MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 641: ONE-EYE

(Fantastic Comics 013, 1940) 

One-Eye is a stylish fellow with a real bone to pick with humankind, who have apparently rejected him for the heinous sin of Having Only One Eye, I guess? Unless having a widow's peak and a long waxed mustache are considered disfigurements? I suppose that cultural mores do change over time and it is 8000 years in the future... in any case, the point is that he's upset at the world and has decided to kill humanity off.

To that end, One-Eye has gathered together a collection of generic mutants, all of whom are more interesting looking than him (and one of whom appears to be wearing some shockingly high-cut booty shorts).

Among these recruits is this "giant devil-octopus" which a) has six arms, b) appears to be made of human skin and c) is the most unsettling thing I've seen in a comic in a long time.

By contrast Kuga the man-eating giant cat is a walk in the park, a beauty to behold! Plus it is stuck in a too-small room so that One-Eye can drop people down a trap door in his office and have them slide directly into its mouth. Barely threatening at all!

Ultimately Sub Saunders beats up the mutants, blows up One-Eye's undersea base and hands him over to the authorities.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 636: THE SERPENT LADY

(Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

We open on Mephisto, the Dreaded Poison Serpent, attacking a small boat and making off with its inhabitants. For a split second I am excited - maybe this is our long-sought criminal animal! - but then I remember the lessons I learned from Cephalopoda the Octopus and rein myself in.

And it's a good thing I did, for Mephisto is a mere tool of the mysterious Serpent Lady, who lives in a golden city in an undersea cave and rules over a population of bald creeps who need blood to live. Maybe? It's possible that they just like blood. Either way, this is why she has been using her cool snake to kidnap surface dwellers: their delicious blood.

Sub Saunders will not stand for blood theft in his god-given ocean. He slays Mephisto and a fair few bald-headed creeps but leaves the Serpent Lady alive and at liberty. Will she be returning? I read ahead a bit and yes she will!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 631: DABLO, LAST OF THE RAY MEN AND THE HOOD

(Fantastic Comics 011, 1940)

THIS. IS. GREAT. We open on the trial of Dablo, Last of the Ray Men, and immediately we must ask: who are the Ray Men? And let me tell you that there is no answer beyond "guys who could shoot rays." Dablo here shoots rays out of a big hole in his forehead but did they all do that? No clue! This is the kind of worldbuilding that people like Alan Moore will eventually get up to in the 80s - implying that there are weird and wonderful things all around by reference and allusion. It's really neat!

Whatever the Ray Men were, there are only one of them left and he, Dablo has just been sentenced to death by Judge Ord.

On the eve of Dablo's execution (via guillotine, by the way. Nobody's thought up a cool futuristic execution method by the Year 10 000. Also there is capital punishment in the Year 10 000) a mysterious figure who we will later learn is called the Hood appears and restores the Last Ray Man's ray powers, to the delight of all.

The Hood is pretty generic, but he meets the criteria for a minor super-villain. Obviously he must take a back seat to the Last of the Ray Men.

Come the morning of the execution and we finally get to see this famous ray that everyone's been talking about. It does not disappoint! Dablo blasts fools left and right before making off with Judge Ord!

This is a Sub Saunders story so of course Dablo has an undersea lair. Just who was this red-haired unfortunate? No idea, but I have a hunch that they met their end at the wrong end of a ray.

The back half of the story is unfortunately much more concerned with the Hood (who turns out to be Judge Ord, crooked and looking to take control of the unnamed future city the trial of Dablo took place in. Will future society reexamine their relationship to capital punishment once the corruption present at the very highest echelons of their legal system comes to light? Probably not), who does a header off of a cliff after revealing his plans to Sub Saunders. The far more dynamic and interesting Dablo survives, presumably to be re-sentenced to death by another judge. There ain't no justice.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 627: CHONG

(Fantastic Comics 010, 1940)

Chong is basically just a pirate, but there are three things worth noting about him. The first is that his name is Chong in a comic book published in 1940 and he is not a horrendous Asian stereotype of one sort or another. It's a low bar and he cleared it with aplomb.

The second thing is Chong's weapon of choice, an enormous spiked wheel that rises out of the depths to wreck ships. It's not precisely a War Wheel but so far it's a close as we've seen and since the real thing doesn't actually debut until 1952. Is it the most efficient way to loot ships? No. Is it a huge spiked wheel? Yes.

The third thing is just how bad Chong is at killing Sub Saunders. Sub handily avoids the ersatz War Wheel, two goons and two explosions in quick succession and while, yes, not getting killed by villains is basically a hero's entire job they usually end up getting knocked around a little bit at least. Chong doesn't even manage to ruffle his foe's hair.

Even the appearance of Zobbo, Chong's amazing man-ape bodyguard, barely fazes Saunders. Chong is just that bad at his job.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 625: BOLOCH

(Fantastic Comics 009, 1940)

Sub Saunders is just cruising around in the ocean when his submarine is swept into an underground cave, the home of the fantastic Cave Things! I was very excited when this comic started but sadly this is the most we see of Cave Things slithering and creeping around like this. They still have a lot going for them as far as humanoid creeps go but it's real sad that we don't get to see more creeping and crawling.

Anyway, the Cave Things worship a god called Boloch and of course there's a guy inside exploiting them via a speaker setup. His plan hits a real snag when Sub Saunders notices the big open door on the front of Boloch's idol and just hops inside.

Boloch (the man inside the statue is also named Boloch, which suggests that he named his fake god after himself?) bangs his head on a table after being socked by Saunders and passes away. And since Sub Saunders emerged from the flames of Boloch unscathed, he himself is acclaimed as Boloch in human form and allowed to leave peacefully.

The trope of an advanced outsider taking advantage of an isolated community by posing as a god and/or repurposing an idol or other religious infrastructure to their own ends is a long-established one, but the real head-scratcher with regard to Boloch is just how in the heck he even knew there was a community of weirdos to take advantage of on the ocean floor, let alone how he set everything up. We shall never know, thanks to the efforts of that brave table.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 614: KOZAR

(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940)

Once again the nations of he world of the year 10 000 CE are faced with an oceanic menace. Twenty ships have been sunk - seems like a case for Sub Saunders! Could we be faced with yet another jerk ruler from the population of undersea humans? It seems likely! (aside: gotta give a shoutout to Thog here: having a name like that in a comic from 1940 is absolutely an early indicator that you are a villain yet he has rejected nominative determinism to instead serve the public goo. Good on ya, Thog)

But no! After five issues and four separate evil underwater rulers we have a c-c-c-combo breaker in the form of Kozar, a scientist with a weirdly concave face. I mean, sure, he is an antisocial guy who does rule an area under the ocean, but he's originally from the surface! It's totally different!

Kozar has some terrific henchmen at his disposal - forget your Frogmen and Mermen: the Sea-Weed Men are the new greatest underwater goons of the year 10 000. I especially like that their flowing fronds accidentally evoke the 1970s stock character of the Fringed Clothing Hippy.

Kozar's motivation for sinking airships and killing hundreds of people is an unspecified rejection by society. The two most common reasons for this type of rejection are for having really wild out-there scientific theories or for being a creep/looking like a creep and if it's not stated outright then you can usually tell which it is. It's not crystal clear with Kozar but... I reckon he was a real creep and a half.

Kozar actually manages to defeat Sub Saunders pretty decisively by catching him in a mechanical clamp! He actually might have won, except for the fact that his undersea base has one small design flaw: if someone's not constantly monitoring the air pressure etc it will flood and implode. To me personally that seems like an important thing to have multiple automatic failsafes and backups on but what do I know, I'm not a mad genius. Maybe the real thing that Kozar was rejected by society for was his rejection of OSHA guidelines.

Though the story ends on a bit of a melancholy note we must take heart that the Sea-Weed Men are okay. Maybe without the stress of being under the thumb of a homicidal madman they can build a free and just society on the ocean floor.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 608: KING KELPA

(Fantastic Comics 005, 1940)

Sub Saunders needs to investigate a series of sunken ships, so he has his fiance Peg given the same treatment as he got from the great "oceantalogist" Professor Foama so that they are both amphibious and can go on missions together. This is wildly progressive for a Golden (or Silver, or a lot of Bronze) Age comic book hero! They're usually more likely to toe the "this is too dangerous for a woman" line - it's probably because Sub Saunders is from the year 10 000.

Somewhat predictably at this point, the problem stems from an irascible undersea ruler with a vaguely nautical name, in this case one King Kelpa. Unlike the rest of the sub-oceanic peoples from earlier Sub Saunders stories, Kelpa and the inhabitants of his unnamed city are actually amphibious, a huge advantage to people living at the bottom of the ocean! Flush with feelings of superiority, he has decided to invade the surfave world, where his people will have no advantage over regular soldiers. Problem is, he doesn't actually know anything about the surface world and so has been sinking ships in hopes of getting intel, but up until Sub and Peg showed up all he got was a bunch of drowned sailors. What luck for him to encounter the only two amphibious surface dwellers!

Only not so much. Sub Saunders defeats Kelpa's pet swordfish, snaps off its bill and stabs him to death with it, then bombs his city for good measure.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 604: PRINCE PIGZA

(Fantastic Comics 004, 1940) 

Is Prince Pigza a proper super-villain or just a jerk? His major crime as discovered by a newly-amphibious Sub Saunders on an exploratory jaunt under the ocean is in not caring that his process for extracting gold from seawater is (possibly) causing disturbances along the coast of the US. Would it be polite to check? Is it a dick move not to stop? Both yes. If he didn't lock up Sub Saunders for suggesting that he stop and subsequently plan on dissecting him to learn the secret of his amphibiousness then I might not have been able in good conscience to include him here.

Sub Saunders of course escapes his prison and calls in the US Navy to *squints* slaughter Pigza's spear wielding guards and presumably declare the city of Crustacea an underwater protectorate of the United States.

Prince Pigza himself is summarily exploded by Sub Saunders. What I'm saying, I guess, is check up on people or governments before you casually make them your enemies because they might have a tendency to respond to provocations with overwhelming and deadly force.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 599: POSEIDA

(Fantastic Comics 003, 1940)

Back to the adventures of Sub Saunders in the Year 10 000 CE! Naulus has been defeated and for their part in achieving that the US military, represented by Sub Saunders, have been promised untold subsea riches recovered from millennia of shipwrecks. The problem with this plan is that the riches are still just kind of out on the seafloor and more specifically that Poseida, ruler of the nearby city of Coralla, has decided to gather them up for himself.

The impending diplomatic incident over the ownership of this treasure is forestalled by a different diplomatic incident as Poseida takes a shine to Sub Saunders' fiancee Peg and attempts to woo her in the traditional manner of the villain: kidnapping and extortion. Is the fact that he seems to be the only human in a city of long-bearded Mermen any excuse for this? Not really but it does shed some light on his motivations.

Poseida's plan to win Peg's love by placing Sub in danger fails when Sub utterly demolishes his giant spider crab foe and before long he has radioed Atlantis for help. The ensuing Frogman/ Merman battle is sadly only visible through the streaky windows of Poseida's HQ. One good sock to the jaw and the treasure Peg is saved!

There's no follow-up on Poseida but as the leader of what seems to be a sovereign city-state he should be safe from prosecution for his crimes. He should count his lucky stars that he didn't get blown up like Naulus.