MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 044 UPDATE: THE MASK 1941

Some highlights of the Mask's career c. 1941.

The Mask starts off 1941 with a bag, quite literally, as he attempts to blow up a munitions factory with FDR inside of it. (Whiz Comics 012, 1941)

He's at it again in the next issue, with another plot to kill FDR - this time by dropping a time bomb on the roof of the White House. He's an ambitious guy, the Mask. Fortunately for the President, he is also a guy who sets his bomb timers way to long, giving Spy Smasher plenty of time to defuse. (Whiz Comics 013, 1941)

In his second-to-last appearance, the Mask uses mind control technology in concert with a huge goon named Grosso, to capture US officials and force them to divulge government secrets before sending them off to kill themselves. 

This scheme is fairly air-tight and the Mask might have gotten away scot-free with a pocket full of secrets if he hadn't gotten too greedy and kidnapped Eve Corby in an attempt to learn Spy Smasher's secret identity from her. Spy Smasher shows up to prevent this and in the subsequent scuffle Grosso ends up in the hypno-chair, where he is given two commands: "kill Spy Smasher" and "Spy Smasher is the one in the white mask." The Mask is then seemingly flung to his death. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941)  

The next issue, however, we learn that he is alive after all! He is just very, very hurt! Despite this, the Mask captures Spy Smasher via ruse and finally learns his secret identity as Alan Armstrong! This is also incidentally the first time that we the reader learn that Armstrong is Spy Smasher, though as I have mentioned before he is literally the only possible suspect, assuming that he's not just some guy.

The Mask's next move must have felt like a real no-brainer at the time: using the new and improved mind control device (the Brain-o-Graph, natch) he turns the former champion of the US Government into its enemy. This works, and Spy Smasher becomes the wicked Smasher Spy (something he is only actually called a couple of times, but a useful way to differentiate the good and evil versions of the character so I'm using it), and will remain that way for a while. The Mask's triumph is tarnished somewhat by the fact that he went a little too hard on the brainwashing, meaning that he is the first victim of Smasher Spy's murderous rampage. Proper safety procedures while creating unstoppable killing machines: they're important. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 897: MR SKELETON

(America's Greatest Comics 001, 1941)

Mr Skeleton is one of the handful of minor super-villains who are foundational to this blog, the true weirdos who my mind turns to whenever the subject of obscure comic book characters comes up, and so it's a real relief  to have him finally hsow his face here. This will keep happening at least until we reach 1978 and train-themed super-villain Casey Jones appears here.

There are three really important aspects to Mr Skeleton that keep him in my thoughts:

1. Appearance 

He's a chalk-white, twelve to eighteen foot tall man with an emaciated frame, huge hands and feet and a real pumpkin head with the face of a cartoon villain. It's an extraordinary look, made even more so by his choice to dress in green trunks, a yellow halter top and a green cape. And he has eccentric facial hair!

It's a look that works well as both an over-the top campy cartoon villain and as a source of horror - just imagine that face looming out of the shadows at someone. 

2. Plans and Methods 

Mr Skeleton's goal, as far as it is articulated, is to conquer the United States, but he doesn't really get into the how and why of this because he is busy with step one: recruitment. 

Specifically, Mr Skeleton needs generals to lead an army against the US, and he has what he seems to think is a surefire method of recruiting them: he kidnaps them and threatens to skeletonize them. This is a tactic that would probably work on me.

Oddly, Mr Skeleton's first step in his attempted conquest is to assassinate FDR, a task which he assigns to his most shifty aide. Who fails, by the way, and is skeletonized for his trouble. But why attempt to massively destabilize the US government when you're still trying to recruit generals for your army of conquest? Honestly, MR Skeleton could probably benefit from a few kidnapped executive assistants. 

3. DEATH 

After being foiled by Minute-Man a couple of times, Mr Skeleton decides to get his recruitment program back on track in the most direct manner possible, by marching into the nearest Army camp and grabbing a fresh batch of generals. While he is doing so and simultaneously beating up the entire US Army, he is confronted by Minute-Man once again and ends up being smacked so hard that he turns into a kind of bone explosion. I guess he really was mostly just skeleton, however that works.

Obviously I believe with all my heart that they should bring back Mr Skeleton - his mixture of goofy and horrifying is always welcome in comics, battling Batman or Wild Dog or somone. You don't even have to stretch too far to have him come back since he was already some sort of skeleton-man: just put him back together. 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 879: THE DARK ANGEL

(Spy Smasher 001, 1941)

We've entered 1941 and the crypto-fascist spies are getting closer and closer to being just plain old Nazis. Case in point: the Dark Angel, a classic femme fatale spy with just enough plausible deniability to satisfy comics' compulsion to stay just barely technically politically neutral. 

The Dark Angel's name might be straight out of the mid-90s but her plans are 1941 all the way down. As the story opens she is sending two of her men to blow up a bridge and a factory and a bunch of soldiers, never imagining that Spy Smasher already has a comfortable vantage point to watch her give orders and thus is perfectly able to foil her schemes.

Not one to wallow in defeat, the Dark Angel manages to turn the tables on Spy Smasher by discovering his secret identity* of Allan Armstrong and ambushing him in his own home. It's honestly an impressive feat for a first-time-on-the-page villain!

*well, technically one of her minions goes out and discovers it but if "employing competent henchmen" isn't a key skill that many villains lack then what is it.

A combination of sadism and unrequited love/lust inspires the Dark Angel to keep Spy Smasher alive with the knowledge that she and her men are off to assassinate the President rather than execute him immediately. Unfortunately for her/ luckily for Spy Smasher, she isn't completely infallible in her choices of henchmen, as seen in the person of chosen Spy Smasher guard Fritzy, a drunken oaf who passes out almost immediately and whose body furnishes Spy Smasher with the knife he needs in order to escape.

Though the Dark Angel and her guys get inside the White House with shocking ease, only to find not Franklin Delano Roosevelt but Spy Alan Smasher sitting in the President's official comfy chair. Dark Angel and her guys are swiftly rounded up and chucked in jail and the fact that she and at least one of the guys knows his secret identity is just kind of ignored.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 713: MURDO

(Prize Comics 005, 1940) 

Having defeated the mad Racko over the course of three adventures, Jupiter and his pal Jim Johnson are ready for some variety in their lives. Well, too bad, because Racko's brother Murdo is out for revenge! His first move, kidnap Racko's former victim and Jim's current girlfriend Joan and put her in a test tube in her underwear.

ASIDE: I had been operating under the assumption that Racko was a last name but now I have to revise my worldview to include a set of parents who would name their children "Racko" and "Murdo".

Over all, Murdo is a lot less interesting than his brother, possibly because of his focus on revenge instead of wacky ways of harming NYC. If he does share one thing with Racko, it's a penchant for interesting hideouts - in his debut issue he is making his home under a lake in India that is stocked with octopuses, sharks and mermen. 

Murdo manages to capture Jim as well (and notably leaves him fully clothed when he puts him in a test tube) but turns out to be even less able to cope with an alien wizard than Racko was.

Jupiter doesn't even bother blowing Murdo up. He just piles some stuff on top of him.

Having not even been plausibly killed in his first appearance (and what an insult that is for the brother of the guy that Jupiter felt the need to blow up three separate times), Murdo is back next issue to try again, this time by using magnets to flip Jim Johnson's cab into a ditch. This is actually very advanced for a Golden Age villain - Murdo has learned that his chances of taking on Jupiter are low and so is starting out by getting the much easier revenge kill on Johnson. Sadly for both Murdo and Johnson's cab driver, the passenger compartment is the only part of the cab that survives.

Jupiter shows up and easily captures Murdo, but Murdo has had the good sense to have a henchman dress up as a cop and lurk nearby to "take the villain into custody." He then abandons his revenge plot entirely in favour of an attempt to take over the US by murdering the president. It's an astonishing display in light of the single-minded obsession that governs most super-villainous behaviour, folks. Unless world domination was Murdo's main thing to begin with and revenge was the distraction, of course.

Jupiter does not stand idly by and allow Franklin Delano Roosevelt to be murdered, of course, though he makes the unusual choice to destroy Murdo's henchmen and just... leave Murdo himself wandering around on the ground somewhere. It's a calculated insult!

The end-of-story blurb promises that next issue would see Murdo teaming up with his brother Racko and I for one think that that would be a fun time, as despite having chosen to go into the same field the two are actually quite different in their approaches to super-villainy, plus a little sibling rivalry never hurt the readability of any story. Sadly, though, Prize Comics 006 was Jupiter's final appearance, so while Murdo remains at large poor Racko is in a limbo-state, reportedly not dead but not confirmed alive. Very sad stuff.

REVENGE KILLING SCORE: 0/5 in two attempts each on Jupiter and Jim's lives and one on Joan's, Murdo got none of them. Abysmal.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 495: STENTOR

(Big Shot Comics 011, 1941)

Stentor is named after a character from the Iliad who was known to have an amazingly loud voice and from whom we derive the word "Stentorian". This is a real slap in the face to me, a mythology-obsessed kid who got a minor in Classics at university essentially by accident because I kept signing up for classes I found interesting. I have opinions on Greek heroes! I know who Philoctetes is! And yet Stentor, a guy who died in a shouting contest with Hermes, was unknown to me until today.

This Stentor has figured out some way of broadcasting his voice without use of obvious receiving equipment and is using it to harass FDR in hopes that he can get ahold of the entire USA.

By amazing coincidence, Skyman has been messing around with Rochelle salts in his lab, leading to the discovery that they are the secret to Stentor's technology (tl;dr on the Wikipedia article: they're crystals used in WWII-era A/V gear).

Skyman fully figures out Stentor's tech and starts razzing him, leading to our first view of the man. I must say I appreciate a super-villain who arranges to spend his entire scheme sitting down.

 

Don't worry about Stentor being a one-trick pony: he is in fact a two-trick pony, as he also has the capacity to cause Rochelle salts to explode, a capacity he employs in an attempt on the life of the President using a cunningly-placed Rochelle salt fish castle, surely one of the most ignoble ways for a world leader to be assassinated.

Stentor is at heart the kind of little weenie nerd who would pull an obscure mythological character to name himself after rather than calling himself the Voice like all of his peers, so once Skyman tracks him down he's swiftly wedgied into custody. Note also that Skyman has the same "ick no, girl cooties" reaction to being smooched as Golden Age Superman.

In conclusion: I like him! His technology is weird and niche and he manages to use it anyway. Plus I got to learn about a mythological guy I didn't know about! (EDIT: Looks like he was in an Assassin's Creed game a couple-three years ago. I am late to the Knowing About Stentor party)