GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 020

We're stretching the definition of the term "generic" this week, folks.

Carr, the self-styled Planetary Potentate, is released from the insane asylum that he is imprisoned in when a resurrected sub-sea dinosaur called the Amphisaur crashes into it. He sets out to claim his rightful place at the head of society, along with his friend/ companion/ army, the wild man Simeo.

While murdering and robbing a gas station attendant, Carr learns of the Amphisaur and its role in their escape and vows to aid his newfound ally against the forces of the enemy as represented by former mummy/current magical super-hero Mystico.

At this point in the story I am fully expecting the pair to have a meaningful interaction with the Amphisaur, something along the lines of them interfering with Mystico's second attempt to kill it and then either riding it around as a war-beast or getting eaten by an uncaring monster. Instead, they are unceremoniously knocked out by the Amphisaur's death-throes. Mystico doesn't even know that they're there! (Startling Comics 004, 1940)

Boris Ivanoff is not a particularly remarkable freelance spy in most respects, but he really does have a flair for the theatrical. I really like the flashlight bit above, but I really really like the fact that he wears that sheet ghost outfit for the entire adventure for no stated reason. The authorities already know his name, where he is and enough about his plans to substitute secret agent Q-13 for his new recruit, for heavens sake. They don't even bother to dramatically unmask Ivanoff at the end, because the sheet is apparently just an affectation! (Super-Mystery Comics v1 003, 1940)

This fellow is really Jay Jackson, publisher of newspaper the Morning Star, who extorts money out of people by threatening to print scandalous articles about them and then murders the ones who refuse to pay. He is very frustrating to me because I find his weird Halloween mask disguise very charming, except that I have read this story and know that it is a racist Chinese caricature, which is the opposite of charming. Annoying!

Jackson is also the subject of what is possibly the most extreme version of the bit where a super-hero scares a confession out of someone I have ever read, in which Magno collapses an entire skyscraper on top of him, seemingly with no guarantee that he will survive the process. Plus, there are like half a dozen other crooks in the building when it comes down and none of them are extracted from the wreckage in time to confess their wrongdoings. (Super-Mystery Comics v1, 1940)

Adopting the role of the high priest of the local Tiger-God might have seemed like a good way to take control of a region that contained a rich gold mine, but all too predictably it ended up with this fellow being thrown into his own tiger pit once he is revealed as a fraud by adventurer Scotty of the Skyways. (Super Spy 001, 1940)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 772: THE BARON

(Super Comics 027, 1940)

Monocle-wearing crypto-Nazi spy and major recurring foe of war correspondent Jack Wander, the Baron is one duelling scar away from being the quintessential Axis agent. Also he looks like he was designed by Paul Grist - just look at that little sneer.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 766: COMRADE RATSKI

(Speed Comics 009, 1940)

Comrade Ratski's first appearance is fairly undistinguished as far as comic book spymasters go. Sent to subvert US war preparations, Ratski targets an airplane factory operating out of Hollywood, California (for some damn reason) and sensibly decides to do so under the guise of a war movie shoot next door, though at the point that you have all of the equipment required for such an attack in place, why bother going through with the "we're just filming a movie" deception? For the love of the game, of course.

Ratski's major distinguishing feature in this appearance is the fact that he is a pseudo-Soviet rather than the usual pseudo-Nazis who are the mainstay of the spy plot at this time. 

Shock Gibson of course does not like all of this factory bombing, and Comrade Ratski, like Baron von Kampf before him, ends up stranded in the middle of the ocean. And he's even more pessimistic about his chances at rescue!

Ratski returns in Speed Comics 010 and immediately starts to collect top scientists from top universities: Dr Bronson from Yarvard, Prof Capchek from Rinceton, and... somebody from Hale. His goal? Force them to invent at gunpoint so that he can use their creations to destroy America

Dr Bronson creates an earthquake machine which Ratski uses to attack democratic hub Western City. Ratski then makes the bizarre decision to send his men out to loot and plunder in the chaos, which is how Shock Gibson learns the location of Ratski's base after using the tried-and-true method of capturing a henchman and threatening to kill them unless they talk.

But even if Gibson hadn't done so, Ratski just can't stop signposting his location: after Prof Capchek develops an arthropod-enlarging serum Ratski just starts releasing giant beetles and flies from his front door in a way that I would call "highly visible."

Though Gibson does fight his way through various flies and spiders to make his way to Ratski's mountain fastness, the Comrade's ultimate undoing comes at the jaws of a freshly enlarged (and adorable!) cockroach with no sense of loyalty. He survives the encounter, but only with the help of a very ambitious mountain lion.

Shock Gibson rescues Capchek and some guy we've never seen before, possibly the Hale man. Bronson is unaccounted for.

Like Baron von Kampf before him, Comrade Ratski's final appearance is in Speed Comics 011 when the two team up in a version of the Soviet/Nazi manouvres in Poland and Eastern Europe, though I don't know quite enough about contemporary opinions on WWII to say if the fact that Ratski is clearly just exploiting von Kampf for cheap labour courtesy of his Zombie minions is further extrapolation of this relationship or just the writer favouring one villain over the other as the real heel.

For an epic team-up between two men sworn to conquer and/or destroy the United States of America, the stakes on the Ratski/von Kampf plan are pretty minimal - essentially it's just some run-of-the-mill piracy, only done by one-eyed green guys made of animal parts and flying a dirigible.

More than anything this issue is an exercise in making the zombies look cool while also making Shock Gibson look cool: the Zombies are parachuting! The Zombies are firing a machine gun! Shock Gibson is posing on top of a whale! Shock Gibson is protecting the whale!

Zombies in keen gas masks wielding cool gas guns! Zombies setting up a guillotine! Shock Gibson looking smug as hell while the guillotine blade smashes on his neck!

After the guillotine fails to do its job, things go very wrong for Comrade Ratski and Baron von Kampf, culminating in the destruction of their base, the foiling of their plans and they themselves becoming a meal for at least nine alligators. Who presumably represent the Allied Forces.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 762: THE DEVILFISH

(Speed Comics 006, 1940)

The Devilfish is a pseudo-Nazi mastermind who vexes Lieutenant Jim Cannon of the Royal British Navy for the first 2 or 3 of his handful of appearances in Speed Comics and I won't lie: it's all about that great name for me, although that same name is annoying the part of me that loves to put things into categories due to the fact that "devilfish" is such a loose term. People - especially in the first half of the 20th Century when we were really starting to poke around under water but didn't really know anything about what was going on down there - love call any scary ocean being a devilfish, including rays, octopus, squid, some whales, all kinds of deep-sea monstrosities... it's impossible to know just which devilfish this fellow was named for.

So what is notable about the Devilfish aside from his wonderful and vexing name? In his debut, he's directing attacks on British shipping and if I'm going to highlight anything it's his wide range of vehicular transport, from ship to plane to submarine, all in one six-page adventure. This issue also establishes a bit where the Devilfish will send Cannon a taunting radio message after getting away, which is a fun bit of business.

The Devilfish returns to plague shipping in Speed Comics 007, and regional pride compels me to point out that this issue begins in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Go, Windjammers!

The Devilfish's actual plan this issue is pretty incoherent: set a bunch of icebergs loose in the shipping lanes and also cover those same icebergs with nautical mines. But... what does this accomplish? Does the Devilfish think that ships just bump innocently and harmlessly into icebergs all the time and the mines are meant to spice things up? Is this a plot to distribute the mines into whichever random stretch of ocean the bergs pass through as they melt? Why not at least paint the mines white so that they aren't so visible that someone (i.e., Lt Cannon) can't just easily spot them and blow them up from a distance? It's maddening to contemplate!

As in his first appearance, this one ends with the Devilfish seemingly being killed but actually scuttling away in a submarine (this actually completes a second ship > plane > submarine sequence) only to taunt Lt Cannon via radio. While it's entirely probable that the Devilfish returned again in Speed Comics 008, the only extant scan of that comic does not include the relevant story and I personally am not willing to pay $100+ for a physical copy to find out. Did the Devilfish return again? Did he die? Does he remain at large? We may never know.

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 017

Buncha mooks this time.

The ship that picked up scientist-adventurer Dean Denton and his pals from the island of Baron Blood just so happened to have a pseudo-Nazi spy (fake name Lieutenant James, code name K-192, real name unknown) committing murders on it for unclear reasons. Despite composing a crime scene to contain nothing but clues pointing to other members of the crew Denton rounds him up pretty quickly. (Masked Marvel 003, 1940)

Pilot Prop Powers has to defend his ship and his cargo of gold bullion from this air pirate and his scurvy crew, and the story ends up glossing over his huge flying aerodrome a bit. Well, I think it's cool, unnamed air pirate captain. I'm sorry they blew it up. (National Comics 001, 1940)

Klotz, aka the Master Spy, has the distinction of being the first foe to battle the Shield. His greatest moment is pictured above, as the Shield is so absorbed in reading spy files that he doesn't notice approximately fifty boxes of TNT being piled up behind him. Klotz also returns in the 1984 series The Original Shield because there's nothing like battling an extremely old man to make for an exciting comic experience. (Pep Comics 001, 1940)

This bunch of clowns work for a mysterious figure who has been murdering Hollywood stars in connection with a jewel-smuggling ring. They're not in the story for very long before their employer murders them all with mustard gas - the henchman's greatest occupational hazard is, as always, the boss. Why do all these murders over some simple smuggled jewelry? Because the mastermind is Biff Crossley, himself a famous actor, and he wants nobody who can possibly tie him to the crime left alive, that's why. (Pep Comics 008, 1940)

THE SUPER-VILLAINS OF HOLLYWOOD PODCAST: The super-villainy might be a bit generic but this story is fodder for a whole season of tSVoHpod: Crossley murders two other stars (one of them inside Grauman's Chinese Theatre, using a bullet-firing compact) and tries to frame a third by pretending to be a target himself, he bumps off his own men, the Shield is there, and the whole thing ends with Crossley's defiant suicide. Sensational! This is podcasting, baby!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 676: THE DEATH

(Miracle Comics 003, 1940)

A scientist/spy who is sabotaging diplomatic talks between the UK and South America by killing diplomats with fog-activated poisoned wallpaper, the Death, aka Jaeger, meets his end at the hands of Secret Agent K-7 and his assistant Yvonne. He's just the latest in a long line of villains with extremely metal names and not much else going on, except of course for the poisoned wallpaper.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 675: THE EYES

(Miracle Comics 002, 1940)

The Eyes is a spy chief (singular) who has a cool gimmick (contact lenses or similar which can emit powerful light beams to spooky effect) and goes all in on it as a theme. Specifically, the Eyes is all about destroying eyes via blinding light, acid or simple traumatic injury - honestly a pretty effective thing to threaten most people with, even if they are for example very loyal to the aircraft company they work for. It ultimately takes Dash Dixon, whose eyes are presumably three times as powerful as the average man's, to take him down.

One more thing about the Eyes is that his henchmen all have their own gangster-style nickname - variously Finger, the Switch and Trusty - and that's pleasing to me.

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 015

It's time for another round with the guys in the masks.

A radio announcer who tries to poison all of Inland City with chlorine gas for unclear reasons. Ends up blowing himself up while tangling with heroic pilot Captain Steve Ransom. (Keen Detective Funnies v2 006, 1939)

This unnamed fellow takes the cake for audaciousness: his racket is drug smuggling and though traditionally one wants to keep a low profile while attempting to move controlled substances from place to place he:

-sets up camp in the basement of an occupied house,

-keeps a gorilla in that same basement,

-sends that gorilla out to attack randos in hopes of driving away the locals,

-poses as an FBI agent in an attempt to throw Power-Man off his scent.

All of these are what I would describe as "activities likely to invite scrutiny". And they do! (Fight Comics 005, 1940)

Muipo here is a Japanese agent in all but name working to foment trouble in China by flooding the country with opioids. His major interesting features are a decent looking half-face draped cloth mask (rare and annoying-looking to wear) and a fake fat guy body he sits in while dealing with his underlings. He gets beat up by US Marine Strut Warren precisely one page after making his debut. (Fight Comics 007, 1940)

The Squadron of Death is a group who blow up US defense infrastructure for... some reason. And there's the problem: very little is given away about who the Squadron are or what their motivations might be (beyond general anti-US sentiment) in this issue, and though there is some indication that they might return to vex the Arrow in future instalments the next three issues of Funny Pages are not available to anyone without about 10 to 15 grand to spend on physical copies. 

Pending further information the Squadron of Death are just two guys who steal a plane and then variously get thrown out of it or blown up in it by the Arrow. (Funny Pages v4 004, 1940)