MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 081

Lev Gleason characters filling every available ecological niche over here. 

Thun-Dohr:

We've seen it before and we'll see it again: Thun-Dohr (Thun-dohr?) is a white guy brought up in the traditions of a Tibetan monastery and he's just the best dang mystic anyone's ever seen, much better than all those Tibetan monks could ever be. 

Like Iron Fist, the 1970s version of this character archetype, Thun-Dohr was orphaned when his parents succumbed to the elements while attempting to reach the fabled monastery. Baby Thun-Dohr (and I can no longer think of new ways to ask why these people brought their baby along on this super dangerous expedition) was found and brought to safety by the monks, who acclaimed him as some sort of prophesied kid. 

Thanks to his training in "the arts of the Gom-Pa," Thun-Dohr has a wide variety of mystic powers, including invisibility, teleportation, invulnerability to a variety of environmental conditions, the ability to see the last moments of a person's life in their corpse's eyes, astral projection and so on and so forth. He also has a mystical bracelet that allows him to remain in mental contact with the 300+ year-old Dalai Lama (not the one you're thinking of) who raised him as he goes out into the world to battle evil (i.e., the other guy from the same monastery who is attempting to end the world - could've used a prophecy telling them not to let him in, amirite?). (Silver Streak Comics 013, 1941)

Categorized in: Day Jobs (Lamas), Elements (Thunder), Origin (Mystic Traditions)

Undercover Man:

Police Detective Phil Barrows is unpopular at the Centre Street Homicide Department due to his habit of working alone (I think? Nobody seems to like him and this is the only stated reason why) so what does he do? Create a secondary identity called the Undercover Man so that he can work even more alone while adopting a variety of disguises. During his one published adventure he takes down corrupt politician Eduardo Donati and while I'm not normally one to critique someone's decision to adopt a costumed identity I think he probably could have done it as a regular cop if he'd tried to. (Captain Battle Comics 001, 1941)

Categorized in: Day Jobs (Police Detective), Powers (Master of Disguise), Professions (Law Enforcement)

Blackout: 

Blackout is the new name adopted by Dr Basil Brusiloff after he is mutated by chemicals randomly mixed together during a Nazi air raid on the hospital in which he is working. Unlike many other super-heroes who undergo physical transformations, Brusiloff's new, jet-black form appears to be a permanent change and not something that he can switch on and off.

Blackout is able to fly at speed comparable to a fighter plane, but his main power is the ability to emit a thick black smoke from his pores, the specificity of which somehow makes it seem more gross than a smoke power usually does.

In addition to being opaque, this smoke is thick enough to suffocate someone in an unventilated environment (this is also gross. Huff my gas, miscreants!). Blackout is able to direct this smoke and even shape it to some degree (such as when he forms a long tunnel out of it to shield fleeing civilians from Nazi eyes), but most remarkably is able to emit it in large enough quantities that at one point he escapes a sealed room by bursting the walls through sheer air pressure.

Aside from his powers, there are two remarkable things about Blackout: firstly, his origin takes place in Belgrade, which makes him the first in what is sure to be a pretty short list of Yugoslavian superhumans. Secondly, Blackout is the subject of some very minor debate vis-a-vis just how hairy/furry he is, with the two sides boiling down to "the text never says he's hairy so it must just be something else" versus "he looks very hairy." I am inclined to side with the latter side. He looks very hairy!

Related to the hairiness question is a third interesting thing about Blackout: it is quite possible that he is completely nude, aside from that stylish green mask. (Captain Battle Comics 001, 1941)

Categorized in: Activities (Blackouts), Colours (Black), Origin (Chemical Mutates)

Nightro: 

Nightro is Hugh Goddard, a scientist who was betrayed and left to die by his associates after they found a rich radium deposit in Alaska and Goddard expressed his desire to donate it to medical research, and though I do have some sympathy for his partners' position that as the expedition's financial backers they should see some profit from the mine they resort to murder a bit too quickly for my tatse. Surely this is a case for the courts!

If you look Nightro up online, odds are that you will be told that he is blinded by the ambient radiation from the deposit. This is not true! What actually happens is that he wanders around in the snow until he is found by some helpful Inuit fellows and ends up with an extreme case of snow-blindness. Radiation doesn't even come up.

Goddard eventually makes his way back to the US, where a Dr Frank Miller (!) discovers that polarized lenses will allow him to see. Unlike his blind super-hero contemporaries the Mask and Dr Mid-Nite, Nightro does not appear to have any kind of enhanced dark vision. Instead, his stated reason for adopting a costumed alias is that his goggles are too ugly for him to be accepted in polite society.

Goddard continues to live as a blind man as part of maintaining his secret identity as Nightro, meaning that from his second appearance onward he has a seeing eye dog companion named Blackie. He is called the "Streamlined Robinhood," supposedly because he takes money from crooks and redistributed it to the needy - I reckon that it's just a way to attach a buzzword to the character - if he had debuted tenyears later he might've been "the Jet Age Robinhood."  (Daredevil Comics 002, 1941)

Categorized in: Accessories (Dogs), Locations (Temporal), Origins (Blind Characters)

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 030

I seal up the cracks but the dang things keep getting in. 

Klang is your classic rejected-and-shunned-by-society-due-to-his-appearance villain, who has channelled his bitterness into inventions such as heat rays and the explosive Super X-X Nitro Glycerine, which he secretes in the bottle of christening champagne in order to destroy the Navy's newest battleship. Just how this is meant to bring him closer to his goal of becoming the dictator of America is left unexplored, as it draws the heroic Navy goofballs Spark Stevens and Chuck Dawson into his orbit and ultimately leads to Klang himself getting blown up. (Wonderworld Comics 014, 1940)

Astonishingly, Klang manages to return for a second kick at the can in Wonderworld Comics 016, but spoils his own chances at destroying the US fleet and conquering a weakened US by attempting to get revenge on Spark and Chuck at the same time. They of course manage to bumble their way free of Klang's trap and blow him up again, this time for good.

Though Klang does in fact die in the second explosion, his daughter Madam Klang survives and continues to vex Spark and Chuck. Madam Klang carries on the family tradition of attempting to take over the US, and in her first solo appearance does a little bit of spying for the Axis as a way of raising funds toward that goal. Though her employers end up being captured by Spark and Chuck, she actually manages to get away with the money, in a rare win for the Klang clan. (Wonderworld Comics 017, 1940)

Madam Klang's final appearance involves a joint attempt to get revenge on Spark and Chuck and also steal the plans for a remote controlled bomber from the US Navy during manoeuvres in the Philippines. Her plans fail mostly because she is a truly terrible boss who kills people for failure. Please note the special font chosen for her suicide panel that indicates that she is doing so for Inscrutable Asian reasons, and also her dying speech about how great the USA is and how the current political norm is the best one, boys and girls. (Wonderworld Comics 018, 1940) 

This here Snake Cult is extremely generic as far as comic book cults go. They spend all episode running around Madras (aka Chennai if you care about accuracy) killing or attempting to kill people for interfering in their affairs but never actually going into what those affairs are. Probably the most interesting thing about the whole adventure is that the king cobras employed (and presumably worshipped) by the cult are consistently referred to by the archaic name of hamadryads, which is already weird to anyone who knows a little Greek mythology, but is then made weirder by the fact that it is misspelled as hamdryad, which is of course some sort of pork nymph. (Wonderworld Comics 018, 1940)

A spy chief so generic that I can't even tell you for certain if he's supposed to be a fascist or not, the Head operates out of a Swiss castle and is primarily concerned with learning the secret of K-51's secret super-power powders. I do appreciate the juxtaposition of the triangular eyeholes with the triangular forehead symbol on his outfit, but other than that this guy is strictly HO-HUM. (Wonderworld Comics 018, 1940)

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 748: THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME

(Smash Comics 012, 1940)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is just that, a modern version of the fictional character, and seemingly just as damaged by society as his predecessor. He is manipulated into working as an assassin for Madame Doom, who is in Paris (presumably on behalf of the Nazis) to disrupt peace talks helmed by US Ambassador Blank but is being effectively countered by the Black X and so must operate through a deniable dupe asset.

Just what the deal is with the Hunchback is down to three distinct possibilities, all fairly equally outlandish, but all are predicated on the fact that Notre Dame has a hunchbacked bellringer in 1940, like it's a prerequisite for the job. The possibilities:

1. That the people of Paris are correct in their belief that this Hunchback of Notre Dame is a direct descendant of Quasimodo, the original, which would imply not only that Quasimodo had a child at some point but that his physical condition was one which was passed down through a line of bellringers for almost 500 years.

2. Similar to Possibility 1. Quasimodo has a child, but in this case, the Hunchback of Notre Dame Gene is recessive and his descendants are not generationally indentured cathedral slaves. This latest member of the family would thus be reviving an old tradition by being a delusional misfit urban legend.

3. The citizens of Paris are credulous fools and all hunchbacked bellringers are not, in fact, related. In this scenario we must assume that it's the job that is so terrible that it drives these poor men mad.

Regardless of his actual origin, the Hunchback meets his end after attacking Black X in a jealous rage over Madame Doom's affections. Riddled with bullets, he falls to his death. Black X is still horny for Madame Doom at this point, so she is allowed to leave.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 718: MASK

(Samson 001, 1940)

Mask here has a fairly ordinary set of plans and goals, for Masked Criminal levels of ordinary. His associate Dr Dag has developed a super-germ and his other associate Ko has control of a death cult, and he is going to use the latter to deliver the former to a number of nearby cities as revenge for tossing him out on his ear. Plus he's going to loot once the cities are cleared out by disease, but that's just good business. Like I said, regular stuff.

The really interesting things about Mask are... etymological? in nature. Firstly, as you might have noticed he has no "the" on his name. He's just Mask, and considering the fact that we have already encountered seven separate fellows called the Mask (and four more the [Adjective] Masks), it's a surprisingly simple way to stand out among the maskèd crowd!

The other thing is in regards to Mask's ally Ko, high priest of Lalore - Lalore is as far as I can tell a made-up god, in keeping with the vaguely pan-Asian setting of the story. However, Lalore's cult fanatics are called Thugs, which is a new one on me. Thuggees/ Thugs are a real historical group (albeit one of which basically every aspect is seemingly the subject of hot scholarly debate) and a fairly popular bunch to dust off as stock villains, but a real key part of their charter is that they worship the goddess Kali. This is the first time that I can recall seeing Thug used as a kind of generic term for a cult murderer.

Too bad for Mask (and Dr Dag and Ko and all the nameless cultists) Samson and David just happen to be travelling through the same vaguely Subcontinental area that they are plotting and scheming in and they live in a temple city so there are a lot of pillars around. Sure enough, Samson does the thing that he's best known for doing and kills basically everyone. Tough luck, Mask.

MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 013

Progress! Science! 

It's blood that this nameless inventor wants, blood to make his super fuel! Too bad for him that he chose to steal it from US Marine Strut Warren because he ends up extremely dead for his efforts (and the world remains dependant on fossil fuels. Thanks, Strut). (Fight Comics 003, 1940)

Professor Pierre Villon, refugee from the Paris Medical Academy, has set himself up on a tropical island to further his scientific research into making human/animal hybrids. His method of acquiring test subjects by knocking aircraft out of the sky with an engine killing ray attracts the attention of Chip Collins of the Skull Squadron, and Villon ends up perishing at the hands, claws and teeth of his own creations. (Fight Comics 008, 1940)

Professor Gustoff's one interest is in administering his mutagenic fluid to people to turn them into "weird creatures", aka bald guys with webbed hands and feet.He sets his sights too high when he tries to creaturize South Sea adventurer Shark Brodie and ends up beat up and presumably in some sort of colonial penal system. And the worst part? The poor weird creatures aren't even fully amphibious - they all end up drowning. (Fight Comics 009, 1940)

This is Dr Wratt, who lives on an isolated island populated by hypnotically controlled man-apes. He kidnaps Kaänga's love interest Ann Mason for what I can only assume are weird creep reasons, based mostly on the fact that Wratt's outfit consists of a short lab smock and nothing else. (Jungle Comics 002, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 641: ONE-EYE

(Fantastic Comics 013, 1940) 

One-Eye is a stylish fellow with a real bone to pick with humankind, who have apparently rejected him for the heinous sin of Having Only One Eye, I guess? Unless having a widow's peak and a long waxed mustache are considered disfigurements? I suppose that cultural mores do change over time and it is 8000 years in the future... in any case, the point is that he's upset at the world and has decided to kill humanity off.

To that end, One-Eye has gathered together a collection of generic mutants, all of whom are more interesting looking than him (and one of whom appears to be wearing some shockingly high-cut booty shorts).

Among these recruits is this "giant devil-octopus" which a) has six arms, b) appears to be made of human skin and c) is the most unsettling thing I've seen in a comic in a long time.

By contrast Kuga the man-eating giant cat is a walk in the park, a beauty to behold! Plus it is stuck in a too-small room so that One-Eye can drop people down a trap door in his office and have them slide directly into its mouth. Barely threatening at all!

Ultimately Sub Saunders beats up the mutants, blows up One-Eye's undersea base and hands him over to the authorities.