MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 086

In contrast to the last group of minor super-heroes, 3/4 of these guys have a teeny-tiny chance of appearing in a modern comic. Like, 5% more.

Mister E: 

Mister E, aka "wealthy sportsman Victor Jay," is a masked vigilante of the suit-and-cape type, and is remarkable mainly for the fact that Marvel Comics doesn't really have that many of those kind of guy. In his one recorded adventure he battles the very entertaining Vampire to a stalemate. After this singular adventure, Mr E is not seen again until J. Michael Straczynski's The Twelve, in which he mainly exists to be emotionally crushed as an object lesson in how being a super-hero can have an impact on your real life, you guys. (Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1941)

Categorized in: Alphanumeric (E)*, Day Jobs (Wealthy Socialites), Generica (Misters)

*we're up to 12 out of 26 letters! 

the Laughing Mask:

Dennis Burton, assistant district attorney and latest in a long line of Burton lawmen, is also one of the many, many comic book law officers who adopt a costumed identity in order to enact justice via fist and gun. Burton's real spin on the concept of vigilantism is in his choice of costume: a simple red-and-yellow number topped off with a theatrical comedy mask. Eerie! 

The Laughing Mask is a calling card leaver of the ominous school, and while this is not exactly groundbreaking stuff I do enjoy seeing how he sets it all up. Someone like the Blue Beetle must be doing all this creeping around in crawlspaces to achieve this kind of effect too, but we never get to see it. (Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

Categorized in: Accessories (Calling Card Leavers), Activities (Laughing), Day Jobs (Assistant District Attorneys) 

the Purple Mask:

Nothing gold can stay, as Ponyboy, or possibly Sodapop, said, and quirky Golden Age super-heroes are no exception. For the second and third of his three appearances, Dennis Burton sets aside his golden mask to adopt a far more generic costume. At least it's a new mask colour for us. (Daring Mystery Comics 003, 1940)

Categorized in: Colours (Purple), Objects (Masks) 

Breeze Barton:

Breeze Barton is more of a science fiction adventurer than a super-hero, but the particulars of his story are weird enough that I want to talk about them. Breeze is a US soldier fighting in World War II, only not our World War II but a near future version of the war (1945 CE) in which American and Japanese forces are clashing in South Africa and the US Army Air Force has instituted a furry-shouldered look in their pilots' uniforms. Shot down while on a scouting flight, Breeze crashes his plane in the Sahara Desert (a truly staggering distance to travel between being shot down and crashing - the entire length of Africa, essentially!). 

While wandering around the desert, Breeze then falls through a dimensional portal called the Spot and finds himself in Miracle City, which is populated by people from across the breadth of human history who have fallen through the Spot and who now do not age thanks to the properties of the Spot Dimension. There are also dinosaurs running around, plus the hostile Demon Folk, who are native to the dimension and who want to invade the Earth for some reason. To finally know death, I guess? 

Breeze eventually figures out the trick to going back through the Spot and returns to Earth to find that it is now 1995 and that the war has been going on for the entire 50 years that he was away. Thanks to the relentless grind of the war humanity has reverted to a state ranging between medieval and stone age. The exception to this is a small remnant of the military forces, who have now banded together as the last bastion of civilization. This is all very interesting, especially if you consider the intermediate period in which society is starting to stagnate but the military is still organized and powerful enough to maintain the former state of things within its ranks. Now, as the military forces finally start to fall, Breeze Barton emerges to rally them and rebuild a non-war-based society.

In conclusion, Breeze Barton is a fellow from a near-future alternate history and then a moderate-future alternate history (but both in the past as far as we're concerned) with a bit of dimensional travel in between. Also he is eventually and inexplicably brought back to die in a 2012 Marvel Zombies book. (Daring Mystery Comics 003, 1940)

Categorized in: Day Jobs (Military), Origin (Heroes of the Future)

the Phantom Reporter:

The Phantom Reporter is actually Dick Jones, smart alec cub reporter for the Daily Express, and like his fellow news-themed super-hero the Press Guardian I really must stress that making such a clear link between your secret and public identities is a bad idea in the long run. Why, if Clark Kent had chosen "Super-Reporter" as his nom de geurre, Lois Lane would've been on him like a hawk.

There are no shortage of suit-wearing mystery men in comics (though as mentioned in the Mister E entry, not so many in Marvel Comics) and they all trend toward the mildly superhuman in their physical prowess. The Phantom Reporter goes a bit farther than that, with a punch so powerful that he straight-up kills his first three opponents with his bare mitts. There was only the one Golden Age adventure for the Reporter, so we cannot say if this trend would have continued or not but it definitely would have set him apart from the regular vigilante crowd.

Dick "the Phantom Reporter" Jones is of course eventually brought back in The Twelve just like Mr E and the Laughing Mask, in his case as the audience surrogate. One thing that falls by the wayside in the course of this is the fact that newspaper reporter Dick "the Phantom Reporter" Jones is also a wealthy socialite named Mr van Ergen, with the implication being that van Ergen is the real, original guy and that Jones and the Reporter are both alternate identities. Interesting, but not particularly conducive to being an everyman character. (Daring Mystery Comics 003, 1940)

Categorized in: Day Jobs (Newspaper Reporters), Professions (Journalism), Supranormal (Phantoms)

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 084

Obscure Marvel super-heroes, you say? But of course!

Monako, Prince of Magic:

Monako is a classic comic book magic hero in the Zatara vein, right down to the top hat, tuxedo and little mustache, though he does eventually switch to wearing a fez. His major distinction from his legion of peers is that he was brought back in a fairly recent Doctor Strange run, though as is so often the case he was dug up only to be horribly killed off.

Monako gets an origin story in Daring Mystery Comics 004, in which he is orphaned when an Indian group referred to only as "the Cruel Tribe" ritually explode the entire caravan that he and his parents were travelling in as missionaries (this at least gives us an answer to the perennial question of why bring your young child along on such a dangerous journey: because missionaries).

Young Monako (a last name? a stage name?) inexplicably survives the conflagration and is subsequently adopted by the chief of the Cruel Tribe, who teaches him the ways of magic. Just why he does this is not explored and will never be, because the British eventually show up to massacre the entire village and send young Monako back to England. Were he a going concern for the seventy-odd years between his final Golden Age appearance and his death, I'm sure that the question of just how a whole group of people with powers similar to the nigh-omnipotent Monako were killed with simple firearms, but alas, such was not the case. (Daring Mystery Comics 001, 1940)

Categorized in: Locations (Unrelated Name), Power Categories (Magic), Royalty (Princes)

Phantom of the Underworld: 

"Doc" Denton is a surgeon-turned-detective who helps the police round up a gang boss named Perrone in his sole recorded adventure. I one hundred percent am including him here because "Phantom of the Underworld" is such a terrific name, even if nobody calls him that in-story. (Daring Mystery Comics 001, 1940)

Categorized in: Day Jobs (Private Detectives), Locations (the Underworld), Supranormal Beings (Phantoms)

Trojak the Tiger Man: 

Trojak, orphaned son of a jungle explorer who made the inexplicable yet very popular decision to bring a baby along with him on his travels (perhaps as a difficulty boost? Was Trojak's father a gamer?), has grown up among a tribe his father died in defense of. As is so often the case in adventure literature, being a white guy in the jungle has made Trojak both stronger and cooler than everyone else, plus he can talk to animals like Balu, his geographically-anomalous tiger companion. (Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

(he is a very intelligent tiger)

Categorized in: Animals (Tigers), Generica (Mans), Origin (Orphan Raised in Jungle)

Tigerman:

"Trojak the Tiger Man" becomes "Tigerman" for its final instalment, and it's a bit of a toss-up on whether the two characters are supposed to be the same or not. Both Trojak and Tigerman are orphaned youths who were raised by jungle tribe and who now adventure while in the company of a tiger named Balu, sure, but crucially "Trojak" is set in Africa while the Tigerman roams India. You'd be forgiven for assuming that Tigerman was Indian but no, he's American by birth - he's just the rare near-naked jungle guy who has the ability to get a tan. 

The one thing that could have cleared up the mystery of whether these two are the same guy or not would be more adventures featuring either one of them and sadly there are no more (Daring Mystery Comics 006, 1940)

Categorized in: Animals (Tigers), Generica (Mans), Origin (Orphan Raised in Jungle) 

K-4 and his Sky Devils:

K-4 is the code name of a "flying spy," and WWI/Spanish Civil War fighter ace (the youngest WWI ace, according to the text box, which would make him at most 18 as far as I can tell) who leads the Sky Devils, comprised of fellow WWI ace René d'Auvergne and makeup expert Ronald Wolverstone-Clodd. Some of the usual fun of the multinational team set-up is missing here because K-4 spends a lot of his time doing solo missions. (Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

Categorized in: Alphanumeric (K, 4), Origins (WWI vets), Supranormal Beings (Devils)

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 017

Buncha mooks this time.

The ship that picked up scientist-adventurer Dean Denton and his pals from the island of Baron Blood just so happened to have a pseudo-Nazi spy (fake name Lieutenant James, code name K-192, real name unknown) committing murders on it for unclear reasons. Despite composing a crime scene to contain nothing but clues pointing to other members of the crew Denton rounds him up pretty quickly. (Masked Marvel 003, 1940)

Pilot Prop Powers has to defend his ship and his cargo of gold bullion from this air pirate and his scurvy crew, and the story ends up glossing over his huge flying aerodrome a bit. Well, I think it's cool, unnamed air pirate captain. I'm sorry they blew it up. (National Comics 001, 1940)

Klotz, aka the Master Spy, has the distinction of being the first foe to battle the Shield. His greatest moment is pictured above, as the Shield is so absorbed in reading spy files that he doesn't notice approximately fifty boxes of TNT being piled up behind him. Klotz also returns in the 1984 series The Original Shield because there's nothing like battling an extremely old man to make for an exciting comic experience. (Pep Comics 001, 1940)

This bunch of clowns work for a mysterious figure who has been murdering Hollywood stars in connection with a jewel-smuggling ring. They're not in the story for very long before their employer murders them all with mustard gas - the henchman's greatest occupational hazard is, as always, the boss. Why do all these murders over some simple smuggled jewelry? Because the mastermind is Biff Crossley, himself a famous actor, and he wants nobody who can possibly tie him to the crime left alive, that's why. (Pep Comics 008, 1940)

THE SUPER-VILLAINS OF HOLLYWOOD PODCAST: The super-villainy might be a bit generic but this story is fodder for a whole season of tSVoHpod: Crossley murders two other stars (one of them inside Grauman's Chinese Theatre, using a bullet-firing compact) and tries to frame a third by pretending to be a target himself, he bumps off his own men, the Shield is there, and the whole thing ends with Crossley's defiant suicide. Sensational! This is podcasting, baby!

MINOR SUPER-HERO 049: FLEXO THE RUBBER MAN

(Mystic Comics v1 001, 1940)

It's Flexo the Rubber Man! A rubber robot filled with some sort of gas created and remote controlled by scientist brothers Joel and Joshua Williams! Flexo can make huge gas-filled jumps and bound across the cityscape!

Flexo can stretch!

Flexo can squeeze through tight spaces and absorb small arms fire without harm! He can also expel his gas to subdue his foes! Truly Flexo is a marvel of the age!

Flexo is also the recipient of a major retcon: recent stories have revised his origin such that the Williams brothers found a Venom-style symbiote and built a robotlike organism out of it. This is cool! Marvel's frequent revisions to their own history are an interesting contrast to the DC Comics reboot style of doing things in which current comics have no retroactive effect. The only real downside to the Marvel approach is in online spaces, as fan-run wikis absorb retcons like Ancient Egyptian dynasties - actual information on the contents of old comics is metaphorically torn down and replaced by the sun-god of the retcon it can frequently be hard to find information on old comics that does not incorporate the retcons in a misleading way.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 387: NEGAL

(More Fun Comics 067, 1941)

Negal is some sort of demon lord who has been allowing ghosts to leave his realm and harass a guy on Earth. He gets very easily intimidated by Dr Fate's ability to blow up a skull and doesn't appear again until Countdown to Mystery in 2007, wherein he is a bit more of a threat.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 043: MISS AMERICA

(Military Comics 001-007, 1941-1942) 

I am not the first to note this by a country mile but it must be said every time she comes up: she wishes to have all of the powers of the Statue of Liberty and then the Statue of Liberty visits her in a dream and gifts them to her. If USA didn't exist then this would be a shoe-in for "most outlandish patriotic hero concept" but as it stands I reckon that they're tied.

Those powers, by the way, aren't "being enormous and made of bronze" like you might expect but rather a host of generic Golden Age magical abilities such as teleportation, telekinesis and transmutation - particularly of goons into birds and trees and such.

Miss America gets brought back every once in a while but the most noteworthy thing about her, her wild origin, was retconned in the Eighties. Now instead of wishing for the powers of the Statue of Liberty and then getting them (absurd, laughable) she wished for the powers of the Statue of Liberty near the entrance to a secret government project underneath the statue and was given powers by them (high concept, realistic).

In conclusion: I quite like Golden Age Miss America but find it hard to get excited about her later incarnations.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 292: ARMLESS TIGER MAN

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 026, 1941)

Armless Tiger Man! A minor classic in the Characters With Goofy Names category and almost certainly a Wizard Magazine Mort of the Month some time in the late 90s. Also: he wears stirrup pants.

Unfortunately there's not a lot going on in the story: Armless Tiger Man is a Nazi saboteur who murders a man in order to save a few bucks on bribes, which leads the Angel to get involved. He ends up getting tracked down due to his taste for hard-to-find Chateau Quim wine (I checked and yes, it absolutely meant the same thing in the 40s as it does now, so this is very cheeky). As seen above he manages to escape only to be apprehended mid-sabotage.

His origin is a bitt more interesting: after losing his arms in an industrial accident he obsessively trains to use his arms and legs as replacements and develops an unsettling appearance due to his massive jaw muscles. He also develops a hatred of industrial machinery which is the reason that the Gestapo mobilizes him to the US.

You can't keep a weird fella like this down forever - Armless Tiger Man is our first properly brung back Marvel Villain, appearing in a Captain America WWII-era comic in 2010, in which he died, then gets to show up in hell! I mean, it's not illustrious but it's better than the Vampire Killer got.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 034: ELECTRO

(Marvel Mystery Comics 004-019, 1940-1941) 

Hey look, it's Electro, Marvel of the Age! I love that guy!

Or rather I love Electro's creator/ mental pilot, Professor Philo Zog (later amended to Zogolowski because heaven forfend that someone have a weird name). It's not often that a weird nerd with a scraggly beard gets to be the hero.

I also love Zog's plan: hire a bunch of husky young men to act as his agents in various parts of the US, who then call in Electro as necessary. They eventually get phased out in favour of more Zog-time but I love them while they last. Also, in their first appearance they're referred to as Zog's "Machine of Righteousness" and that's what I think of them as because as a name, it rules.

Zog later shows up in a period piece or two, but it's Electro who eventually gets brung back by J. Michael Straczynski in The Twelve, making this the inaugural edition of THE TWELVE REPORT, a review of just how our pals fared in that book.

Electro got done somewhat dirty by J. Michael: The incident that put the other eleven heroes in suspended animation also severed the mental connection required to drive the robot. and Zog subsequently died of mental withdrawal. It might have taken a while though? His daughter Elizabeth shows up in the series and she is definitely not drown or styled as the 60+ year-old she would have to be if Zog kicked the bucket in 1945.

As for Electro itself, it was basically a narrative device in the book, acting as a combo murder weapon and witness. Ultimately it ends up being driven around the Middle East by the Laughing Mask. Ho hum.

Maybe I'll work out a 1-12 scale of how well I reckon the characters in The Twelve ended up being treated but it's hard to do with only one of them, you know?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 262: DR MANYAC & THE GREEN FLAME

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 004, 1940)

Dr Manyac here is a perfectly fine criminal scientist with a very good name. It's just too bad for him that he is in the very common position of being completely overshadowed by his henchmen:

THE GREEN FLAME! Very very cool looking guys who are also some of our first simple examples of evil opposites, as their green flame burns cold to contend with our pal the red-hot Human Torch. Using the threat of the Green Flame's cold causing buildings to crumble and collapse, Manyac aims to ransom New York for big bux.

Unfortunately for his plans, and especially for his henchmen, the Green Flame's suits aren't quite robust enough to stand up to the Human Torch's flame. They all end up roasted, while Manyac is carted off to jail, never to be seen again (until he's brought back and killed off in 2009, natch)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 245: SATANA

(Flash Comics v1 013, 1941)

 I am torn on Satana! Torn verily in twain!

My standard critique of a comic book scientist-villain is that they would have been better off using their tech in a non-crime endeavor, but Satana is a brilliant and pioneering young surgeon living in 1941 and given what I know about the history of women in science I think it's fair to say that if she had decided to make a go of it in academia then there's a decent chance that all her research would have been stolen by some dude and she might have gotten credit years after her death, if ever. Also, her signature breakthrough involves transplanting human brains (and eyes!) into tigers, which while groundbreaking might be a hard sell to the ethics committee.

On the other hand, her crime scheme is very bad. In short: she extorts rich men with threats of harm, then gets work as an entertainer called Satana the Tiger Girl at rich guy parties and has her tigers kill the ones that don't pay up. She only does it once before getting caught by Hawkman, that we know of, but even if she varied the method by which the tiger was introduced to the rich guy, it's not a sustainable business model. Stylish, yes, but not sustainable.

Perhaps the best part of the story is when Hawkman comes across a couple of tigers engaging in humanlike behaviors and it nearly drives him insane, like he's an HP Lovecraft character. Human habits like... sitting near a newspaper and holding a pipe in their mouth. 

They kinda hint at a return appearance for Satana at the end of the story but she doesn't actually come back until 2004, in the same Hawkman story that brought back the Thought Terror. She's a substantially different character by that point, with ties to the Ultra-Humanite and a focus on making humanoid animals via genetic modification. I'll revisit her when and if I manage to keep doing this long enough to get to that era. It's good that they brought her back! She's a fun character!