MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 043

A grab bag of old characters I skipped over back in the early days when I thought that this blog wasn't going to be completely self-indulgent. 

Mr Clue: 

He only had one adventure in which he solves the murder of a mayor by a police chief, but Mr Clue is too great a name not to take note of. (Master Comics 001, 1940)

the Red Gaucho: 

A swashbuckling hero in the Zorro mode, the Red Gaucho protects the South American nation of Santa Palos from threats both foreign and domestic before eventually just kind of wandering North to have adventures in a sort of generic Central America. He's a fun character! He has one of the biggest hats in comics!

The Red Gaucho is also a character I think about whenever the topic of white supremacy comes up. White supremacy is one of those topics that gets a lot of people very angry, but at its base it's simply the belief that the world consists of white people and everyone else and more specifically that it's white people versus everyone else in a competition to keep white people on top, where they belong. And the further back you go, the less people felt the need to hide the fact that that was their worldview, and possibly the place that that attitude is most on display is in early Golden Age comics - just read any set outside North America and you'll catch on to it pretty quickly.

Anyway, that is all to say that even though it's more subtle than a lot of other examples of this worldview in comics, ever since I noticed that every single appearance of the Red Gaucho includes a disclaimer assuring readers that he was in fact the child of two Americans and not some horrible South American - heavens forfend! - his smiling face pops into my head whenever the subject comes up.(Nickel Comics 004, 1940)

the Hawk:

On a less heavy note, here's the Hawk! Created by George Brenner, who also created the Clock, the Hawk has the distinction of being the first masked crimefighter to appear in a comic that would eventually be amalgamated into the DC Comics fold (the Clock had only appeared in Centaur comics up until this point and wouldn't make his way into a Quality book for a few months yet). A heady and heavily qualified distinction!

The Hawk is secretly T. James Harrington II, wealthy and useless playboy who hangs around looking bored until some crime happens and it's time for the Hawk to hit the streets. It's a bit Bruce Wayne/Batman only without the parental murder.

Unlike Batman, the Hawk leans pretty minimal on the costume front, with his major identifying feature being a set of slip-on claws. 

The Hawk also has a couple of assistants named Link and Rollo who are touted as the only people who know the Hawk's identity but who don't get much time to show their stuff in this, their one-panel appearance. Astute readers might note that the crook that the Hawk has just captured likely also knows his secret identity at this point but please note that Link and Rollo are identified as the only living people to know the secret. Sinister stuff!

DC has already gone with the Crimson Avenger as the Official First Golden Age Super-Hero but I reckon that the Hawk would be a fun guy to be brung back for some future story involving early mystery men antics. (Feature Funnies 002, 1937)

*Hero Update* Shock Gibson:

It had to happen someday: Shock Gibson disguises himself as a cowboy and in the process abandons his iconic helmet forever. Fare the well, helmet. (Speed Comics 007, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 766: COMRADE RATSKI

(Speed Comics 009, 1940)

Comrade Ratski's first appearance is fairly undistinguished as far as comic book spymasters go. Sent to subvert US war preparations, Ratski targets an airplane factory operating out of Hollywood, California (for some damn reason) and sensibly decides to do so under the guise of a war movie shoot next door, though at the point that you have all of the equipment required for such an attack in place, why bother going through with the "we're just filming a movie" deception? For the love of the game, of course.

Ratski's major distinguishing feature in this appearance is the fact that he is a pseudo-Soviet rather than the usual pseudo-Nazis who are the mainstay of the spy plot at this time. 

Shock Gibson of course does not like all of this factory bombing, and Comrade Ratski, like Baron von Kampf before him, ends up stranded in the middle of the ocean. And he's even more pessimistic about his chances at rescue!

Ratski returns in Speed Comics 010 and immediately starts to collect top scientists from top universities: Dr Bronson from Yarvard, Prof Capchek from Rinceton, and... somebody from Hale. His goal? Force them to invent at gunpoint so that he can use their creations to destroy America

Dr Bronson creates an earthquake machine which Ratski uses to attack democratic hub Western City. Ratski then makes the bizarre decision to send his men out to loot and plunder in the chaos, which is how Shock Gibson learns the location of Ratski's base after using the tried-and-true method of capturing a henchman and threatening to kill them unless they talk.

But even if Gibson hadn't done so, Ratski just can't stop signposting his location: after Prof Capchek develops an arthropod-enlarging serum Ratski just starts releasing giant beetles and flies from his front door in a way that I would call "highly visible."

Though Gibson does fight his way through various flies and spiders to make his way to Ratski's mountain fastness, the Comrade's ultimate undoing comes at the jaws of a freshly enlarged (and adorable!) cockroach with no sense of loyalty. He survives the encounter, but only with the help of a very ambitious mountain lion.

Shock Gibson rescues Capchek and some guy we've never seen before, possibly the Hale man. Bronson is unaccounted for.

Like Baron von Kampf before him, Comrade Ratski's final appearance is in Speed Comics 011 when the two team up in a version of the Soviet/Nazi manouvres in Poland and Eastern Europe, though I don't know quite enough about contemporary opinions on WWII to say if the fact that Ratski is clearly just exploiting von Kampf for cheap labour courtesy of his Zombie minions is further extrapolation of this relationship or just the writer favouring one villain over the other as the real heel.

For an epic team-up between two men sworn to conquer and/or destroy the United States of America, the stakes on the Ratski/von Kampf plan are pretty minimal - essentially it's just some run-of-the-mill piracy, only done by one-eyed green guys made of animal parts and flying a dirigible.

More than anything this issue is an exercise in making the zombies look cool while also making Shock Gibson look cool: the Zombies are parachuting! The Zombies are firing a machine gun! Shock Gibson is posing on top of a whale! Shock Gibson is protecting the whale!

Zombies in keen gas masks wielding cool gas guns! Zombies setting up a guillotine! Shock Gibson looking smug as hell while the guillotine blade smashes on his neck!

After the guillotine fails to do its job, things go very wrong for Comrade Ratski and Baron von Kampf, culminating in the destruction of their base, the foiling of their plans and they themselves becoming a meal for at least nine alligators. Who presumably represent the Allied Forces.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 650: RANGO OF SLAVONIA/ MINOR SUPER-HERO: THE MASTER MYSTIC

(Green Giant Comics 001, 1940)

We join Rango, a science villain of some description, after he has failed to conquer Europe. His next move: total destruction.

After absolutely devastating a city in what is probably Slavonia, Rango heads for the United States by the simple expedient of swimming across the Atlantic.

And now we encounter the main attraction, Master Mystic! What a character! Master Mystic is very much ahead of his time, both in his art style and degree of superhuman omnipotence.

Master Mystic's entire battle with Rango feels like something out of a 60s underground comic, slightly unreal and rubbery and full of visual excess. Appropriately, Master Mystic was created by Victor E. Pazmino, whose other credits tended more toward the funny animal content that informed so much of the underground comix scene.

(see also Pazmino's other super-heroic creation, TNT Todd, for some fun costume compare-and-contrast)

It really is a shame that Pazmino didn't do more work along these lines, assuming that he wanted to. Stuff like this visualization of the Master Mystic's telekinesis stands out as innovative by any era's standards.

Master Mystic eventually melts Rango into horrible goo and then returns to his Arctic stronghold to resume his protective watch over humanity North America, and if the super-powered one-upsmanship of their battle felt like something out of 60s counterculture comics then this detached, omnipotent man routine feels very 1980s post-Watchmen, or at least one step away from that. Should some entrepeneur BRING BACK the Master Mystic the next time metatextual super-hero analysis characters like Miracleman come into vogue? It's worth a shot!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 645: SNEELY

(Fight Comics 004, 1940)

Kinks Mason is deep sea fishing with some friend when one of them lands a swordfish that is covered in gold and jewels! Just where did these riches come from? The answer is unguessable!

Upon reaching the ocean floor, Kinks discovers that the swordfish was covered in pirate gold, and furthermore, he finds the pirate! Sneely (Pirate Terror of the Seven Seas, the Great, the Magnificent) is an old-time pirate who claims that he drank a magic potion that allowed him to live seemingly indefinitely underwater and who guards his ill-gotten treasure both personally and with a school of trained swordfish. Is attaining near-immortality and then spending it guarding a pile of shiny metal that only has value if you actually spend it on something a huge waste? Indeed it is! It's absolute dragon behaviour is what it is.

Sneely is exactly the kind of weird wild completely un-fleshed-out villain that you get for a character like Kinks Mason who a) isn't one of the real top-tier guys in the book he appears in and b) has a niche role. Every issue, Kinks dives into the ocean for 5 to 8 pages and he has to find a challenge to overcome down there and sometimes it's a, immortal amphibious pirate with the world's most Xtreme Hoarding Problem. 

Probably the best thing about Sneely is the one that never got capitalized on: that he's seemingly still alive at the end of the story, as Kinks Mason just konks him on the head with a thighbone before making off with the treasure. And while an immortal amphibious pirate squatting on a pile of gold at the bottom of the ocean is a bit of an underwhelming idea for a comic book, an immortal amphibious pirate who Wants His Treasure Back is a cool recurring enemy. I say BRING BACK Sneely, in concept if not as an actual character.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 617: MOROSIO

(Fantastic Comics 007, 1940)

Like so many Space Smith adventures do, this one begins with Space and his ladyfriend Dianna being waylaid as they make their way around the Solar System. In this case a mysterious gas disables their spaceship and causes them to land on the moon Ganymede. From whence did this gas come? Why, it was the sinister laboratory of Morosio, not just a mad and/or criminal scientist but a mad and/or criminal scientist who has already been caught once and escaped to do further science crimes and/or madness.

I like his sass ("Say Emperor Morosio") and I love a villain with pre-baked backstory but I gotta say that Morosio's hair leaves a lot to be desired.

The really great thing about Morosio is that his henchmen of choice are these fellows who he made with his own two hands. They're called the Crustaceans and they are peak character design. The base model is the size of a large cat, with a lobster body and a crab claw head, but they can range in size all the way up to maybe five feet tall. They have between zero and two arms and either have wings or little bipedal legs... I think that given a more advanced colour palette and a visual guide to different crab claw shapes you could populate an entire video game enemy ecosystem based off of the Crustacean design.

The major flaw in the Crustaceans as henchmen is that they are vulnerable to radioactive beryllium, in that it makes them explode. Coincidentally, Ganymede is littered with radioactive beryllium, to the extent that not only is Space Smith able to defeat the entire Crustacean swam using a slingshot but also blow up Morosio's whole operation to hell and gone with some spare radiation. A true design oversight!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 545: "?"

(Smash Comics 002, 1939)

An art thief, but an audacious art thief. "?" is so-named because he sends a message signed thus to the Paris Prefect of Police warning that he would steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and then actually does it from under the noses of the Prefect, the police and Captain Cook of Scotland Yard. Like, while in the same room as them - he just hits the lights and grabs the painting.

Then, a couple of days later, another note from "?" saying that he is going to put the painting back! And he approaches this task with the same level of audacity: reveal the location of the painting and then out the window.

Too bad for "?" that reckless audacity can be a bit predictable - he is immediately corralled on the street below and turns out to be criminal Renee Landrue, who simply stole the painting as a way to sell on 4 forged copies of the Mona Lisa. It's practically not even a crime! If only he hadn't tried to blow up Captain Cook and the Prefect in between the theft and the return, he'd practically be a folk hero! BRING BACK the audacious French thief "?", I say! Give Batman's filing system a workout!