MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 822: THE TERROR

(Thrilling Comics 003, 1940) 

The Valery family have a problem: they are set to inherit a fortune from their deceased relative John Valery, but on the condition that they all live in the family estate, Valery Grange, for a full year, and danged if a mysterious character called the Terror hasn't started bumping them off just as they were about to complete the terms of John's will. Enter undercover police officer Peggy Allen, aka the Woman in Red, once again posing as a nurse. 

Please note the final panel above in which the Terror appears on-panel with almost every remaining Valery, thus removing them from the suspect list. It's a dirty thing to do to me, a person who like to try to solve a whodunnit.

One of the few viable suspects, assuming that the Terror isn't in cahoots with one of the Valerys, is the disappeared Horace Valery, but the Woman in Red finds his skeleton after chasing the Terror from the scene of the murder of Elton Valery into the unexplored depths of Valery Grange.

The Woman in Red reveals her identity to Eleanor Valery (terrible infosec) and sets a trap that nets her one (1) the Terror, and wouldn't you know it, he turns out to be Greeley Butler the family lawyer, who has been fiddling the Valery books to his own benefit and was killing off the family (extremely major crime) to cover for his embezzlement (not that bad, crime-wise). But where would mystery stories be if people didn't see murder as a handy solution for their problems all the time, hey?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 774: THE TERROR

(Super-Mystery Comics 001, 1940)

The Terror is really Scar (or Scar-Face) Pontois, a gang boss who is expending a lot of effort in order to drive people away from a rich gold claim that he has hijacked but has perhaps gone a bit too far, as Corporal Flint of the RCMP, the hero of our story, is only nosing around Scar's locale because of the strange rumours he and/or his superiors have heard. Please note his giant hat.

In addition to the fearsome Terror identity, Scar's efforts include playing off of local superstitions by sending the daughter of the man he stole the gold claim from out to play the ominous Flame Maiden, but the real star of the show is the Coffin of the Mad. Based on the idea that radium can destroy the human brain (an idea that I can find no real source for, which probably means that it appeared in one Scientific American article that the comic's writer read in 1935 or so), the coffin is made out of radium-bearing pitchblende ore. Various characters in the story claim that men have been made mad after being placed in the coffin, but even taking the "radium destroys brains" thing as gospel as far as I can tell pitchblende is so much less radioactive that radium that it's more likely that they all went nuts because they were shut up in a stone coffin alive. I wouldn't bet against their chances of getting cancer at some point though.

In conclusion, the Terror probably would have been better off just killing people. Or just investing in that guy's mine through a shell company.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 350: THE TERROR

(Master Comics 012, 1941)

At first I was fairly unimpressed with the Terror - I regarded him as yet another low-ambition super-crook, a guy with the wherewithal to invent a hypnotic ray belt and mount the output in the villain-standard rubberoid mask but with no greater ambition than to murder his uncle and half sister to get his mitts on the family fortune. But... is there another, non-crime way to get rich off of a hypnotic ray projector? I imagine that it would be quite useful in a psychologist's practice but that's a get-somewhat-rich-slowly scheme if I ever heard one. I suppose crime might have been the way to go for a young man in need of money, though speaking as an uncle, avunculicide is never the answer.

Once I looked at the Terror with fresh eyes I realized something else: as the Terror, young Stephen Barish was completely committed to the bit. He decided to kill his family, adopted an over-the-top cackling movie villain persona and kept that shit up until he was unmasked (and even then he tried to knife Zoro the Mystery Man and got sword caned for his trouble). Just look at this behaviour:

Just grinning and laughing and gloating and hopping around like a goblin until he is physically skewered. This is the kind of villain I like, even if he has an anti-uncle bias.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 214: THE TERROR

(Detective Comics v1 049, 1941)

This is one of your technical qualifications: a singer's former partner, jealous of his success, comes back for revenge. He calls himself the Terror and has a camera-gun and a bunch of hired goons with names like Smokey Joe. It all adds up to just enough to land him in the theoretical super-villain wing of the prison when Slam Bradley busts him.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 208: THE TERROR

(Crack Comics 018, 1941)

Not too much to distinguish this guy: he's Bumps Bale, a former pinball racketeer (you're just as likely to see Batman smashing up a bunch of pinball machines as an underground casino or a slot machine in the 40s. Gambling is Bad and Pinball is Gambling, was the attitude) who had hit hard times and decided to go into extorting mayors as a second career. Accordingly, he poisoned city comptroller Ezra Daves and promised Unnamed Mayor here some of the same if one million dollars in small bills was not produced post haste. Sadly for the Terror, the Clock got involved.

I do have to say that I appreciate the cowl-style mask that the Terror is sporting. Personally I find it far more aesthetically pleasing than the executioner's hoods and cloth draperies that have been more the norm thusfar.

(also for those keeping track this is presumably the mayor who took over after the Big Shot was ousted, placing him somewhere on a very spicy alternate Wikipedia page for List of Mayors of New York City)