MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 836: MORGANA LE FAY

(Top-Notch Comics 009, 1940) 

It's another version of Morgan le Fay, less than two weeks after the last one! Will le Fay end up being the mythic/fictional character with the greatest number of comic book interpretations? Possibly!

This version of Morgan le Fay, Morgana le Fey, is after revenge on Galahad for the death of her husband the Knight of the Griffin and so sends out squads of knights to find him and bring him back to be tiger food. Unfortunately for her, her knights are pretty unprofessional and fail to question the fact that the "Galahad" that they capture is unusually scrawny and meek and in fact turns out to be Garlan, Galahad's squire, doing a bit of roleplay while his boss is asleep.

Once the real Galahad shows up, Morgana's men prove to be as inadequate at combat as they are at knight-identification and she is forced to play her trump card: the Monster. An eight-foot tall green guy who looks like he just stepped out of a science fiction comic, the Monster proves to be a match for Galahad and his horse.

Lucky for Galahad, Garlan is on-hand to save the day by delivering the poorly-named magic sword Scabor to him as he and the Monster are battling in the depths of Morgana's moat. It's a heroic act for the lad, and it really underscores how terrible it was when he was captured earlier in the story and Galahad did not go after him because he was late for a meeting.

Presumably Morgana le Fay would have continued to vex Galahad going forward, but the series ends while she is planning her next move. 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 834: THE KNIGHT OF THE GRIFFIN

(Top-Notch Comics 007, 1940) 

Tasked with finding the two-days-overdue Sir Gawain, Galahad discovers him being set upon by ruffians in the employ of the Knight of the Griffin, a dastardly character who hates King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Galahad proceeds to confront the Knight himself, where we find that he is based on Sir Turquine, a villainous knight who had both the knight-summoning bell and tree full of defeated knights' shields as seen above, but who critically hated Lancelot, Galahads father, and battled knights as part of a long-term plan to kill him, whereas the Knight of the Griffin is more of an anti-Knights of the Round Table guy.

Thanks to an exposure to a Choose Your Own Adventure version of this story in my youth, I think I have an inflated sense of how iconic the tree of shields is, but I love it. It's very ominous! 

The Knight of the Griffin is also aided and abetted by his wife, Morgana le Fay, who hoodwinks knights into getting her a drink of water and then swaps their good swords for ones that will shatter during the cut and thrust of knightly combat. This is not a part of Sir Turquine's story - though Morgan le Fay has plenty of evil knights in her roster of exes, she and Turquine don't seem to have been an item.

Between the broken sword and the home field advantage, the Knight of the Griffin has Galahad on the ropes, and might have emerged victorious if Merlin the Magician hadn't been lurking nearby to bring the tree of shields crashing down to unhorse him. Given a more even contest, Galahad is able to employ some Arthurian judo and heave tKotG off of a cliff to his doom.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 832: SIR GILBERT, THE SUN KNIGHT

(Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940)

Sir Gilbert is the evil knight who Galahad sets out to vanquish on his first official Knights of the Round Table mission. He's got all the requisite qualities of an evil Arthurian knight: a cool name, a rakish attitude toward kidnapping and menacing women, and designs on the lands near his castle. And like most if not all non-Mordred evil knights in comic book Arthuriana, he's a completely original character, which is always a bit confusing because there are ever so many villains and scumbags to choose from in the source material.

Canonicity aside, Sir Gilbert is a good first foe for any character. He's got a good name and a bit if a reputation, and he provides just enough challenge to be a credible threat before being defeated so thoroughly that he can be repurposed into an improvised missile.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 827: MORGAN LE FAY

(Thrilling Comics 005, 1940) 

Sometimes when I'm writing the original drafts of these entries I'm tired or rushed or the like and I go into Extreme Shorthand Mode, and sometimes that version of the writeup is very charming to me when I come back to it a couple of weeks later. Which is all to say that the younger, rushed version of me wrote "merlin stung by brutal own" to describe how the venerable wizard took being exposed as a fraud by the Ghost during one of his time-travel adventures, and I think it captures something. Is it enough to explain Merlin selling out Camelot to Morgan le Fay? Probably not, but it clearly was in the eyes of a 1940s comics book writer.

Don't worry, however, because the Ghost is still on hand and is most certainly not a charlatan. He conjures up a big pile of machine guns and grenades for the Knights of the Round Table, and s my past self put it: "modern weapons vs medieval is okay if its vs bad guys."

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 806: THE SCOURGE

(The Funnies 050, 1940)

The Scourge is a bandit chief operating in the nonspecific Medieval-pastiche England of the Black Knight, and let me tell you, he is a terrific villain. His amazing look is one thing - just how many Golden Age villains have the confidence to use eye makeup to accentuate their air of menace? - but on top of that I have seldom seen a villain so eager and joyful to torture a peasant woman. Just an amazingly hateable guy, with a really top-notch crew of evil oafs to boot.

Though the poor woman's husband and sons set out to avenge her, they prove no match for the Scourge and his band of ruffians, and it falls to the Black Knight and a local hunk to get the job done. 

It does of course turn out that a good look and a bad attitude will only take you so far, particularly when your follow-up to a a successful heist is to get drunk in the woods for a week straight. The Black Knight and his unnamed and shirtless assistant make quick work of the lot of them once they are able to approach them on equal footing, and the Scourge meets his end by the Black Knight's Blade.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 803: THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN GANG

(The Arrow 002, 1940)

It's an occupational hazard for the costumed adventurer: eventually someone is going to dress up like you so that they can do crimes and get away with it while you take all the blame. And when the hero in question is a mysterious and half-legendary figure like your typical masked cowboy tends to be, why, it must be all the more tempting, as Betty aka the Headless Horseman learns to her dismay when she learns that her own alter ego has been tearing up the Mesa County countryside in a crime spree even though she is attending college in Chicago.

Returning on the first available stagecoach, Betty wastes no time in tracking down the real crooks, then she simply substitutes herself for the convenient her-sized dummy that has been playing the part of the Headless Horseman during the gang raids and leads the whole gang into a corral and the waiting arms of the town sheriff.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 717: THE MASKED TERROR

(Rocket Comics 003, 1940)

The Phantom Ranger is just minding his business one day when he receives a sternly-worded letter via throwing knife, warning him to "steer clear of the red-headed girl." This is of course your classic case of warning the hero off before he has a dang clue what's going on.

Everything is okay though, because the young woman who shortly rides up and requests the Ranger's help has blonde hair. The "red-headed girl" must be seeking aid elsewhere. Or the colourist and the letterer had some sort of miscommunication. One of the two.

The girl, whatever her hair colour, is named Lindy Davis, and the Masked Terror has kidnapped her father for ransom, a crime you don't see as much in a lot of Western comics but I am certain is an authentic Old West crime.

The Phantom Ranger accompanies Lindy to the handoff, where we learn that a) the Masked Terror is one homely cuss and eventually b) that he has already killed Mr Davis. The Phantom Ranger sets off in hot pursuit.

And of course the Masked Terror turns out to be Ansom, the Davis' neighbour and, crucially, the only one Lindy told about her plan to contact the Phantom Ranger. Plus I assume that he is the only nearby man ugly enough to be a suspect. The Terror chooses to go for his gun and meets a swift end.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 682: CLEA

(OK Comics 001, 1940) 

"The Further Adventures of Ulysses" is a feature that posits that Ulysses/ Odysseus, after a gruelling twenty year journey home from Troy to Ithaca, immediately got bored and left again upon hearing a rumour that one of his men had been left behind on the island of the Cyclopes and still lived. This is a fun idea and very in keeping with both the lifestyles of the Greek heroes and a particular 1940s idea of manly disdain for settled domesticity. The only problem is that the one extant TFAOU story is all retellings of the greatest hits, from the return to Cyclops Island to Clea here, who is Circe in all but name.

Specifically, Clea lives on an island and uses her magic wand to turn humans into beasts - Ulysses' crew here all end up as tigers, so they must have had better table manners than the last bunch who all turned into pigs - and does not either provide Ulysses with information on how to enter the underworld or have between 2 and 5 children with him.

Clea almost gets away with it too, but that meddling Mercury gives Ulysses a sprig of protective ivy and her weirdly long wand has no effect on him. Frankly embarrassing, Clea.

BONUS: Just want to highlight this giant two-headed monster lady as the only novel concept in the adventure.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 634: KING RATON

(Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

King Raton is a fellow met by the Golden Knight and his companion/ lover Alice after the earth near a pool of water gives way and they are dropped into a cavern. He demands that they fetch a potion for him from Kataka, Witch of the Volcano, under threat of death - this is a source of conflict not only because of the threats but because he wants the potion in order to conquer Blackamoor Forest, home of their ally the Queen of Blackamoor.

Kataka, Witch of the Volcano turns out to be Raton's mom, which raises the question of why he has to send a couple of heroes up the volcano to get his precious potion. Families are complicated, I guess.

On that note, Kataka goes completely off the rails and tries to kill Sir Richard and Alice as they exit her lair. Exactly why she does this is not elaborated on but it results in here death via magma pool, following which Our Heroes realize something that that seemed obvious to me: they are under no obligation or compulsion to complete this clearly evil quest.

I had a whole thing written about how Sir Richard and Alice just took the word of this guy in a cave that he was a king and that they should be a bit less credulous about that sort of thing before embarking on hazardous quests but I'll be danged if Raton doesn't return in Fantastic Comics 013 with actual subjects!

Raton's plan to sneakily attack Queen Blackamoor and her Forest People using an Annihilating Potion (which is an explosive of some kind, I think) was a sound one because as it turns out, when they are ready for him the Forest people absolutely wipe the floor with his Sand People. 

Raton must take after his mother, because like her he makes a poorly thought-out attack on the Golden Knight and his pals and ends up dying for it.

(I've surely mentioned before that I try not to assign modern motivations etc to the characters in these comics but... the Queen of Blackamoor is explicitly into Sir Richard and I have to say that this reads like a proposition to me)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 629: QUEEN SULIA

(Fantastic Comics 011, 1940)

We begin with the old comic book trope of Ignoring Bad Feelings When a Woman Has Them, as Alice senses something in the wind and Sir Richard tells her to shut up just before a giant bird gets them both.

They are flown to Soulless Isle and meet its ruler Queen Sulia, along with her coterie of beastly subjects. She wants a sword fight and Sir Richard of Warwick is who she wants it from. If this weren't the 1940s I would suspect some double entendre was going on here. I kind of suspect it anyway.

If this is an extended sex metaphor then things are heating up, as Alice jumps in to take over for her reluctant boyfriend only to be overwhelmed by Sulia's technique, forcing Richard to join in. Phew!

The prize for defeating Queen Sulia in battle is her hand in marriage and Sir Richard of Warwick seems weirdly okay with doing so. If the beastmen hadn't sent a representative to him to reveal that they were in fact not just weirdos but regular folk transformed by Sulia's dark majicks I reckon that the tale of the Golden Knight would have ended with him shacked up on Soulless Isle.

But no, Sir Richard takes advantage of the beastmen's intel re: Sulia having a magical clotting disorder and  employs a spiked wedding band to fatally wound her finger. Oddly enough, this underhanded trick doesn't trigger his "thou shalt not fight women" chivalry. With Sulia slain and the beastmen restored to regular, Richard is free to return to Alice and I assume apologize to her.