MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 808: THE BLACK QUEEN

(The Spirit, "The Black Queen", June 16, 1940)

We first meet the Black Queen as the otherwise-unnamed defense lawyer in the murder trial of gangster Slot Gorgan. She already has a reputation for being brilliant, and that reputation proves to be accurate, as Gorgan is acquitted despite the evidence against him.

Upon returning to the Black Queen's penthouse, we learn that she is in fact the very first in the Spirit's long line of female villains, as it turns out that she is the brains behind Gorgan's gang. Unfortunately for Gorgan and the Black Queen, the Spirit has been engaging in the long-standing comic book tradition of getting mad about not-guilty trial results, and so has preceded them to the apartment. Now he knows about about the Black Queen's crime ties and that Slot was actually guilty.

The Spirit manages to wrangle a confession out of Slot in the presence of the District Attorney, which results in a retrial for the same murder he was originally accused of (and while I am not even remotely a lawyer I reckon that this is exactly what double jeopardy is supposed to be about? Or is it one of those things where he was tried for second degree murder the first time and first degree the second?). This time, the Black Queen's brilliant legal mind is merely able to get his sentenced reduced from death to life imprisonment, but importantly she herself is still running the gang when the episode concludes.

The Black Queen returns a few weeks later having made the astonishing decision to move from being the secret head of her gang (smart, secure) to personally leading them in a raid on the New York Sub-Treasury building* (dumb, risky). Why do this when her prior setup was so good that she got to the end of a "crime doesn't pay" comic with her crime career still intact? Since she talks about taking 25 million dollars for herself and splitting town, I can only assume that she has grown tired of the admin of running a gang while being a successful attorney and just wants to retire.

*this might be the fifth time I have read a story in which crooks try to rob the New York Sub-Treasury, and having looked it up to see if it was a thing I have found that a) it was - the US used to keep stores of cash and gold in a few major cities, presumably due to longer travel times in the past and b) the sub-treasury system was phased out in the 1920s. The Black Queen and her fellows are actually trying to break into a building now known as Federal Hall, administered by the National Park Service, and in 1940 occupied by exhibits relating to the New York World's Fair. This raises the question: is the major divergence of the various super-hero universes from our own in fact the passing of the Independent Treasury Act of 1920?

Though the Black Queen's gang are captured before they can get away with either fifty million dollars or some dioramas about the history of finance, she alone manages to escape in her private yacht. Thanks to a timely intervention by the Governor's island defense batteries, the yacht is disabled (a very rare artillery-based entry in my collection of cops shooting fleeing suspects), but the Black Queen herself remains at large for a second appearance in a row thanks to a frankly amazing hand grenade throw that disables the Spirit's flying car. 

The Black Queen's third and final appearance is also the one in which she makes the jump to being a full-fledged femme fatale in the (eventual) grand Spirit tradition, and I say that not just because she has started wearing hot pants and a bustier as her everyday outfit.

No, what really puts the fatale into this femme is the fact that she is going around giving men the literal kiss of death via some poisoned lip gloss. I'm not even sure why she kills this guy - just for the hell of it, I suppose, as he seems to be totally okay with working for her.

But just what was that guy killed for? Why a formula for creating artificial diamonds, which means that along with the sub-treasury thing from earlier, the Black Queen has engaged in two of the biggest non-crimes in comics history!

The Black Queen has also seduced a jeweller named Abner Ames into acting as a fence for her. The Spirit goes pretty far out of his way to rescue this guy from getting the Kiss of Death and make sure that he isn't held criminally responsible, and while I commend him for being nice to Ames' poor wife in this way I would humbly suggest that she would be better off without him.

(the above panels also reveal that the Black Queen's calling card is the queen of spades, and as someone who loves categorizing things I am just pleased as punch to have confirmation on exactly which black queen she was going for with than name) 

Ames having been saved, there is a thrilling chase that culminates in a fight on the superstructure of a bridge. Though the Black Queen almost gets him, the Spirit manages to take her in. Sadly for those of us who enjoy her style, the Black Queen chooses to take her own life rather than face trial, even though she might have been the first person in history for whom self-representation was a good idea.

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 050

Novelty Press character round-up, more like.

the Chameleon:

An unnamed master of disguise (throughout his 1940 appearances, at least) who dispenses vigilante justice on an ad hoc basis, the Chameleon's major distinction is that his name is always written in cursive. Other than that: he's got a chauffeur/sidekick (Slim) and a bumbling police nemesis (Inspector Parks) and somehow manages to simultaneously be one of those heroes who is wanted by the law and whose identity and address are just kind of common knowledge. (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)

the Blue Zombie:

"Fantastic Feature Films" was a strip that ran in the first couple of years of Target Comics, with the same conceit as Ed Wheelan's Minute Movies: that the stories being presented were films in which the were being portrayed by a pool of fictional actors - the titular Blue Zombie of this feature, for instance, was played by Orson Black, a Boris Karloff-style Man of a Thousand Faces. This is a fantastic fictional conceit and I am surprised that it hasn't cropped up more over the years.

In the fictional movie The Blue Zombie, Bolshemanian scientist Igor Zamoisky rebels against his country's warmongering dictator and heads to the neighbouring country of Coreland in order to put his scientific discoveries to use in thwarting a Bolshemanian invasion. Discovering a lost Bolshemanian battalion that succumbed to the harsh Corelian winter, he attempts to restore one of them, his old friend Nicholas Samousk, to life. Instead of a restored Samousk, his experiment produces a bright blue zombie version of his friend who responds to his mental commands but cannot think for itself. Zamoisky restores the rest of the battalion in a similar fashion and uses them to crush the Bolshemanian invasion of Coreland, then sets off with his zombie army to free his homeland. 

Obviously describing a one-off like the Blue Zombie as a super-hero is a bit of a stretch, but a) he's not that far off of the Purple Zombie in his origin and general deal, b) I wanted an excuse to talk about the fictional-actors-in-fictional-film conceit and c) the Blue Zombie is a really good name. (Target Comics v1 006, 1940)

the Target: 

It's always fun when an old-school anthology comic book gets a character to match its name fairly late in the game and to prove my point here's the Target, showing up in the tenth issue of Target Comics.

The Target makes his debut with a big advertising push to really get the word out that he is out to crush crime in his version of NYC: full page newspaper ads, messages on the radio, threatening telegrams sent directly to crooks... at one point a lady calls that number that used to tell you the correct time and a recording of the Target tells her to keep her nose clean. It's really the opposite of the modern Batman as Urban Legend school of superhero mystique.

The Target's gimmick is also Batman adjacent: like 50s 60s 70s whichever era's Batman first justified the yellow circle on his chest as a bulletproof target for crooks to aim at, the Target is running around with a literal target painted on his chest (and back) because he has a bulletproof leotard on underneath. Just why the fact that his legs are unprotected is a) necessary and b) emphasized is never really addressed.

Finally, the Target has a thematically appropriate calling card, a dart. We'll see how long he keeps using it for. (Target Comics v1 010, 1940)

the Targeteers:

The more astute readers among you might have noticed that I didn't really go into the actual origin of the Target in his own entry, and that's because it's tied in with that of his sidekicks the Targeteers and so we're covering them all at once.

So: Niles Reed is a brilliant but aimless metallurgist whose only relative, brother and New York City District Attorney Bill Reed, is framed for murder and scheduled to be executed at Sing Sing.

Niles dons a domino mask and attempts to bust Bill out during his final prison transfer but the guards manage to hit Bill during their escape. After a heartfelt "why me?" Bill dies and Niles buries him in an unmarked grave, which means that he's still considered to be at large, an evocative detail that I had hoped would lead to something like Niles hinting that the Target is actually Bill to throw suspicion off of himself and flush out the crooks who framed him, it never really seems to come up again.

This would ordinarily be the point in an origin story in which the costume would come into play, there's one more step to the Target's origin and that's the Targeteers.

See, Niles is wandering the streets at night, trying to figure out just what he can do in the face of an uncaring world in which innocent district attorneys are gunned down in the street for merely trying to break jail, when he runs off some thugs who are attempting to kill or at least maim two teenage boys, Dave and Tommy. It turns out that the kids are both orphans who also hate crime because the crooks had already killed their father (well, one father and one unofficial adopted father, but why get technical).

Having two young wards who love to talk about getting real beefy and wiping out crime is the final catalyst for Niles, who remembers that he has some superscientific bulletproof material and three super-hero costumes just lying around, and since the three were playing darts when they came up with the idea the whole endeavour ends up being dart and target themed (and as this is possibly my favourite style of generic supersuit it's nice to see three people running around in it at once).

The two lads collectively go by the Targeteers, which is a nice change of pace from teen sidekicks who just go by their own names. Finally, according to some dialogue later in the comic the jailbreak, ad hoc funeral, befriending of the boys, making costumes and the initial Target adventure in the previous issue (including the entire publicity blitz) all take place in about a week, which is very efficient. (Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

NOTES - JUNE 2025

Letters to the Editor: 

I rag on Novelty Press and their horrible and possibly fictional readership every chance I get, but I think I need to start presenting the letters they print in their comics so that I have some evidence to back up my grumbling. Here's Clarence Pool of Seattle Washington advocating for the nice sensible adventures of an Army Air Force cadet who manages to foil a Fifth Column plot ever week over the exploits of a magic robot. (Target Comics v1 011, 1940)

Skeletons with Jobs: 

Driver is a job, certainly. Onto the pile! (The Funnies 047, 1940) 

Honours: 

Mickey Kelly, sidekick to swashbuckling newsreel cameraman Speed Martin, gets a medal from the French Army for foiling a spy. (The Funnies 048, 1940)

Two issues later Mickey Riley (they forgot that he already had a last name, it seems) is decorated by the British for saving Gibraltar from the Axis. (The Funnies 050, 1940)

Heroes Going to Costume Parties as Themselves: 

Brenda Banks attends the Grand Costume Ball as Lady Luck, in an attempt to save a life. (The Spirit Section, "The Cinderella Murder Case", 28 July, 1940)

Mr Mystic also attends a costume party as himself in 1940, and a guy with no secret identity doing this might just be the most baffling thing I've read today, and this is the episode in which Mystic's fiance is seduced by Death. (The Spirit Section, 22 December, 1940)

Cops Shooting at Fleeing Suspects: 

Sure, the Spirit has just confessed to a murder he did not commit for complicated reasons, but forgive me if I don't agree with Mayor Aldrich here that that means that Commissioner Dolan has free license to shoot him in the back. (The Spirit "Eldas Thayer", 21 July, 1940) 

Interior Decoration: 

This child's ducky bed is just barely charming and not eerie. (The Spirit Section, 1 December, 1940) 

NOTES - MAY 2025

Cops Shooting at Fleeing Suspects: 

The Raven, a nonviolent thief who crucial only steals ill-gotten gains from the wealthy and powerful, draws a lot of police fire over the course of his activities. (Sure-Fire Comics 002, 1940)

Treasury agent blazes away at a fleeing diamond smuggler in the middle of NYC. (Target Comics v1 004, 1940)

A Good Line to Exit A Burning Building With:

Especially if you have no intention of being a waffle. (Sure-Fire Comics 002, 1940)

Insufficiently Advanced: 

This "aging machine" has to be the most low-rent bit of alien tech ever featured in any bit of fiction. Just locking someone up for fifty years isn't a particularly impressive feat of extraterrestrial engineering, so-called King of the Brainmen. (Sure-Fire Comics 003b, 1940)

The March of Progress:

A fun exercise in just how recent the Satanic Panic and its preoccupations were: this puzzle, in which a goat-man demonstrates how to draw an inverted pentagram, is presented as a fun activity for kids, something that would have caused an American parent from c.1987 to spontaneously combust with the speed at which they would have been travelling to contact the authorities/the news media/the evangelical church. (Famous Funnies 054, 1939)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 755: STRADIVOUS

(Smash Comics 017, 1940)

There are a lot of comic book characters who derive their powers from or express them through music, but Stradivous here is the only one I know of who does so using a clarinet. This is going to be huge if we ever want to draft an all-star comics orchestra someday. He also has a really terrific look, with an eccentric choice in every single aspect of his head and facial hair - I'll even grudgingly admit that he pulls off a fu manchu, traditionally my least favourite mustache.

Like many other super musicians, Stradivous specializes in mind control: he can make the people dance and caper as he pleases with but a toot.

More importantly to the plot, Stradivous can also enthrall the entire crew of a ship by broadcasting his music over the radio, and he and his employer Dock Commissioner Jennings have been doing just that from a nearby lighthouse. Jennings gets the info on valuable incoming shipments and Stradivous wrecks the ships and then the gather up the loot.

The Ray is of course none too happy about all of this wanton wrecking and looting and steps in to put a stop to it. He approaches as Happy Terrill for some reason, and is thus vulnerable to Stradivous' hypnotic music. This doesn't stop Happy/the Ray for long, of course, but as he proceeds to beat the ass of every goon in the lighthouse a secondary drama plays out: two cops, drawn to the island by the hypnotic broadcast, spot Jennings and Stradivous fleeing the scene and summarily execute them for running. It's like a dog with a ball - if they see someone moving fast enough they just can't help themself.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 746: THE LUMINOUS EYES

(Smash Comics 011, 1940)

London is in the grip of terror! An ominous figure with huge glowing eyes is terrifying/attacking people in the streets and in their homes! The city is in an uproar - where could the Luminous Eyes strike next? And to make the whole situation even more confusing, the only purpose of these attacks appears to be the theft of various common items, all green.

When there's trouble in this particular fictional version of London, Captain Cook of Scotland Yard is the one to call, and indeed he almost corners the Luminous Eyes on his first attempt, only to lose his own green hat (and also attempt to shoot a fleeing criminal in the back, I might add). Still, this represents progress.

Through some wild deduction that we are not really privy to, Cook arrives at the conclusion that all of this theft-of-ggreen has been preparation for an attempt to steal the Royal Crown Emeralds (not actually a part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, I checked) from the Tower of London. Further, he has deduced that the Luminous Eyes is not a man at all! Instead, he has been matching wits with an East Indian Panola (a fictional type of chimpanzee, I checked) with surgically-implanted owl's eyes, and that the prior thefts were all part of an elaborate training regimen by the creature's creator.

And speaking of that creator, this is what I was talking about yesterday in the Bat entry! Is training a surgically-modified chimpanzee to steal green objects as part of an attempt to steal an emerald crown a reasonable thing to do? Of course not, unless you're in a comic book universe. In a comic book universe, such a plan has a reasonable chance of working, and even if it doesn't you're only down a chimp. And an owl, I suppose. Heck, the creator of the Luminous Eyes even gets away with it!

(it turns out that this is the 1000th post that I've made on this blog, and unlike many of the other Milestone Posts, this one falls on a character that I actually have a lot of affection for! Here's to the nxt thousand!)