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!

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 447: THE MANX

(Mystery Men Comics 026, 1941)

It's the Manx! Our second catsuit-clad cat-themed villain after the Cat's Paw! This fella doesn't share too much about himself but seems to be a bit of a criminal opportunist - here he's attempting to steal a pistol used in a 25 year-old murder so that he can blackmail the murderer, now a wealthy and successful man. Given his sneaky climbing style of getting about I'd wager that he's usually some sort of burglar. A cat burglar, natch.

Mustn't forget to note his themed weapon: a cat's claw mounted on his wrist that he uses to slash up his foes in a surprisingly gory fashion. Also: no tail, just like a real manx!

Ultimately, the Manx seems to have the wrong ratio of sneaking around vs committing horrific violence going on, particularly once he's aware that he's facing a super-powered foe in the Green Mask. With a little more creeping and a little less clawing he might have gotten away with some swag rather than being caught by an oaf.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 301: THE CAMERA FIEND

(Captain America Comics 006, 1941) 

The  Camera Fiend is your regular gimmicked-up gang boss who parlays the classic comic book camera gun into a modestly successful career in theft that sees him almost getting away with the British Crown Jewels before being beaten down by Cap and Bucky. He is of course playing off the idea of the rabid photography fanatic from the advent of cheap personal cameras.

I was going to criticize him for having such a grotesque costume while attempting to do stealth assassinations with a poison dart-firing camera but now that I think of it I guess the point is that the Fiend is so wild in appearance that nobody would suspect  Bucky Barnes' high school teacher Professor Hall of being the killer in question. I will however critique his choice to attempt to kill Captain America in front of about 20 witnesses as seen above. Still, this is exactly the sort of low-level crook I'm always in favour of being BRUNG BACK, even if it's a legacy-of-a-legacy-of-a-legacy character: the Camera Fiend begat the Home Movie Murderer begat the Home Movie Murderer II (this time it's on VHS) begat Selfie Stick or the Gram etc.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 279: THE CAT'S PAW

(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 018-020, 1941)

The Cat's Paw gets a pretty classic intro: Dr Lin, the Angel's old mentor and friend who was introduced in the previous issue, is ruthlessly murdered via high-speed application of poisoned dart. The Angel give chase, but fails to make the bust.

The next day we see some of the Cat's Paw's scheme begin to emerge. She's killing industrialists for some reason. But why?

Here's our first look at the villain in question, because I chose some odd images to clip. A couple of things about her stand out:

-she's our first example (if not necessarily Marvel's first example - they've got a half-dozen other titles at this point) of a few things in a Marvel comic: a female super-villain, a proper costumed crook, themed weaponry in the form of a cat-claw launcher, and, kind of, a recurring villain.

-on that last point: not really. Though the Cat's Paw does appear in three issues worth of  Angel comics, it's all one story, just decompressed a bit.

-it is of course notable that she looks a bit like 90s Catwoman

-most importantly: in the above image both the Cat's Paw and the Angel are attending a costume party as themselves! A twofer! 

Eventually, the Angel tracks the Cat's Paw down to her HQ in one of the dozens of deserted castles that litter the mountains a short drive from NYC in any given comic book universe.

Now for the disappointing news: the reason that the Cat's Paw was killing all of those industrialists is that she was acting as a... catspaw for the Nazis in their bid to weaken US support for Britain (and here once more I must note that Marvel was really leading the pack on making Nazi villains for-real Nazis well before Pearl Harbor). She does rediscover her patriotism once her Nazi handler tries to bump her off, which is better than nothing, I suppose. 

Here's where I'd normally be decrying the comic for killing her off at the end, pointing out how ambiguous the "guess we'll never find the corpse, oh well" nature of her death is, and call for her to be brung back as a legacy villain, but the Nazi collaboration is really sticking in my craw. Honestly if she hadn't walked it back at the end I'd be all for the Cat's Paw showing up as an Axis agent in period pieces going forward but as-is I reckon she can lie fallow.