GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 026

A wretched and motley crew for ye this day. 

Mikal, leader of the undersea pirates, is an evocative figure who exists only to pad out the Typhon story that he appears in by a couple of pages. In an attempt to aid his ally, the king of the Sea Demons, he gets off one good hydro-jet blast at Typhon's submarine before he and his entire undersea fortress are annihilated by the sub's hydro-ray. (Weird Comics 005, 1940)

Friends, I am 100% sure that "the War Maniac" is just being used as a standard 1939-1941 paper-thin obfuscation of the fact that they're talking about Hitler, and yet it's such an excellent villain name that I am compelled to make note of it as if it were describing an armoured giant from a 60s Jack Kirby comic. (Weird Comics 007, 1940)

The Boss, leader of a gang that targets the members of a private club that the Eagle belongs to in his secret identity of Bill Powers, turns out to be Rider, the club secretary, who might have been a great gang boss but really should have thought to keep his huge and distinctive wrist scar covered up in at least one of his identities. (Weird Comics 008, 1940)

Queen Marie is a gang boss who styles herself as royalty, which just barely lines up with her diamond-smuggling concerns. I would call it a 100% charming affectation if her definition of queendom didn't include having a throne room dotted with African slaves. Queen or not, her gang beat up by the Sparkler and she gets shipped off the the hoosegow. (Wham Comics 002, 1940)

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 020

If I've learned one thing from comics it's to never turn your back on a scientist. 

Henry Falcon is one of a trio of scientists, along with John Robin and John Sparrow, who have been made the beneficiaries of the whimsical will of millionaire Mortimer Bird. This is of course one of those special murder mystery wills in which the payout increases for any survivors as fellow inheritors are killed off, and Henry Falcon is all about getting that money through murder. He even goes the extra mile to make all of the deaths bird themed in an attempt to throw suspicion on Mortimer Bird, thanks to some special powder he has discovered that makes birds go crazy and peck people to death.

You can't just have something like that bird-madness powder around without some stringent safety protocols, however, and Falcon manages to get some on himself while pretending to be Mortimer Bird's private nurse. So long Henry. (Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940)

Dr Exton, inventor of the super explosive Tekite, almost sells his creation to a fascist dictator but reforms after he is left on an island for a half hour by the Bird Man. (Weird Comics 004, 1940)

Menar, a big-eared scientist of the unspecified future time occupied by Typhon, has invented a device called the Tidal Wave Annihilator which he unsurprisingly uses to create tidal waves. The tidal waves in turn sink ships which Menar and his men then loot. It's a pretty foolproof plan, and Menar even manages to capture Typhon when he comes to investigate, but like many a mad scientist before and after him, Menar has underestimated just how evil he can be before his own daughter turns against him. Typhon escapes with Ina Menar and brings the whole operation crashing down around her father's pointy ears. (Weird Comics 006, 1940)

Karnak is a scientist of the year 5940 CE who has already had some measure of success, having conquered and mind-controlled an entire planet of beefy scaly guys, and I must assume is now at a loss as to what to do with himself. Why else would he send a heavily armed spaceship to Earth to extort them into giving him a lady to be his bride? I mean, there have to be at least a few women who would be into him if he just put himself out there on Space Tinder - everyone likes a bad boy, after all. 

Karnak seems to take it weirdly personally when his kidnapped bride-to-be cooperates with Blast Bennett to take down his whole operation, and tris to feed the two of them to his pet tiger. They'd be doomed if Blast wasn't so good at cat-wrestling, but as it stands they escape handily.

Karnak also commits the cardinal sin of not checking his captive spaceman for any ray guns he might have on his person, and catches an explosion bullet to the gut for it. Alas for the inhabitants of the unnamed planet he was in charge of, Karnak dealt in the kind of mind control that kills its subjects when the controller dies. Alas for the beefy scaly guys. (Weird Comics 007, 1940) 

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 016

Love those aliens. And so forth. 

the Sea Demons:

The Sea Demons are a hostile underwater race of fish-men who look great but get very little character development as a society. Their main thing seems to be a deeps desire to attack and capture...

the Sea Amazons:

The Sea Amazons (described as "blonde Sea Amazons" at least twice in the text despite the fact that a pretty noticeable percentage of them - including their queen! - are brunettes) are about a (blonde) hair more well-developed than the Sea Demons. They are a race of amphibious women who live in the city of Mermea under the rule of Queen Bea (or possibly Mea) and who just hate being kidnapped by those dang Sea Demons. To that end, they have tamed a creature called the Guardian, and I must say that while I love the Guardian and its look I have an incredibly hard time figuring out its anatomy: its main component is an enormous humanoid head, yes, but is it stuck on the end of an eel body with a chin-mounted tentacle? Is it more like a giant slug? Are there two tentacles that I'm meant to picture churning through the water? 

Though the Sea Demon and Sea Amazon societies are at odds, they do in fact have a lot in common, such as the Sea Demon's own beast, the Seaclops, seen here battling the Guardian. They don't really get around to exploring these similarities, however, as undersea hero Typhon ends up blowing up both the Seaclops and most of the Sea Demons. (Weird Comics 005, 1940)

Crab Men: 

These Crab Men from Mercury have been trapped on a derelict spaceship for twenty years - are they really vicious or just looking for help? Space adventurers Gale Allen and Jack North are taking no chances, and vaporize them with an artificial sun ray. (Planet Comics 008, 1940) 

Cranians:

Rex Dexter of Mars has the honour of encountering the Cranians, an alien race so goofy that even in-fiction they are believed to be just a myth. But what has brought the Cranians out of the mists of legend to aggress against the human race?

It turns out that if you have a hand for a head and heads for hands, having that extra nose means that you will breathe twice as much and thus eventually use up all the oxygen on your planet, and rather than planting some extra forests, the Cranians have decided that the best solution to this problem is the conquest of Earth and its rich stores of O2.

I personally do not think that a machine that controls Earth's atmosphere such that oxygen levels can be cut in half near-instantly is a particularly good idea, but it turns out that I am a fool because not only does the far future Earth of 2000 AD have such a device but it proves integral to the defeat of the Cranian menace when Rex Dexter does just that. Live and learn, as they say. (Mystery Men Comics 017, 1940)

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 014

We've hit a rich seam of aliums this month.

Mermaid/ Reptile-Men:

This city of Reptile-Men is ruled over by a Mermaid queen, and I am forced to contemplate, and not for the first time, whether this is an instance of a member or group of one species ruling over another or if it's one of extreme sexual dimorphism. Whichever one it is, I do appreciate that the Reptile-Men have that really goofy wide stance going on with their lizard legs. (Weird Comics 003, 1940)

Monkey Men: 

Also known as the Cannibalistic Monkey Men, these beefy lads vex one of those hidden Ancient Roman colonies that are all over Africa and the Middle East by demanding tribute of human flesh. They eventually meet their match and are seemingly wiped out entirely when they try to eat Kaänga and his new pal "Red" Longjohn. (Jungle Comics 007, 1940)

Capris-Men:

Earth is in need of radium, the only cure to a deadly plague that is ravaging the population, and so an expedition headed by Rex Dexter of Mars sets out to get some from the nearly 100% pitchblende planet Capris (okay, so it's called a planet throughout the story but it's got to be a dwarf planet or an asteroid or something based on travel timelines alone). The fantastic-looking native Capris-Men, aka the Capris Monsters, don't take to kindly to this and mount an attack on the expedition, which leads the expedition to leave early, meaning that they don't get enough radium to treat everyone.

The obvious solution to this problem is, of course, to tow the entire planet(oid) into orbit around Earth, so that the healing power of ionizing radiation can eternally shine down on its inhabitants and make them the healthiest people in the universe. No word on what the Capris-Men thought about this development. (Mystery-Men Comics 002, 1939)

the Cave Men and the Lizard Men:

The Cave Men are basically just some extra hairy guys who live in a cave system called the Underground Empire beneath Rhodesia/modern day Zimbabwe. They are possibly immortal and are ruled by a white lady named Aldia, who is - the question is whether she bothered to share the secret of the Immortal Flame with her subjects.

The thing that really sets the Cave Men apart is the quality of their enemies, the Lizard Men. Sure, they're just a mindless horde of inhuman monsters who exist only to be righteously slaughtered by the heroic Lance Hale, but just look at their majestic fins! (Silver Streak Comics 004, 1940)

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 012

You won't believe these guys. 

the Mermen: 

Some undersea jerks who capture explorer Typhon and his crew. Their leader is a real creep named Neptune who has a nigh-fetishistic plan to freeze the crew - and particularly sole female crewmember Cecelia - into blocks of ice and then breathe fire on them. Luckily for all who might venture beneath the waves, he drowns (?) during Typhon's escape. (Weird Comics 002, 1940)

the Beaked Men:

The Beaked Men of Mercury's mountains operate as an extortion racket on the solar trade routes, raiding and capturing ships from their mobile "space island" ships. Such a threat to the interplanetary commerce of the year 25 000 will not stand, and Spurt Hammond, Planet Flyer successfully manages to explode the whole operation thanks to a handy prisoner revolt. (Planet Comics 004, 1940)

the Big-Eared Tribe of Saturn: 

I'm not sure if the implication is that all of the people of Saturn are big-eared or if it's just a subgroup, but the fact that they seem to be generally feared and that the leader (and father) of this particular bunch of Big-Eared men, Varg Emmos, is a respected scientist who is presumably using his futuristic heardpiece to disguise his own big-eared status points toward the former. 

Varg and his boys have a plot to take over Earth using an ultrasonic ray that affects only humans but are foiled when Rex Dexter in turn discovers a musical note that kills them and that is seemingly featured heavily in symphonic music. Sucks to be a Big-Eared music lover I guess. (Mystery Men Comics 020, 1941)

the Coal People:

The Coal People (also referred to as the Blackmen) reside in an underground kingdom below Colorado and are descended from ancient people who got themselves trapped there and were forced to subsist of coal to survive. Rather than dying of starvation and/or stomach cancer, they instead became humanoid creatures composed of living coal. The problem comes when mining activities bring the Coal People into contact with contemporary surface humans - fairly harmless when they decide to worship the above old man as a kind of captive god, but increasingly menacing after the discovery of a miner's corpse reveals to them that there are more interesting things to eat than coal.

Luckily for the surface world (or for Coloradans, at least) the next person to enter the mines and get captured is the super-strong giant Mighty Man, who discovers the in-retrospect-fairly-obvious secret of the Coal People: that they fear fire. He and the erstwhile god escape and seal the mine behind them. Colorado is saved! (Amazing-Man Comics 011, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 843: THE RULER OF THE UNDERSEAS

(Weird Comics 001, 1940) 

During the inaugural voyage of his super submarine the A-14, oceanic explorer Typhon encounters a remarkable monster: a mass of eels with a central woman's head and the attractive power of a siren.

Though the creature kills several of his crew, Typhon is able to use his magic ring to kill its heads, which reveals that the girl-head in the centre is actually a human woman who has been mind controlled and used as a monster-part for "many years." This is horrifying to contemplate!

The Ruler of the Underseas, stung by the loss of his composite beast, sends the equally-as-horrifying Serpent-Men to capture them, which of course raises the question of why he was using a human woman in a bubble helmet as his monster core when he could have just used one of his loyal undersea dudes. Is it because none of them are attractive enough?

Typhon foils the Ruler's plans by paralyzing him with his magic ring so that they can all escape back to the A-14, and I am left with one observation and one question:

Observation: Given how important Typhon's magic ring is to the plot of this issue - note that it also protects him from the spell of the eel-siren earlier - one might expect it appear again in a future story. This is not the case.

Question: Is the Ruler of the Underseas just permanently paralyzed? He certainly does not ever return to vex Typhon and his former eel-maiden companion (later named Cecelia). Because if he is, well, condemning even an evil man to an inescapable prison in his own body isn't a great look, Typhon.