MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 875: THE RED CIRCLE

(Zip Comics 006, 1940)

As Nevada Jones and his pal Little Joe are passing through the town of Copper Bluffs one day, they find themselves smack in the middle of a criminal conspiracy: someone is murdering people as part of a scheme to buy up key portions of the town's land before the railroad comes through town, and the sign that someone is about to be killed is that a red circle is painted on the shaving mug when they are visiting the town's barber shop.

Nevada does some snooping around and discovers an actual note from the mastermind behind the crime spree, signed with a red circle in a way that makes it clear that this is what he calls himself and I am not making things up in an effort to complete a "basic shapes" triumvirate with former minor super-hero the Red Triangle and a hypothetical third character called the Red Square who I must assume is some sort of Soviet super-agent.

Given the barber shop-centric nature of the Red Circle's activities it may come as little surprise when I reveal that the Red Circle turns out to be the kindly and helpful old sweeping man, who not only organized the whole thing but was using Nevada's investigation to eliminate his partners and thus keep all of the money to himself. And he almost gets away with it, too! Ultimately, however, it turns out that he has brought a straight razor to a gun fight.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 868: THE HOOD

(Wonderworld Comics 019, 1940)

The Hood, a mysterious figure (who leaves a note with an unfortunately cut-off symbol that I can only assume/hope is a hood-and-crossbones) is terrorizing an unnamed city with a series of murders - eight in one week! 

Going by the old wisdom that the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime, the Flame waits at the site of the latest murder and is rewarded when the Hood does just that. He is however unsuccessful in capturing the fiend due to the twin facts that a) the Hood thought to bring some guys along with him and b) an unfortunate woman happens by just in time to be taken hostage. 

The Flame and the never-named woman are taken prisoner and spend some time escaping while the Hood lines up his next victim, a store owner who lives near the Sea Clock mentioned in his taunting note. This is when we finally get some inkling of the Hood's motivations: far from being an ordinary homicidal maniac, he is instead forcing his victims to sign over their property to him before murdering them.

(I would just like to take a second here to roast the Unnamed City authorities for the sheer amount of consternation they evince at the notion of a "sea clock" when they live in a town that has such a large clock tower located on its waterfront)

The Hood is finally unmasked and turns out to be the Unnamed City Mayor's personal secretary, Jenkins, who the Flame had held in deep suspicion for the entire issue for using the word "extraordinary" to describe the killer. This sort of thing is always highlighted when it pays off, but how many times does a crime go unsolved because of such unwarranted suspicion of a person with a weird vocabulary or a tendency for malapropisms, hmm?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 802: HAMMERFIST

(Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

Hammerfist is a good old-fashioned gang boss-with-a-gimmick, in his case an iron ball in place of his missing right hand. He's on a mission to take over the night club scene in New York City by the simple expedient of shooting up clubs until business gets so bad that everyone is willing to sell cheap rather than go bankrupt.

More importantly, Hammerfist is the person responsible for framing Niles "the Target" Reed's brother Bill for murder, which leads to Bill's death and then to the creation of the Target and the Targeteers. I really want to say that he's also the one responsible for the protection racket that left the Targeteers homeless orphans to be taken in by Niles, but while this is plausible it's never quite explicitly laid out. 

More importantly, even though Niles/the Target battles and captures his brother's killer in this issue, he never learns that Hammerfist is the one who framed Bill! Which is actually a very interesting contrast with Bill "supposedly escaped murderer but actually dead in a shallow grave" Reed, with the law seeking a dead but innocent man and the Target looking for a man who has already been captured. I'm sure that someone could really do something with all of this if the Target were still a going concern!

Hammerfist and his gang do pretty well against drunken nightclub patrons, but ultimately their role is to serve as punching bags to show just how good the Target and his Targeteers are at beating up crooks. And they're great at it! Don't worry though: even though he's hung up for the police to find, Hammerfist will return in 1941 for what is hopefully a more illustrious appearance.

(almost forgot to include Hammerfist's amazing entrance)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 735: THE SILVER-WORSHIPPERS

(Silver Streak Comics 005, 1940)

Comics book cults, am I right? They'll worship anything. Case in point: the Silver-Worshippers, who believe that silver is sacred and are pretty dang mad that it is being profaned by its use in finance and currency. They also very frustratingly do not seem to have a name that they use for themselves, so the Silver-Worshippers will have to do.

But just how to remove the sacred silver from the hands of the heathen financiers? Why via a series of bank robberies, of course! The Silver-Worshippers devise a system so foolproof that they use it upwards of thirty-five times: set off a big explosion and/or fire on the edge of town and then rob the town bank of all of its silver while the emergency services are busy.

Of course, the Silver Streak is no slouch and so by the thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth silver robbery he is ready to get in on the action, zipping off to Easton, Ohio in time to help with the fire and in grand comics tradition almost catch the bank robbers so that it will be more satisfying when he gets 'em later.

Now to reveal a little bit about the kind of person I am: I absolutely love when an old comic uses a real place (or even better: a real street address) due to the ease with which I can use modern mapping software to check out just where things supposedly happened, and of course I was overjoyed to discover that Easton, Ohio was a real place, but let me tell you, it does not have a downtown, or a bank, or indeed a fire department.

Our adventure in geography continues, as the Silver Streak determines that the Silver-Worshippers have been writing the word DOOM in cursive across a map of the US (this is where my "thirty-five robberies" calculation comes from, by the way), and that Clayton, Ohio is the next likely stop to complete the M.

(Clayton, Ohio is also a real place, by the way, and while it does have a small downtown that I can believe held a robbable bank in 1940 it is not directly South of Easton. What wild geography games was Jack Cole playing with us? did he just pick two names out of the air and get lucky?)

The Silver Streak tracks the cultists sent to rob the Clayton bank back to their hidden temple and comes very close to being gruesomely killed in a wave of molten silver, but because he is a super speed character this only comes about because he clumsily knocks himself out with a bit of falling masonry.

The Silver Streak recovers in time to not be fatally silvered and proves my usual point about speedster heroes vs regular crooks by taking on a whole temple-full of guys using only hand-thrown bricks of silver, only they turn out to actually be silvered bricks, substituted for the real thing by the cult's leader Gregory Randil. "Just who is Gregory Randil?" I hear you cry. Why he is the owner of Randil Silver Co and he has been playing the Silver-Worshippers for chumps by having them steal for him so that he can cut down on overhead. And to forestall any further questions: no, Randil has never appeared or been mentioned in the comic prior to his unmasking. This is the definition of an unfair mystery!

The Randil Silver Co. deception of course does not go down well with the room full of Silver-Worshippers, and the Silver Streak has to bop every one of them into unconsciousness before hauling them off to jail.

NEXT DAY ADDENDUM: Okay, here is a bonus thing about me. Sometimes I get so excited and full of pride in myself for figuring something out that I overlook the obvious. Yes, Easton and Clayton are real places in Ohio, as I so smugly pointed out, but it's a Golden Age comic book - if you see a place name one of the things you have to assume is that there is a simple substitution going on. Forget Easton and Clayton, I should have checked for a Weston and assumed that it was Dayton, and when I did in fact do so, the line between them was almost perfect for the finale of a cursive "m". Weston even has a little downtown which, while it doesn't appear to have many buildings over two stories, probably had a perfectly lootable bank in 1940. Just a reminder for me to stay humble.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 710: BLOOR

(Prize Comics 004, 1940)

The year is 1982! The world languishes under the heel of a global dictatorship, and the economy is tanking - presumably the Mongols were running a war economy that failed to stand up to the post-world-conquering peace.

Emperor Seng I offers nothing but empty promises to his subjects, until Power Nelson, as committed as ever to working within the system, bursts in and strongarms him into making... real promises? Frankly, this is Power Nelson at his worst. He was created to remove the dictator's yoke from around the neck of the people and he consistently works to make the absolute dictator a better leader rather than, say, destroying him utterly. Like, I know that conflict is the essence of storytelling and if Nelson had just broken Seng I's neck in Prize Comics 001 there would be less of that but... come on, man. Forcing the Emperor to say he'll make some jobs isn't going to do anything.

In fact, Nelson's threats probably make Seng I more amenable to the offer he receives when he is visited by Bloor, dictator of Uranus. After all, how can Power Nelson complain after thousands of men are given jobs? And how could the Emperor know that they were actually being sold into slavery, wink, wink?

The men are of course disappointed to learn that they are effectively slaves, to the extent that none of them seem to notice the high-fashion look that their captor is sporting and how much is contrasts with the simple purple pants of the planet's leader. A bit self-involved, but who am I to judge?

Power Nelson of course does not abide this, and busts everyone free at the first opportunity. Note also the factory foreman's look - orange sunburst bonnets must be "in" on Uranus in 1982.

Power Nelson does not fight women and so Bloor's strategy to send his Amazon Regiment to capture him really pays off. But who are these Amazons? Is this what female Uranians look like or are they mercenaries from some other planet? Is this a sex thing for Bloor?

Power Neslon is of course held in place not by ropes but by the power of his own antiquated ideas about gender and he frees himself just in time to get attacked by some really excellent cylindrical robots that, alas, have no visible gender signifiers and are rendered into so much scrap.

Bloor is forced to release and pay the men, but in keeping with Nelson's dedication to preserving existing power structures suffers no further consequences. I do really appreciate how committed he is to his role as a manager of Uranus rather than a traditional dictator - he might just be our first villain who operates almost completely from a desk. 

The men all head home with a week's wages and I guess that that solves the financial crisis. Everyone is happy under the boot of Seng I. Thanks, Power Nelson!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 604: PRINCE PIGZA

(Fantastic Comics 004, 1940) 

Is Prince Pigza a proper super-villain or just a jerk? His major crime as discovered by a newly-amphibious Sub Saunders on an exploratory jaunt under the ocean is in not caring that his process for extracting gold from seawater is (possibly) causing disturbances along the coast of the US. Would it be polite to check? Is it a dick move not to stop? Both yes. If he didn't lock up Sub Saunders for suggesting that he stop and subsequently plan on dissecting him to learn the secret of his amphibiousness then I might not have been able in good conscience to include him here.

Sub Saunders of course escapes his prison and calls in the US Navy to *squints* slaughter Pigza's spear wielding guards and presumably declare the city of Crustacea an underwater protectorate of the United States.

Prince Pigza himself is summarily exploded by Sub Saunders. What I'm saying, I guess, is check up on people or governments before you casually make them your enemies because they might have a tendency to respond to provocations with overwhelming and deadly force.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 594: RIP-THE-BLOOD

(Fantastic Comics 002, 1940)

As weird as Fletcher Hanks stories are, sometimes the hardest thing to parse are the seem-like-they-should-mean-something names. Take Rip-the-Blood here: is this just a weird way to present a fellow named Rip with the nickname of "the Blood" or does his name mean something more? Is he so tough he'll "rip the blood" out of you? I never know with this guy.

Whatever his name means, Rip-the-Blood is a bad dude: through his influence over US politics and control of the munitions industry he plans to push the world into total war and become the most powerful man alive. 

EDIT Jan 2026: I just learned about New York underworld figure Harry Horowitz, aka "Gyp the Blood" and can only assume that Rip here is named in reference to him.

The inciting incident that will start the big war is the kidnapping of FDR by a foreign-looking plane. This is not a bad plan! I have no notes on the big "plunge the world into war" scheme! 

EXCEPT. Rip-the-Blood knows about Stardust the Super Wizard. He knows what Stardust did to the Spy Army (not covered here but they got messed up) and that he will probably be targeted as well - it should be no surprise to him when FDR is rescued from his kidnappers almost immediately. It shouldn't, but it really seems to mess up Rip's whole day/world domination scheme.

Rip's big anti-Stardust plan is to use a wind generator to blow him into something called a "glue pit" which I put in quotes only because I don't know what it actually is - it gets name-checked several times during the course of the story but never actually comes into play. Given Golden Age naming conventions I'm not willing to just assume that it's a literal pit full of literal glue - it could be anything from that to a cave with a giant slug in it.

Rip-the-Blood's associates get off surprisingly lightly for Stardust foes, being sent to some sort of private prison near Polaris, but the man himself is tossed from a cliff to his death. I personally would have involved the much-discussed Glue Pit, but who am I to judge a weird enormous spaceman?