MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 289: PROFESSOR ENRIC ZAGNAR

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 025, 1941)

Enric Zagnar is your classic Victim of Orthodoxy. His beliefs (mankind will someday be able to control the weather) clash with the view of the establishment (that is wrong) and so he is left adrift.

He of course goes off into the mountains to learn how to control the weather and dream of revenge.

Harnessing the power of black magic, he attempts to flood and drown the entire town and is opposed by everyone's fave smoke-dweller the Vision.

Finally, in his moment of triumph, nature itself seems to take a hand and he is incinerated by lightning.

Honestly the most interesting part of this guy's story aside from his wild-haired Jack Kirby Draws a Madman design is the specifics of the conflict between Zagnar and his unnamed university. "Mankind will learn to control the weather someday" is not a particularly outré belief, particularly in comics - we're probably less than a decade away from the heyday of cloud seeding as a go-to solution, for instance - so I reckon it's the hubris of it all, the Victor Frankenstein "we will be as gods" of it all that narratively seals Zagnar's fate.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 286: GROSSO

(Marvel Mystery Comics 024, 1941)

It's been a while since we've had a proper evil equivalent, so here's Grosso to show us how it's done! Golden Age Vision, see, is from an extradimensional realm usually called Smokeworld that's full of smoke and that the Vision travels to and from via (you guessed it) clouds of smoke. Smoke is kind of his whole deal. Grosso, by contrast, is from the World of War-Dust, with war-dust being defined as clouds of metallic particulate like aluminum. Whether the dust strictly has to have been generated in the production of armaments isn't really addressed - Grosso is a vocal enough fan of war as a concept that I reckon he wouldn't appear in the dust produced by,  say, an electric fan factory even if he had the option.

The fact that Grosso know the  Vision by sight raises further questions about Smokeworld and the World of War-Dust existing in some sort of particulate-based continuum - perhaps the aforementioned dust from electric fan production would open a portal to a world of morally neutral people obsessed with moderate breezes.

The fact that Grosso's hinder is so juicy merits further study.

The back half of the story is taken up with a big fight between Grosso and the Vision where it becomes clear that Grosso is either made of metal dust or manifesting a body on Earth using metal dust: his primary attack (other than big punches) is firing busts of aluminum dust and his arm is disabled when Vision squirts some water on it. The full ramifications of this are left unexplored because the Vision subsequently ups the ante and employs the Ultimate Liquid: molten lead. Grosso hasn't been seen since, probably due to being dead.

Obviously I'm totally into this guy and  think he or some other representative of the World of War-Dust should be BRUNG BACK - it's not like we up and stopped making weapons of war, after all. Having alien warmonger frat bros pop up in your factory from time to time should be a thing in the Marvel Universe. There should be insurance for it!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 284: KAI-MAK, THE SHARK-GOD

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 023, 1941)

Kai-Mak here (AKA God of Sharks, Lord of Sharks, Lord of the Deep, Master of the Deep, the Man-Shark) is one of my very favourite things in comics: a weird monster pretending to be a god in order to score power or riches or, as in this case, snacks.

I'm so fond of this trope, in fact, that I have to make sure to frontload the acknowledgement that it is predicated on the idea that a lot of the varied people in the world are credulous primitive savages with no critical thinking skills or I'll focus too much on the monster and gloss over the racism. Someday we'll get to M'nagalah the Cancer God, who at least has the decency to manifest in small mining towns and suburbs.

That having been said, we must acknowledge how great both Kai-Mak and his high priest look. Jack Kirby's finest shark-based work, I reckon. Just look at his nose and his greasy hair!

The Vision shouts a bunch of guesses at what Kai-Mak is that are neither confirmed or denied - he could be right and Kai-Mak could be the last remnant of a race of sharkfolk, sure. He could also be a mutant, an Inhuman, a Deviant, some sort of alien or science experiment or heck, a demi-god spawned by Poseidon in a moment of weakness. Rather than spell out his origin, Kai-Mak opts for a no-holds-barred underwater deathmatch.

After a cool battle under the waves, Kai-Mak is killed and both his worshippers and a selection of human sacrifices are free to go.

Now, if there's one thing that any super-hero universe is simply crawling with, it's humanoid sharks. On a strict market saturation metric there's no logical reason to campaign for the return of Kai-Mak. Too bad for Adam Smith that I think the free market sucks eggs: BRING BACK the Shark-God! There's always room for another giant shark-man! Particularly one who's been nursing his wounds at the bottom of the ocean for 80 years and is after a new community to subjugate. Have him pop up in New England, Deep One style! The old fish-for-sacrifice trade! It literally can't go wrong!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 282: KHOR, THE BLACK SORCERER

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 022, 1941)

Khor, the Black Sorcerer is one of those magical generalists I was talking about back when I wrote about the Mor the Mighty, with a diverse range of magic abilities including stun bolts, paralysis spells, teleportation spells and shrinking spells. He's a Jack Kirby troll-man special who comes to the attention of the Vision when he kidnaps a whole-ass Antarctic science expedition because he's a lonely immortal who doesn't know how to make friends normally.

By far the most interesting thing about Khor is that his home in the Antarctic tropical paradise the Land Where Time Stands Still has since been retconned as part of Marvel's main Antarctic tropical paradise the Savage Land. This a fun bit of trivia, but more fun is the idea that throughout the whole convoluted history of the Savage Land (or at least from 1245 AD onward) an immortal French wizard is holed up in a little cave in the one location in the whole dang place not overrun with swamp men or ape men or dinosaurs, missing all the fun. Dante Alighieri is fighting literal demons in an alien amusement park while Khor spends the afternoon washing his robe. Delightful!

It all ends with the Vision pitching Khor into a lava flow and freeing his collection of beefy old men. I won't say that I won't miss him, but I'll always know that in any story set between 1245 and 1941 AD he's there, in the Savage Land, bored out of his mind, and that's enough.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 278: THE VAMPIRE KILLER

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020, 1941)

We open on a fear-gripped Star City (not the one you're thinking of), in which ten people have been killed and drained of their blood. VAMPIRE! KILLER!

An eleventh soon joins their ranks, and we get a look at the Vampire Killer in his cool as hell Shadow cosplay. VAMPIRE! KILLER! INTO! FASHION!

But it seems all is not as we thought! Extradimensional smoke-man the Vision, exercising the oft-overlooked super-hero skill of Research, discovers that the so-called Vampire Killer is in reality biochemical Experiment 36-B, AKA Florus Homo. I don't know that I want to blame the victim here, but engineering an intelligent plant that feeds on blood is a comic book science version of Russian Roulette. PLANT! MAN! DAD! EATER!

And of course, having learned that the Vampire Killer is no vampire, we get to see it's face in all of its Kirby-designed glory. Makes you wish that it hadn't been set on fire by the Vision one page later. But it's a plant, right? And seeds! Seeds can stay viable for centuries! There's still hope, even now! BRING! BACK! TURNIP! HEAD!

NOTES - MAY 2023

Folk:

Luther Robinson and Lynne Harris! These folks are hard to categorize! They're not villains, despite being antagonists to Namor the Sub-Mariner, because Namor is very much a villain at least half of the time. They're not heroes, despite eventually allying with Namor to fight Nazis, because they definitely attempt to commit at least one genocide against the people of Atlantis. 

They're adventurers, they've both been surgically modified by Atlantean scientists to be amphibious, and Lynne is one of a long line of women to be abducted by Namor with romantic ill-intent (and she's, like, third one, in a mere handful of stories). They're interesting artifacts of the way comic book universes come together, and that's great.

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 010-026 (sporadically), 1940-1941) 

Vision foe Rhamu Rondi is your bog standard crooked mystic character and will make no further appearances here, but the Buddha Signal is objectively great - even early Jack Kirby knew what was up with regard to villainous décor.(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 015, 1941)

Names:

Fella name of Barney Bailey here, which is a pretty great moniker for an exhibiter of curiosities to have. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 016, 1941)

Panel fun:

Sub-Mariner x Human Torch (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 017, 1941)

Whether this is Namor's personal flag/ crest or a more general Atlantean symbol, this bit of regalia must be noted. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 018, 1941)

Biographical Details: Namor the Sub-Mariner weighs 198 pounds, according to the ring announcer during his foray into the world of boxing (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020, 1941)