MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 991: ZIRA

(Jungle Comics 013, 1941)

While searching for her champion Sir Champion (annoying thing to have to write and the main reason I'm happy that he eventually fades into obscurity), who has failed to return from a hunt, Camilla, Queen of the Lost Empire is confronted by the ghostly vision of a blonde lady who rules an ancient lost castle. This is just a kind of person you get in the undefined part of Africa that houses the Lost Empire.

The lady's name, by the way, is Zira, Princess of the Palace of the Black Heart. She also refers to herself as a "wizardess," and while I am generally of the opinion that gendered job titles like that are retrograde and unhelpful I must admit to being charmed. Wizardess!

This vision leads Camilla back to the aforementioned Palace of the Black Heart, where her mortal form is revealed to be a middle-aged lady, or "old hag" as our hero so tactfully puts it. Zira states that Sir Champion is locked up in her dungeon and she will return him in exchange for all of Camilla's magic powers. The sum total of these powers, from my notes, being the ability to talk to gorillas and the power to call upon Thor and Baal to freeze someone. Frankly not a bad trade for someone's life. Do we include her eternal life? She got that from a potion, after all.

Camilla evidently wishes to continue to speak to apes and so she and her men battle with Zira's forces until they are ironically defeated by some apes.

It then turns out that Camilla has more tricks up her sleeve than I had in my notes. She offers to brew up a potion to make Zira good looking in exchange for freedom for her and her men, and since this is the same comic that made a point of calling Zira a wizardess, she is of course very vain by default and takes the deal immediately.

The thing about taking advantage of a woman's default vanity in such a comic is of course the fact that the vain woman will also be extremely fickle, as seen when the newly-hot Zira reneges on her deal in favour of keeping Sir Champion for her own horny purposes. Things quickly turn violent and Sir Champion is forced to slay Zira to save Camilla's life. All in all it's a real eleventh-hour fumble on Zira's part.

Categorized in: Accessories (Castles), Genrica (Ends in -a), Powers (Various Magics)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 609 UPDATE: LUCIFER

When we covered the Fourth Dimensional being called Lucifer, who might be the for-real Devil (if the Fourth Dimension is also the afterlife) and might just be a big weirdo (if it isn't), I said that we would see him again. Well here he is!

Flip Falcon next encounters Lucifer after he takes a woman named Nora into the Fourth Dimension in order to heal her face, which was scarred with acid by a vindictive man. This is a noble quest, but it once again raises the question of just how all these regular people are accessing accurate information about the properties of the Fourth Dimension, e.g., that it contains "a purifying element which restores the marred"? It's not Flip, as he never seems to know about these things when people tell him about them. Then who? Is Flip's assistant Peg publishing 4D guidebooks on the sly?

Regardless of where she got it, Nora's information was sound and her face is cured almost immediately upon entering Flip's dimensional portal. And just as soon as she is healed, Lucifer swoops in and kidnaps her in order to turn her into a giant woman with "my mind" as he puts it, and whether this is meant literally or if it's just a way of saying that she will have his moral outlook is tough to say. Either way, it's a real wild insight into Lucifer's psychology and sense of the romantic.

We never do get to meet Lucifer's ideal woman, as Flip Falcon simply zips in to interrupt the process and then sneaks out the back door. It is, all in all, an embarrassing episode for the (possible) arch-devil. (Fantastic Comics 015, 1941)

This humiliating defeat possibly explains why Lucifer's next appearance involves him returning to his roots with an attempt to wipe out humanity. Specifically (vaguely?) he is forcing "elements of dimension space" into our atmosphere, to disastrous effect.

 Unfortunately for Lucifer, Flip Falcon has a new trick since he last foiled this specific plan by this specific guy, and so rather than employing his trail of pan-dimensional energy to merely immobilize his foe, he instead annihilates him utterly. What the destruction of the Great Adversary might mean to the faithful is not explored. (Fantastic Comics 020, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 950: HANS MEYER

(Daredevil Comics 004, 1941)

Bart "Daredevil" Hill and his fiance Tonia Saunders are accompanying their friends Jeff and Sue Hart on their honeymoon (!) yacht trip when they encounter the killer combo of rough stormy seas and a mysterious lighthouse that sends them right onto a reef.

Happily for all involved (except two sailors who are swept overboard and never mentioned again) the yacht is merely wedged rather than sinking and there is a convenient nearby island. An inhabited one, even, as is revealed when the owner, a Hans Meyer, boats over to check on his new neighbours. 

As you might have noted from when he described himself as the local dictator , Meyer is a prime creep who uses a floating lighthouse to draw ships to his island so that he can hunt their crews for sport, a la Count Zaroff of "The Most Dangerous Game" fame. He barely waits until breakfast is over before he hunts and nearly kills Jeff Hart, and only the Daredevil's timely intervention prevents the coup de grace.

I must give Meyer credit here: unlike most people in comics who see a costumed super-hero popping up well outside of their normal territory but coincidentally proximal to some people from back home, he actually puts two and two together and identifies the Daredevil as Bart Hill, and he loves it. I imagine that when you hunt humans for sport you are just itching for the day a vigilante-type super-hero crosses your path.

I also have to give it to the creative minds behind the Daredevil for continuing to think up reasons for him to be wearing that spiked belt. "It protects him against bear hugs" is a valid, if very specific, reason!

Having trapped the Daredevil in a pit, Meyer gets to brag a bit, and we learn the other part of his misanthropy, as foreshadowed by his leering at the ladies in his initial appearance. Not only does he hunt and murder the men who land on his island but he "marries" any women who do, and as he very conspicuously does not have any women on his island, we must assume the worst for them.

Despite seemingly bringing along every weapon he owns (including some very uncomfortable looking knives just kind of shoved through a strap around his ankle), Meyer's hero hunt goes poorly. Through sheer chance, however, he manages to bury and seemingly kill Daredevil by starting an avalanche.

Meyer immediately scurries back home to marry Tonia Saunders against her will (and just why is the officiant in a cool mask, you ask? Because it was on the cover that way, as far as I can tell) and then gets himself shot by Jeff Hart, who Meyer never actually went back to kill after he was interrupted in the first place and who has seemingly been crawling slowly toward his vengeance the entire time since. All in all, it's a memorable honeymoon for the newly-minted Mr & Mrs Hart!

Categorized in: Location (Pacific Island), Murder (Hunting Humans for Sport), Real Folk - Fictional (Count Zaroff) 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 944: PROFESSOR MARKUSYI

(Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

Professor Markusyi, the music teacher in question, is a man who is never seen at night and who *refuses* to go out at night, much to the amusement and consternation of those around him.

There are plenty of reasons why one might not want to go out at night (nyctophobia, love of an early bedtime, a jealous spouse, etc) but only a few of them are worthy of being the focus of a comic book plot, at least in the Golden Age. Markusyi's secret reason for being diurnal is that he is a werewolf, and specifically the kind of werewolf who transforms every night? And maybe can do it at will during the day? The mythology is murky at best. As is the anatomy: just look at the legs on that thing.

I gues we must give Markusyi some credit for containing the beast within for long enough to get a reputation as a night-hating crank, but there wouldn't be a plot if he didn't lose control, would there, so he murders one of his students for being "too beautiful to live" like a real creep.

Also please note the free rein that a literal wolf had to roam the streets in the 1940s. Are modern social and legal conventions about not allowing your dog to roam free secretly part of an anti-werewolf agenda?

We must now step back to the title page of this story for a look at a different messed-up drawing of a wolf (man), and while my initial instinct was to make fun of the anatomy on display (see above) I do kind of love the concept of a werewolf as a messed-up uncanny valley dog-thing, like the human part is trying to create the wolf part from memory and doing a bad job.

I also want to showcase the fact that the only thing that Markusyi is called other than his own name is here in the title and it's the Music Teacher, which is a good name for a villain but frustratingly not applicable here. I just love when villains have cool names, you guys. Calling them by their government name is a bummer.

Bart "the Daredevil" Hill is alerted to the case thanks to a police inspector pal with what I would call an unprofessional approach to law enforcement. Thanks to some research in one of those extremely comprehensive books on folklore that you get in horror movies, Bart is soon aware of just how exactly Markusyi's version of werewolfism works. Specifically, that he has to kill four... women? in order to be cured, and he's already killed three!

Markusyi's fourth target is the Daredevil's fiance Tonia Saunders, who he met and fixated upon thanks to an ill-conceived plan to gather information by signing her up for violin lessons with him. While this was a very dumb idea, it does allow Daredevil to find Markusyi before he commits his final murder (and becomes human just in time to have to get away from a crime scene) and seemingly beat him to death, which I guess that this kind of werewolf is unacceptable to. All's well that ends well, I suppose? For a certain value of "well"?

Categorized in: Doctors & Professors, Murder (Magical Reason), Origin (Lycanthrope)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 930: THE BLACK DRAGON

(Silver Streak Comics 010, 1941)

Here's the thing about the Black Dragon: though he looms large in the early adventures of Captain Battle and is a key player in the origin of Hale Battle, he doesn't personally do that much villainy.

So just what is the Black Dragon's deal? Well, he's a magic using tyrant who lives in a secret castle in some unspecified Asian mountains, and he's the secret mastermind behind the Axis Axian Powers, making him the guy behind WWII! Like I said above: he doesn't personally get his hands dirty.

So what kind of evil does the Black Dragon get up to? Mostly he captures people and turns them into monsters with his fell majicks, such as when he attempts to do so to Captain Battle, above. This attempt fails because the Black Dragon fails to think to take his prisoner's iconic jet pack away.

In his second appearance, in Silver Streak Comics 011, the Black Dragon captures Captain Battle's assistant Jane Lorrain and offers her the creep villain's choice of becoming his queen or being transformed into a monster. He then attempts to take on Captain Battle in hand-to-hand combat and is quickly disabused of any illusions he might have had about his martial prowess. 

The reason that the Black Dragon is so personally unimpressive as a villain is that all of his important evil works are done by Deaglos, giant bird-men that he makes out of captives. Monstrous humanoid mutates are nothing new in comics even this early in their history, but the Deaglos have one very cool feature that almost feels like it comes from a Vertigo-era New Weird comic: they are created using the spirits of the extinct dodo and so are immune to death.

(the Deaglos also have field commanders referred to a "your cluckness," which is very fun)

By Silver Streak Comics 012: Captain Battle gets on the right page and realizes that if he cuts off the Black Dragon from his Deaglo supply he will have little to no ability to do evil. Plus the Deaglos are technically also victims, so his prior solutions of horrifically melting them with his dissolvo ray or using their inexplicable vulnerability to radio waves to kill them all are no very heroic acts. Accordingly, he brews up a "de-witcher solution" and applies it to a captive Deaglo, restoring him to his human form of Major Ling Fu.

Captain Battle and the Major then go on to blast all the other Deaglos with the de-witcher, which coincidentally places a hostile force within the very walls of the Black Dragon's fortress (this is where Hale Battle comes from).

In his final act as a super-villain, the Black Dragon responds to this invasion by making what is probably the funniest evil exit of the Golden Age. "Ha Ha-Haaaaaa!" *strikes evil pose* *sinks into floor* *is never seen again*. I can't endorse the whole thing where he started World War Two, but this exit really engenders a lot of affection for the guy in my heart.

Categorized in: Animals (Dragons), Henchmen (Deaglos), Supercrime (Attempted World Conquest)