FASCIST GOON CLEARING HOUSE 012

I know we're all tired of fascist, but these are fake, historical fascists who get beat up, so it's cathartic at least. 

the Blitzys:

The Blitzys, aka the Yellowshirts, have a never-clearly-articulated plan to divide American society by beating people up for not joining the Army. I assume that there must be more to it than that but the focus of the adventure is not on Spy Smasher beating up these particular fascists (though beat them he does) but in avoiding them long enough to get to Washington and warn the President about this fifth column activity. (Whiz Comics 020, 1941)

The Blitzys, armed with a completely silent bomber plane, continue to vex Spy Smasher and America on behalf of their boss the War Lord through to Whiz Comics 022, when their leader Kurt Bund is finally run to ground in his base underneath a local cemetery and properly walloped.

Categorized in: Crime as Theme (Naziism), Objects (Shirts)

the Ring:

A gang of airplane saboteurs with so little assigned motivation that they might as well be in it for the love of the game, the Ring is undone by FBI agent Dick Star and his aide, the unusually-named Pinky Dink. (Bang-Up Comics 001, 1941)

Categorized in: Generica (Rings), Ideologies (Crypto-Fascists)

Unnamed Giant Robot Unit: 

Eventually the comic timeline that I'm working on is going to get to the point that the US is World War II, and the flow of vague Nazi-adjacent antagonist groups is going to dry up and be replaced mainly with overt Nazi and Japanese super-villains. Does this mean the end of the Fascict Goon Round-Up? surely not, because there needs to be a place to document the weird over-the-top schemes that the comic book version of the Axis powers get up to.

Take this one: two enormous robots rise out of the depth of New York Harbor and destroy a patrol boat before stomping into the city proper. 

Then, after making their way downtown, they disgorge a bunch of Nazi soldiers to... do something. Honestly it's unclear what these guys are up to and more to the point just what havoc they could raise that a giant Robot couldn't. In any case they don't have long on the ground before they are beaten up by the Flag-Man and Rusty. 

All this action in the city is especially baffling as the actual plan is to blow up a chunk of the US fleet with a minefield. Maaaybe the idea is to draw them in with the giant robot attack? In any case, the Flag-Man steers one of the robots into the minefield and takes care of the entire problem with one huge explosion. (Captain Aero Comics 001, 1941)

Categorized in: Accessories (Mecha)

the Swastika Council:

It's not entirely clear just what kind of fascist group the Swastika Council is, thanks to the fact that their sole appearance concerns the fact that David Merrywether, aka the Cat-Man, is about to expose their membership to the papers and their efforts to prevent him from doing that. My money's on them being some sort of fifth columnists. (Cat-Man Comics 004, 1941)

Categorized in: Crime as Theme (Naziism), Generica (Councils)

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 023

Perhaps we should make ethics a mandatory subject for the sciences again.

Kruger: 

While tooling around in the desert one day, Diamond Jack encounters a young woman named Ruth West, whose physician brother has been captured by the diabolical scientist Kruger and taken to Terror Valley in order to help in Kruger's work turning men into hybrid creatures called Vulture Men, with the ultimate goal of using them to take over the world. If that plot sounds at all familiar, it's because it is almost exactly the same as the one in Wonderworld Comics 015, featuring the Flame and Dr Belos, right down to the name of the valley, the colour of the Vulture men and the fact that the scientist has his own private hydroelectric dam.

Just how did this happen? Three distinct possibilities spring to mind:

1. The Diamond Jack writer (Gus Ricca? He's got the generally accepted art credit) just plain old cribbed the story off of the Flame adventure, which came out about six months earlier

2. Gus Ricca and the Flame writer (unidentified) knew one another and came up with the idea for the story together in the reasonable expectation that nobody would notice. Alternately, the same person might have written both stories for two different artists.

3. The biggest coincidence in the history of mankind.

Whatever the reason for it, we are left with two very similar stories to compare:

Kruger's Vulture Men are much more appealing to me than Belos' - particularly their weird pawlike hands. While Belos' version does look a bit more like something you could do to a person via surgery (except for the part where they have functional dragon wings coming out of their backs of course), the lack of humanity in the bird heads of Kruger's really drives home the horror of their being transformed against their wills. I also appreciate their seemingly organic feather kilts.

Kruger also has a better look than Belos - his having a bit of the vulture to his look makes a lot of aesthetic sense! I do miss Belos' one long tooth, though.

The one place where Kruger loses out to Belos is in means of destruction. Being drowned by your own bursting dam doesn't hold a candle to getting fatally beaned with the skull of one of your own failed experiments (though "I'm drowning - AAAGH!" are pretty good last words). (Wow Comics 001, 1940)

Categorized in: Animals (Birds) 

Professor Stargaze: 

Professor Stargaze is a mad astronomer (nominative determinism) who discovers that the wandering and flaming planet Inferno will soon pass near Earth and wipe all life from its surface. Not only does Stargaze decide not to share this information with the world (possibly a morally neutral act) but he is so convinced that it is the right thing to happen that he tags along with Zambini the Miracle Man and tries to prevent him from stopping it (actively evil).

Stargaze is ultimately fried to a crisp when he attempts to assassinate Zambini with a flaming spear, then reincarnated as a rat by magic, then restored to his human form back on Earth once it is saved. Has he learned a lesson from all this? Unclear. (Zip Comics 002, 1940)

Categorized in: Day Jobs (Astronomers), Doctors and Professors

Doctor Igor:

Doctor Igor is a scientist with a vision: to develop a method of creating giant men via electrical stimulation of the pituitary gland, and to use an army of these men to take over the world. To that end, he has taken over a remote island (probably because it already has a castle on it) and used its inhabitants as guinea pigs.

Igor probably saw the fact that the island had a copra plantation on it as a plus, since it provided a supply experimental subjects for him, but what he failed to anticipate was that an interruption of commercial product is likely to draw the attention of an adventurer such as Lance Rand to investigate just what the heck was going on. Igor is ultimately undone when his own creation trips over some equipment and blows up the castle. (Cat-Man Comics 002, 1941)

Categorized in: Accessories (Castles), Doctors and Professors 

Borcia:

Borcia (also called "Garcia" one time which is probably an editorial oversight but possibly means that his name is either Garcia Borcia or Borcia Garcia) is a formerly-famous scientist whose mind cracked due to overwork and who now dreams of world conquest. And how better to achieve that dream than by stealing the magic gem owned by small-time super-hero Dr Diamond?

Once both the gem and Dr Diamond are in his clutches, Borcia reveals his world domination plot: let loose a moderately cool-looking giant robot called Najar to just kind of indiscriminately rampage through the nearby town of Verez, Mexico. Presumably there will be more robots later on. As for the magic diamond: it seems to play no real role in the plan. Borcia just wanted it, I guess.

As so often happens, Borcia is betrayed by his own step-daughter Elena, who just wants a normal, non-evil life and resents being part of a super-villainous household. Dr Diamond proves more than a match for Najar, and despite some typical super-villain bluster as he is lead off to jail, Borcia is never seen again. (Cat-Man Comics 003, 1941)

Categorized in: Accessories (Gems (Magic), Giant Robots), Location (Mexico)

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 019

Science for all! Whether they want it or not! 

Doctor Ivan has been pursuing a scheme in which he is systematically taking out insurance policies on everyone he knows and then having them murdered, and he is extremely smug about it. Now, I'm no expert in insurance fraud, but I have to say that I am certain that it requires a bit more subtlety than that, even if you're doing it as a one-off. Forget the fact that the Flame shows up after the third murder; I would expect some raised eyebrows down at the insurance company after the second. (The Flame 003, 1940)

Dr Gung is an old associate of magical arch-criminal Elena, and is the one who saves her from execution after the Karoly Gore affair by means of some death-simulating drugs. 

Gung's main line of inquiry is the use of his signature ray to destroy men's minds and turn them into mindless robot soldiers, something that works perfectly well on regular guys sourced from the nearby populace but when tried on Mr Mystic goes badly enough that Dr Gung ends up shrunk to a few inches tall and then blown to smithereens along with his entire mansion. (The Spirit Section, 23 June 1940)

Ghantse is one of those mad scientists who talk a lot about their grand plans but don't actually get a chance to put them in motion, so it's a real mystery whether he actually would have been able to fuse several human brains together into a single entity who would "know all" like he claimed or not, but he sure was willing to try. Along the way, he made two major mistakes: 1) targeting Mr Mystic for brain extraction and 2) somehow ending up with the Shadowman, the literal embodiment of death, on his payroll, the latter being compounded by the fact that the Shadowman hates Ghantse's guts, and so not only releases Mr Mystic from his chemically-induced paralysis before Ghantse can extract his brain but also blows Ghantse's entire base to kingdom come. (The Spirit Section, 22 September, 1940)

Doctor Zorn, an eccentric roboticist living on Puerto Rico, is possibly the world record holder for escalation, as he manages to go from an argument about a late loan payment to unleashing his voice-controlled super robot (aka the Monster) to activating his lab's self-destruct mechanism in the space of about half an hour. 

Given that this is what he started shouting immediately after showing off his robot to a young woman, I do suspect that Doctor Zorn was primed for this kind of thing and was just looking for an excuse, like a man who has just bought a katana standing in his kitchen. (Thrilling Comics 005, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 813: YAGOR

(The Spirit, "The Death Dolls", 4 August, 1940)

In terms of villainy, Yagor ain't much. Formerly chief engineer at the Battle Arms Co, Yagor murdered the inventor Kalin and stole his inventions and is trying to sell them on when the Spirit tracks him down in a small New England town. Though he gets the drop on the Spirit and captures him when he shows up to take him in, Yagor is undone by his own poor salesmanship and the crucial lack of imagination possessed by munitions buyer Emil Kampf, who dismisses a working robot soldier as a useless toy without, for instance, considering the possibility inherent in a bit of armour plating.

Among Yagor's many shortcomings is dismal salesmanship and specifically his failure to present Kampf with the other invention that he stole from Kalin, a smaller automaton capable of tracking a person across tens if not hundreds of kilometres, navigating such obstacles as sheer walls and subway systems, in order to kill them via explosion. Instead, he sends one, charmingly named Jepetto, to kill Kampf.

(perhaps the oddest thing about this assassination is that as Jepetto is tracking down and killing Kampf Yagor and the Spirit are in New England listening for news of the explosion on the radio, and while this is in the days when the Spirit's adventures were still set in New York City, the whole process must have taken hours if not days to complete, even if the "dark. mysterious fishing village" of Cape Haven were somehow both at the Southern border of Connecticut and "out of the tourist route." Just standing around at gunpoint for three days while a small robot walks down the East Coast)

But perhaps I am giving Yagor too much grief. After all, he was the chief engineer at that munitions company, not the chief salesman. Surely after bungling two whole opportunities to sell his robots (I'm counting the assassination because I think that loading that little robot up with a couple of water balloons or the like would have been a very good proof of concept indeed) he will rally and hike up his pants and really put in a good effort in his next black market arms presentation. What's that? He just loaded all of his remaining Death Dolls (which is what the little assassin-bots are called) into a big robot soldier and sent them to attack New York for no good reason? Yagor, no. You're going to get caught by the Spirit!

Yagor got caught by the Spirit, you guys. 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 410: THE BRAIN OF THE ROBOT

(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939) 

I've started reading Mystery Men Comics, as seen at the top of the Sphinx entry, and the thing about Mystery Men Comics is that although it features the Blue Beetle, who by a circuitous chain of publication rights changing hands is now a DC Comics character, it also has a lot of other characters that aren't currently owned by a media conglomerate! And although I mostly write about DC and Marvel characters because I have a fixation on continuity and its implications, I love all oddball comics characters! So I'm taking advantage of the holiday season to revisit some minor super-villains who got overlooked back when this blog was just a baby Twitter thread.

The Brain of the Robot is a so-so villain - he takes control of a robot exhibition at the New York World's Fair and causes a moderate amount of havoc before being brought to justice - made interesting by two things: 1. he is given absolutely no motive and 2. he is the only super-villain faced by early comics hero the Fantom of the Fair (the only one in my notes, at least).

The Fantom of the Fair, now there's an interesting guy! Some facts:

- Almost exclusively operates out of and protects the New York World's Fair

- His haircut is fully discernible through his mask

- In one adventure it is heavily implied that he is mentioned in an ancient Icelandic texts

- In another, an escaped ancient snow beasts recalls battling him on the tundra a thousand years earlier

They cram a lot of weird lore into the Fantom's handful of adventures, which makes it all the harder to take how dirty he got done by DC Comics when Roy Thomas brought him back as "the Phantom of the Fair", a villain whose exploits might just have been inspired by the Brain of the Robot. He inspires a Crimson Avenger/ Sandman teamup while using a World's Fair robot exhibit to, among other things, attempt to assassinate the King and Queen of England before escaping. He was then brought back and done even dirtier in Sandman Mystery Theatre, as a self-loathing serial murderer of gay men.Sad sad stuff.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 034: ELECTRO

(Marvel Mystery Comics 004-019, 1940-1941) 

Hey look, it's Electro, Marvel of the Age! I love that guy!

Or rather I love Electro's creator/ mental pilot, Professor Philo Zog (later amended to Zogolowski because heaven forfend that someone have a weird name). It's not often that a weird nerd with a scraggly beard gets to be the hero.

I also love Zog's plan: hire a bunch of husky young men to act as his agents in various parts of the US, who then call in Electro as necessary. They eventually get phased out in favour of more Zog-time but I love them while they last. Also, in their first appearance they're referred to as Zog's "Machine of Righteousness" and that's what I think of them as because as a name, it rules.

Zog later shows up in a period piece or two, but it's Electro who eventually gets brung back by J. Michael Straczynski in The Twelve, making this the inaugural edition of THE TWELVE REPORT, a review of just how our pals fared in that book.

Electro got done somewhat dirty by J. Michael: The incident that put the other eleven heroes in suspended animation also severed the mental connection required to drive the robot. and Zog subsequently died of mental withdrawal. It might have taken a while though? His daughter Elizabeth shows up in the series and she is definitely not drown or styled as the 60+ year-old she would have to be if Zog kicked the bucket in 1945.

As for Electro itself, it was basically a narrative device in the book, acting as a combo murder weapon and witness. Ultimately it ends up being driven around the Middle East by the Laughing Mask. Ho hum.

Maybe I'll work out a 1-12 scale of how well I reckon the characters in The Twelve ended up being treated but it's hard to do with only one of them, you know?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 212: ECHO

(Detective Comics v1 049, 1941)

The story elements of this aren't anything special: a mad scientist builds a giant robot (or something) and sends it to get revenge on the world what shunned him for his wild ideas about building giant robots (or something). Eventually he gets sloppy and the Crimson Avenger tracks him back to his lair and in a twist of mild irony the order that was meant to cause the ultra-literal Echo to kill the Crimson instead results in the death of the scientist.

Echo is a perfectly fine example of the giant robot but the only really interesting part of this whole story is that it's a bit ambiguous what exactly he is? Like he's probably a robot, but read this:

"A horrible experiment," "a man-made giant." He could be a frankenstein, or a weird clone beast or a cybernetic humanoid toadstool! He's almost certainly supposed to be a robot, but the mind boggles at the possibilities! If only the Crimson Avenger hadn't tossed him off a cliff!