MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 833: THE MASTER

(Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940) 

The Mosconians, stand-ins for Nazi-allied Russia (or possibly just Russian-flavoured stand-ins for Nazi Germany) have a lot more stick-to-itiveness than your typical gang of foreign espionage agents, to the extent that they manage to not only bedevil the Wizard for three whole issues but also the Shield over in Pep Comics, leading to what is touted as the first super-hero crossover in comics (as previously seen here). The Master is the shadowy figure behind the Mosconian schemes and as seen above he even managed to kidnap the Wizard's brother Grover! A decent showing for a crypto-fascist, considering how ephemeral they usually are.

The actual crossover-precipitating plan is an attempt to blow up the military academies at Annapolis and West Point, thus shutting off the supply of officers to the US armed forces and incidentally killing off a portion of the country's political officials as they attend a ceremony at the latter. The actual crossovers between the Wizard and the two students is fairly ships-in-the-night - he basically waves at them as he leaves to beat up Mosconians at a second location.

The Mosconians and their Master return in Top-Notch Comics 006 with an attempt to blow up Boulder Dam*, which is one of those plots that would be pretty horrifying in real life but is not so exciting or unusual in a comic book. This is also the point at which the Mosconians start to get really German.

*Hoover Dam, which I just learned was in a state of naming limbo for years and only officially became Hoover in 1947! 

The Mosconians next plot, in Top-Notch Comics 007, involves an attack on the Golden Gate Bridge. The Wizard manages to track them down to their staging area in British Columbia, where the Master is finally unmasked and revealed to be the Mosconian ambassador to the United States (not much of a surprise). This is also the point at which the Wizard is chemically blinded, leading him to change his costume to a more standard super-heroic one with no noticeably different eye protection. So attired, he rounds up the plotter in San Francisco with the aid of the Shield.

PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 004

Get ready for a collection of MLJ's finest racially-problematic villains.

Yen Fat Sing: 

Yen Fat Sing's deal is that he knows about a treasure buried on Fu Chang's charity farm and, in an effort to grab that treasure for himself, has been murdering the workers using man-eating plants. He's a pretty standard type of minor super-villain but because he is a Fu Chang foe he is of course a generic Yellow Peril character on top of that. A couple of remarkable things about Yen Fat Sing: 

1. after all the effort to run everyone off the farm, once Fu Chang is closing in he just sneaks onto the grounds and digs up the treasure, suggesting that he could have done that all along and particularly so because nobody knew about the treasure at all until he ran his mouth about it.

2. Yen Fat Sing is killed in the course of the story but, unlike virtually every other comic book villain to have anything to do with carnivorous plants, he is not eaten by a tree but rather dies in a car crash.

I do rally like that the man-eating plants only attack in the dark. That's a fun detail. (Pep Comics 005, 1940)

Joodar the Evil:

Joodar the Evil starts out as an evil equivalent to Fu Chang, only instead of accessing his power via supplication to an ancestral god with a tonsure, Joodar worships the Great Genii of the Water Demons, and instead of a very eclectic set of animated chess figures...

... Joodar is granted the services of - you guessed it - water demons. Though his stated plans involve world domination, Joodar has a lot of trouble with step 1: destroy Fu Chang, to the extent that both the Great Genii and his Water Demon crew end up destroyed. (Pep Comics 006, 1940)

Joodar returns in the next issue, potentially because "summoning water demons" isn't a crime in San Francisco. This time he is without his demon pals and so he turns to the next best things: bacteria and mosquitoes! Specifically, he has mixed up a big batch of different harmful bacteria and stuck 'em in some mosquitoes in order to create havoc in San Francisco's Chinatown. Why does he do this? It's not entirely clear. Generic revenge? Mass chaos? Joodar doesn't really deliver a coherent thesis statement I'm afraid.

Joodar's greatest creation is this enormous mosquito, which almost takes out Fu Chang and his fiance Tay Ming but ultimately cannot contend with those pesky magic chessmen. Joodar, as far as I know, just absconds into the night - perhaps mosquito-crime is also not illegal in San Francisco. (Pep Comics 007, 1940)

Dr Wang:

Dr Wang is a Yellow Peril villain in the true Fu Manchu mould, a sinister genius who strikes at the security of the US for no stated reason. It's possible that we are meant to read Asian villain = Japanese, but if I'm honest an evil mastermind who plots against the United States for the sheer cussed challenge of it it quite a bit more evocative.

Dr Wang is so threatening to the secuirty of the country, in fact, that we are introduced to him in media res ad the Shield attempts to murder him by dropping a boulder on his car. This is that proactive super-hero action that we al1 wanted in the late aughts!

Dr Wang has two things going for him: the first is his mask, which looks great. Terrific style of mask, particularly with a hat. The second is his plan to disrupt US war production, by rounding up a bunch of guys who are afflicted with cholera and hypnotizing them into getting jobs in arms factories, thus starting a targeted cholera epidemic. And the very fun thing about this is that cholera is mostly spread by contact with infected feces, so these factories must be disgusting.

The Shield cannot of course let this stand, and goes back for another try at solving the Dr Wang Problem, and you know what they say: the second time is the charm - plus it's a bit more narratively satisfying for the Shield not to do a premeditated murder! (Shield-Wizard Comics 002, 1940)

REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 009

Some day these won't inevitably start with Hitler. Some day.

Adolf Hitler:

Rix, a human living on Venus in the peaceful year 3090 CE, learns about dictators thanks to the time capsule from the 1939 New York World's Fair and immediately sets out to make himself into the Hitler of the future. Beat down by interplanetary troubleshooter Planet Payson. (Planet Comics 008, 1940)

Aviator Ted O'Neil is brought down in the warlike nation of Gestapia (one of the more on-the-nose Nazi Germany stand-ins I have encountered), ruled over by dictator "Schnitzler." (Prize Comics 004, 1940)

Al Capone:

It's just a shorthand reference for "bigtime gangster" but Scarface Marone here is absolutely an Al Capone pastiche for the one and a half panels he appears in before jumping out a window to avoid capture. (Rocket Comics 002, 1940)

Anna Roosevelt:

She's referred to only as "the President's daughter" throughout this adventure which sees her being kidnapped and almost killed by Gerlandian spies before being rescued by Electro here, but it's 1940 and the US has had precisely one President's Daughter for nearly eight years at this point and it's Anna Roosevelt. (Science Comics 001, 1940)

Captain Nemo:

It shouldn't have surprised me when Navy Jones, established in the previous issue to be descended from the legendary Davy Jones, encounters not-just-fictional-but-fictional-from-about-seventy-years-earlier figure Captain Nemo while noodling around under the sea with his paramour Princess Coral, but I'm afraid that it did. And not only do they team up to battle octopus men and recover an ancient Roman map to Atlantis together but Nemo basically joins the "Navy Jones" cast going forward! (Science Comics 005, 1940)

FDR:

Minor Appearances:

Science Comics 003, 1940

Genghis Khan:

Obvious allusion to Genghis Khan in Khangiz, the warlike master of Mars in the year 40 000 CE. (Planet Comics 002, 1940)

J Edgar Hoover:

You have a comic book character who works for the FBI and eventually an unnamed J Edgar Hoover is going to show up and congratulate them for doing their job, as happens to FBI agent Buck Brady here. (Prize Comics 005, 1940)

J Edgar Hoover is not only Joe "the Shield" Higgins' boss at the FBI but he was the best friend of Tom Higgins, Joe's father. (Shield-Wizard Comics 001, 1940)

Minor appearances:

Science Comics 003, 1940

Oak Island:

Even though Fu Chang operates out of San Francisco and thus Money Pit Island is located somewhere in the Pacific, its name alone twigs it as at least inspired by the legend of Oak Island, which (I checked) was indeed going strong as of 1940 (Pep Comics 009, 1940)

REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 008

If they're real then why are they in a comic book?

Anastacio Somoza García:

The Shield meets with the President of Nicaragua and as per usual the artist did not bother to check what the President of Nicaragua actually looked like. (Pep Comics 006, 1940)

Clark Gable:

Boxer Kayo Ward stars in a movie ("Hot Lips and Hot Fists," a riff on 1933's "The Prizefighter and the Lady" starring real-life boxers Primo Carnera, Max Baer and Jack Dempsey) and the opening night crowd includes not only Clark Gable but Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, all under their real names in a wild break from comics custom. (Pep Comics 008, 1940)

FDR:

Misc minor appearances: 

Meets with the Shield (Pep Comics 006, 1940)

Shown blowing off a cabinet meeting to watch a boxing match (Pep Comics 007, 1940)

J Edgar Hoover:

He's never actually named but "the Chief of the FBI" and only person who knows the secret identity of Joe Higgins, aka the Shield, is clearly supposed to be J Edgar Hoover, and they do occasionally refer to him by his surname. (Pep Comics 001-004, 006-009, 1940)

Joe DiMaggio:

Famed baseball player Slugger Madaggio (or possibly MaDaggio) is murdered mid-game for failing to pay protection money. Two other players, Wheezy Seen and Cal Bubble, as well as a manager named Terrier are mentioned in the story but I simply do not know enough about baseball to know who they are references to, if anyone. Also, the lady in the above picture is Madaggio's wife and thus an oblique reference to actress Dorothy Arnold. (Pep Comics 007, 1940)

Joe Louis:

Boxer Kayo Ward is signed to fight Joe Louis for the heavyweight boxing championship, only Kayo is then kidnapped and replaced with a double by gamblers looking to fix the match, and when he manages to get free and fight for real the kidnapping has had enough of a negative effect on him that Louis sportingly calls the fight off rather than beat Ward to a pulp. They're supposed to reconvene in six months - will it happen in 1941? (Pep Comics 006-007, 1940)

Mata Hari:

Sent to Antwerp to extract a British general's daughter before the Nazi invasion, army hero Sergeant Boyle engages in some classic comedy of errors shtick as he accidentally brings back the wrong woman, only to find out that he has inadvertently captured the famed spy "Hatter Mary." (Pep Comics 008, 1940)

PT Barnum:

There are a lot of comic book circus mans who are some sort of version of PT Barnum but this guy, Barnham by name, really captures the spirit of the man with his exploitation of Paul Bunyan's ape-man friend. (National Comics 006, 1940)

the Seven Dwarfs:

The "Prince Buttonhead" feature in Pep Comics is from the school of one-page comic book humour strips that are best described as incoherent, with only the feeblest attempt at jokes or even a structured plot. The Five Dopes here (Block-Head, Lunk-Head, Stupid, Useless and Lame-Brain) are interesting for being so very on-model as a Seven Dwarfs parody. (Pep Comics 005, 1940)

Various Golden Age Comics Creators:

During Kayo Ward's rise to the top he fights a lot of also-rans, and compiling a splash panel of them dovetailed nicely with the grand comic book tradition of using your coworkers' names for mildly embarrassing purposes. In order (and focusing on MLJ credits because it's an illustrious group), we have: 

Butch Blezard - Okay I have no idea who this guy is. Bad start.

"Canvas-Back" Shorten - Harry Shorten, co-creator of the Shield

"Chick" Biro - Charles Biro, creator of Steel Sterling

"Biff" Zoffer - Another mystery character

"Mush" Meskin - Mort Meskin, prolific MLJ illustrator

"Flash" Ashe - Edd Ashe, illustrator of the Wizard

"Nosedive" Novick - Irv Novick, co-creator of the Shield

"50 Second" Streeter - Lin Streeter, MLJ illustrator

"Slam" Sundell - Abner Sundell, MLJ editor

"Socker" Benson - probably not a reference, as he was a boxer faced by Ward in a prior issue. (Pep Comics 005, 1940)

Pep Comics was a real hotbed of this kind of thing in 1940, as seen in this ad for "Meskin's Matzhos"  (Pep Comics 007, 1940)

Here's Charles Biro ditching work to catch a boxing match. (Pep Comics 007, 1940)

Handprints outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre, featuring "Biro W. Mouskin," "Sundell something (possibly M. Wood? as in Bob Wood, co-creator of Kayo Ward?) as well as "Mickey Looney" and "Joe E. Frown" (Mickey Rooney and Joe E. Brown, natch) (Pep Comics 008, 1940)

And finally, the movie that Kayo Ward stars in is a Sundell Production. (Pep Comics 008, 1940)

Unknown:

The specifics of Jimmie Fiddle here, with his entertainment column in the NY Reflection, and especially the detail of him rating things with orchids, ping my "this is a version of a real guy" sense quite hard, but I can't find a good thread to grab onto for a search. (Pep Comics 008, 1940)

EDIT: a list of New York periodicals of the 1930s turned up the NY Review as a possible original of the NY Reflection, but any further investigation is hampered by the popularity of the New York Review of Books. It's a dead end!

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 017

Buncha mooks this time.

The ship that picked up scientist-adventurer Dean Denton and his pals from the island of Baron Blood just so happened to have a pseudo-Nazi spy (fake name Lieutenant James, code name K-192, real name unknown) committing murders on it for unclear reasons. Despite composing a crime scene to contain nothing but clues pointing to other members of the crew Denton rounds him up pretty quickly. (Masked Marvel 003, 1940)

Pilot Prop Powers has to defend his ship and his cargo of gold bullion from this air pirate and his scurvy crew, and the story ends up glossing over his huge flying aerodrome a bit. Well, I think it's cool, unnamed air pirate captain. I'm sorry they blew it up. (National Comics 001, 1940)

Klotz, aka the Master Spy, has the distinction of being the first foe to battle the Shield. His greatest moment is pictured above, as the Shield is so absorbed in reading spy files that he doesn't notice approximately fifty boxes of TNT being piled up behind him. Klotz also returns in the 1984 series The Original Shield because there's nothing like battling an extremely old man to make for an exciting comic experience. (Pep Comics 001, 1940)

This bunch of clowns work for a mysterious figure who has been murdering Hollywood stars in connection with a jewel-smuggling ring. They're not in the story for very long before their employer murders them all with mustard gas - the henchman's greatest occupational hazard is, as always, the boss. Why do all these murders over some simple smuggled jewelry? Because the mastermind is Biff Crossley, himself a famous actor, and he wants nobody who can possibly tie him to the crime left alive, that's why. (Pep Comics 008, 1940)

THE SUPER-VILLAINS OF HOLLYWOOD PODCAST: The super-villainy might be a bit generic but this story is fodder for a whole season of tSVoHpod: Crossley murders two other stars (one of them inside Grauman's Chinese Theatre, using a bullet-firing compact) and tries to frame a third by pretending to be a target himself, he bumps off his own men, the Shield is there, and the whole thing ends with Crossley's defiant suicide. Sensational! This is podcasting, baby!