MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 791: CATS ROMELT

(Lightning Comics 004, 1940)

Though Cats Romelt is the head of a gang of river pirates who organizes a fake warehouse guard union in order to call a general strike and leave the dock warehouses easy pickings, none of this is the reason for his being here. No, it is his sheer bloody-minded commitment to using starved alley cats with poisoned claws as weapons of terror and mass destruction that tipped him over into the category of super-villain. It's an idea that certainly works better on paper than in practice, but the real question is: is he constantly doing it because his nickname is "Cats" or is that his nickname because he breaks out a poison-clawed alley cat as the solution to any problem?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 401: THE MASKED MAN

(More Fun Comics 073, 1941)

This is not a new development but having Johnny Quick and Green Arrow's debuts so close together made me realize that a minor sea change had happened some time in 1941: whereas the earliest super-heroes would start out collaring regular crooks we're entering an era in which super-villains are the norm! (that said, Aquaman's debut is in this issue as well and he just blows up a few Nazis).

As for the Masked Man (our fifth! Even if more than half of them are unofficial), he's another themed deathtraps guy, killing members of the extremely tryhard History Club (members must have the same last name as a famous historical or mythological figure, but sometimes it's the figure's first name as their last name and also there's a member named Frank d'Arcy who is a member under the extremely slim pretext of sharing a name with Joan of Arc AKA Jean d'Arc. Maybe it's a club for guys too uninteresting to belong to any of the other weird themed organizations in comics). Needless to say my interest was piqued: themed deathtraps are a classic villain trope! These, however, are extremely perfunctory - shooting a guy named Lincoln but not in a theatre, stabbing a Caesar in his sleep... a little more theatricality would have gone a long way.

More halfassed deathtraps: Ezra Samson is tied up next to a bomb that will collapse a building on him, Frank d'Arcy is tied up in a burning building, Amos Socrates is forced to drink poison at gunpoint and Leonard Achilles (great name!) is warned about his heel being targeted so he wears metal boots and is then killed via electrified mat. It's all moderately thematic but feels perfunctory.

And it is, in fact, perfunctory! The Masked Man is not killing the members of the History Club out of hatred or because of a weird compulsion but as a distraction! He's actually club treasurer Ezra Samson attempting to cover up his long-term embezzlement of club funds by murdering everyone who would care, culminating in a fake attempt on his own life and a staging of Amos Socrates' poisoning so that he would look like a guilty suicide. And he might have gotten away with it if Green Arrow and Speedy hadn't been there to kill him with a car wreck at the end of the story.

BONUS TROPHY ROOM

Green Arrow and Speedy add the Masked Man's fake round bomb to their already overstuffed trophy case.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 399: THE MURDER MAESTRO

(More Fun Comics 072, 1941) 

The Murder Maestro comes out swinging with a rapid-fire campaign of musical murder. Over the course of two days he delivers five musical warnings followed by song-inspired deathtraps to members of the Tin Pan Alley Club, e.g., "I'm Walking on Air" delivered via singing telegram followed by an attempt to hang the recipient from a light aircraft.

This of course leads to one of my favourite setups: a collection of possible suspects. Not as much as could be is done with this bunch - two are almost immediately targeted by the Murder Maestro, leaving only two actual suspects - but I still appreciate the effort.

The Murder Maestro of course is Blind Harry Thorpe, the least likely of the suspects, who turns out to have Dr Mid-Nite-style "can only see in complete darkness" blindness. His murder spree was inspired by the fact that the Tin Pan Alley Club was a collective enterprise in which royalties were pooled and shared among the songwriter members, and of course fewer members meant more royalties for the survivors. Whether Thorpe had an excuse ready for when he was the only one left alive was left unexplored.