MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 313: DR KLUTCH

(Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942)

Dr Klutch is your basic criminal scientist. His major distinction is that he got beat up by the Tough Kid Squad in their only recorded outing, but there are a couple of other points worthy of discussion here.

The first is that we have a clear timeline for this guy. Many, many super-villains are clearly operating at a level that would require years of work to establish or have a lengthy if nebulous criminal record, but with Klutch here we know: in 1926 he murdered his research partner Dr Danger in revenge for not sharing his findings and in the subsequent 16 years he became a successful enough criminal scientist to be identified on sight by even beat cops.

(not sure how great of a scientist he was, given that it took the entire 16 years to track down the Danger Twins, one of whom was adopted by Danger's friend Professor Moxon - follow a few leads, buddy!)

Point two is merely that the idea of murdering someone and then perpetually electrocuting their twitching skeleton is fairly metal.

But the real kicker is that Klutch eventually gets ahold of Dr Danger's serum by extracting it from the blood of Danger Twin Wally. Klutch is a super-powered criminal scientist! The serum is a bit ill-defined but the gist of it seems to be that it enhances your trained abilities, and Dr Klutch is trained in fightin', science and EVIL.

Sadly, the closest we get to seeing the full chemically-enhanced might of Klutch's evil mind is a plan to rob several banks at once - mid-tier super-villainy at best, but perhaps he was working up to it. BUT, in an exciting turn of events, Klutch was captured at the end of the story, leaving the door open to my favourite potential BRUNG BACK scenario: the super-powered crook who gets out after 80+ years of cooling his heels in the klink. After all, he's full of serum! Who knows what that does to the aging process?

MINOR SUPER-HERO 036: THE TOUGH KID SQUAD

(Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942)

I occasionally opine about the relative obscurity of one super-hero or another and it's tricky to judge such a thing objectively, especially when it's about a suite of characters who are all 100% unknown to the world at large. Despite this I am confident in my assertion that the Tough Kid Squad are the most obscure Marvel characters ever to receive their own title, even if it did only last one issue.

The Tough Kid Squad is an obvious attempt by Marvel to replicate the formula of the Young Allies, but the technology to boil down a concept and recast it misfired somehow. The real key to a 40s kid gang is the mix of personalities - as seen in the Young Allies' Smart Kid, Fat Kid, Tough Kid, Racial Stereotype and two Super-Hero Kids. The Tough Kid Squad on the other hand, is as follows:

Wally Danger: Together with his brother Wally forms the Danger Twins, the Super-Hero kid Element of the team. Orphaned at a young age, the twins were raised separately after Tom was stolen by a crook to be his protege. They both benefit from a serum that their father gave them as infants which enhances their trained abilities. Wally mostly acts as the Smart Kid.

Tom Danger: Raised to be a crook but his better nature shone through when he met his long-lost twin, Tom is a Tough Kid to his core.

Derrick Dawes: A former school bully who was befriended after a beating from Tom. Tough Kid.

Butch: A guy on the school football team who is befriended off-panel. Supposedly a Fat Kid based on the action but is drawn as and acts like a Tough Kid.

Eagle: The football team also had a Racial Stereotype to befriend, albeit one who mostly acts like a Tough Kid. Eagle also presents the conundrum common to comic book racial stereotype characters: that because part of the joke of them is that they are acting against stereotype by being the hero of the piece they are often driving the action in the most interesting ways. 

The main point of this breakdown is that true to its name the Tough Kid Squad is a real one-note kid gang. It is in fact weirdly tough to figure out if there is a true knockoff kirby in the bunch, in fact - they're kind of all part of one gestalt knockoff kirby, with Eagle looking most the part and Tom acting it.

Obviously I think the name should be brung back, and I'm kind of disappointed in Marvel for not dredging it up during the 50-State Initiative time - it might have been the only thing to make the fact that Hellcat was the entire Alaska Initiative team all by herself more fun. As for the members themselves... they are a bit generic, but the fact that the Danger Twins are all hopped up on serum offers the easy possibility for a couple of unaging characters to have been secretly operating for the last 80+ years, which is always fun.