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 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 171: THE VOICE

(Bulletman 001, 1940)

There is a pretty broad swath of the super-villain community (and an even larger cohort of generic costumed villains) who have the common origin of being respectable members of society who need a second identity to head a gang or catburgle or do murders under the guise of.

The gang leaders tend to stick to a few different styles of dress: there's the domino mask wearers, the executioners-style hood guys and the more cautious head-to-toe robe wearers. The Voice here is part of a very specific type of these guys who only appear in silhouette - not particularly common, probably because it ends up tying them pretty thoroughly to a specific locale.

The Voice doesn't have too much to distinguish him: he's running for district attorney and making a lot of political hay out of all the crimes being committed by the gang he himself is running. The really unusual thing about him is that he and his gang find out Bulletman's secret identity over the course of the story and then... nothing. They go to jail, with none of the usual mind-wipes, elaborate deceptions or gruesome deaths that usually ensure that those who learn a hero's secrets do not retain them. Just between 4 and 10 hardened crooks nursing that knowledge as they are taken away by the police. Remarkable stuff!