GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 024

None of these guys are ever going to be in a movie. 

It's been a while since we've seen any masked cowboys, so here's a particularly well-dressed bunch about to have a scrap with the Rio Kid. He doesn't get the upper hand in this particular encounter, but by gum he eventually brings rancher John Wendel and his whole gang of rustlers to justice. (Thrilling Comics 002, 1940)

Likewise, it's been a while since we've seen a masked Nazi spy, and even though we only get one panel of X-5 aka Captain Clarke here, he fits the bill as he arranges to frame Tom Niles, the Undersea Raider, for espionage. (Thrilling Comics 006, 1940) 

This completely unnamed masked killer is actually Violet Parsons, who has an especially poor reaction to being cut out of her father's will: she murders her brothers Frank and Henry and tries to pin the killings on her insane brother Robert. She is ultimately undone by the fact that a person, even one who has had a nervous breakdown, won't automatically turn into a ravening beast man if you lock them in a room until they grow a long beard. The Woman in Red triumphs once more. (Thrilling Comics 008, 1940)

Someone has been murdering everyone who stays in the De Luxe Suite of the Hotel Metropolis, and the Woman in Red is on the case. The murderer turns out to be Mr Bascom, the hotel manager who used to be the hotel's owner, who couldn't stand to see the hotel's new owner make a success out of a business he failed at. He only shows up in this mask for a few panels, but I would like to point out it's unusual length, required so as to cover up Bascom's mustache. (Thrilling Comics 009, 1940)

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 023

Some real gems here tonite. 

Executed gangster Black Morger's four identical sons reconvene twenty-five years after their father's execution to seek revenge on the four people who they consider to be responsible for his death (and for that of their mother, who had some sort of rage-induced heart attack at the instant of Black Morger's demise). To their credit, they manage to kill two of them before the Spirit butts in and foils their plot. 

REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 2/4 (The Spirit, "The Morger Boys", 18 August, 1940) 

Waxy Morgan is a gang boss with the bright idea to commit crimes while dressed as the Spirit so as to throw suspicion off of himself and his men. This goes poorly for him. (The Spirit, "The Spirit! Who is He?", 13 October, 1940)

 

This unnamed villain deduces Lady Luck's secret identity by the simple trick of being the only one in the city capable of visualizing a lady in a hat. But though he has this unimaginable deductive power his people skills are lacking, and he fails both to convince Lady Luck to help him kill rich guys and to predict that his huge servant Tortu might eventually tire of being beaten with a whip and subsequently totally pulverize him. (The Spirit Section, 3 November, 1940)

When Mr Mystic has a ski accident in the Carpathian Mountains, he ends up being cared for in an idyllic village that has been cut off from the outside world for 700 years, but which has one major problem: a horrible ogre who lives in the mountains above and demands the sacrifice of one maiden per year or else he will wipe the place off the map with a well-placed avalanche. What's worse, this year the Ogre has demanded a red-haired maiden and the village is fresh out. And what's worse, Mr Mystic's red-haired friend Penny Douglas has just wandered into town. 

Anyway, the Ogre turns out to just be some creep hermit who likes making the village kill women for some reason. He manages to yeet himself off the side of a mountain while trying to murder Mr Mystic. (The Spirit Section, 29 December, 1940) 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 814: SARKU

(The Spirit Section, 25 August, 1940)

I've mentioned before that the foes faced by magical Golden Age super-heroes break down into roughly three types: 1) regular crooks who are there to be clowned upon, 2) legitimate threats with equivalent magical power of their own and 3) crooks with a little magical power, who provide a Iof a challenge but are ultimately also clowned upon. Sarku is the third type, and has set out, fresh out of prison, to get revenge on those who put him there. Also, like all magic users in "Mr Mystic," Sarku has an innate resistance to magic that makes even low-level practicioners more of a challenge to Our Hero than they would be to a Zatara or a Yarko.

By the time Mr Mystic has been brought in on the case, Sarku has already murdered the (police?) Commissioner of the unnamed Indian city he was incarcerated in and escaped via some handy teleportation magic. Though Mystic interrupts his attempt on the life of the French Consul, Sarku escapes again, this time into the far future world of 2050 AD.

(just what had prevented him from time travelling or indeed merely teleporting out of his prison cell over the ten years of his incarceration is not elaborated upon. Perhaps he only just got the knack)

Sarku does a bit of premature gloating before learning that Mr Mystic can also travel through time, and the two are quickly engaged in a high-speed rocket chase to the Moon. 

Mystic ends up shooting Sarku down as they approach the Moon's surface, and he makes the grim choice to pop his corpse into a handy corpse container (originally intended for the evocatively-named by alas never-seen "Moon King's mummy") as a sort of general warning to all would-be murderers who might be wandering around on the Moon. That's it for Sarku!

But perhaps I spoke too soon! Sarku is back in the next "Mr Mystic" installment, and though we don't get to see any mummies, we are treated to a Moon King, as a not-so-dead Sarku is brought before Tan Tan, King of the Moon by his subjects. It turns out that he wasn't quite dead when Mr Mystic shoved him in that tube, which is great for him now but horrifying in retrospect.

Tan Tan turns out to have a weird crush on the (to him) historical figure of Elena, former Mr Mystic villain and current Mr Mystic fiance (stay tuned for her entry), and trades Sarku a space fleet for her.

Sarku's attempt to get revenge on the entire population of Earth for a 1930-1940 AD prison sentence that almost nobody in 2050 AD would have been alive at the same time as, let alone had anything to do with, is foiled once again by Mr Mystic, who leaves nothing to chance this time as he socks Sarku out the spaceship's hatch and into the void of space (Tan Tan, by contrast gets a mere sock in the jaw for his creepy Elena-napping. The perks of royalty, eh?).

REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 1/2+

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 739: THE AVENGER

(Smash Comics 003, 1939 - Smash Comics 012, 1940) 

The Avenger is a cottage-industry villain, which is a term I just made up for particular kind of villain that you saw a fair amount in the Golden Age and then again in 1980s cartoons, wherein battling and thwarting them is the sole focus of a hero's career - see also Mr H and the Conqueror.

The Avenger is also a revenge-focused villain: he is really Jim Rowan, a man who was swindled out of an unspecified invention decades earlier and now seeks to ruin and murder the thirteen men who did the swindling and have since grown wealthy off of it. This is a pretty reasonable motivation for revenge, and the Avenger might even have managed to come across as a somewhat sympathetic figure if he gave even one single damn about who else he might harm or kill in pursuit of his quest. His various schemes:

- bankrupt airline owner Carter by blowing up his passenger planes mid-flight

- murder electric company owner Amos Reid and frame his son George for the crime

- ruin railroad owner Edgar Karr by wrecking his trains

- incite mob violence against drug manufacturer Roger Carlin by tainting his products and distributing them to the poor

- just some low-effort murder attempts against group member Albert Mills

- ruin Rolls the bus company owner by stealing his buses, passengers and all 

- attempt to murder industrialist Roger O. Gates directly (but mistakenly kill a man who looks like him)

- blow up the munitions factory of Mr Arms

There's also a threat by the Avenger against nonspecific industrialist Albert Lewis that turns out to be bogus because Lewis has been imprisoned and impersonated by Rowan/the Avenger in order to aid his plan to destroy the others. The "death threat" is in actuality a ruse to get detective John Law alone and kill him. This leads to the discovery of another revenge scheme:

- lock Albert Lewis up in an insane asylum and take his place while acting as the Avenger, thus not only framing him but leaving him somewhere where he can't even tell anyone about it or be counted as even more insane

None of these schemes actually succeed, however, because the 13 men have hired scientist/lawyer/detective John Law (aka the Scientective) to discover just who is targeting them and why. Like fellow Henry Campbell creations Wizard Wells and Dean Denton, Law is a scientific genius who uses his knowledge and inventions to further his crusade against crime. He never quite gets ahead of the Avenger, but he's cagey enough to thwart his schemes before they can reach murderous fruition. Except for Amos Reid's murder, of course, because that was the first step in a plan to ruin Reid's legacy. And that one innocent man who died, that was a shame. The dozens of people who died on Carter's planes don't count, of course, because that happened before Law was hired. Look, the important thing is that twelve wealthy men were saved from facing the consequences of their actions.

The Avenger/John Law stories are entertaining stuff but nothing to write home about, mostly because both characters tend to employ what was cutting-edge or unusual science c.1940 that today is either unremarkable (remote controlled aircraft, thermite, dry ice) or is still a bit sci-fi seeming (magnetic levitation, increasing the skin's permeability via ultrasound) but all of it is applied in this very dry, matter-of-fact, everyone-is-wearing-a-suit way that drains some of the wonder and majesty from the proceedings.

A couple of interesting things about the Avenger:

 

The Avenger isn't a habitual costume wearer but he does throw on a hood a couple of times and I thought I'd showcase that. I prefer the red one!

This deathtrap, which involves a rapidly-spinning propeller and a strobe light synched to its movements to create the illusion of a stationary bar, is very fun and unique! Strobe lights! Very futuristic!

Also fun: Law's method for discovering the identity of the Avenger. He has thirteen phone lines installed, each with its own unique number, and gives one to each of his thirteen suspects. He then issues a provocative statement to the press and simply waits to see which phone rings when the Avenger calls to yell at him. This is, frankly, an amazing hack for any situation involving multiple suspects.

I can only assume that the Avenger's death came as a direct result of the series being discontinued - John Law, up to this point a fairly nonviolent man, abruptly shifts gears and blows the villain out of the skies with his own drone bomb. It's an ignominious end to be sure.

REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 1/13 - a pretty poor showing, due mostly to the Avenger's desire to draw out his targets' suffering. If he had gone for the kill straight away he might have done a bit better.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 733: THE PANTHER

(Silver Streak Comics 004, 1940)

The Panther! A murderous thief with a very cool look and a vicious set of claws! Well, okay, he does compliment his cool panther mask, panther paw gloves and shoes and pantherskin shirt with a pair of brown slacks so I'll amend that to a mostly cool look. 

Moderately cool looking or not, the Panther has been doing his crimes in the nonspecific New York-esque city that Ace Powers calls home and so Ace is on the case!

And Ace Powers turns out to be the guy for the job, because he immediately figures out the Panther is in fact an unnamed asylum escapee who went mad after his face was mangled in a car accident. What he fails to intuit, to his detriment, is that the panther mask isn't just for show but is armour plated - in his surprised state after his best haymaker fails to make an impact, Powers is nearly slashed to death by the Panther's also-functional claws. 

The Panther's reign of terror comes to an end when, after a rooftop chase across a flaming building, he proves that armour plating is not a good protection against fall damage by landing square on his armoured face and instantly dying.

What's this? Could it be that all of that "armour can't protect you from a fall" talk was mere propaganda courtesy of Big Parachute? Evidently so, because in the next issue of Silver Streak Comics the Panther turns out to be Just Fine. Better, even, because he demonstrates some pretty advanced super-villain thinking by setting out to avoid the mistakes of the past by recruiting some manpower (fellow inmates at the same asylum he had previously escaped from) for backup the next time he had to face Ace Powers.

The Panther Men (as they are called) are a terrific addition to the Panther's operation. First of all, I love any group of henchmen who are dressed in a junior version of their boss' outfit, though the colourist has obfuscated the fact that that is the case here by rendering what is pretty clearly still their inmates' uniforms as a golden brown. More importantly, the Panther's somewhat-goofy open-mouthed mask looks fantastic when quadrupled - just look at that panel where they're all sneaking up on Ace Powers yet perfectly farmed in a mirror for proof.

The Panther Men prove to be effective backup for the Panther (aka the Panther Man at this point) - they capture Ace Powers and take him back to their weird little shed HQ to dispose of him, and he only manages to escape being buried alive by surprising the lot of them and knocking them into his would-be grave.

But the saga of the Panther is not quite over yet! When the police dig up the crooks (did I mention that the shed had collapsed on top of the hole after the various Panther Men had fallen in it? be cause it had) in Silver Streak Comics 006, they find only the bodies of the three Panther Men, with no sign of the Panther himself.

Examining the hole, Powers discovers a secret door that leads to the underground lair of future subject the Spook, who turns out to be the Panther's boss, which I suppose makes the Panther Men some sort of subcontractors? This is very fun! While having the villain turn out to be working for an even greater villain isn't a guaranteed win as far as plot twists go, it works here, even if it was clearly 100% made up when *checks credits* Harry Anderson sat down to draw this comic. 

This is, alas, the end for the poor Panther, as the Spook is one of those terrible super-villain bosses who murder their employees for failing them, in this case for not managing to kill Ace Powers. The Panther meets his end at the blades of a triple swinging pendulum deathtrap, and although that's not a particularly rare style of comic book murder machine this might just be the first time I've seen one take someone out, so that's a final achievement for out boy.

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.