MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 1000: THE MUMMY

Number 1000!!*

(Lightning Comics v1 005, 1941)

The Old Man of the Pyramids summons (F)lash Lightning to his thundercloud lair to warn him about trouble at Midton College, and he is right, as can only be expected of a wise old oracular father figure. This particular trouble is called Professor Vatz and is a professor of chemistry who is ready to give up academia for the heady world of supercrime.

Vatz's new career is founded on two inventions: his "Hotlight," a ray gun that seems to spit out both bright light and great heat sufficient to kill a regular person or knock out a superhuman figure like Lightning, and a radium compound that makes ordinary cloth into a form of armour resistant to conventional attack. Vatz decides to apply this solution to mummy wrappings, and while I can kind of see that being a way to ensure that the his armour is applied as close to his body as possible, but just what his justification is for using wrappings from an actual mummy is completely inscrutable to me.

As always, mummy wrappings are a fantastic look and they are only enhanced by the fact that Vatz either chooses to leave the little flyaway portions of his hair sticking out of the sides or simply does not care that they are. It's some very very strong bald guy energy and perhaps the most significant addition to the mummy look in two thousand years.

The newly-fledged Mummy recruits a few gangsters and goes on a mild crime spree but is soon tracked down by a recovered Lightning. This leaves the problem of the Mummy's invincibility to solve, and Lightning does so with aplomb: if the wrappings are the vehicle for the invulnerability, simply remove the wrappings before applying violence.

(please note that the Mummy had a calling card all ready to go, and it's a cute one. He only ever gets to use it the once, however)

The Mummy returns in Lightning Comics v1 006, in what is effectively a bottle episode. Professor Vatz, given far both too much credit for a rapid reformation and unfettered access to the prison laboratory, is able to recreate his radium solution and take over - but not actually escape - the prison he has been locked up in.

The only thing that the Mummy seems to be unable to replicate in prison is his Hotlight. Instead, he sports a much cooler "Nitro Gun" that shoots explosive pellets. He is also able to whip up a "Lightning Arrester" to drain the electric energy from Lash Lightning's body when he inevitably turns up to foil the Mummy's plans.

Despite the fact that he is able to disable Lightning and throw him into the prison gas chamber, the Mummy does not account for the possibility that his lightning powers might return to him and allow him to escape. He is soon recaptured in the exact same manner as he was in their first encounter and I must say that the fact that Professor Vatz failed to account for this - perhaps by means of a tricky little knot or fastener - really lowers him in my estimation.

In the Mummy's final appearance, in Lightning Comics v2 001, he is broken out of a prison hospital by Lash Lightning's new archfoe Mastermind, who is hoping to learn the secret of Professor Vatz's radium coating in order render himself immune to harm. 

The Mummy makes three key mistakes in his dealings with Mastermind: 1) he tries to negotiate after the initial deal has been struck, proposing that the radium formula be revealed in exchange for the secret to Mastermind's own ability to command lightning. This might work if the Mummy were dealing with a reasonable person, but Mastermind is a super-villain, a class of inherently unreasonable people. 2) The Mummy escalates the confrontation to a physical one without first applying the radium solution and thus rendering himself immune to harm, and 3) he gets himself obliterated by a lightning bolt. he does therefore mess up Mastermind's plans by taking his formula to the grave, but it must be cold comfort when one is a smouldering corpse.

Farewell, the Mummy. You weren't a very good super-villain but you were an entertaining one.

Categorized in: Accessories (Anti-Hero; Heat Rays), Day Jobs (College Professors), Supranormal Beings (Mummies)

*technically Fang Ryan is number 1000 and the Mummy is number 999, but I like mummies more than snake-themed gangsters so I fudged it for the sake of the round number.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 999: FANG RYAN

(Lightning Comics v1 005, 1941)

We meet Fang Ryan after he grabs a payroll from the recently-deceased messenger who was in the process of delivering it. He then escapes despite the fact that Police Detective Danny "the Raven" Dartin is on the scene to engage him in thrilling gunplay, but drops his signature weapon, a stick with a couple of snake fangs on one end. It's a neat gimmick: the stick has a reservoir full of poison inside of it, so when Fang whacks someone with it they die of what looks like a snakebite. It is therefore a shame that he does not actually use this item in the story (aside from in killing the courier, implicitly).

Since Ryan has lost his weapon, the Raven knows that he will need a new supply of snake venom to make another, and waits in ambush for him at the zoo from which he had previously sourced the stuff. Sure enough, Ryan shows up in time for a fist fight, which ends in... perhaps not the only time that a super-hero is knocked out by a zebra but surely one of a very limited number of times that it happens.

When a supercrook has rendered a super-hero unconscious and captured them, there are a few ways that they can proceed. The standard approach is of course to place the hero in a deathtrap in full costume and then leave the room, followed closely by "go to unmask them but take so long that they wake up and start fighting you again." Fang Ryan instead opts for one of the rarer options and just immediately unmasks the Raven, and thanks to the gunfight from earlier he even recognizes him!

Ryan's next thoughts are both good: frame the Raven for his next job and expose the Raven's identity, thus taking all the focus off of him and his piddly little crime spree. Where it all falls apart that he tries to do both at the same time instead of sequentially, as he calls up Dartin's boss and rats him out before heading out to do the next robbery.

The one-two punch of this means that when an insomniac sees the Raven and reports him to the cops, the entire police force shows up to get him rather than a car or two worth of guys.

Meanwhile Dartin has escaped from where Ryan left him hogtied in the woods and shows up to avenge his honour. He ends up killing Ryan in a shootout, which somehow completely overwrites the part of Police Chief Lash's brain that heard the information about Dartin being the Raven. It's just the luck of the costumed vigilante, I guess.

Categorized in: Animals (Snakes), Body (Nonhuman Parts), Fraud (Identity Theft (Hero Impostors))

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 998: THE CHIEF

(Liberty Scouts Comics 002, 1941)

The Chief is one of two things, either a not-very-specific Hitler stand-in who is leading his forces from the front in an attempted invasion of the US, or the representative of such a figure in such an invasion. Either way, he is clearly a pseudo-Nazi. When we meet the Chief he is preoccupied with discovering the identities of the mysterious figures (who we know to be the Liberty Scouts) who have been thwarting his attempts to weaken the US war effort.

Though he makes a decent try at it, the Chief just barely fails at an attempt to destroy both the Liberty Scouts and the President of the United States while they are meeting at Liberty House. Their next encounter, by contrast, ends with him capturing the Scouts and gloating about his plans before leaving them tied up next to a bomb. It doesn't work out, of course, but setting up a deathtrap that will kill the hero while you are in a second location is a core super-villain activity. It's enrichment for them.

The Chief is at the forefront of Axis superweapon technology, with such innovations as a secret naval base in a hollowed-out iceberg off Newfoundland, a fleet of remote-controlled ships housed in that base, and heat ray cannons mounted on those ships, with which New York City as the first move in his invasion of the US.

Though New York ends up taking some heat ray fire, the Liberty Scouts (conspicuously not dead, as is the norm when super-heroes are left in deathtraps) show up in time take control of the robot fleet and turn the rays on the Chief's own forces.

Though the Chief makes a valiant attempt to escape to fight another day, he ends up flying his plane directly into the path of a heat ray and exploding.

The Liberty Scouts face a second Chief in Liberty Scouts Comics 003, who is also attempting to conquer the US on behalf of the same faux-Nazi government (they have the same crossed-knives symbol standing in for the swastika). This time the plan hinges on stealing a super knockout gas developed by Liberty Scout member Smokey and deploying it nation-wide, and once again the Chief's deadliest enemy proves to be aviation safety, and he doesn't even have a convenient heat ray cannon to blame for it: he just up and crashed his plane.

Categorized in: Generica (Chiefs), Ideologies (Crypto-Fascists), Supercrime (Attempted Conquest (United States))

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 997: THE ZOMBIE WITCH

(Jungle Comics 024, 1941)

The Zombie Witch (aka the Queen of the Zombies, aka Celie) is, as the name suggests, a witch with a penchant for raising the dead - often while they are still actively being mourned. She demonstrates a few other magic powers (e.g., scrying in a bowl of water, crocodile charming) but the zombie thing is her bread and butter.

So what, specifically, does she want a bunch of reanimated corpses for? Well! I won't say that it's for a good reason but it certainly an innovative one: Celie has pulled a con on some unscrupulous fellows and convinced them that a worthless mountain is full of gold, and is now going to sell them zombie labour to work the mines. It's not a bad way to use up surplus zombies, if you ignore the horror.

Tabu of course objects to the fraud just as hard as he does to the necromancy, and wastes no time in ratting the Zombie Witch out to her clients. They in turn waste no time in murdering her, but not before she orders her zombies to "kill the white men," thus in turn sealing their dooms. Only Tabu makes it out alive.

Categorized in: Accessories (Henchmen (Zombies)), Careers in Magic (Witches), Fraud (Con Artistry)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 996: THE BIRD KING

(Jungle Comics 022, 1941)

Zuko, aka the Bird King, is in a lot of ways a very classic minor super-villain. He has an obsession with birds and has both a flock of trained vultures and a set of working bird wings for personal flight that he uses in the pursuit of crime. He also has an obsession with diamonds that makes him jealously guard the ones that he has collected, and stop at nothing, including kidnapping and murder, to acquire more.

The really unusual thing about Zuko is the fact that all of this villainous potential exists in a guy who lives in a treehouse in the middle of a crocodile-infested swamp in the middle of a jungle in an unspecified part of Central Africa. He only learns that there are people nearby with diamonds that he might be able to steal when one of them accidentally wanders into his front yard. In the next issue of Jungle Comics some crooks come looking for Zuko's treasure so it's possible that he was a super thief somewhere else before moving to the jungle to hide but as presented in his own story it's kind of like if Dr Doom had just forged his mask and then stayed on the mountain with those monks.

The Bird Man makes a spirited attempt to steal the diamonds from Kaänga's adopted people but is unable to contend with jungle-man resistance. This all ends with him learning the ultimate lesson for people who choose the life of the wingsuit, all the way back to Icarus himself: they don't work very well if they are on fire.

Categorized in: Accessories (Wingsuits), Animals (Birds), Theft (Jewel Thieves) 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 995: ORG

(Jungle Comics 015, 1941)

Org is a fellow with a gift - the power to play the drums hypnotically - and also the knowledge of the location of a hidden valley full of giant spiders. He combines these two factors as a part of his scheme to conquer "all of Jungleland," which probably means Africa and possibly means India but in my heart will always mean a humid pocket dimension summoned into being by Fletcher Hanks and his fellow Jungle writers' lack of geographic savvy.

Org quickly organizes a spider army with his sick beats, earning him one strike on Fantomah's personal "should I kill this guy" tracker.

This is often the point at which Fantomah gives her target a little hint that he might want to cut back on the wanton slaughter, etc. for his own sake, but Org is given no such grace - perhaps Fantomah just hates spiders. Or drummers. In any case, Org appears to be a pretty thoroughly rotten guy who delights in having his minions attack human and animal alike. It is at this point that I must point out the horrific fact that Org's spiders have what appear to be human hands on the end of each of their legs, which is gross.

Attacking people and animals like this were evidently strikes two and three, because it is at this point that Fantomah steps in, just a little too late as per usual. Org is paralyzed and unceremoniously fed to his own erstwhile troops, who in turn are shrunken down to the size of regular everyday spiders. We can only hope that there wasn't some sort of catastrophic megafauna that they were keeping in check with their predations, I guess.

Appropriately for what I am almost certain is our last Fletcher Hanks comic (but not out final Fantomah), our hero gives a little farewell at the end of the comic!

Categorized in: Accessories (Giant Spiders), Powers (Animal Control), Supercrime (Attempted Conquest)