PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 002

Once again I present the worst that comics has to offer.

The Great Green Turtle:

The Great Green Turtle is just your standard Yellow Peril Chinatown ganglord, albeit one with a fantastic name. He does try to throw Sub-Zero, a man with ice powers, into a shark tank so we can safely say that he is not a villain with fantastic intelligence. His gem-smuggling ring gets thoroughly kiboshed. (Blue Bolt v1 004, 1940)

The Lama:

The Lama is a bandit chief, essentially, albeit one with a name from one religious tradition and henchmen - Thuggees, natch - from another. He hijacks a plantation and then gets beat up by aviator Captain Kidd. (Fantastic Comics 010, 1940)

The Fire God:

If there's one thing that Captain Kidd likes, it's finding lost explorers, so when a fellow named Benson goes missing he's off like a shot. He finds Benson about to be sacrificed to the Fire God, a masked figure who a well-placed kick reveals to be a Hitler lookalike in a mask (the Hitler thing is either a coincidence or just kind of meant to indicate generic megalomania in the Fire God's character). This one not only has a white guy easily convincing a group of credulous natives that he is a god but an instance of White People Vs Everyone else as Captain Kidd fruitlessly tries to get out of a sticky situation by playing the race card.

The Fire God ultimately meets his end in the classic writer's cop-out when they don't want to make their guy do a murder: he falls and hits his head on a rock after a sock to the jaw. (Fantastic Comics 011, 1940)

Mad Ming:

Part of me wants to give Mad Ming some credit for not being as racist a Yellow Peril villain as someone like the Great Green Turtle, but he basically is and I am being tricked. Ming talks and dresses like a normal person and so all of his outrageous villainy is recontextualized, and maybe he would be worthy of reconsideration if all of his schemes and his henchmen and his nom de crime weren't still mired in the muck of the Oriental pulp villain, but as it stands he's just mildly better than his peers, racist stereotype-wise. (Funny Pages v4 001, 1940)

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 011

Some say they're not generic enough but I think they're trying their best.

This fellow is part of a gang looking to hijack a shipment of railway guns from train engineer Runaway Ronson. I really enjoy the look of the padded suit they use to help survive crashing a car into a high-speed train but I really really enjoy the fact that they immediately scramble off into the woods and are never seen again, as if they were completely unrelated to the criminal plot. (Blue Bolt v1 007, 1940)

This fellow's a pseudo-Nazi spy named Ketler who goes up against Sub-Zero in an attempt to influence the very specific Torpedo Workers Union into striking and hindering part of the US defense program. I feel like he overestimates the usefulness of the mask as he doesn't change anything else about his appearance when not murdering people but that's not what gets him caught so I guess I'm the fool here.(Blue Bolt v2 002, 1941)

Colourful enemy aces are the best/ only tolerable part of the absurd number of Golden Age comics about pilot-adventurers, so my little ears pricked up when American-flying-for-the-French Loop Logan was challenged to a dogfight by a Nazi called the Blue Duke but... there's nothing to him. He's just a guy with a name who's been sabotaging French planes and shooting them down. Waste of a good name, if you ask me. (several days later note: it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that this guy's name was a play on the Red Baron) (Blue Ribbon Comics 004, 1940)

These guys briefly terrorize New York (possibly - we have another instance of a city that is Clearly New York City But the Mayor is Wrong) with a futuristic tank mounted with a death ray. If they a) had a name and b) weren't completely demolished by Mr Justice in about three panels they might have made the leap to full Minor Super-Villain status but as it stands they're an object lesson in why ultra-powerful ghosts need a tougher class of enemy to be really entertaining. (Blue Ribbon Comics 010, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 008

Some real highs and lows in this one.

the Twister: 

The Twister is a quite minor Golden Age super-hero - he managed more than one appearance but not more than seven - who has the distinction of having one of the most well-designed costumes of the era. Not my favourite costume, mind you, but boy oh boy, you can really tell that his creators (Ray Gill and Paul Gustavson as it happens) really sat down for a good think about how to evoke "tornado" via the medium of clothing.

The Twister turns out to be Bob Sanders, and he turns out to be a descendant of perennial fave Greek hero Odysseus. It turns out that the story of Aeolus gifting Odysseus two bags of wind and his men opening the bag of storm winds thinking that it was full of treasure was more than just another delay in Odysseus' Bad Voyage, it was akin to the opening of Pandora's Box and Aeolus had charged Odysseus or his descendants to round up all of the evil violent winds and return the to captivity. 

Evidently over the years the charge to gather up evil winds has expanded to fighting all evil, and the Twister's power set allows him to run roughshod over just about anyone using wind control, a tornado form and invulnerability to anything that couldn't harm actual wind. There is some attempt to establish that he is vulnerable to being locked up somewhere with no airflow but that proves even easier to defeat than all the times that Silver Age Aquaman is locked up and forced to source water from unexpected places.

The Twister's other claim to fame is that he was introduced as a mysterious tornado that appeared in the Blue Bolt, Sub-Zero and Dick Cole stories in the issue he first appears in, which is enough to be counted as a rare Golden Age crossover even though none of them shared words. (Blue Bolt v2 001, 1941)

Freezum:

On an adventure that takes him to Alaska, Sub-Zero happens upon a little Inuit or Aleut boy frozen in a glacier.

Thawing the kid out and finding him to miraculously be alive, Sub-Zero (as well as an unfortunate doctor) is further astounded to discover that they share the same sort of cold-based powers due to their similar near-death freezing experiences. The kid names himself Freezum, and that's just the first salvo of a barrage of tired comic relief sidekick shenanigans. Yes, we'll be sighing and rolling our eyes for the remainder of Sub-Zero's run - the joys of the Golden Age, friends! (Blue Bolt v2 005, 1941)

Lois Blake:

Lois Blake is a woman who Blue Bolt meets while attempting to take down a gang that was swindling immigrants using fake citizenship papers and decides to team up with. At some point when the gang is being particularly elusive he remembers that his pal Dr Bertoff down in the underground Kirby world has a viewscreen that can see virtually any location and so they head down there to use it. Bertoff then very helpfully offers to transfer some of Blue Bolt's power to Lois and a new crimefighting team is born! (small aside: Golden Age comics don't get a lot of praise for their art but I really enjoy both the small detail of Lois gripping Blue Bolt's arm for comfort in the first panel above and her delighted expression in the third).

Lois never gets a super-hero name and only really makes a handful of appearances before Blue Bolt ditches his costume and powers to become a regular if oddly-named soldier, but he's such a nonentity post Simon and Kirby that I can't help but love her for adding some life to the strip.(Blue Bolt v2 007, 1941)

the Marvel:

The Marvel is your classic mask-and-tuxedo vigilante, who specializes in showing up to bail reporter Scoop Cody out of the kind of jams you can get in when you've cracked a juicy crime story but not accounted for the possibility that the criminals involved might want to stop you from reporting on it.

Three things about the Marvel: 

1. The nose cutout never looks as cool as the full-face cowl does but I reckon it's a heck of a lot more comfortable, so you have to give him some credit for choosing function over form.

2. Scoop Cody and thus the Marvel only had two appearances and both of them had a teaser at the end promising that the Marvel's identity would be revealed in the next issue. It's always possible that they were planning on making the Marvel a completely new, never-before-seen guy but if they weren't then literally the only suspect is this guy, Scoop Cody's crusty old unnamed editor.

3. Love a super-hero calling card, even in the rare cases when it's a literal calling card.

Also here is the Marvel's second appearance in its entirety. (Blue Ribbon Coimcs 002, 1939)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 512: AGENT 17

(Blue Bolt v1 012, 1941)

There are a lot of dastardly fascist spy chiefs in comics of the 1940s, so it's nice when one has something to distinguish themself from the monocle-and-dueling-scar heavy pack. Agent 17's gimmick, as stated by the dying Latonian agent Gonzales, is that he is a "young man with an old face." How useful is this in the average spy mission? Moderately, I presume.

Agent 17's mission is to prevent the government of the South American nation of Latonia from learning before it's too late that the nonspecific European fascist nation that they just signed a trade pact with is in fact planning to take over their country as a staging area for a full-scale invasion of South America. But though Agent 17 had managed to deal a fatal blow to Latonian secret agent Gonzales, Gonzales had not died before engaging the services of Venusian super-hero Sub-Zero.

For all that Agent 17 was going up against a cold-controlling super-hero armed with an old face he almost pulls it off! Latonia almost falls to the unspecified hordes of the enemy! Lucky for them, Sub-Zero manages to show up with a warning in the nick of time. Plus he gets to punch an old man in the face, guilt free!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 511: DR TRASK

(Blue Bolt v1 011, 1941)

Dr Trask is himself not much to speak of: a scientist who has taken over a village in the South American jungle, forced its inhabitants to pan gold and fight for him and killed anyone from the outside world who got too close, including Dr Martin, a scientist whose colleague Dr Howard has hired Sub-Zero to investigate just what is going on. Like I said, pretty standard comic book villain stuff, but his methods, oh boy!

Dr Trask, you see, has developed so-called "vampire rats" that are said to attack human necks and suck out their blood. A fearsome legend that is only enhanced by just how small and cute the rats are. Look how adorably he foams at the mouth!

Even better is the revelation that the rats are not actually vampires but instead are carriers of the Green Vampire Germ, a disease that merely makes rats aggressive but makes humans dead. And it looks like a little protoplasmic crocodile! This is unironically one of the greatest things I have ever seen.

Anyway, Trask jumps on Sub-Zero in an attempt to kill him with Green Vampire Germ and gets frozen to death for his efforts. But not before creating two wonderful bastardizations of science, for which I salute him.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 510: FARGALL

(Blue Bolt v1 010, 1941)

Fargall is a scientist-cum-criminal operating out of Centro, Sub-Zero's chosen home (well, it hasn't actually been identified as Centro for about 7 issues or so and I'm afraid that it's slowly transmogrifying into NYC like all unnamed comic book cities but until I'm told otherwise it's Centro to me) who has taken up the challenge of operating out of a super-hero town by inventing heat ray guns that effectively counter Sub-Zero's whole deal.

If that were all that Fargall had going on he'd be lumped in with all of the other one-trick scientists in the round-up but no, Fargall has something that they lack: Fargall has style.

When Fargall's scheme goes off he and his guys put on tuxedos and paint the town red. And unlike his underlings, Fargall keeps on wearing that tuxedo as they set out to rob the Legally Distinct from the New York World's Fair. Because he has style.

Heck, even the goggles that Fargall and his guys wear to protects their eyes from heat rays look good.

At this point it would be quite narratively satisfying for Fargall to be undone by his sense of style in some way but since that's just something I have built up in my head it wasn't on Bill Everett's mind when he plotted the whole thing out. Instead, Fargall falls victim to that most pervasive pattern of super-villain hubris: gloating and sadistically taking so long in finishing the hero off that they are able to escape and beat you up. It's very common!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 504: PROFESSOR X

(Blue Bolt v1 005, 1940)

Professor X has two of my favourite qualities in a minor super-villain: a famous name and a prior history. The first is the same kind of fun as when my friend named his cat after me. "What do you mean Professor X keeps getting up on the counter to steal ham?"

I really love his Prohibition-Era villainy as well, particularly as I had it in my head that he specifically was a bootlegger and thus that all of his great inventions were in service of that - dirigibles full of Canadian whiskey? The axe-proof barrel? The mighty Beer-Bot? Fun stuff. The suicide vest, by contrast is a bit much and not particularly fun, but does establish his bona fides as a legitimate threat.

Prof. X is on a classic Judge and Jury Revenge Killer tear, targeting Hogan, the cop who brought him in and Johnson, the lawyer who put him away, who since then has become the District Attorney of Centro and close personal friend of local super-hero Sub-Zero.

Due to this last fact Professor X is forced to turn his genius to the creation of anti-Sub-Zero weaponry, including cold-proof cars, an unfreezable gun that fires superheated bullets and his iconic costume which - you guessed it - is insulated  and renders him immune to Sub-Zero's freezing powers. And he almost manages to beat Sub-Zero! His only mistake is in having uninsulated water pipes in his secret lair and leads to him being sent to jail inside a large block of ice.

Professor X returns in the next issue in an attempt to finish getting revenge on DA Johnson as well as new target Sub-Zero (he also tries to kill Sub-Zero's girlfriend Mary but I don't think he has a specific grudge against her), and this time he's accompanied by a costumed henchman named Rat. Once again he very nearly pulls it off but this time his fatal flaw is a lot more fatal, as he misjudges a jump during his escape and does a header out a fourth story window. An ignominious end to be sure.

JUDGE AND JURY REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 1/3

But death is not the end for Professor X! Blue Bolt v1 007 features a gambler named Rocky Garret who has acquired the Professor's anti-Sub-Zero tech as insurance against interference in his baseball-fixing scheme (and it's a good idea for him to do so, as his scheme is Not Very Good - a lot of it is literally just putting the wrong numbers on the scoreboard which... isn't good.  It's a bad plan.)

Sadly this is it as far as Professor X's legacy goes. I was kind of hoping that Sub-Zero would be confronted with a guy in a mesh bodysuit every now and again going forward, but alas, it was not meant to be.

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 007

All Novelty Press edition!

Dick Cole, Wonder-Boy: 

Dick Cole was left on the front steps of scientist Professor Blair as a baby, and according to him there was an accompanying note requesting that he use his hitherto-untested experimental child-rearing techniques to bring the kid up to be superhuman. And it works! Dick Cole is stronger and faster and smarter than everyone else, and works to help those around him in whatever way he can.

Sadly for me the Dick Cole series is set at a military academy, a surprisingly popular location in early comics. I think that the weird pseudo-military class structure that such places had/have was popular for the easy drama inherent in the noble protagonists being forced to kowtow to undeserving upperclassmen but reading comics about teenagers being assholes to each other for imaginary reasons palls quickly. (ADDENDUM: I wrote this at the beginning of my Dick Cole reading and am pleased to say that the military academy stuff isn't as bad as it is in other comics of the time) (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)

BONUS: here's Dick Cole as a very cool baby.

Sub-Zero:

AKA Sub-Zero Man. Part of a Venusian expedition to Earth whose extremely awesome looking spaceship crashed through a frozen gas ball en route, killing everyone but Our Hero, who instead becomes uncontrollably and destructively super-cold.

After a couple of issues of misunderstood wandering and being hunted, Sub-Zero endears himself to the city of Centro... Oregon? by saving it from a volcano. (highway signs place Centro somewhere between Los Angeles and Topeka, so it's probably either Oregon or Northern California, and Oregon is closer to volcano country). There, he settles down to a regular super-hero life, albeit one with no secret identity, Centro slowly becomes NYC like so many other comic book cities and people basically forget the fact that he's an alien. (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)

the Phantom Sub: 

A bunch of young men led by Jack Damon and Slim Dugan construct an advanced submarine in secret, as you do, and end up as wanted fugitives dispensing justice on the high seas via an electrified water cannon and some plucky attitudes. (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)

Near the end of 1941 the Phantom Sub added the power of flight to its many features, and shortly after that the Phantom Sub crew were able to come in from the cold and begin aiding the US war effort. (Blue Bolt v2 006, 1941)

the White Rider and Super Horse:

During a stagecoach holdup, a youngster named Peter (no last name given) is orphaned and flung into a river that eventually flows into the mysterious Lost Valley, where he befriends and is raised by an old hermit named Jeb and a cool horse named Cloud. Eventually, the hermit dies of puma and Peter and Cloud make their way to the outside world where it turns out that due to the valley's depth it somehow had more gravity and thus the two are super strong. Anyhow, Peter immediately hunts down and kills the bandit who orphaned him and resolves to stamp out crime as the White Rider and Super Horse. 

Despite the superpowers the White Rider is a bit of a dud, hero-wise and Super Horse does most of the heavy lifting, both literally and metaphorically. (Blue Bolt v1 001)

NOTES - MARCH 2024 PART 2

I used up all the tags on the first one.

Honours:

Dick Cole gets the Carnegie Hero Fund Medal for saving a baby and a shirtless lunatic (Blue Bolt v1 001, 1940)

Dick Cole also saves the Princess of the fictional European nation of Dania from pseudo-Nazis and is awarded the Danian Order of the Exalted Knight for his efforts. (Blue Bolt v1 012, 1941)

Sub-Zero saves the city of Centro from a volcano and gets a banquet in his honour (and more importantly goes from a wanted fugitive to a civic hero) (Blue Bolt v1 002, 1940)

Ten issues later, Sub-Zero saves the South American nation of Latonia from invasion by crypto-Nazis and is given an unspecified medal (Blue Bolt v1 012, 1941)

Train engineer Runaway Ronson gets a medal from the Governor of... some state for saving a town from a flood with his train - the story takes place in the Mississippi River Valley which is not exactly a precise geographical location. (Blue Bolt v1 003, 1940)

Runaway Ronson and his pal Pat also get a personal visit from FDR after stopping some spies from their nefarious train-based plotting (Blue Bolt v1 006, 1940)

Sergeant Spook is honoured by former President of the US and current president of Ghost Town, George Washington! (Blue Bolt v1 008, 1941)

Trophy Room:

Sub-Zero just gives away a huge ruby to his gal pal Janet Ware at the end of his encounter with the Great Green Turtle (Blue Bolt v1 004)

Kid inventor Edison Bell wins the *checks notes* National Gas Midget Auto Race complete with a trip to the South Seas (Blue Bolt v2 004, 1941)

Cops Shooting at Fleeing Suspects:

PANG! PANG! The cops are trying to shoot fleeing teen Dick Cole in the back after he is framed for murder. (Blue Bolt v1 007, 1940)

Twice!

Crossdressing:

Sub-Zero might just have the least amount of gender panic of any crossdressing Golden Age hero bar Madam Fatal. (Blue Bolt v2 003, 1941)