the teeth and have holed up in a fortified mansion supplied by...

The Masked Ambassador! A surprise second Minor Super-Villain 212 (if just barely) and smarter-than-average fifth columnist from Axis-coded Yugonia who has weaponized the Madespos rather than risk his own hide in sabotaging the American military. If he wasn't caught by the Owl literally one panel after putting on his mask he might just be the most effective villain on this list.

Sadly for the Madespos, the Owl soon takes advantage of a police siege of their mansion to befriend the ill-treated gorilla and bring the whole lot of them in.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 210: THE SPECTRE

(Crackajack Funnies 035-037, 1941) 

There's a lot to like about the Spectre. His motivation is okay - his face was blasted off by American shelling in WWI and he wants revenge - and his execution is nonexistent as he ends up getting caught during the planning and preparation stage. It's the trappings that really do it for me.

Fist up: costumes. The Spectre's own is okay, but I have nothing but joy in my heart when I see henchmen dressed in such simple yet effective outfits. Stylish, easily recognizable, easy to remove in a pinch... they have it all!

Next: lore. The Spectre's story isn't told until the third issue of the three he appears in but part of it is that in the 20 years since he vowed revenge on America he hasn't slept, and in support of this, in basically every panel he appears in he is chugging coffee. A small but fun (and visually charming) detail.

Finally: progressive values. All of the above panels feature a blonde woman. This is Miss Owl, the Owl's fiancé/ crimefighting partner who has been captured in the mistaken belief that she herself is the Owl. And the Spectre - outbursts about "American women" aside - is perfectly willing to accept this, and to accept the services of a seemingly turncoat Owl. He might be a partially-exploded revenge-driven warmonger who probably went insane from lack of sleep decades ago but he isn't a misogynist.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 209: THE PANTHERMAN

(Crackajack Funnies 031-033, 1941) 

The first costumed foe to face Dell Comics' answer to Batman, the Owl, Pantherman strikes a very impressive figure and knows how to make an entrance. He does seem to be a very sloppy operator, however, as he initially attracts the attention of the Owl after mind controlling a man into stealing his own jewels but not somehow thinking to keep him from calling in the police (and renowned private investigator Nick "the Owl" Terry, natch) afterward.

Subsequent issues reveal that the Pantherman's sloppiness is more a recent thing, as he has been operating out of the city's sewers for at least the past 4 years and is well on his way to uniting the underworld with himself at the head. It doesn't take much to ruin a promising crime career, however, and once the Owl is on the case, Pantherman is soon caught.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 018: THE OWL

(Feature Funnies 007, 1938)

Our first Quality Comics super-villain! Otherwise, not very interesting - he doesn't even wear the mask in the story, just tries to frame the Clock and finds out how far that kind of thing gets you in the comic book game.