MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 790: DR HORTON

(Sure-Fire Comics 003a, 1940)

The town of Branton, no state specified, has been struck by a mysterious plague, and X, the Phantom Fed, is suspicious. He infiltrates the quarantine zone around the town in the guise of a doctor and starts investigating the various odd facts of the plague, beginning with 1) the fact that is is being spread by a troop of escaped gorillas that were being used in medical testing and are now apparently just wandering the town and attacking people at random.

Or are these attacks actually random? They are not, and weird thing number 2) is the fact that the gorillas seem to only be attacking the wealthiest inhabitants of Branton, such as young Donald Warden here.

3) Speaking of amazing coincidences, a mysterious doctor just happens to have an antidote to the disease spread by the gorillas, and is willing to provide it for a hundred grand a pop, which is again an amazing coincidence since all of the victims just happen to have that kind of money.

X disguises himself as the deceased Donald Warden and arranges to get the antidote so that he can trail the agents of the mysterious doctor back to their headquarters. There, he makes an amazing discovery: the gorillas are actually men in gorilla outfits, administering fake diseased bites using a weird fork. Let me tell you: it has been too long since we have had some gorillas, real or not, in this online space.

The thing about a gang made up of a bunch of guys in gorilla suits is that it is pretty easy to infiltrate, and X does just that, tagging along as Dr Horton, the supposed researcher who supposedly accidentally lost the gorillas, orchestrates an all-out attack on City Hall to loot the town treasury before presumably wrapping up the entire operation and skipping town. Horton's luck has run out, however, and he is corralled with relative ease by the Man of a Million Faces.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 787: THE TERROR TRUST

(Sure-Fire Comics 002, 1940)

The Terror Trust is a group with a very simple money-making scheme: demand money from millionaires and then throw acid in the faces of the one who refuse to pay up. X, the Phantom Fed infiltrates this group by breaking captured member Horton out of prison and then impersonating him.

 
X's scheme falls apart when the Trust's members realize that Horton was simply not clever enough to effect his own escape, leading him to capture one of the ringleaders, prominent psychologist Professor Parks, and extract the names of the remaining two from him using some legally suspect truth serum.

Does X then complete the roundup of the Terror Trust in disguise as Parks? Nothing so simple for the Phantom Fed. First off, he disguises himself as the local Police Commissioner, then enlists the aid of the Trust's next victim, Sir Anthony, and then poses as Parks. Or rather as the Commissioner posing as Parks. Does he do this as a way to gain Sir Anthony's trust, perhaps? A good guess, but no, he immediately tells Sir Anthony that he is actually X in disguise. It might be in an effort to make the local police look good but honestly I reckon that it's merely for the challenge of the thing, that by his second appearance X is getting a bit tired of the regular master of disguise schtick and looking to up the difficulty a bit. Real adrenaline junkie stuff.

As is customary we must take a moment to recognize the little people who make the true super-villainy happen, and this time our focus is on this bunch of absolute creeps, the Acid Brigade. Just something to keep in mind when you create a business that revolves around the act of throwing acid in people's faces: you're going to have to work with people willing to do that. It's an HR nightmare, I can only assume.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 784: THE GREEN MASK

(Sure-Fire Comics 001, 1940)

The Green Mask is after one thing: world domination, and he's looking to achieve it by capturing the Shock Ray, a weapon capable of paralyzing hundreds of people at a time, and which has been deemed too terrible to use by the US government (just why this is it unclear - my only idea is that it is either a fatal paralysis or a permanent one).

The thing about the Green Mask that is very compelling is his hood - I'm always harping on about those characters who make the choice to have a nose cutout in their evil villain hood, and how that choice is a perfect one if you want comfort and also don't mind looking bad, and while the Green Mask has chosen to have ear cutouts - very similar - he has also gone with nostril holes instead of the full nose, and I have to say that that strikes me as both bad-looking and immensely impractical/uncomfortable. His minions all look terrific in their Halloween demon masks, though.

Another thing I'm always yapping on about is the long stretches of pointless action in the middles of Golden Age stories, and in no story is that more evident than this one. The Green Mask gets ahold of the Shock Ray plans on the first panel of the second page, and the much of the rest of the fifteen-page story involves his attempts to kill or capture various people tangentially involved in the theft for no stated reason, while X gathers more and more evidence toward his eventual capture.

And speaking of that capture, once it happens the Green Mask is revealed to be... Sam Barkley! And let me tell you that when I first read this story I was a little tired and so I figured that the fact that I had no idea who Sam Barkley was meant that I hadn't been paying enough attention, but no, Sam Barley is a "famous sportsman" who made a one-panel, non-speaking appearance, six pages earlier and that was it. It's the most out-of nowhere reveal in comics history.

Anyway, much beloved ancillary character Sam Barkley turned to a life of crime because he was mixed-race, and his American father abandoned his probably-Malaysian mother (based mostly on the fact that his henchmen are all or mostly Malaysian), leading him to hate all Americans and ultimately embark on a life of costumed crime. If his motivations were more nuanced than that then they will sadly go unexplored, as once captured he immediately chugs some prussic acid rather than be taken alive.

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 047

Astonishing super-heroes of the past! And future!

the Invisible Avenger: 

Teen radio enthusiast Buzz Allen discovers the secret of personal invisibility shortly after the death of his father at the hands of criminals and so is perfectly primed to become part of a super-vigilante duo alongside his friend Will Lawrence (if the issue of whether they should be the Invisible Avengers ever comes up then it is in the initial adventure which I alas cannot read). 

Their adventures are structured such that they cause maximum consternation so as to really get the most out of the invisibility gimmick: they become invisible before driving their car to the scene of a robbery, for example, and when they put on their anti-invisibility gloves so that they can flash their guns at the crooks they make sure to do so in a public place so as to freak out the subway-riding squares. If I were to devise some sort of ratings scale to score invisible characters on how well they use their powers (which I will not - I am already tracking far too many arbitrary metrics), then the Invisible Avenger and Will would score low. (Superworld Comics 001, 1940*)

Hip Knox:

Hip Knox! An orphaned child raised by Professor Knox to have the mightiest mind in the world and named by Professor Knox to have a silly name that kind of winks at his powerset!

If Hip Knox is known for anything then it's for being one of the worst-dressed men in comics. Every element of his uniform is just a little bit wrong, except for the parts that are a lot wrong. Breaking things down from top to bottom, we have:

1. The Helmet. If there's one piece of this costume that is 100% bad then it's this scaly golden swim cap. I sincerely wish that Superworld Comics 001 was available for less than 2000 dollars US, because I really want to know if this is some sort of mind amplification helmet or just a bizarre affectation. Hate it. Hate that it covers his ears.

2. The Mustache. I can get behind a super-hero with a fussy little mustache, but you aren't Hercule Poirot, my dude. Grow it out a bit more or have fewer weird and uncanny elements to your outfit so that a little mustache is a fun little affectation and not the punchline to someone's description of you to their friends.

3. The Jumpsuit. This isn't all that far off of what would come to be the standard super-hero outfit, so I should be fine with it, right? Wrong. Between the fact that Hip is drawn with a bit of a barrel chest and the noodle arms of someone who fights crime with their mind, and the suit being buttoned all the way up to a collar at the neck, this suit is bad.

4. The Insignia. A minor nitpick but it contributes to the whole: that eye looks too realistic to just be sitting on the chest by itself. Throw it in a circle or something. Plus you gotta choose: either the eye or ...

5. The Belt Buckle. I have nothing against a good yonic symbol, but why does Hip Knox have one as his belt buckle? And why is it so big? It looks like an attempt to pick up a pencil off the ground would result in him simultaneously stabbing himself in the groin and the upper abdomen.

What is the solution for this fashion debacle? Change one or two key elements: swap the jumpsuit out for a red tuxedo to lean into the (stage) hypnotist angle and things feel a lot more harmonious. The eye would have to become an amulet or maybe an ornament on one of those weird sashes that goes under the jacket, but everything would hold together much better. Or keep the jumpsuit and lose the helmet! Or make it a headband, that would be much less heinous!

As befits a super-hypnotist, Hip Knox has a pretty relaxed approach to the mental autonomy of those around him, but tragically also seems to have a terrible imagination, as in the above panels in which he attempts to signal that he is being kidnapped by turning bystanders into a trail of living statues instead of, say, having them shout "Hip Knox is in that car being kidnapped!" in unison. (Superworld Comics 001, 1940*)

Marvo 1￮2 Go+:

The Boy Genius style of comics/fiction in general has produced a lot of very fun adventure heroes over the years and also a lot of annoying little smug turds, and I'm sure that personal bias plays in to whether a particular boy reads as one or the other to you. As you might be able to tell from all of this preamble, Marvo 1￮2 Go+ is very much a smug little turd in my eyes.

Thanks to the wonders of sleep education, Marvo has all the knowledge of a forty-year-old scientist packed into his fifteen year-old head, but he's even more intelligent than that, so much so that he gets to put a little plus sign on the end of his name (Marvo is from one of those science fiction futures where inefficient surnames have been replaced with government-assigned alphanumerical designations, like Superworld publisher Hugo Gernsback's own novel Ralph 124C 41+ or DC Comics' later Chris KL-99), which he makes sure to have embroidered on the front of all of his clothing in case people forget how special he is.

Knowledge of a forty year-old or not, Marvo still has all the foresight of a fifteen year-old, as seen for instance in the above panels wherein he takes advantage of a geothermal hotspot beneath Pennsylvania to permanently alter its climate without stopping to consider the potential long term environmental effects of a permanent Summer. (Superworld Comics 001, 1940*)

X, the Phantom Fed: 

There are a whole lot of comic book protagonists with names like Secret Agent Q49 or Agent X-7, etc, code-named operatives two-fistedly saving the world for democracy the US Government, and X, the Phantom Fed exists at the border between that concept and that of the super-hero. Described as the "Man of a Million Faces," X's real face is a mystery even to his friends because he is always in some disguise or another. X is armed with an embryonic version of the James Bond-era spy's arsenal and the best super-spy name of the bunch but sadly that doesn't save him from having a bare handful of appearances. (Sure-Fire Comics 001, 1940)

*I have not actually read Superworld Comics 001 because it is not readily available to the average person. My information on the origins of these characters therefore might be slightly inaccurate.