MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 749: THE SABOTEURS

(Smash Comics 015, 1940)

Sometimes all you need is a group of mercenary saboteurs dressed in matching cloaks and gas masks to zazz up a story - Black X and his comic book contemporaries have faced and defeated hundred of sabotage plots in front of my now-jaded eyes over the course of my comics-reading career, and so it takes a bit more than your basic pseudo-Nazi in a suit and tie to get my attention. That there is a suit-and-tie pseudo-Nazi behind the scheme to blow up a city that is technically never called New York is irrelevant, as it's the cloak-and-gas mask guys who matter.

Black X and Batu do not of course let this campaign of destruction stand, and despite some unusually acrobatic fighting moves on behalf of the Saboteurs the whole bunch of them are brought to justice after only a moderate amount of infrastructure is exploded.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 396: THE CIPHER

(More Fun Comics 071, 1941)

The Cipher is a fairly unremarkable oceangoing spy with a really great name. He attempts to extract some information on winter warfare tactics from a friend of Clip Carson (on behalf of unspecified employers - somewhat interestingly, the Cipher is explicitly a freelance spy) and gets blown up for his efforts.