MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 949: PRINCESS SHEBA

(Daredevil Comics 002, 1941)

1900! Archaeologist Professor Pierce leads an expedition to find the tomb of Princess Sheba in Arabia! Buried alive in a solid gold tomb with a gold cobra perched on her chest, Princess Sheba appears to be meant to be the daughter of the biblical Queen of Sheba. The mummy, her grave goods and praticularly the golden cobra found sitting on her chest are all promptly packed up and shipped back to New York.

Professor Pierce puzzles over the inscription on the golden cobra for the next forty years, until, in 1941, he decodes it and learns that the cobra is in fact a bottle filled with special mummy-resurrection juice.

What can a dedicated Egyptologist do in a situation like this, other than immediately run to the museum and unwrap the top half of Princess Sheba's mummy so that he can give her the juice. After all, if it works it will be a tremendous boon to science, and if it doesn't, well, they probably have plenty of other mummies.

The fluid works, and Princess Sheba is restored to life as a goth. I was initially going to classify this as a lucky event for Pierce, but it does complicate his life considerably as he not only has to cover up the fact that one of the museum's mummies is missing but also has an unexpected nude woman who he has implicitly taken responsibility for.

And a responsibility it is, because Princess Sheba is not only a woman out of time but a complete amnesiac. She learns English and so forth with supernatural rapidity, but Pierce forces her to remain isolated and withholds the information that she was entombed alive because she was born with the ability to control men's minds with a kiss and used that power for evil in her first life. This turns out to have been a good idea, because as soon as he does tell her she stabs him to death to gain control of the cobra fluid and use her power for evil. 

Please note that her mind-control kiss is called "the Kiss of Death" and that that is very annoying to me.

Sheba declares herself the Queen of America and sets about building an army of men to enact her will, though her methodology is a bit weird. She targets powerful and influential men, but the only use she puts them to (that we see, at least) is to cut out their tongues and employ them as gangsters in a pretty conventional crime wave. Is this evidence of a fundamental lack of imagination on her part or is it that despite her rapid learning she is still effectively a child and cannot yet make subtle plans? Or was her brain all shrivelled and dehydrated for a few thousand years too many?

This is when the Daredevil gets involved after capturing one of her Tongueless Ones and making him write out the directions to her lair - tonguelessness as a tool of secrecy has really lost a lot of its cache as literacy rates have gone up. Sheba goes into the old familiar femme fatale's "this is the most handsome man I have ever met" routine, and... c'mon. It makes sense when people do that to Superman or the Spirit, or even Batman, as you can see enough of the face to make some sort of judgment, but this guy? Frankly, her interest read as disingenuous and Daredevil is correct in his decision not to kiss her.

The confrontation between the two ends in a bit of an anticlimax, as Daredevil doesn't really do anything beyond avoiding that kiss. Instead, Sheba throws the jar of life-juice at him in a fit of pique, then shrivels back into a mummy almost immediately. Like every comic book character who is dependant on a serum for survival she seems to have timed her doses to the minute instead of leaving a little wiggle room in case of unexpected delays. Or maybe the cobra was magic somehow, whatever. The day is saved and hopefully the surviving Tongueless Ones can go back to their old lives in some fashion.

AND THEY GO BACK TO DISPLAYING HER MUMMY IN THE MUSEUM

Categorized in: Origin (Resurrected Mummy), Power (Mind Control Kiss), Royalty (Princesses)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 942: THE SERPENT

(Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

The Serpent, a well-established and powerful crimelord, has been laying low due to the threat posed by the Daredevil, but all that is at an end now because as far as she can tell the Daredevil isn't around any longer. She puts in a call to her men, and I really like the sequence that follows. Nothing can stop these guys from getting to work, not prison, not pool, not partying with babes.

The Serpent's plan is both simple and audacious: kidnap the children of the wealthy simultaneously in at least thirteen cities across the US, relying on the mass confusion of the event to hinder law enforcement long enough for her to collect the 10 million dollars ransom and skedaddle.

It turns out that the Serpent was right to fear the Daredevil as he had not retired or been killed but had instead been lying low specifically to draw her out. Now that she has revealed herself, he jumps into action and, barring a brief spell in the Serpent's dungeons (from which she has the audacity to try to ransom him back to the police!), he breaks up her operation in no time flat.

The Serpent herself is captured after an attempt to assassinate the Daredevil at his home because he a) didn't check to see if anyone was following him and b) walked back in uniform. Terrible secret identity hygiene, Daredevil!

Though she is jailed (and makes a great face while being captured!), the Serpent joins the ranks of one-off characters who are just kind of out there with full knowledge of their enemy's secrets. Luckily for the Daredevil, he existed in a less continuity-obsessed time than later heroes and so the Serpent never comes back to bite him for his carelessness.

Categorized in: Animals (Snakes), Kidnappers (Ransom), Villains Who Know Their Heroic Foe's Secret Identity

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 038

Criminals!

Unnamed Gambler: 

Not much is revealed about this fellow, but what we do know for sure is that he has access to a super strength drink and that he has been using it to clean up on gambling by slipping it to boxers and race horses with long odds. He also relies on the potion to help him escape from the cops, which backfires on him because Presto Martin, having taken the place of one of the boxers, is also hopped up on super juice and engages him in thrilling aerial combat.

This super strength potion is the sort of thing I accuse crooks of employing shrtsightedly for quick crime profit rather than marketing legitimately for unimaginable wealth but I might give this fellow a pass due to his clear gambling problem. (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)

the White Dragon Flower:

She might just be a generic femme fatale spy chief who shows up for three panels before her whole operation gets busted up by aviator Cloud Curtis but I'll be danged if a) that isn't a great look and b) "White Dragon Flower" isn't a terrific name, even if it was clearly thrown together to sound as mysterious and Asian as possible. (Silver Streak Comics 007, 1941)

Categorized in: Animals & Plants (Plants)

the Murder Syndicate, Inc: 

As thier name suggests, the Murder Syndicate, Inc are hitmen for hire, distinguished mainly by the fact that the Daredevil has to round them up twice thanks to a mid-trial escape engineered by their boss, the mysterious Man in Black.

And just who is the Man in Black? Why, it's Judge Harkins, the man presiding over the trial in question! Is this surprising? Only if this is your first-ever experience reading a piece of fiction. (Silver Streak Comics 012, 1941)

Categorized in: Murder (Assassins), Professions (Corporations) 

Armando Siam:

Armando Siam and his henchman Alfonze are a couple of generically foreign crooks who roll into Castleton in their absurdly long car one day and just kind of stumble into gaining control over Dickie Dean's army of deep sea salvage robots, which they of course immediately set to looting the place.

The duo eventually get word of the treasure that Dickie had been intending to use the robots for in the first place and hijack a salvage vessel in a very visually entertaining manner. Alas, it is at this point that the Boy Inventor himself catches up with them and the due end up as octopus fodder during their escape attempt. (Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 879: THE DARK ANGEL

(Spy Smasher 001, 1941)

We've entered 1941 and the crypto-fascist spies are getting closer and closer to being just plain old Nazis. Case in point: the Dark Angel, a classic femme fatale spy with just enough plausible deniability to satisfy comics' compulsion to stay just barely technically politically neutral. 

The Dark Angel's name might be straight out of the mid-90s but her plans are 1941 all the way down. As the story opens she is sending two of her men to blow up a bridge and a factory and a bunch of soldiers, never imagining that Spy Smasher already has a comfortable vantage point to watch her give orders and thus is perfectly able to foil her schemes.

Not one to wallow in defeat, the Dark Angel manages to turn the tables on Spy Smasher by discovering his secret identity* of Allan Armstrong and ambushing him in his own home. It's honestly an impressive feat for a first-time-on-the-page villain!

*well, technically one of her minions goes out and discovers it but if "employing competent henchmen" isn't a key skill that many villains lack then what is it.

A combination of sadism and unrequited love/lust inspires the Dark Angel to keep Spy Smasher alive with the knowledge that she and her men are off to assassinate the President rather than execute him immediately. Unfortunately for her/ luckily for Spy Smasher, she isn't completely infallible in her choices of henchmen, as seen in the person of chosen Spy Smasher guard Fritzy, a drunken oaf who passes out almost immediately and whose body furnishes Spy Smasher with the knife he needs in order to escape.

Though the Dark Angel and her guys get inside the White House with shocking ease, only to find not Franklin Delano Roosevelt but Spy Alan Smasher sitting in the President's official comfy chair. Dark Angel and her guys are swiftly rounded up and chucked in jail and the fact that she and at least one of the guys knows his secret identity is just kind of ignored.

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.