MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 852: THE SUPER-SCIENTIST

(Weird Comics 008, 1940)

The Sorceress of Zoom is up to her usual tricks: attempting to steal some random guy from his lady friend, getting mad that he won't fall in love with her, attacking the city he lives in and turning their tank patrol (!) into a series of ornamental trees, and finally abducting people willy-nilly in order to turn them into furniture. Regular stuff.

In the city council's hour of need it is approached by an eccentrically dressed character who calls himself the Super-Scientist and who claims that he can save the city from the Sorceress' depredations. This of course turns out to have a pretty big caveat: the Super-Scientist will indeed save the city, but only so that he can rule it himself.

After an initial exchange of fire (1. SoZ attempts to flood the city, 2. S-S transforms water to gas, 3. SoZ launches flaming humans in attempt to ignite gas, 4. flaming humans shot down by city militia (!)) the Sorceress of Zoom and the Super-Scientist agree to have an old-fashioned magic vs science duel for ownership of the city.

As the duel comprises almost four pages of back-and-forth attack, defense and counter-attack, I won't go into the whole thing, save to note that the Super-Scientist trucks in the kind of science that is indistinguishable from magic, that the highlight of the event is when the Super-Scientist's radium ray briefly turns the Sorceress into a skeleton, and that the whole thing ends with the Super-Scientist transformed into a gross rat.

All this has alleviated the boredom that seemingly inspires the Sorceress to start causing trouble in the mortal world, and she packs up Zoom and flies off. Ironically, in providing the Sorceress of Zoom with a diverting afternoon, the Super-Scientist has in fact saved the city, though any degree of ratty satisfaction he might feel about this is probably spoiled by the hungry cat that the Sorceress summons just before taking off.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 851: MORGANA LE FAY

(Weird Comics 007, 1940)

Here we are again with another Morgan(a) le Fay entry, our third in about a month and a half. Was there something in the water? This is also going to double as a micro Real Folk Round-Up, as all of the Arthurian characters who appear in the story are plot-relevant enough that I might as well detail them here as duplicate my effort.

Our Real Folk start off with Sir Gareth, Knight of the Round Table, brother to Gawaine, not quite the sort of household name knight as his brother or a Lancelot or a Galahad but held in pretty high esteem by the fans of such things. Gareth is rescued from a group of murderous knights by the Sorceress of Zoom after she travels back in time to avoid the burgeoning World War II, and is pining after his lady Elaine*, held captive by Morgana le Fay and destined to be married to the odious Mordred.

The Sorceress of Zoom, horny for Gareth, decides to aid him on his quest in hopes of finding a way to eliminate Elaine along the way. Approaching le Fay's castle, the duo find themselves imprisoned and facing death by the sword. 

The Sorceress' shirtless men prove a match for Morgana le Fay's knights; her flying dragons make short work of le Fay's flightless ones, and her magic is easily able to save Sir Gareth from being changed into a pig. Morgana le Fay is seemingly beaten!

The Sorceress of Zoom does not press her advantage, but instead encourages a joust for Elaine's freedom between Sir Gareth and Sir Mordred (not much of a character beyond being a generic evil knight here. He is portrayed as the son of Morgana le Fay rather than of her sister Margawse, but whether that is because that is so common a literary elision that it has entered the public consciousness or because Gareth is also the son of Margawse and having them be half brothers would be a complication that the story did not need, is hard to say). Her plan is to influence the joust so that Sir Gareth loses and thus is single, but is foiled in this by Merlin the Magician (also barely a character and just there to deus ex machina the Sorceress back to her own time), who tells her she is not wanted in Arthurian England. Morgana, while technically defeated and foiled, is left to go about her business.

*Lady Elaine is not a reference to a specific Arthurian character to my knowledge. There are a half dozen or so Elaines running around Camelot and its environs, and the only one connected to Sir Gareth is his aunt/ Morgana le Fay's sister, who she hopefully wouldn't be trying to marry to her son.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 847: THE WIZARD OF ZORO

(Weird Comics 004, 1940) 

The Wizard of Zoro really takes the prize for the Most Charming Atrocity of 1940 when he swoops down on a small town and turns everyone into the kind of semi-anthropomorphic giant frogs that you get in Victorian greeting cards. Do I love that he then enslaves the frogs? No. Do I endorse the fact that he singles out an attractive young woman for special torment by turning her boyfriend into a snake? Of course not. Nevertheless, the frogs are charming and dear.

Perhaps the Wizard of Zoro is riding a little too high on his great ranomancy (a word I just made up to describe frog-based magic) because when the Sorceress of Zoom proposes an alliance between the two of them he gets all high and mighty about how he doesn't need anyone else to be a cool and powerful wizard. (sidebar: I think it shows a lot of maturity for the Sorceress to attempt this partnership with someone who looks nearly identical to her recent tormentor the Wizard. It's a real shame that the Wizard of Zoro was too much of a jerk to join her)

The Sorceress of Zoom is of course more than a match for some lousy frog wizard, which she proves by incinerating his lousy palace. 

The Wizard's only response being to further transform his subjects, from frogs into mice, is inadequate at best. And the frogs were the only thing he had going for him, so he's really shooting himself in the foot here. 

The Sorceress ultimately puts this sad excuse for a duel out of its misery by weaponizing the boyfriend-turned snake. Once the Wizard of Zoro is consumed by his former victim he is forced to restore him to human form lest he be digested, and it seems that the Wizard's magic works like an old string of Xmas lights because undoing one spell turns out to also restore all of the mice as well.

All that's left is to smack the Wizard one before everyone goes home.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE WIZARD

(Weird Comics 003, 1940)

The Wizard is the first of five villains to challenge the Sorceress of Zoom for the role of top villain in her own dang feature. He is unique among that group for being the only villain in the story he appears in, as while the rest of his peers come at the Sorceress while she is engaged in some nefarious activity, the Wizard shows up while she is peacefully hanging out with her friend Allan. 

Once the Wizard's weird humanoids have slaughtered all of the citizens of Zoom, he smashes the Sorceress' never-before-seen magic mirror, which in this story only is the source of her magical power. He then absconds with the entire damn city.

The Sorceress and Allan set out to restore the mirror by re-forging it in the heart of a volcano, only to find the Wizard and his goons waiting on the rim of the caldera to beat them up.

This turns out to be a bad decision on the Wizard's part, as the Sorceress is able to perform an extremely sick move that is let down somewhat by the art, wherein she leaps into the volcano holding the mirror and is thus able to use her magic to fly back out/become immune to flame/heal her horrific wounds once it re-forms. And the volcano does double duty, since she is able to dispose of the Wizard in there!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE SORCERESS OF ZOOM

(Weird Comics 001, 1940)

The Sorceress of Zoom is just what it says on the tin: a sorceress from Zoom, which is a magical flying city that she lives in and controls. She's another of the Golden Age's surprisingly large number of headlining super-villains, only instead of being a mad scientist or a more conventional crook she is a mercurial magic woman who just kind of flies around harassing people. Sometimes she's almost okay and other times she's one of history's worst monsters - it's over all fun!

As has become the norm with these recurring villains, here is a litany of her crimes for 1940:

In her first outing, the Sorceress takes over a small American city for unclear reasons (a page is missing from the only available scan of the issue and I reckon that the answer lies there), but the main conflict involves the Sorceress' attempt to vamp a dude named Tom away from a lady named Janice. 

Sorceress' Motivation: caprice, lust

Inhabitants of Zoom: This is the first appearance of the Sorceress of Zoom's most frequent henchmen, a group of unnamed gobliny humanoids 

In Weird Comics 002, the Sorceress really ups the stakes. This might be her most villainous appearance, as she first attempts to get the king of Bango, a... European city-state? to surrender 300 people so that she can kill them and turn their corpses into her goblin-men, and when he refuses to do so, she razes the entire city and turns the slaughtered population of Bango en masse.

The only surviving Bangonian, Prince Paul, escapes to the nearby city-state of Zoda and when the Sorceress appears there, conceives of a plan to evaporate the cloud that Zoom sits upon - this marks the first of many times that Zoom is destroyed, but the Sorceress seems to be able to recreate it at will, so that's not as consequential as it seems.

I really enjoy the flying throne that the SoZ escapes on, so here it is.

Sorceress' Motivation: power

Inhabitants of Zoom: The same gobliny humanoids, now revealed to be necromantically created out of human corpses.

Weird Comics 003 really highlights the mercurial nature of the Sorceress' character, as she is fully the blameless protagonist here. She and her friend Allan are just hanging out in Zoom when a nefarious character called the Wizard attacks them and makes off with the entire dang city, forcing the Sorceress and the tuxedo-clad Allan to quest in search of it. The Wizard is number 1 of 5 upcoming Minor Super-Villain entries dealing with foes of the Sorceress, so more on him later.

Sorceress' Motivation: vengeance, good times

Inhabitants of Zoom: Seemingly just regular people, who are all slaughtered by the Wizard. The hazards of living in a magical city owned by a super-villain, I suppose. 

In Weird Comics 004, the Sorceress attempts to ally with a fellow called the Wizard of Zoro to take over the US (? Possibly - a sense of place is not the strong suit of the Sorceress of Zoom comics), but he is too full of himself to work with someone else, making him the second of our future entries and giving the Sorceress a real opportunity to show off her flying, lion-driven carriage as she makes a brief tactical retreat.

The Sorceress once again threatens to return and steal someone's fairly generic man at the end of this one, and as far as is shown she never really follows up on these impulses.

Sorceress' Motivation: vengeance, lust

Inhabitants of Zoom: The coachmen above are the only ones shown, so presumably more regular people have decided to live on the edge by inhabiting a magical villain's lair. 

 

Weird Comics 005 sees the Sorceress kidnapping the magical men who live in Nagpur, India, both to beef up her forces and to prove that she is better than them.

What the Sorceress doesn't count on is the fact that one of the magical men might have a magical son, and that magical son might effect a magical rescue. The magical men, once released, are able to prevent the Sorceress from making any more attempts to deprive them of their freedom.

This issue also attempts to inject some continuity and foreshadowing into the ongoing Sorceress of Zoom narrative with a bit of a cliffhanger about just what the general and the king in her cryo-chamber could be doing there. This is to my knowledge never revisited.

Sorceress' Motivation: pride, power

Inhabitants of Zoom: The gobliny humanoids are back!

In Weird Comics 006, a somewhat off-model Sorceress of Zoom attempts to take over the Middle East with the help of some dragons. This attempt is foiled by young Prince Ja'afar, who is gifted a protective amulet and a flying carpet by a friendly desert mage and invades Zoom to rescue his love, the Princess Shahzarad.

Sorceress' Motivation: power, lust

Inhabitants of Zoom: Slaves and dragons.

Weird Comics 007 sees the Sorceress transporting Zoom back in time to escape the chaos of the growing World War II. She ends up in Arthurian England, mixed up in a conflict between Sir Gareth of the Round Table (who she of course wants, carnally) and Morgana le Fay (upcoming minor super-villain 3/5), before being run out of town by Merlin.

Sorceress' Motivation: lust

Inhabitants of Zoom: Big beefy shirtless men, mostly. 

The Weird Comics 008 story is the first of what I think will be a pattern of adventures going forward: the Sorceress rolls into some area and starts causing trouble, then gets into a scrap, then undoes some or all of the mischief that she caused and leaves. My theory is that this is what she does when she gets bored.

In this case, the Sorceress annoys a young couple and attempts to seduce the man away from the woman (who has been turned into flowers, natch), then attempts to conquer a nearby city before having a real tussle with upcoming villain 4/5, the Super-Scientist, and leaving (after turning the flowers back into a lady).

This issue also features the second time that Zoom is destroyed and recreated.

Sorceress' Motivation: lust, boredom, power

Inhabitants of Zoom: the very cool-looking Vapor Men. 

Weird Comics 009 is another of these boredom issues, in which the Sorceress is ostensibly transporting some treasure out of the North African desert but really seems to just be having fun torturing the poor people who she has enslaved to do so. Eventually, she gets into a conflict with out final upcoming super-villain, Gobi, the Super-Wizard of the Desert, who wants to use the Sorceress' slaves as food for his vultures. Zoom is destroyed yet again this issue.

Sorceress' Motivation: wealth, boredom

Inhabitants of Zoom: None shown. 

That's it for the Sorceress of Zoom in 1940: stay tuned for her 1941 adventures!