GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 039

Those who also ran, we salute you. 

Karl the Hermit:

Karl, as his name implies, is a mean ol' hermit who lives atop a mountain. He has has got himself a critter called the Thing that Walks Like a Man that he uses to act out his misanthropic impulses, such as when he sends it to kill his cousin Rushman. What is his motivation for doing all this? Don't worry about it - he's a crazy old hermit!

Karl's actions attract the attention of the Silver Streak and Meteor, and both he and the Thing end up doing a header off of a cliff. (Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

Lord Garnett:

Lord Garnett, English MP, engages in a little pigeon-based espionage on behalf of the Nazis and gets socked by the Silver Streak for his efforts. As can be deduced by his trademark braying laugh, this is the guy who later pivots into propaganda broadcasting as a Lord Haw-Haw analog, but here we are only concerned with his foray into masked spymanship. (Daredevil Comics 001, 1941)

Anders:

When a masked arsonist starts burning down all of a company's buildings in a comic it's equal odds on whether it's corporate sabotage, extortion or insurance fraud. I guess those are the main choices in real life as well, now that I think about it. In this case it's some pretty solvable insurance fraud, as the Anders Warehouse Company is being burned down by Mr Anders for the money. (Dynamic Comics 001, 1941)

Mr Black:

Mr Black, Art Supervisor of the Municipal Museum in the undefined city that Lucky Coyne calls home, has happened upon a foolproof scheme: kidnap a painter and force him to create forgeries, then sell those forgeries for beaucoup bucks. There are only two problems with this scheme: 1) Black loses his job immediately for spending museum funds on one of his own forged paintings and 2) both the museum and the painter's daughter come to Lucky Coyne for help, leading on a severe blow to the head for Mr Black. (Dynamic Comics 002, 1941)

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 022

The Ethic Committee is going to have a field day.  

Dr Belos is a single-issue mad scientist: he wants to turn men into birds, and to that end he has set up camp in a place called the Valley of Terror and gotten to work creating surgical chimeras called Vulture Men. His downfall comes about because he kidnaps surgeon Dr D'arne to act as his unwilling assistant, thus causing D'Arne's daughter to bring in the Flame to help rescue him. 

Please also note that Belos has a single long fang in place of one of his lower incisors. 

Despite looking more like human-reptile than human-bird hybrids, the Vulture Men are some classic examples of monstrous humanoid henchmen. They also get mercilessly slaughtered by the Flame instead of perhaps being captured and restored to human form, like so many of the monstrously transformed in comics are. I guess next time they shouldn't be transformed into bird guys against their wills.

Though the Flame really wrecks up his operation, Dr Belos' true nemesis turns out to be the pitching arm of Dr D'Arne, when he flings what is presumably a Vulture Man skull with sufficient force to kill the mad scientist outright. Then the Flame destroys Belos' dam and floods the Valley of Terror for good measure. (Wonderworld Comics 015, 1940)

Dr Grant was kicked out of the Scientist's Society for his theories, and while I always have some sympathy for the villains who are reacting to hidebound thinkers and their ways, one must consider that his response to this slight is to start collapsing bridges with his friction-neutralizing ray. If this is the way that Grant typically escalates conflict, maybe it wasn't his theories but his interpersonal skills that got him kicked out of the Society in the first place. 

Grant's comes into conflict with newsreel camerawoman Patty O'Day and eventually gets shot by Patty's assistant Ham. (Wonderworld Comics 018, 1940)

Zarhov is what I would call a pretty mad scientist, who has transformed a lady into a huge apelike creature called Zozo and is now looking to do the same to the daughter of his enemy Dr Carr. Luckily for Carr, he is friends with Yarko the Great (comics are full of older scientists with no wife and one beautiful adult daughter, and they seem to make up 100% of Yarko's social circle), who manages to baffle Zozo long enough for her monster rage to turn on Zahrov. Zozo gets off lightly compared to fellow transformees like the Vulture Men, because Yarko the Great has the means and inclination to turn her back into a human being. (Wonderworld Comics 020, 1940) 

Godfrey Calkins, described as a "retired millionaire business man" has an interesting idea that he seems to want to employ for normal, non-criminal means: he wants to freeze people so that they can better withstand the rigours of space travel. A noble goal! The problem lies in his experimental methodology: instead of starting out with animal testing and then perhaps moving on to volunteers, Calkins has decided to move straight to human trials on some kidnapped teenagers. And what's worse is that he acquires those teenagers by derailing an entire train full of football boosters into a river with the expectation that there would probably be a survivor or two. Truly a wretched man! 

Luckily for the teens in question, they are Dusty Davis and Janey Smart, classmates and pals of Atom Blake, Boy Wizard, and he soon shows up to beat the tar out of Calkins and his goons and to retrieve and thaw out Janey from the Venus-bound rocket she was already setting out on. No word on what subsequently happened to Calkins - perhaps he had to pay a small fine. (Wow Comics 001, 1940) 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 726: PROFESSOR MEIER

(Science Comics 005, 1940)

Professor Meier, a scientist, seeks to conquer the world by unleashing an ever-growing horde of mutated life forms from his jungle HQ. This is all pretty regular stuff and he probably would have been tossed into the regular science round-up, only there are a couple of fun things that Meier brings to the table that I would like to highlight.

First off, the mutated beasts themselves are a pretty fun design, a sort of lion/monkey/caveman/eagle chimera, plus green. What really sells them for me, though, are the dramatic shadows that they are covered with, and which usually obscure their face like they're in a 50s horror comic and have visages too terrible for the human mind to comprehend (*CHOKE!*). Plus, they all have fun little bowl cuts.

Professor Meier also has a fantastic look. Like, yes, most of the characters tagged "scientist" and/or "mad science" here are wearing some sort of labwear, but the whole 1940s surgical outfit complete with head mirror and black rubber gloves is a real banger of a costume. And he wears it to bed in his Safety Bedroom. Armed, of course.

New Power Alert: Marga the Panther Woman is already too mutated to be turned into a creature by Meier's janky serum but she does get even stronger than she already was.

And finally, once Marga and Homer (the one friendly beast) get Meier out of the way, all of his creatures are given an antidote and turn out mainly to be small animals like rabbits and ducks - shades of Sonic the Hedgehog! - which is pretty fun. Homer turns out to be a German Shepherd, and it looks like Marga will have a fun canine companion going forward but sadly he never returns. Professor Meier's fate is a bit more ambiguous, but I reckon he's dead.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 712: DR DEKKAR, MASTER OF MONSTERS

(Prize Comics 005, 1940) 

Comic book features with the villain as the lead were one of the rarer subgenres of the Golden Age, and so I must note that this is our third instance of one with a monster-maker as the lead. Fun!

We first encounter Dr Dekkar here after he has advertised for an assistant and thus brought one Diane Clark to his laboratory-castle on the English moors. There's a part of me that wants to get very critical of the concept of accepting a job whee you will be living with your boss sight-unseen but I know that that was a thing that many people did in fact have to do in the past - particularly women, who were making up most of the live-in childcare and nursing workforce. And there's a lot ove very harrowing fiction built around the premise of accepting one of those jobs and turning up only to find yourself in a Weird Situation, so this one checks out!

Case in point: Diane soon learns that the job in the isolated castle, that she was given sight unseen after answering a newspaper advertisement and which has her sharing a residence with two overtly creepy men and a third (unseen, screaming) presence, might just be a little sketchy. Specifically, she learns that the screamer is Dr Dekkar's last assistant, who has been turned into a kind of ape-man by Dekkar's experiments with hormone injection.

And to add insult to injury, it turns out that Diane hasn't been brought in as an assistant after all, but is simply the next experimental subject!

Luckily for Diane, her fiance Bob Trent has a poor sense of the boundaries between personal and private lives and shows up on her first day at her new job to see how she's doing. Chaos ensues: Dekkar's real assistant Wilkins releases and is killed by the ape-man; the ape-man makes off with Diane and is subsequently killed by Tom; the castle burns down and Dekkar is presumed dead.

You know what they say about presuming that a super-villain is dead, though: they always crawl back out of the woodwork to press U and ME in some sort of diabolical deathtrap. And indeed, Dr Dekkar is back again one month later with a collection of animal men and a thirst for vengeance.

In an impressive move for a comic book scientist, Dekkar has continued in his prior avenue of research instead of tossing it all and starting over in the field of robotics or making frankensteins. His hormone treatments have gotten precise enough that he is able to make humanoid creatures out of animal life, including an almost fully human Tiger Woman, with the dual caveats that a) the creatures must be given an injection every six hours or lose their human forms and b) human brain matter is an important part of the recipe and oh, look! Diane and Bob have human brains! What a wonderful coincidence!

As an aside, Dekkar sure has made some interesting choices here: make a woman out of a tiger, dress her in a fur bikini and teach her to smoke using a cigarette holder... I'm just saying that if this were a modern comic then Dekkar's search history would have some very specific booleans going on in it.

The Tiger Woman is of course horny for Bob and lets him free only to turn on him once he expresses some desire to leave with the date he came with. This leads to Bob being carried off by the amazing Condor-Man, who gets far too little on-panel time.

(shout out to Dr Dekkar for wearing something approaching proper attire for a surgical theatre: just look at that face mask!)

Bob manages to escape the Condor-Man and return just in time to see his plan take effect: he had somehow managed to replace the beast-men's hormone injections from the night before with water and now they were all reverting to their former states with remarkable speed. Bob and Diane haul ass out of there while Dr Dekkar is messily devoured by his own test subjects (there is a "will Dr Dekkar return next month?" caption at the end, but since he did not I guess the tigers really did do him in).

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 702: THE DRAGON MAN

(Planet Comics 003, 1940)

The work of the Lord of Jupiter is never done, as Auro (Lord of Jupiter, natch) learns one day when he receives the alarming news that a giant flame-breathing dragon has been carrying off dozens of his subjects.

And indeed, not only is there a dragon running around causing trouble but that dragon is actually a guy who can turn into a dragon and who has used his humanoid powers of reasoning to correctly identify Auro as the biggest threat to his lifestyle. Fortunately for Auro, the power of thought goes hand in hand with the ability to be fooled, and he manages to bluff the Dragon Man into fleeing from a common apple by pretending that it is a grenade.

Auro sets out to deal with the Dragon Man once and for all and upon finding him learns the reason for his actions: making a kingdom of his own, plus snacks. That really does have to be the one big perk of being an anthropophageous monster - if you're looking to establish a food supply, a group of humans will organize and try to keep themselves alive. They are more likely to periodically try to kill you than a flock of sheep, though.

Too late does the Dragon Man learn the important corollary to to plan of "seeking out and preemptively killing the greatest threat to your life," which is "and then make sure to kill them, because now they know." Having not followed through, he must perforce be stabbed.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 691: THE CLAW

(Pep Comics 007, 1940) 

The Press Guardian's only recurring villain, the Claw has what can only be described as an eclectic career: In his first appearance he's a sort of freelance spy chief working to aid the I-assume-European country of Shironia in its attempt to conquer neighbouring Lanfia by committing acts of sabotage in the US and framing Lanfia as the perpetrator so that America will withdraw its support of Lanfia. The Press Guardian exposes the scheme and sends the Claw and his henchmen to a presumed watery grave.

Pep 008 drops a bombshell: the Claw could, in fact, swim. Instead of drowning, he made his way to the Central City docks and set up an insurance scam whereby he and his crew of rowdy sea dogs sunk their own ships for a tidy profit. The only flaw in the plan: the Claw kept on murdering nosy reporters who got too interested in all the shipwrecks going on, and you know that the Press Guardian is going to show up to check something like that out. The Claw ended up in the drink again, presumed dead but with more of a question mark than before.

And that question mark was justified! Pep 009's Press Guardian adventure begins with he and his aide Cynthia Blake investigating an extremely suspicious want ad for "young, healthy women with no living relatives" and wouldn't you know it, it's the Claw again. He's been turning people into beast-men using animal hormone injections and he's decided to finally branch out into making beast-women. The Press Guardian is even less into this scenario than the others and wastes little time in beating everyone up and forcing the Claw to reveal the antidote to beast-manism. When last seen the one-handed villain is being chased down by a mob of former beast-men, with murderous intent. Surely the Claw has finally met his end?

No dice. The Claw returns one last time, in Pep Comics 010, with a knife-wielding green-skinned weirdo named the Goon in tow. The Goon and the Claw have been kidnapping women from a bit of cottage country called Rocky Point - has he gone back to making beast-women? Is he trying to ruin the Press Guardian's home paper, the Daily Express, who are involved in the development of the region somehow? No, he's trying to drive people off so that he can steal a radium deposit that's located on the land.

The Claw suffers a fairly ignominious defeat in the face of what can't have been a very hard kick from Cynthia Blake. For all that he's been tenacious, he's also always been very easily defeated and while in a real-world way I know that that is because the Press Guardian was a second-tier character with a smaller pagecount than a headliner like the Shield, in my heart of hearts I prefer to believe that he's just a scrawny little wiener. Or maybe it's because he hangs out in radium-filled caves all the time, who can say.

Though the Goon is captured, the Claw just scampers away, and since he isn't in what turns out to be the Press Guardian's final outing in Pep Comics 011, he's just... at large when all is said and done (though again: radium cave. The Claw might not have been troubling humanity for much longer after this particular escapade).

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 672: KARDO, THE MONSTER MAKER

(Masked Marvel 002, 1940)

Kardo, Maker of Monsters, is not quite a super-villain but that's about the closest thing to what he is and I'm not making up a new category for every guy who doesn't quite fit the existing ones. What is Kardo then, you ask? A world-famous scientist with the soul of a clown and a compulsion to make creatures and beasties - when we first meet him he is sharing a drink with his friends Dr Melvyn Hunt and Rosalind Rogers and reminiscing about all the trouble he caused the last time he made a monster.

The fact that Kardo is continuing with his experiments is revealed when he accepts delivery of a human foot, and even then his friends treat him like someone who needs an intervention for hoarding or medium-grade drugs instead of someone treading in realms man was not meant to.

Of course the monster wakes up unexpectedly and is hostile to all human life because why wouldn't it be. Kardo really earns my affection here by being a perfect straight man to the creature's "he's right behind me" routine.

Kardo rounds out his perfect combination of comedy villain traits by being a complete coward and leaving Hunt to battle the monster on his own.

Thus ends the intervention. We love you Kardo and that is why we have impaled your unholy creation on this fence. Now promise that you won't immediately relapse. *Kardo* is immediately considering how best source human brains*

God I love this man. He just can't stop making monsters!