MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 953: THE COUPLE KILLER

(Daredevil Comics 006, 1941)

New York's dating scene is in trouble, as courting couples are being murdered at a blazing clip: six couples in two weeks as the story begins and a seventh just one page in - that's fourteen people! That's a person a day! On average!

Nightro is on the case, but merely patrolling the parks and other canoodling spots is a bust as the killer knows to look out for costumed vigilantes and even leaves a taunting note with the bodies of the unfortunate Mert and Rita. 

Nightro's next move is to set up a sting, featuring him in a dress alongside a dummy boyfriend that he can "make love to," and here I must pause to say that the physical transformation achieved by the Streamlined Robinhood by merely putting on a dress is phenomenal, no matter what kind of shaping undergarments he has on. He goes from a fairly beefy superdude to a slender woman who might be a few inches shorter than he is normally, despite wearing high heels. His face changes shape! This is a Bugs Bunny-level crossdress, is what I'm saying, which means that once the Couple Killer takes the bait he is immediately attracted to the disguised Nightro and so leaves himself open to a left hook.

There's a full page of Nightro beating up the Couple Killer, which is a lot for a five pages story but you just have to get as much mileage as you can out of having your hero in a dress when it's 1941 and that it the height of comedy.

So, after all that bloodshed and gender-bending, just what was the Couple Killer's motivation? Turns out that he is actually a fellow known as Lonesome Larry, a known arsonist and misogynist who just got dumped and went "a little loco" and killed fourteen people. It's not quite a "boys will be boys" situation but these cops sure do give him a lot more grace than he deserves.

Categorized in: Crime (Killers), Ideology (Misogynists), Murder (Serial Killers)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 934: THE LADY KILLER

(Silver Streak Comics 012, 1941)

The Lady Killer makes his debut at the glamorous Crane Club, in which he attacks and nearly kills rising stage star Betty Crawford and takes a moment to grandstand a bit before making his escape. The name is a somewhat presumptuous one here, given the fact that he has yet to kill a lady.

He makes up for this over the next few days as he murders a whopping fourteen women and injures a similar number of people and leaves a "Lady Killer" calling card at the scene of each crime. Though this is a fast turnaround on murder, I think that technically he is a serial rather than spree killer as he seems to be choosing his victims rather than attacking targets of opportunity - it's just that his pool of potential victims is so huge that he can kill whenever he feels like it.

Presto Martin eventually lays hands on the Lady Killer in his usual manner, through disguise. Specifically, by announcing that the villain will reappear at the Crane Club and then impersonating him there at the appointed time, and sure enough, the Lady Killer's ego is too great to allow this imposture to stand and he gets within range of the detective's fists and has his big hat knocked off.

This is the point at which a mystery story would pay off and one of the suspects would be unmasked, but the thing about this story is that there are no suspects. Like, literally none - the only named characters in the comic other than Presto and his supporting cast are Betty Crawford and her beau and they are the only ones who it couldn't be. Instead the Lady Killer is just Some Guy who had a very bad breakup and lost all his money and decided to take it out on an entire gender instead of dealing with his issues in a more mature manner. As a fan of a mystery I feel robbed.

Categorized in: Crime Theme (Killers), Language (Expressions), Murder (Serial Killers)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 924: MOLO

(Silver Streak Comics 008, 1941)

A killer stalks the entertainment industry! Prominent  people are being murdered, including Academy Award winner Kay Kaye, opera singer Lily Donela and Dick Bradley, recent recipient of the Nobel Prize for "the best play of the year" which I suppose would be for literature? And also very impressive because the Nobel Prize was suspended in 1941 due to the war?

In total, nine luminaries of the stage and screen have been killed as the story opens and all have been found with a note reading "Death by Molo." 

The next projected target is playwright Bruce Canton, who is about to be honoured with a banquet. Enter Presto Martin, master of disguise, who poses as Canton and rounds up Molo with little effort. Case closed, the day is saved, etc.

There's just one problem: Canton is murdered at the banquet, complete with calling card, and the witnesses identify the man in Martin's lockup as the culprit.

A little of the ol' disguise routine from Presto determines that the Molo in police custody has a twin brother who is hell-bent on continuing the murder spree. This means that Martin has to dress up like the logical next victim again and act as bait for a killer again, ho hum. The second Molo is captured with ease and thrown into jail with his brother.

And just why were the Molos so hell-bent on murdering successful figures in the entertainment industry anyway? Why, because they themselves were failures back in the dying days of Vaudeville and they just couldn't take seeing other people make it. 

THE SUPER-VILLAINS OF HOLLYWOOD PODCAST: One of the least successful episodes in the history of the show. The hosts take the bizarre approach of treating the Molo brothers as victims of the entertainment system and among other things demonstrate that they don't really know what Vaudeville is. Rumours that the podcast was threatened with a lawsuit by the estate of Kay Kaye are unconfirmed, but the episode was quietly removed from the archive after a few months.

Categorized in: Murder (Serial Killers), Origin (Twins), the Super-Villains of Hollywood Podcast

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 877: TWISTO THE RUBBER MAN

(Zip Comics 009, 1940) 

The Tingling Bros Circus is in trouble! Someone has been killing the performers, mid-act, with throwing knives, and it has caused enough financial disruption to the show that owner Jack Tingling is on the verge of bankruptcy!

As you might have surmised from the fact that this entry is about him, the person responsible for the murders is sideshow attraction Twisto the Rubber Man, and we'll get to his motivations in a second because they are one of two notable things about him. First, though, we must take note of the other notable thing: his powers. According to his own patter he was born with them, which I suppose makes him some sort of mutant. Whatever the reason, he is able to stretch and twist his body to a superhuman degree, as if he were completely boneless. He doesn't seem to be able to extend his limbs at will, but his fist does continue travelling under its own momentum to sock new Steel Sterling sidekick Loony in the head in the above panel. He is also able to mould his face into a new shape as if it were made of putty - all in all, he's a much more limited version of stretching characters like the soon-to-debut Plastic Man.

But just why did Twisto do all of those murders? Why to drive down the value of the circus so that he can buy it, make his lion-taming wife Lilli a star and grow rich, of course! It's a foolproof plan, spoiled only by the fact that Lilli considers it "bad" and "wrong" and "illegal" to murder her friends and coworkers for a shot at the big-time.

Having been rejected by the woman that he loves over a few measly murders, Twisto has a bit of a mental break and turns to the only solution he knows: more murders. First on the agenda is Lilli, whose big cat act he sabotages by giving the beasts a taste of his own blood, thus transforming them into uncontrollable man-eaters (this is one of those tropes that crops up a fair amount, that an animal, once it tastes human blood, can't stop craving it. Is it true? No idea). 

At this point, Twisto is so deep in the murder hole (not to mention probably a bit light headed from all that missing blood) that he kind of talks himself into becoming a serial killer by extrapolating from "my beautiful, intelligent wife rejected me because of the crimes I did" to "all beautiful, intelligent women are my enemies and must die." He almost starts his misogynistic murder spree with Steel Sterling love interest Dora Cummings, but is stopped by the timely intervention of Steel himself.

Twisto's progressive mental break continues: his murderous mania transitions into a childlike passivity and he is led away to jail without issue. This isn't the last you'll see of ol' Twisto the Rubber Man, however, as he seemingly snaps out it and escapes immediately after being left alone. We'll see him again in 1941, presumably with a whole new range of criminal motivations.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 864: THE BLOODY BARON

(Wonderworld Comics 010, 1940)

The Bloody Baron was once Karek, Baron of the Duchy of Morziava, somewhere in the spooky part of Eastern Europe. Nine Hundred plus years ago he went off to war and came back a woman-killing creep and so his people burned him at the stake. Ever since, he's been rising from the dead and carrying off a woman per year - that's at least eight hundred women as of the story we're talking about!

Yarko the Great is passing through Morziava when he runs into the Albert Deach, the son of an old friend, and his Morziavan fiance Sonya Miran. They collectively seek shelter for the night in a nearby castle and have the bad luck to find the Bloody Baron and his cadre of ghostly knights, who grab Sonya and spirit her off to the Valley of Shadows, which is either a euphemism for the underworld or a location in the underworld, take your pick.

Yarko of course pursues, using the Baron's own sword as a link to his spirit and then later as a weapon to stab the ghostly knights with.

The Baron is made of sterner stuff than his subordinate ghosts, and Yarko's magic is hampered by being in the underworld. but this doesn't prove to be a problem, because the Baron has spent eight centuries generating an army of vengeful spirits and is completely unprepared to deal with any sort of ghost-on-ghost violence. Yarko only has to summon three dagger-wielding women before he is completely destroyed and descends to some sort of lower underworld yet. The people of Morziava are finally free!

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 025

Buncha rude crude dudes for ya. 

The Rio Kid is after another gang of masked bandits, and this time they're in league with a crooked sheriff and led by a corrupt political boss aptly named the Boss. Nothing really remarkable here but I do dig the Boss' hat. (Thrilling Comics 010, 1940)

Jose Gonzales, star football player for Sornora University of Mexico, is visiting Carson University with two aims in mind: hit the ol' gridiron and slap on a mask and steal a newly developed super-explosive for his father, a fascist politician back home. Star Carson U quarterback Dan Duffy foils his hopes on both counts. (Thrilling Comics 011, 1940)

Sneaky, a "notorious" gangster with poor dentition, is featured in the teaser panel at the end of the Firefly story in Top-Notch Comics 009, with the implication that he is going to be a real thorn in the Firefly's side in issue 010. How disappointing, then, to find that he is a mere flunky working for the murderous scientist Henry Falcon. (Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940)

Though the "Danny Dash" feature only lasted two issues, it's pretty clear that creator Erwin L Hess had a lot of medium-to-long-range plans for the story. In the first instalment, Danny and his pal Shamrock "Mac" McGlynn (!!) have a run-in with the the Grey Hordes from the Center of the Earth who have been bombing London for unclear reasons, while the second sets up Charon, an escaped handsome madman who has been roaming Paris murdering people in the belief that he is actually the ferryman of the Styx, ushering souls into the afterlife.

Charon's latest victim is the future brother-in-law of Dash's friend Georges Barnett, and the never-seen third Danny Dash adventure would have involved them searching for Charon and, if I'm any judge of Golden Age plots, finding a connection between him and the Grey Horde. Alas, it's just another thing we will likely never know. (War Comics 002, 1940)