MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 331: THE LEGION OF DESPAIR

(Human Torch v1 006, 1941)

A fairly simple one today: am man named Haskell advertises for people with no hope in life, then selects the most desperate of them into a gang. Since they were all prepared to die already, the members of the Legion of Despair are prone to, say, blowing themselves up with grenades in order to see that their compatriots get away with whatever loot they're scampering off with.

Aside from this radical investment in the goals of the group, Haskell's other thematic concept for the Legion is the Dice of Death, which are used to determine who goes on these potential suicide missions by who wins a game of craps (I think? It's not exactly spelled out).

It all comes tumbling down once the Human Torch and Toro get involved, because even with five guys willing to blow themselves up to ensure success there's only so much you can do against a couple of fire men. Haskell turns out to have been cheating in order to avoid risking his life on missions but only after everyone has been captured, offering no real comeuppance other than, presumably, a bad reputation once they're all in prison. Unsatisfying!

MINOR SUPER-HERO 330: RATHIA

(Human Torch v1 005b, 1941)

Bit of an unfair one here: Rathia is a princess of a Baltic kingdom of Atlanteans who persuades the Sub-Mariner to attempt world conquest. She is unquestionably a bad egg but by far the worst crimes of the issue are perpetuated by Namor himself and include: imprisoning and nearly killing Toro, mind controlling the Human Torch, flooding Africa and NYC, sinking the Italian Navy, nearly destroying Moscow and various war crimes. Crucially, Rathia does not exert any influence other than puffing up Namor's ego - no mind control, nothing. Maybe a roll in the hay. Despite this, she is the one who stands trial as "World Enemy No. 2 - second only to Hitler!" while Namor just has to look contrite.

In conclusion, this should probably be part of a Yearbook post about Namor but I am aggressively disinterested in him so Rathia takes the hit once again.  

Seriously, look at this guy. Contemptible.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 327: DR SMART

(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941)

I think I've mentioned the old three-act super-villain story structure of yore a couple of times, but there are a whole host of old comic book story styles that have fallen by the wayside and Dr Smart here stars in one of them: the book-length heist story. 

Three pages into our tale, Smart and his crew, posing as a funeral procession, rob an armoured car. The remaining 38 or so pages concern the efforts of the Human Torch and Toro to capture the slippery little devil because to his credit Dr Smart is a guy who reads the paper and knows that the Torch is a cop and will be guarding the money he is after.

Dr Smart's entire scheme hinges on anti-Torch technology: asbestos suits; grenades that explode into asbestos bindings; super-cold liquid air bombs and smokescreens; thermite ammunition that won't melt. The capper is a duo of tricked-out hearses equipped with asbestos linings and heatproof glass - a considerable portion of the issue is spent with Toro and the Torch either locked up in the back of one or fruitlessly trying to get Dr Smart and his henchmen out of the front. Smart might have gotten away with it if he hadn't tried to be clever and bury the heroes with the loot - it was one too many things to juggle and he got pinched.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 326: BLACKJACK

(Human Torch v1 004, 1941)

Blackjack is your regular style gang boss who is operating at a scale sufficient to be considered super-villainous: he has an ocean liner and a private island equipped with various anti-Human Torch measures, including a fleet of nitrogen bomb-dropping bombers, all in service to one of my personal favourite supercrime setups: the escape ring (which of course involves paying a portion of your take to a third party in order to be spirited away from the reach of the authorities).

Sadly for Blackjack the Human Torch has been a cop for a while now and he is gunned (well, fire-handed) dpwn while trying to escape.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 290: THE PARROT

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 024, 1941)

There are two different comic book tropes that come together in the Parrot. The first is simple: the weird-looking guy adopts a criminal persona based on their appearance -. So: the Penguin, the Vulture, the Chicken, the Platypus, the Skull etc. This is basic stuff, but generally fun.

The second thing has to do with the nature of super-powers, that by their very nature they require countering Just as every penny-ante gangster who faced Superman in the 50s seemed to have gotten their hands on a chunk of kryptonite, the well-informed criminal in a Human Torch story will at the very least have asbestos clothing and some form of fire-suppressing chemical liquid or spray. In extreme cases like the Kryptonite Man or the Torch's own Asbestos Lady the counter-weapon becomes the entire theme, but the Parrot here represents an intermediate step that I find quite compelling.

See, a while back the Human Torch encountered a Tibetan cult called the Fire-Men who had fire-powers that they used to fight fire-monsters. One of those Fire-Men, named Culflam, was a crook who got sent to jail at the end of the story, where he shared a cell with the Parrot and taught him all the secrets of the Fire-Men Cult (unfortunately for Culflam, as the last part of the Learn Mystical Secrets in Jail trick is to murder your teacher on the way out). 

So the Parrot is fireproof. He's also something like seven and a half feet tall and completely ruthless. All of this makes for a very fun villain, even if all he really does is try to rob an opera crowd. I was pretty jazzed to read his second appearance, two issues later!

Very sad times had by all: all he does is escape from jail again and then accept a contract from a man with  a German accent to blow up a strategic sulphur supply - his flame immunity doesn't even come up! And then he dies in a car crash! Truly this is an example of squandered potential.

Clearly the Parrot should be BRUNG BACK in some form - unfortunately the only hook I can think of are his stolen Fire-Man powers perhaps coming with some sort of curse for shirking the duties of the cult and he comes back to haunt the California desert as a fiery ghost? Or a modern incarnation of the cult needs access to lost teachings and mistakenly resurrects him instead of Culflam?  Or maybe the US government just keeps the bodies of deceased super-villains in cold storage somewhere and he just gets mad scienced back from the dead, I don't know.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 288: THE KING

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 025, 1941)

The King is your regular old gang boss who decides to pivot from running a numbers racket to selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and if that was it he wouldn't be listed here. The dang guy just wasn't content to be regular, though. Some salient features of his crime time:

-he made the fake drugs in a sprawling underground lab using kidnapped doctors

-recalcitrant doctors ended up in a giant vat of boiling acid

-he has a full suite of gadgets including acid, gas and regular bombs and a remote controlled exploding car for blowing up excess henchmen

-he leaves a king playing card at the scene of his crimes

-he uses a cigar holder, which isn't villainous per se but always stands out so much to me that I must make note of it.

He's also very dumb? Like, the calling cards tie together various crimes in a way that they might not otherwise have been, and he leaves a license plate that's registered in his name on the bomb-car. Plus he does a lot of unnecessary murdering and kidnapping that does a lot less to make people respect him and more to make them want to stop him, or, as in the case of the henchman he fails to fully blow up, kill him.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 283: N-4

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

N-4 is the kind of Nazi spy that really reminds one that the swastika was a costume design go-to for a while there. Gonna be swastikas cropping up basically forever, aren't there. Like Captain Nazi still shows up from time to time, doesn't he.

More interesting than N-4 being one of our earlier costumed Nazis is that they're a trend-based crime villain! The trend: highways! Their whole scheme revolves around the recently-completed Pennsylvania Turnpike and involves a trick switcheroo tunnel that they use to steal tanks in a complicated scheme that foolishly includes framing the Human Torch and Toro for some reason and of course leads to them being caught.

And of course I was using neutral pronouns in that last paragraph because I wanted to obfuscate the fact that N-4 was your old classic female agent posing as a male agent for unclear reasons. Also she got caught because of a deus ex bear trap.

Not a lot to say about N-4, it seems! I'd say sorry N-4 but you are a Nazi, so go rot somewhere.

COUSINS OF THE WAR-WHEEL

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 022, 1941)

During the Human Torch and Toro's time foiling the Nazi invasion of clear-stand-in-for-Yugoslavia Aslavia they encounter and sink this submersible fortress:

But FAR more importantly they encounter what may be the best ridiculous Nazi superweapon I have ever seen:

The German Invasion Wall! The superweapon so ridiculous that even in a comic book it has to have bits of wood propping it up so that it doesn't fall over when firing its cannons! I love it.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 280: PRINCE ITOR

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 021, 1941)

I like Prince Itor because he's a weenie. Not enough of those in the Golden Age. He's not even really the focus of this story, which ain't called "The Idol of Death" for nothing.

So: Morrison here owns the titular Idol and is loaning it to the Egyptian Museum, but the transfer process and time was leaked in the papers, which leads to at least half of he story being taken up with a heist that Prince Itor has absolutely no involvement in.

Itor himself doesn't get a lot of backstory: his family are presumably like those deposed European royals who are always mooching around high society, but for thousands instead of hundreds of years. Unless of course there is an ancient prophecy about the power of the pharaohs awakening in a completely unrelated family. Either would be good!

Itor does eventually get ahold of the idol, by the simple method of having his men take it off of the crooks who went to the hard work of actually stealing it. That pharaonic power turns out to have a kick to it, in the form of a bad case of monster-face. 

Whatever powers the ancient monster-Pharaohs wielded do not get a full exploration, as Itor discovers pretty quickly that he can control the people around him. What follows is a pretty brief and unsuccessful attempt to destroy the Human Torch using a subwayful of commuters that ends when  the Torch melts the idol and a fleeing Prince conveniently flings himself onto the third rail - no fuss, no muss.

But why did I call Prince Itor a weenie? Very simply it's because he's the kind of villain who hangs back and lets his employees do all of the work, whether it's stealing the idol or marching in mind-controlled lockstep against a man of living flame. He's the kind of bumbling aristocratic oaf who can't even escape without accidentally electrocuting himself - I love to loathe him. And as with every other good aristocratic oaf, he has a highly-competent aide to take care of all of the nitty-gritty for him

Nalda! The Jeeves to Itor's Wooster, if Jeeves was a pistol-wielding femme fatale in a cape and a pair of buccaneer gloves. Nalda! The kind of second-in-command that is clearly the power behind the throne. Nalda!

I was going to say that it's sad that Nalda only appears on a single page but no, I'm glad. That means that she survived the adventure and likely got away to empty Itor's bank accounts and set herself up in Madripoor or the like. She's probably still there, something like 105 years old, running her underground casino/ assassination service/ chain of cat cafes like a ruthless raisin. Godspeed, Nalda.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 277: THE MASKED CHIEF

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020, 1941)

This here is the Masked Chief, at least according to the caption boxes (welcome to the unofficial name club, fella), a fairly standard masked gang boss enhanced by several factors of variable wildness. First and least: he is yet another in the long line of Human Torch foes who choose to use arson as their  modus operandi. Sure he's not specifically challenging the Torch, but he must know that he's employed by the city, right? The Jim Hammond identity is basically unused - even his partner on the police force calls him Torch for heaven's sake.

Secondly, New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, though unnamed, is a major secondary character in this story. Fun in and of itself, but La Guardia is convinced (with some encouragement from the Masked Chief) that the attempt to ransom the city via arson is the work of recently eliminated corrupt NY politicians. Which means, unless this was a very specific reference that I couldn't find, that Tammany Hall is the suspect? Whee!

Thirdly, and more perplexing than fun, the Human Torch is insanely mean to Toro throughout this story. Just a complete asshole. I'm not the world's foremost Golden Age Human Torch expert but it seems wildly out of character for him - I guess we'll see if I'm right about that going forward.

And finally: the Masked Chief is not, in fact, the 1941-era successor to Boss Tweed but rather the escaped convict that the Human Torch and Toro were hunting when the story began, a man with the fairly excellent name of Hawk Rivers.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 275: THE HAG

(Marvel  Mystery Comics v1 019, 1941)

I don't have to go into how wild it is that this woman is called a Hag, right? The wild misogyny of it all? Great, thanks.

Aside from her name, the Hag is a gang boss, and one who dreams big. Her plan involves causing a citywide power outage in NYC so that her men could  tamper with the Stock Exchange and then clean up the next day while everyone panics about a nonexistent stock crash that she engineered. And also for some reason she takes over a radio station to get access to incoming news? The motivation behind that one is weird to me.

The real flaw in the Hag's plan is that while she accounts for the presence of the Human Torch and Toro, she doesn't really deal with them. Her men are equipped with flame-resistant clothing and fire-suppressing chemicals, but they just serve to help in avoiding the Torch. Ultimately, he catches up, there is an explosion (inevitable), and the Hag is no more.

This adventure also features the concept of Toro needing a "flame transfusion" after being severely hurt, which is very terrific, and which seems to be a convoluted way for Carl Burgos to canonically establish that Toro's powers are a little weaker than the Torch's? For some reason? It'll be interesting to see if this is ever referenced again, frankly.

ADDENDUM: forgot to mention the Hag's sweet calling card:

ADDENDUM II: Toro's reduced fire-power actually came up in the subsequent issue, so I'm going to go ahead and try to note every issue it came up in right here:

Marvel Mystery Comics v1 019

Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020

Human Torch v1 004

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 274: THE BRAIN

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 018, 1941)

The Brain is your classic nerd gang boss, of the common subvariety that are almost clever enough to succeed but get in their own way. His core plan this ish is solid as far as supercrime goes: rob an Army payroll and frame the Human Torch for it via the use of what is essentially one of those suits that stuntmen wear in order to set themselves on fire (which as an aside kind of makes me reconsider just how upsetting the Human Torch would be to see). He even has a decent plan to get rid of the Torch is he manages to figure out whodunnit.

The Brain's real failing lies in underestimating Toro, the Torch's teen sidekick and avid shirt avoider. While the Human Torch is afforded an entire elaborate deathtrap of his own, the Brain's entire plan to deal with Toro is to assume that he can take him in a fight.

And he can't! It's not even close! Toro is basically exactly as powerful as the Human Torch, plus he's a teen boy, a notoriously wily bunch! This is frankly embarrassing for the Brain.