Showing posts with label scientific vampirism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scientific vampirism. Show all posts

Monday, February 19, 2024

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 454: THE GREEN TERROR

(Mystic Comics v1 001, 1940)

The Green Terror gets off on the right foot with me, let me tell you. Sure he's a mysterious figure who sends goons out to kidnap healthy young New Yorkers for unknown but surely sinister purposes, but those goons are dressed in green costumes and drive around in a green car with a green smokescreen and if there's one thing I love, my friend, it's a villain who sticks to a theme.

The Green Terror is opposed by super-sleuth trio the Three Xs and well... I groused a while back about Marvel Comics fans constantly overwriting their own history and the Three Xs might just be the best recent example of that. Up until 2019 this was their only appearance and their entry on any given fan website probably read like that final panel: 1X is the leader, 2X the brains and 3X the muscle. Then Marvel Comics #1000 came out and did a really great, fun job of bringing together disparate and unconnected bits of Marvel Universe lore - the Three Xs were also the Scientists' Guild from the Human Torch's origin were also the Enclave who created Adam Warlock etc, and they were engaged in a generations-long scheme involving the Eternity Mask which was, it turns out, worn by everyone from the Operative to the Thunderer to the Masked Raider.

And like I said: this is all great! It's a fun way for a forgotten bit of comics lore to come back into focus! I just wish that there wasn't such a tendency for more recent information to overwrite what came before.

Grumbling aside, the Three Xs get jumped by a bunch of the Green Terror's goons, then track them to an ocean liner and get jumped again, leading to them being captured. On purpose, or so they claim.

(the Green Terror's lieutenant really going for it here "Ah! More guests for the blood feast!" indeed)

The blood feast in question involves draining the blood out of the kidnap victims in order to... inject? feed? it to this tall green hunk of jerky. Honestly, most information about the Green Terror is going to be speculative due to the fact that he's a classic blowhard of a villain who yammers on and on about how great he is. If you take him at his word he's an immortal superman who absorbs strength from the blood of his victims. On the face of the evidence, he's a green guy with a blood fetish. The truth lies somewhere in between.


Obviously any villain who can convincingly deliver the line "the Green Terror will always be the strongest man in the Universe!" about half a page before being punched out and apprehended is my kind of bad guy and should be BRUNG BACK post haste. Is he exactly the same or is he a withered green husk after 80-odd years in prison? Just how much blood will he steal and how much trash will he talk while doing so? I want to see it!

OR! Since the Three Xs eventually became the Enclave etc of Adam Warlock fame perhaps they acquired the Green Terror from the authorities as part of their research into superhumanity. He's floating in a tube in an abandoned lab right now after having his weird hair harvested to make cocoons or something and all he needs is for the right dummy to break in to steal the copper wiring to set him free!

Thursday, December 7, 2023

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 392: THE GREEN MEN

(More Fun Comics 068, 1941)

The Green Men are little alien bigheads who rock up to our Solar System one day in their mobile planet and start siphoning life from the people of New Jersey in order to create a life-extension fluid. To this end, they depopulate at least three entire cities before being stopped, which is cool and dramatic as a bit of villainy and plays merry hell with the idea of a unified comics continuity: whither the monuments to the people of Lakehurst, Brent City and Memphis Beach? 

(of course it's hard to estimate exactly how many people that is, but as the low end of what can be called a city is generally agreed to be around 1500 we're talking 4500 people at minimum)

There's a lot of running around and malarky by both the Green Men and the Spectre - the green ray guns and bighead mental powers that they use on him are able to disable but not kill him, while he spends a long time trying and failing to shoot their planet into a star - but ultimately the Spectre engages in a good old ironic punishment and traps them in a little ball for all eternity. How's the extended lifespan now?

DEMONIC ROUND-UP 003

Two shorts and two longs. Bajah : Minor Golden Age Marvel magician Dakor has to travel all the way to the fictional Indian kingdom of Nordu ...