MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 724: BONTO OF DUOTANIA

(Science Comics 004, 1940) 

Perisphere Payne, a kind of outer space troubleshooter (whose name, by the way, was meant to sound cool and futuristic but because the Perisphere was one of the cool and futuristic building-mascots of the 1939 World's Fair is in fact equivalent to someone today calling themselves Crystal Palace Collins, Parthenon Pete, or indeed Perisphere Payne) gets a wild alert on his televizo one day: the entire city of Freeton has been levitated off the surface of the Earth! Setting off in hot city-pursuit, Payne finds not only the city but he and his crew are captives in an enormous spaceship.

All questions of  who exactly is responsible for this are cleared up by the appearance of Bonto of Duotania, a giant two-headed alien and generally jolly guy.

Payne's bluster earns him a place as one of Bonto's pets, and en route he gets the lowdown from another pet, Janice of Venus: Bonto and his people come from the twin asteroids of Jutania (presumably aka Duotania) and are blessed not only with a second head and increased size but also an overabundance of cruelty and selfishness. He has captured Freeton as a source of slaves, with the slight implication that the rest of humanity will follow. (Please not also Bonto's cool two-headed Jutanian pets)

The real practical problem with using slave labour to run your high-tech society, of course, is that your slaves will inevitably have to learn how to use your high-tech equipment if you want everything to be done as efficiently as you are used to, which is how Perisphere Payne becomes proficient enough in the use of Bonto's magnetic tractor beam that he is able not only to deposit Freeton back in the giant spaceship for transport back to Earth but also do a cheeky alien genocide on his way out the door. I'm shaking my finger at you, Perisphere Payne - this might be a standard heroic move in the 1940s but as an enlightened future-man you ought to know better.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 650: RANGO OF SLAVONIA/ MINOR SUPER-HERO: THE MASTER MYSTIC

(Green Giant Comics 001, 1940)

We join Rango, a science villain of some description, after he has failed to conquer Europe. His next move: total destruction.

After absolutely devastating a city in what is probably Slavonia, Rango heads for the United States by the simple expedient of swimming across the Atlantic.

And now we encounter the main attraction, Master Mystic! What a character! Master Mystic is very much ahead of his time, both in his art style and degree of superhuman omnipotence.

Master Mystic's entire battle with Rango feels like something out of a 60s underground comic, slightly unreal and rubbery and full of visual excess. Appropriately, Master Mystic was created by Victor E. Pazmino, whose other credits tended more toward the funny animal content that informed so much of the underground comix scene.

(see also Pazmino's other super-heroic creation, TNT Todd, for some fun costume compare-and-contrast)

It really is a shame that Pazmino didn't do more work along these lines, assuming that he wanted to. Stuff like this visualization of the Master Mystic's telekinesis stands out as innovative by any era's standards.

Master Mystic eventually melts Rango into horrible goo and then returns to his Arctic stronghold to resume his protective watch over humanity North America, and if the super-powered one-upsmanship of their battle felt like something out of 60s counterculture comics then this detached, omnipotent man routine feels very 1980s post-Watchmen, or at least one step away from that. Should some entrepeneur BRING BACK the Master Mystic the next time metatextual super-hero analysis characters like Miracleman come into vogue? It's worth a shot!

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 026

Just look at all these guys.

Power-Man:

Power-Man, aka Rip Regan, private detective or possibly just nosy guy, gets his powers in one of the classic ways: his friend Dr Austin gives him a special suit. It's the simplest of origins and also one that puts a lot of weight on Austin's assessment of Regan's character.

The Power-Man suit is one of the more hand-wavy bits of comic book super-science I have encountered, when you get down to it. Billed as chemically-treated metal woven into cloth, the suit simultaneously makes the wearer light enough to perform superhuman feats of jumping, grants super strength, provides total protection against penetrating weapons like bullets and knives but also crushing damage from a collapsing building and also somehow protects the wearer's head despite it not being covered. It truly is a miracle of science. (Fight Comics 003, 1940)

Mantoka, Maker of Indian Magic:

Mantoka is a comic book magic user, with all of the nigh-omnipotent power that that entails: manipulating the elements, transforming humans to animals, giving himself superhuman attributes like flight, intangibility, size control, etc. It is slightly unclear if he receives his powers from being bitten by a magic snake or if the snakebite is merely a part of a ritual to transfer his father's powers to him. Either way, it's an extremely radical and cool as hell way to become a magic man.

I keep wanting to give the Mantoka strip credit for being a not-racist comic starring a Native American character but then I look at it again and it is in fact built on racist tropes. After a few cycles of this I realized that I was thinking this way because it doesn't go out of its way to be extra racist - the characters are being portrayed at about the racism level of a comical Cockney or a Chinese American c. 1943. Still not great but not as bad as it could be*. (Funny Pages v4 001, 1940)

*only one out of three Mantoka adventures is actually easily available, so all of this applies to that comic only. 

the Owl:

The Owl is a man named Jack (no surname given) who is on a quest for revenge against the gangsters who cost his father his legs and by extension against crime in general. To that end, the never-named father has invented an owl-themed flying suit capable of speed of up to 200 mph. Also, he invented himself what I can only describe as the most unstable looking motorized wheelchair I have ever seen.

The Owl and his dad live in a swamp near an unnamed city in the Southern US, and Jack spends his days working at a library under an assumed name and sweeps up any dirt that falls off of anyone's shoes so that he can take it home to be analyzed in their swamp shack/laboratory. Presumably this is part of some sort of organized plan relating to the leg-revenge quest but the Owl only ever had one adventure and so in effect it's just the weirdest version of Clark Kent working at the Daily Planet or Bruce Wayne palling around with Commissioner Gordon to hear about crime. It does work in this issue though. (Funny Pages v4 001, 1940)

the Green Giant:

The Green Giant! Cover model and namesake for the one and only comic put out by Pelican Productions! Thanks to me spending my formative years with my nose buried in a copy of Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Superheroes that image of him bounding over those buildings was forever seared into my brain as the definitive non-Marvel/DC Golden Age comic book cover, despite the fact that the actual comic probably wasn't really distributed.

I've never really found any information on the Green Giant beyond people pointing out that he wears pants on the cover but not in the actual story, so I kind of went in assuming that he was so bare bones as to be unremarkable but no, the Green Giant is as fleshed out as any single appearance character of the time.

The Green Giant's real name is Brentwood (no first name given), the owner of both a Wall Street Hall Street brokerage firm and a presumably high-tech belt, the latter of which allows him to grow to various enormous heights. I had kind of assumed that the fact of his sheer size and the problems it might cause was not really explored in-comic but there is a mention of the belt having anti-gravity properties as well. That's why he isn't, for example, crushing that building on the cover! How great and more well thought-out than I had assumed! This anti-gravity also explains how the Green Giant hops around like an off-brand Hulk even when at regular size.

One thing that really stands out about the Green Giant's sole appearance is that the problem he is dealing with is a targeted attack on his own brokerage firm. I reckon that an ongoing comic might have featured him acting in a more selfless light but as it stands all the evidence is of him being solely motivated by his own self interest. Do better, Green Giant, sheesh. (Green Giant Comics 001, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 603: THE MAD GIANT

(Fantastic Comics 004, 1940)

The Mad Giant is another Fletcher Hanks villain with a straightforward motivation: civilization has ruined his domination of a slave group (presumably a tribal society as he refers to them by the formerly much-used and now depricated term "savage") and so he is simply going to end civilization. And given the method that he has chosen - pumping the Earth full of a chemical that will raise its temperature and cause widespread geologic upheaval - he might just be trying to destroy the planet itself!

(the exact circumstances of the Mad Giant losing his slaves are left as unexplored as those of him being such a big beefcake. He just did and he just is)

The Mad Giant might just have the most rational plan to deal with Stardust the Super Wizard of any of his foes. Like most of them he seems to have a pretty good inkling that Stardust will show up, so a barrage of missiles (anti-ray missiles, natch) to delay, incapacitate or destroy him will hopefully buy enough time for the Giant and his lil' pal Kamet to finish destroying the planet. Too bad for the Mad Giant that he is very easily fooled: Stardust fakes his own death and ends up taking them by surprise on his second approach.

Giant or no, it's all over once Stardust gets close enough to put those big mitts on you. The Mad Giant is knocked silly and summarily whisked off to... prison? What an odd place for a Stardust villain to end his days. I assume Kamet gets a pass because there's a high chance he was there against his will.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 579: COLOSSUS

(Colossus Comics 001, 1940)

I included this cover here in order to indulge in a little personal nostalgia but instead I feel like I am going a bit mad. See, I know this cover very well, from somewhere. I thought it was from Jeff Rovin's Encyclopedia of Supervillains, which I read through about one million times as a youth, but when I decided to check out the entry on Colossus in that book I could not find one. Ditto for the Encyclopedia of Monsters and even the Encyclopedia of Superheroes. As far as I can tell the oldest book I own with this image in it is Jon Morris' the Legion of Regrettable Supervillains, and that came out when I was 36 years old - will I ever learn where I encountered it as a young skeleton?

But enough of my memory crisis. The real important thing to note about this cover is that That's Not What Colossus Looks Like, or at least Dresses Like. Perhaps if this issue weren't his sole appearance he might have adopted something closer to the... well, I can only really describe it as a metal bondage outfit. The metal bondage outfit that he's wearing on the cover, then

Colossus is originally Richard Zenith, a humble lab assistant of the year 2640. He works for scientist Doctor Blitzmann, who is a good enough boss to know that Zenith's secret wish is to be a burly six-foot tall man like their colleague Bryn Hale (rather than *squints* his current burly five-foot-ten or so) but also a terrible enough boss that he says this in a shitty and humiliating way while injecting Zenith with growth serum.

Blitzmann's daughter Eve also works at her father's lab and it seems like she might not have gotten the job on merit because when she prepared the syringe of Hyper Catalyst VII growth serum for Zenith so that he would stop referring to himself as a "short king" she mixed it roughly 20 000 times stronger than needed. 

The serum seems to be more than merely biochemical in nature, as Zenith grows to thousands of times his original size without collapsing into a pile of viscera and broken bones. Plus, his clothes grow with him!

The power inherent in being a big big man immediately goes to Zenith's head and he declares himself "Colossus, Ruler of All the Earth!" and sets out to extract a surrender from Gregory Graves, head of the Tri-Planetary Federation's Solar Patrol, by threatening to destroy the Federation capital of Urbania. It's your classic case of a nerd being given power and immediately turning into a fascist.

In a fortuitous coincidence Earth's old enemies, the very cool Plantaliens, are also attempting to conquer the planet at the same time as Colossus and so there is a bit of a turf war that is handily won by the unstoppable 2000 foot tall man. Too bad, Plantaliens! Try again in another 60 years!

Colossus Comics was reportedly a test by Sun Publications to see if it was worth getting into this crazy new industry, and if that was indeed the case then the answer was "no" because this is the only appearance of Colossus (next month, i.e., never, "Colossus over Europe"!)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 539: THE CLAW

(Silver Streak Comics 001, 1939)

The Claw is a character we will be returning to - he's one of the most prominent Golden Age super-villains, after all - but this entry is concerned only with his first appearance in accordance with my new policy of approaching things as they come. And while the Claw who eventually battles super-heroes like the Ghost and Daredevil and massacres thousands in an attempt at world domination is a size-changing monster-man this first version reads more like an elaborate hoax.

As the story opens, "chemist-adventurer" Jerry Morris and "America's only female ambassador" Eloise Pearsall dock at the Pacific island of Ricca on their way to China with a shipload of gold to aid in the war with Japan. One hitch: Ricca is home to the Claw, a giant who holds the whole island in the grip of fear and incidentally also runs the submarine pirate operation that is looting ships in the region.

The Claw maintains his grip on the island using his own fearsome looming presence, plus a "maddening hum" that also influences Eloise Pearsall to jump overboard and make her way to the castle because the Claw is also a creep who wants a "queen" and doesn't care if he has to do a little mind control to get it.

Jerry Morris of course goes after his travel companion and it's a good thing that he's a chemist-adventurer because he manages to whip up a useful serum in his stateroom/ laboratory, a radium-based solution that renders one immune to "any mental or physical attack". Jerry infiltrates the Claw's organization by feigning interest in signing up and discovers that the Claw ensures loyalty in his henchmen by giving them addictively pleasant dreams (and also punishes them with nightmares, natch). Eloise is in the first stages of the addiction treatment but lucky for her the radium serum covers that too and one shot later she is free.

Thanks to his complete immunity to harm, Jerry goes on to foil a submarine raid on the gold shipment and returns with a load of sailors all hopped up on serum. They rout the Claw's men only to find the villain's throne empty and abandoned.

(due to a flamethrower attack by the Claw's defenders there is also an unusual amount of male nudity thanks to the invulnerable men not thinking to wear invulnerable clothing)

Like I said, if I didn't know that the next issue would feature the Claw walking around and demonstrating his power to grow to colossal sizes I would assume that he was a fake, engineered to keep the island people under the thumb of some schemer like the Purple Monster - the enthroned Claw actually a robotic shell, the towering Claw some sort of projection or inflatable. The mind control? Sonics and drugs. After all, why would such an enormous man flee from a handful of nudists, even if they are invulnerable?

UPDATE 1940

UPDATE 1941 Part 1 

UPDATE 1941 Part 2 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 519: THE GHOST OF THE CYCLOPS

(Blue Bolt v2 004-005, 1941)

We open on a bit of... not hubris but it's often framed as hubris. I'm sure that TV Tropes has a name for it but danged if I'm going to go hunting for it. It's the phenomenon in which a character in an ongoing fictional setting jokes about how they're sure glad that *SPECIFIC THING* isn't real etc and that thing is the focus of the next story. In this case, Sergeant Spook says he's glad that mythology doesn't real and so Ghost Town doesn't have to contend with the ghosts of mythological characters and BAM the ghost of the Cyclops starts destroying Alaska.

Although the human world sees these attacks as merely a bizarre and terrifying natural disaster the ghosts of Ghost Town know what's up and dispatch Sergeant Spook northward. On arrival he is met and guided by several of the Cyclops' recent victims - always a handy part of being a ghost cop.

Spook's encounter with the Cyclops follows a fairly predictable pattern: cornered in a cave, he anages to temporarily blind the other ghost and then trace him back to his lair by clinging to his cyclopean sandals. This encounter does serve to further muddy the waters of how ghosts workin Sergeant Spook comics, however: can a ghost hit another ghost with a corporeal snowball? Is Alaska covered in a layer of ghost snow? Or is the Cyclops just super-vulnerable to eye-damaging attacks like a video game boss?

The second issue of this two-parter is a bit perfunctory: Spook arrives at the Cyclops' lair where we learn that when not translucent to signify that he is a ghost in the corporeal world the Cyclops is green. He is also served by other, unidentified ghosts who are presumably being bullied into servitude with the threat of violence like the Ghost of King Tut's slaves. He also captures Sergeant Spook with very little trouble. Things look bad, but then:

HERCULES! Because of course if the Cyclops is real then there's gotta be guys like Hercules (famous foe of the Cyclops) running around too. There's a bit of a scuffle and then he plants a slobberknocker on the Cyclops that decisively concludes things.

Hercules' reward: eternal vigilance. His ghost pledges to guard the Cyclops' ghost for the rest of time, which will presumably entail regular brawls whenever his charge wakes up and wants to cause more chaos. Maybe this is a good outcome for Hercules? I just hope that someone in Ghost Town thinks to ship him some ghost books or the like.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 464: THE ELEMENTAL

(Amazing-Man Comics 009, 1940)

The Elemental! An extradimensional intruder who insinuates itself into the unspecified future world of hero the Magician from Mars via the music of unwitting dupe Bill Wend. Is this a future with wildly relaxed standards for professional music performance or has the musical director of Concert Hall also being influenced by the Elemental? This question will go unanswered, alas.

Having achieved its goal of entering our reality, the Elemental feeds not only on the crowd's fear but the crowd itself - I think. Though the extremely florid writing of this panel is wonderful, it's not too clear if "feeding on human energy" is meant to be literal or not. It does literally eat large portions of the crowd, so either way it is feeding on them.

Earth's  armies prove useless against the Elemental, so the Magician from Mars is forced to step in in a kicky new costume.

This fight between a giant lady and a giant green guy is absolutely the highlight of the story. Both are so powerful that they almost pull a Superman/ Doomsday and battle to the death, but though they are both still alive at the end they are severely weakened. The Elemental disappears while the Magician from Mars is lauded as a hero.

Eventually, the Magician follows a string of mass kidnappings and discovers a man identified only as the Mad Professor has been capturing people and feeding them to the Elemental in exchange for future consideration when further elementals are summoned to conquer the planet. Seemingly following a hunch, the Magician sings "one of the most beautiful songs in the world" and discovers that, yes, what was summoned via music can be banished in the same way. The Mad Professor she merely collapses a wall on.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 368: GENGHIS KHAN THE SECOND

(Minute-Man 002, 1941)

Genghis Khan the Second, like our poor deceased pal Stuporman, is a giant quasi-superhuman imported from far-off Mongolia by a gang boss for use as exotic muscle.

The difference between Stuporman ad our guy here, however, is that he is not content to be anyone's stooge. Genghis Khan the Second bumps off his would-be masters on page 2 of the story and promptly sets his Mongolian Horde to looting and pillaging the countryside using their mastery of horse-mounted archery (I assume). It's honestly the gang boss' own fault he gets it in the neck - imagine assuming that someone who chose the nae Genghis Khan the Second being content to act as second fiddle in what appears to be a two-person gang.

Of course the Army eventually gets involves, and Minute-Man, as part of that army, ends up dropping a mountain on the whole lot of them. It's fine. The real star of the story for me is the teen in the above image - I reckon that those middle three panels are one of the better bits of comedy I have seen in a Golden Age comic.

ADDENDUM: forgot to mention that the guy who imports GKII and his Mongol Horde lives in one of the castles of California's popular Castle District.