MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 830: ROBERT W MARSH

(Thrilling Comics 010, 1940)

Fifth column activities are wreaking havoc on the US! Why, it's so bad that the new National Defense Building has been bombed! Doc Strange is called in along with a crack team of industrialists to help solve the problem, and is pointed toward fellow committee member Henry Dallas by yet another member, Robert W Marsh. Could this be so easy a problem to solve?

Henry Dallas kills himself rather than own up to working with the Nazis against American interests, but Doc Strange is able to trace his business dealings to the defunct Mammoth Automobile factory in the South, where he discovers a fascist tank-manufacturing setup. He also takes an explosive anti-tank shell to the back of the head, which is immaterial to the story, but it is fun to occasionally highlight just how powerful a super-hero is.

Strange finally comes face to face with the leader of this operation (conveniently called the Leader) after both he and Virginia Thompson are captured by them, and unmasks him within minutes, revealing him to be... Robert W Marsh, who is coincidentally also the only other named character in the comic. I gotta say, I wish that the Leader facade had been maintained for longer, both because I always prefer referring to a guy by a codename rather than by what's on his birth certificate, but also because that mask is a pretty sweet little number and I wish that Marsh had a reason to keep wearing it.

Doc and Virginia of course escape from Marsh and prevent his bid to take over the US by bombing Washington DC into dust, but the former Leader is pretty conspicuously not among the casualties of that battle. And well he shouldn't be, because he is also the antagonist of the next Doc Strange story:

In Thrilling Comics 011, Marsh takes over the... Central?... American nation of Panamela to use as a staging area for another attempt to take over the US.

(side note: it is pretty remarkable that Marsh is just a straight-up Nazi in 1940, albeit one with a reversed swastika. I suppose it's possible that this is a small-n nazi, as a stand-in for fascist) 

Marsh's plan revolves around attacking the US using the Panamelan fleet and some new super-explosive artillery shells, but he is foiled when Doc Strange sabotages the explosive at the production stage. Pop! Plink!

Though his fleet is blasted into oblivion by the US Navy, Marsh lives to fight another day. 

I'll be honest, I'm tired of the guy and I almost included his third appearance here to get him out of the way, even though it takes place in 1941. But when I started reading it to do just that I was startled to find out that it's fun! There isn't even any naval combat! Thus, I'm going to leave it as a treat for myself in the future.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 770: GOLI

(Startling Comics 004, 1940)

We open on a world in turmoil! The tides are going crazy! New York City is trashed!

The world's leaders turn to the mysterious Dr X for help, and he immediately recognizes that the problem must be Moon-based, and further that the solution will require his niece's fiance Bob to go beat someone up. This is the second and final Dr X story of the Golden Age, and I really wish that there were more. Wizened scientists sending burly aides to beat up crooks is entirely in my wheelhouse

Bob and Cynthia are promptly teleported to the Moon in their finest protective beachwear, and Bob gets to fight an excellent moon-beast.

Bob and Cynthia are captured by Moon-Man forces who do indeed turn out to be the ones messing up the tides. This Moon-aggression is technically happening under the command of the unnamed Moon King and his tall horny daughter, but it becomes clear that the real architect of the plot against Earth is the Head Scientist, Goli. Never one to waste a couple of good prisoners, Goli has plans to stick some Moon-Man brains in Bob and Cynthia's bodies in order to use them as spies in the post-apocalyptic Moon-Man invasion of Earth.

In a lucky turn for Bob, Cynthia and the Earth, the Moon Princess is so horny for Bob that she sets the prisoners free. Goli is killed by Bob in a move that also smashes the tide machine, and one short teleporter ride later everyone is safely back in Dr X's secret laboratory in the Andes.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 760: THE FIRE-MEN

(Speed Comics 004, 1940) 

The Fire-Men make an impressive debut: dressed in bulletproof suits and wielding powerful flamethrowers, they carve a path of destruction through both New York City and the tank division that is sent to bring them to heel. Nothing seems able to stop these mysterious marauders!

Nothing, that is, until Landor, Maker of Monsters emerges from the shadows to offer his creature-based services to the US government. He'll fight on the side of law and order for once, but only in exchange for his hated enemy, Tony Torrence. It's a triumph of negotiation, in that there is absolutely no way that a patriotic fellow like Torrence could fail his country in its hour of need, even at the cost of his own life, the rube.

To his credit, Landor follows through, and while up to this point I thought that the Fire-Men might have secretly been more of his creatures under those suits the whole time, they are in fact what will eventually be a comics staple: the minor villain that exists only to be utterly trounced as a demonstration of the prowess of another character. Whatever the Fire-Men's goals might have been will never be revealed due to their grisly deaths at the claws of a giant fireproof cyborg.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 752: CADAVA

(Smash Comics 015, 1940)

As we meet Cadava, he is all dressed up and off to attend a costume party, with some pretty harsh words and feeling for humanity in general and a lady named Diane in particular - seems that he has been shunned and rejected after some sort of accident. Also his little friend Soo Choo is there.

Also in attendance - in his super-hero costume, no less! -  is the Ray, and luckily for Diane he is a naturally nosy guy. He sees the knight kidnapping her while creeping on random conversations (I assume) and while he doesn't quite manage to prevent it, he is now on the case.

Back in Cadava's sewer lair, he reveals his identity to Diane, causing her to faint and effectively removing her from the story. This is a real shame, because Diane was really our major potential source of information on Cadava's whole deal. Is he a man who has been so hurt by circumstance and an uncaring world that he is lashing out like the Ugliest Man in the World, or was he always just a jerk? Regardless, I think that we can all agree that his decision to smash up what is probably NYC with some sort of earthquake ray is an unnecessary escalation.

Cadava and Soo Choo manage to put in a pretty good showing against the Ray, considering the fact that they are two regular guys facing off against a man made of light, but ultimately he just up and drowns them both. He who lives by the sewer dies by the sewer, as they say.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 727: VOLTON

(Science Comics 006, 1940)

In the Science Comics 005, Dynamo develops his Brain-Wave Trap helmet which allows him to read the minds of everyone on Earth. Now, only one issue later, we discover that the range of this device is in fact interstellar, and furthermore that Dynamo can travel to other stars, as he receives a call for help from King Berin of Betelguese (sic) and gets himself there almost instantly - that's somewhere between four and six hundred light years, folks! 

(assuming that this is the same Betelgeuse as we all know and love - aside from the fact that it's spelled slightly differently, it's pretty consistently referred to as a planet instead of a star. Whatever the case, it's still an impressive expansion of the range of Dynamo's power)

Dynamo asserts his heroic privilege by instantly determining which of two warring forces to side with and drives Volton's attacking army from the field. Luckily, Volton is indeed the evil one of the two, as evidenced by the very creepy way he goes about abducting King Berin's daughter Princess Glama.

Here's where I lay out my real problem with Volton: when Dynamo first shows up, Volton is deploying his Lightning Men to attack King Berin's fortifications with their Electrode and Lightning Guns, and even his dang name is Volton. In short, I though that he was going to be another electricity powered guy and that we would see Dynamo in some sort of electric duel or similar. Instead, Volton's personal theme is way more vulture-centric and electricity just seems to be a hobby of his, to the extent that he doesn't consider all of the ramifications of trying to electrocute a depowered Dynamo to death and ends up being firmly punched out by a repowered Dynamo.

There follows a 2.5 page interlude featuring what I will call an inexplicable and disastrous decision by Dynamo, as he transport Volton back to Earth with him and offers him a second chance, only for Volton to immediately blow up an entire city while gearing up for an attempt to take over our planet. Like, one panel immediately. Just why did Dynamo do this? Pagecount, I assume.

Dynamo's faith in alternative forms of justice is forever shattered by this experience, and Volton quickly finds himself hurtling headfirst into a Betelguesian prison.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 722: DR DOOM

(Science Comics 003, 1940)

Flashback to my times in the Fiction House content-recycling mines of Planet Comics! What we have here is a Dr Doom story nestled snugly into an issue of Science Comics just where Dr Doom stories always go, but it's not the right Dr Doom! Was this a story about a different science villain that was renamed to fit the space, or did "Richard Crater" (Dick Briefer, possibly) just kind of freestyle a fill-in gig and go wildly off-model? Who can say?

What I can say is that this Dr Doom is a villain both more entertaining and more ambitious than our regularly scheduled one. Instead of tormenting a handful of people for his own entertainment, this Dr Doom is blowing up buildings as part of a campaign of terror designed to put him in charge of the world, and he shows off some fantastic bombast while expositing all of this. "Fools! Fools! Fools!"

Of course this sort of thing can not allowed to go on, and since this Dr Doom is very much not a future-man, J Edgar Hoover sends the rough and tumble Bob Steele to take care of him.

Bob doesn't have much trouble making his way to Dr Doom's lair - he merely hops out of his plane and into the remotely-piloted one that Doom uses as a relay for his destructive ray, and after that it's just a matter of waiting to be flown back to a mountain full of costumed goons and then beating all of those goons up. Simple stuff.

Bob and Dr Doom provide an object lesson on the limits of bombast as a tool in everyday life, as it proves ineffective in convincing Bob not to punch Dooms lights out and smash up his laboratory. So long Dr Doom, it's neat that there are two of you (and more to come).

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 706: LEPUS-THE-FIEND

(Planet Comics 007, 1940) 

Lepus-the-Fiend has a lot of classic Fletcher Hanks villain qualities: the weirdly hyphenated name, the fact that he lives on a star (to be clear: not a poetic name for a planet. He lives on a five-pointed, flaming star) and of course his hatred of civilization, which is not given a particular motivation so I am left to assume is because he is a hairy and wild looking guy. He's not the first Hanks character to yell about destroying all the civilized planets but it is his particular phrasing that makes the title of Paul Karasik's first collection of Hank's comics.

Lepus has chosen to destroy civilization in a fairly dramatic fashion, by smashing inhabited planets together like so many pool balls. Effective but fiddly, it seems, as both Earth and Venus are saved by Lepus' poor aim on his first attempt.

Lepus-the-Fiend doesn't get another shot at planet-smashing, as it is at this point that Buzz Crandall and and his aide Sandra really get on top of the adventure and blow him to smithereens. These civilization-haters never seem to be particularly prepared for civilization to defend itself, do they.

(note the second panel above. This is the answer to a question that had been bouncing around in my head: why would Fletcher Hanks take over an existing character (Buzz Crandall) rather than make up a new one as seems to be his usual modus operandi? Because this was originally a Whirlwind Carter comic that Marvel evidently did not want. We're solving mysteries here!)