MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 945: DR DRACULA

(Silver Streak Comics 017, 1941) 

With Dr Dracula, Captain Battle has now faced four Nazi or Nazi-adjacent villains in a row whose plans involve gathering up a bunch of guys and pretending to be monsters, in this case vampires. Was there a meeting about this at the regional Nazi spy headquarters or is this one of those things like when Hollywood makes two volcano movies at the same time? Maybe one guy had a good idea and the other three stole it. 

I'd have to say that Dr Dracula has the best name and possibly the best look out of the four, but the Mummy Master's Mummy Gang might take the gold in terms of best henchmen. 

As a supplement to the power of fake vampirism, Dr Dracula steals a new death ray from the hapless Professor Fosdick, who then serves as the first (human) target of its instant skeletonization effect. Horrifying! And visually striking!

(please note the fourth panel above, when Fosdick exclaims "Vampires! Vampires as large as men!" I believe him to be referring to vampire bats, which doesn't make a huge amount of sense given what he is looking at at the time but which is the only interpretation to make much sense. It is the kind of thing that comic book people shout when vampire bats are about, after all)

This is about the time that Captain Battle shows up to put a stop to Dr Dracula's plans, which gives he and his men the opportunity to demonstrate that they can all fly as they engage in thrilling aerial combat vs Captain Battle and his luceflyer (Hale Battle is lagging behind and can't be there for this fight). 

These wing suits are very cool and more importantly... way more strategically valuable than the death ray that they just stole? Like, yes: the death ray can instantly kill any target, but so can a good sniper, and you certainly could deploy more good snipers easily if you had flying infantry, right?

Having made his getaway, Dr Dracula gets down to the serious business of sabotaging American war production by turning people into goofy skeletons. Prof Fosdick must have had a sense of humour, because while the ray dissolves clothing it selectively leaves props such as cigarettes or blankets behind so that every tragic ray-gun death looks just a little bit funny.

Dr Dracula meets his end when Captain Battle throws a steel net over him and the death ray explodes. This is what happens when you steal an experimental piece of technology and kill the inventor, folks. 

Hale Battle must of course have his souvenir, and what better or more striking object is there than one of the false vampires' wing suits?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 943: HERR DEATH

(Silver Streak Comics 016, 1941)

This issue continues the trend of Captain Battle foes being fascist spies who are weaponizing fear by dressing up as the undead. In this case Herr Death is, as the name implies, a desiccated corpse version of Death, accompanied by a horde of the walking dead (not, I must stress, zombies. This is more "the dead have come out of their graves" kind of thing which, yes, would be classified as zombie behaviour now but which used to be its own spooky thing).

Herr Death has improved on the formula employed by Herr Skull and the Mummy Master before him in a couple of ways. Firstly, his men are not just spooky looking but fitted with bulletproof vests in order to showcase their supernatural fortitude (lucky for them the "destroy the brain" aspect of fighting the undead doesn't enter the public consciousness for a little while yet). Secondly, Herr Death is far more proactive than his contemporaries and he is very willing to mix it up with his scythe.

Herr Death also has a very thematic cemetery lair featuring a sick-ass corpse whirlpool for disposing of interlopers such as Captain and Hale Battle. I can't imagine that it's too much fun to hang around in between missions but oooh, the atmosphere!

On the negative side, Herr Death and his men are particularly bad at concealing the fact that they are Nazis, from the fact that his name includes the telltale Herr to his minions yelling "himmel!" and so forth the whole time. This really gives the game away to anyone who is paying attention, such as Captain Battle for instance.

Once they're no longer actively drowning in a skeleton whirlpool, Captain Battle and Hale are able to round up Herr Death with little difficulty. Bulletproof vests aren't too effective against four good ol' American fists.

Hale Battle must of course grab his souvenir, and he of course chooses Herr Death's scythe as the coolest possible option. I don't think that it's applicable here since Herr Death did so very many crimes, but this may just be the first time that we've seen someone take a murder weapon as a trophy, which makes me wonder just how many super-villain trials have been ruined because a key piece of evidence is sitting in a cave somewhere?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 941: THE MUMMY MASTER

(Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

In a very comic book series of events, a rash of mummy thefts at the City Museum in NYC is followed by the emergence of a Nazi super-crook calling himself the Mummy Master.

While my normal modus operandi is to lay out the story of the villains I cover in an abridged but linear fashion, here I must jump ahead to the reveal that the Mummy Master is in fact City Museum director Dr Kolb, because I need to talk about just what the heck is going on with this guy and what exactly he was thinking. 

So: Kolb is a Nazi and he is either officially or unofficially working to hinder US defense production by targeting so-called "Dollar-a-Year Men" (a type of altruistic/patriotic rich guy explored recently in our discussion of the Death Battalion). On the surface his decision to become the Mummy Master is... not a good one, but one with a lot of thematic resonance and which uses a lot of close-at-hand resources: he has access to mummies and a ready-made HQ in the depths of the museum. He never really states it outright, but by stealing a bunch of mummies and then dressing his henchmen up like them he seems to be going for the same sort of shock factor as Herr Skull got with his Skull Men.

The first Dollar-a-Year Man on the Mummy Master's list is even kidnapped with the same mummy DIY philosophy: he receives a mummy case in the mail, is disturbingly cavalier about going to bed with it sitting about five feet away and is then captured by the very alive mummy inside and taken away in its former home.

I would say that the first indication that Kolb/the Mummy Master is not a criminal genius comes at the culmination of the Henderson kidnapping. Surely the move is to dress up like movers and stick the mummy case in a truck, but the Mummy Master and his Mummy Gang just schlep the thing through the city streets. It's like the idea of maintaining the theme is interfering with Kolb's ability to do risk management.

The abduction of the second man, Billings, is comparatively simple: just a bunch of fake mummies storming the guy's office and grabbing him. It's a dumb meathead plan, but it's less dumb than the first, ostensibly clever plan so I must give it some credit.

By this point, the Mummy Master's haphazard approach to super-espionage has caught up to him and not only Captain Battle but Hale Battle and Battle associate Jane Lorrain are wandering around inside his lair - his capture is a foregone conclusion.

Hale Battle of course takes a souvenir of the battle with the Mummy Master, in the form of a little mummy doll made out of some of his wrappings. Of note is the fact that Hale's collection contains only the souvenirs that we have seen him collect, in contrast to other trophy displays like Green Arrow's that are already stuffed full of trash upon their first appearance.

Categorized in: Day Jobs (Museum Director), Fraud (Fake Mummy), Supranormal Beings (Mummies)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 938: HERR SKULL

(Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941)

Herr Skull is the leader of the Skull Men, a band of fascist saboteurs who dress up like ghoulish skeletons in order to facilitate their crimes. Why do they have spikes on top of their heads? I do not know the answer to that. Perhaps Herr Skull just thought the look needed a bit more to really pop.

Spike aside, the plan works! The Skull Men are terrifying enough that their victims are caught completely off guard, as these unfortunate armoured truck guards demonstrate, and those who do not manage to flee are ruthlessly killed.

Using the defense money stolen from the armoured truck job, Herr Skull and his men embark on a campaign of death and destruction around NYC, striking at aircraft, naval and ammunition production.

The flaw in the Skull Men's operation is exposed by Captain Battle and sidekick Hale Battle, who almost capture them during the armoured car job but are knocked out by a gas grenade long enough for the gang to make their escape. Simply put, Herr Skull's whole plan hinges on the Skull Men's victims being too frightened to fight back with no apparent backup plan for if they do. When the Battle duo infiltrate their sewer lair it's all over.

SKULL SCORE: visible eyes make it a 4, dropping to 3 because it's just a mask.

Categorized in: Body (Skulls), Generica (Herrs), Ideology (Crypto-Fascists)

Silver Streak Comics 014 is the issue in which Hale Battle starts his ongoing souvenir collection. He adds one of the Skull Men masks to it at the end of the issue...

... but the real start of his obsession is in the cliffhanger from their previous adventure which involved sinking a u-boat and from which he retained a torpedo propeller.

NOTES - DECEMBER 2025

Nova Scotia: 

As I always have to note when Nova Scotia pops up in a comic book: here's Captain Aero taking in the sights on the featureless green plain that is the Halifax Airfield. (Captain Aero Comics 001, 1941)

the Looming Spectre of War: 

Less popular than our old friend the Looming Spectre of Death, the Looming Spectre of War nonetheless deserves recognition as a potent allegorical image. (Cat-Man Comics 002, 1941)

 And speaking of the Looming Spectre of Death, here's a fine example of such. (Cat-Man Comics 003, 1941)

Trophy Room - Blaze Baylor:

Blaze Baylor, costumed arson-fighter, has a whole bookshelf full of incendiary devices. (Cat-Man Comics 002, 1941)