MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 016

Can't keep 'em down for long, these guys.

Look, breeding up a giant amoeba in order to use it to spread terror and conquer the world is one thing, but deliberately going out of your way to feed it "pretty girls" is some real twisted incel shit. It's a wonder that Dr Jorgen here just ends up in jail and not in the belly vacuoles of his creation. (Science Comics 006, 1940)

Dr Borgia is a weird creep who becomes... infatuated? obsessed? with Marga the Panther Woman during a period in which she is working at a circus in the US. Stung by her rejection of his creepy overtures, Borgia conspires with the owner of a rival circus to kill Marga by using the same technique that von Dorf used to give her the power of a panther to give a tiger the added power of a lion, thus making it too powerful fro her to defeat.

(and how galling for the ghost of von Dorf to see that Borgia knows his secrets after dying in a fire he caused while trying to burn that very information)

Marga is of course more than a match for even a tiger with the proportionate strength of a lion and proceeds to murder not only it but Borgia and his associate Randler. She also gets so fired up by this process that she acquires a kind of feral vampire-from-Buffy look that may not ever appear again.  (Science Comics 006, 1940)

With a thesis like "I reckon that humans won't do well when deprived of water," Bulvo here isn't exactly pushing the boundaries or even basics of science. It's just as well that the Eagle ends up blowing him up as he tries to destroy NYC's water supply, as he would have been eviscerated in court, not to mention the mad scientist trade shows. (Science Comics 008, 1940) 

Like his nemesis Iron Vic, Dr Spagna here suffers from the fact that the sole story in which he appears is incomplete. What we do know about him is that he used to work with Vic's benefactor Professor Carvel and possibly even on the very serum that Carvel used on the near-corpse that would become Iron Vic, but Spagna was too eager to share his findings and ended up being laughed out of scientific society. This is a common origin story for evil scientist types, but Spagna seems to have taken it harder than most and has been sowing murder and chaos throughout New York City even before the plot outlined in his letter to Vic above.

Iron Vic manages to foil 2/3 of Spagna's plot before the adventure is cut off, never to be resumed (as far as I can tell). Presumably, Vic prevented the bombing of Jefferson Square Garden and brought Spagna to justice somehow, but if that involved further hints or revelations about Vic's past, we will seemingly never know. (Single Series 022, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 041

Another assortment of guys for your delectation.

the Sky Wolf:

Just another masked pilot in a souped-up named plane (originally the Silver Bullet, followed by the Golden Bullet), the Sky Wolf loses both his place in Silver Streak Comics and his plane's name to fellow pilot Cloud Curtis once 1941 rolls around, and to add insult to injury, in 1942 the far more successful character of Skywolf debuts over at Hillman, ensuring that he doesn't even have good SEO. (Silver Streak Comics 004, 1940)

Whiz, King of Falcons:

The Silver Streak is not immune to the sting of pride, so when aviator Sir Cedric Baldwin challenges him to a race around the world to prove who is the fastest man on Earth, he accepts, and is of course fast enough that he not only wins but is able to have a very culturally-sensitive adventure in Saudi Arabia along the way. Silver Streak is knocked out and captured at one point, and the falconry-obsessed villain takes advantage of this to inject his favourite bird with some super-fast blood. 

Astonishingly, this works, despite our only account of the Silver Streak's origin being as a result of hypnotic conditioning coupled with a near-death experience - perhaps the hypnosis was so deep that it mesmerized his very blood? That would explain the falcon's immediate shift in loyalty from its owner to its super-heroic blood doner, at least.

"Whiz, King of Falcons" is technically not this guy's name until Silver Streak Comics 007, which was published in 1941, but I reckon that calling him "Unnamed Falcon Companion" here and then correcting it in six months' time would be extremely wilfully obtuse of me. (Silver Streak Comics 006, 1940)

UPDATE 1941 

the Daredevil:

The Daredevil is Bart Hill, a vigilante in the Batman mould, having lost his parents to a gang of crooks and subsequently vowed to revenge himself on crime. Further, those same crooks tortured Bart himself, rendering him mute in the process, and due to a boomerang-shaped brand they left on his chest he devoted himself to the study of the weapon, adopting it as one of his heroic signatures. The Daredevil is one of the longer-running non-Marvel or DC/Fawcett/Quality characters of the Golden Age so he will be making a few appearances here going forward, but there are a few notable things about him:

- his origin will undergo some revision between his first and second appearances, most notably the fact that his muteness is discarded - presumably to enable for easier storytelling

- his costume is also somewhat revised, which is fun particularly because, like his Silver Age namesake, he switches from a yellow to a red colour scheme

- this Daredevil's Golden Age popularity, combined with his public domain status, means that he's a popular choice for modern revivals, but the fact that there is a currently-published character with the same name (and owned by Disney, to boot) means that nobody dares to actually call him Daredevil in their stories and so the more recent versions of him have a wide range of variably terrible alternate names including the Death Defying 'Devil, the Daring Devil and Doubledare. (Silver Streak Comics 006, 1940)

UPDATE 1941 

Iron Vic:

Iron Vic is a frustrating beast. He first appears as a mostly-dead body washing up near the island laboratory of Professor Carvel, who applies a "certain rare serum" to the task of saving his life before dropping dead from the strain. Vic, as the man comes to be known, is rendered both amnesiac and superhuman by the process. He has one proper super-heroic adventure against Carvel's old colleague Dr Spagna before the strip transitions into one primarily about baseball (and in case you're wondering there is no mention of the ethical quandary that a superhuman participating in regular human sports would cause). The really frustrating part is that Dr Spagna implies that he knows something about Iron Vic, but the Spagna story is never actually resolved anywhere. Vic is merely an amnesiac baseball player until I think he enters the Army at some point? WHERE OH WHERE IS MY RESOLUTION (Single Series 022, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 438: THE GLOVE

(Tip-Top Comics 054-056, 1940)

The Glove here is the head of a gang of international criminals that come to the attention of super-hero brothers the Triple Terror when they make off with a load of radium. Why the radium, you ask? Why, so that the Glove and his pal Mr Mario (good name) could run their death ray cannon.

Unfortunately for the Glove he only ever managed to capture 2/3 of the Triple Terror. The final confrontation does reveal the reason that he is called the Glove: like our old friend the Hook he has a prosthetic hook hand covered by a false plastic one. The hook proves to be his ultimate undoing, as a fumbled grab for a light switch ends in his electrocution (and, through some literary contrivance, that of most of his men. Only Mr Mario survives).

But who are the Triple Terror? They are triplets Barton, Richard and Bruce Brandon, who operate respectively as Chemix, Lectra and Menta, the masters of chemistry, electricity and men's minds. Though they are technically nonpowered they are sufficiently adept at their specialties that they effectively are. Chemix has for instance created what is essentially Spider-Man's webshooter while Menta has access to hypnotic powers that are tantamount to mind control. All three are of course physical paragons capable of bursting chains and scaling walls with ease

The only real weak point in the Brandons arsenal of abilities is in their faculty for naming: "Triple Terror" and "Chemix" are okay but "Lectra"? "Menta"? Even the family estate is called "Brandwell" which is frankly mid-tier.

I do enjoy their Platonic Ideal super-hero outfits, complete with dumb logos and a variable number of pouches depending on how many accessories each uses as part of their role in the team. I will be starting a pool to bet on how long the belt thing lasts.