MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 799: GLORK

(Target Comics v1 009, 1940) 

Glork here is a candidate for election to the post of King of Mars who manages to lose despite massive political interference on his part. This is probably because he is a very unpleasant and transparently evil person.

Despite some recent real-world examples, Glork might still reign supreme as the worst-ever loser of an election. He immediately settles upon a plan to pull the moon Phobos down to the surface to destroy the entire Martian civilization, while he flees the planet in his personal spaceship to seek glory in the wider Solar System. 

It can't be a surprise at this point: Spacehawk does not take this kind of thing lying down. He busts into Glork's secret lair disguised as a Martian, reverses the polarity on the device so that Phobos returns to its normal orbit, and when Glork makes a run for it Spacehawk uses the attractor machine to crash his spaceship in his own pit full of man- Martian-eating beasts. 

Special shout out to this guy, who I completely thought was being set up to murder Glork in a fit of pique later in the story but who I guess was just an object illustration of what a jerk Glork was.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 626: THE SUPER FIEND

(Fantastic Comics 010, 1940)

The Super Fiend (aka the Super Fiend of the Lost Planet) is, if not the archetypal Fletcher Hanks villain then certainly representative of one of the major Hanks villain types, the civilization hater. He's got no stated motivation but the Super Fiend hates civilization so much that he's out to destroy it on a planetary scale, starting with Mars and moving on to Earth as an encore.

The Super Fiend's Thermal Ray Spore does the job on Mars, rendering the question of whether non-Hanks Stardust stories actually canonically occurred a bit moot - if Dr Martinious and the Brain Men did actually exist then they're just so many charred bones now.

Though Mars is toast and Earth is in the crosshairs, unfortunately for the Super Fiend Stardust the Super Wizard only allows one genocide per story, and with a cry of "You're going bye-by!" he whisks his foe off to face justice.

Like Wolf-Eye before him, the Super Fiend is made big and strong for the final righteous beatdown - presumably this keeps happening because Fletcher Hanks recognized that even the righteous Stardust looks like a bit of a bully beating up people 1/3 his size.

The Super Fiend is left behind on Mars to contemplate his actions among the bones of his victims for the rest of his life - a classic Stardust punishment and in fact the same one meted out to Moloka in the non-Fletcher Hanks story in the previous issue. This raises the schoolday spectre of the compare-and-contrast vis-a-vis Moloka and the Super Fiend. On paper, they are very similar villains, but Moloka never felt quite right as a Stardust foe while the Super Fiend did. Why? Simple clarity of purpose, perhaps? Molka's goals remain undefined throughout while the Super Fiend was lightning focused on destroying civilization, one planet at a time.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 624: MOLOKA

(Fantastic Comics 009, 1940)

Moloka is our second Stardust the Super Wizard foe from a story not penned by Fletcher Hanks and I'd say that our unknown scribe gets things mostly right: there's certainly enough wanton destruction for this to be a Hanks comic. Moloka is a humanoid alien who has developed world-wrecking super weapons and as the comic opens is using them to blast away at various inhabited planets.

Where exactly this is happening is a little unclear. If Fletcher Hanks' idea of how outer space is structured is a little fuzzy then his stand-in is even more vague on the particulars. It's equally possible that Moloka is based in another star system and using weapons with an interstellar range as it is that he's in our own Solar System and there are just a heap of extra planets to blow up.

Moloka's goal is also a bit unclear. I think that he's looking to become some sort of Galactic or Solar Dictator but he spends an awful lot of time just blasting away at inhabited planets without really asking to be put in charge. It's possible that the power is an excuse and the blasting is the point.

Moloka is based on Pluton, which is either an alternate spelling of Pluto (that I have seen before to be honest) or as mentioned above a completely extrasolar one. There's no way of working out which it is though I will say that none of Pluto's satellites were discovered before 1978 so I have no idea where Nemus is supposed to be.

Moloka does give some hints as to his mental state when he mistakes a vengeful Stardust for some sort of elemental being created by the hellish energies at his command. It's kind of charming! It's also wildly out of character for Stardust "the shortest distance between two lines is a punch" the Super Wizard. Stardust's goal with this little ruse is to goad Moloka into firing his weapon at Earth, then using his own patented ray-reversal technology to redirect it back to its source.

As to whyhe bothers to do this when he's perfectly capable of blowing the whole of Pluton to hell and gone? I guess it's a bit more of an ironic punishment to leave a warmonger stranded on a planet that they themself have devastated? Sure, we'll go with that.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 609: LUCIFER

(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940)

Scientist-adventurer Flip Falcon has a machine that allows him to enter the Fourth Dimension and come out, effectively, anywhere. He's used it to visit various other planets and will use it to travel through time - it's an adventure machine, basically. The fact that it can detect something as vague as "a disturbance somewhere" is both on point and completely meaningless - when you can go anywhere and anywhen, you can always find a disturbance (he does sometimes let Adele come along, by the way).

This turns out to be Flip's first adventure to take place in the Fourth Dimension itself and the first time that the Fourth Dimension is suggested to have a supernatural element, as he encounters Lucifer himself! And his magical mouth!

Perhaps I gave the disturbance-detector too hard of a time, because the disturbance it somehow detected was Lucifer getting ready (did he finally accrue enough power or just make the decision?) to destroy planet Earth!

Lucky for the Earth and all who dwell on her, the trail of energy that Flip leaves behind as he travels not only functions as a lifeline to his home but in a bit of a deus ex machina turns out to have anti-demonic properties! Flip securely ties up Lucifer and then... just goes home. It's a very confident move, assuming that the Great Adversary, a being capable of destroying whole planets, will never escape from your improvised knot, and if he does (he does, we'll be seeing him again) he won't bother blowing up the planet out of embarrassment or something. And just because that's exactly what happens is no reason not to ask questions.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 429: LORD MARVEL

(Mystery Men Comics 004, 1939)

Here we see Lord Marvel, a weird little creep who lives on the planet Ursis (as with many planets in the Rex Dexter comics, Ursis is ambiguously placed: Dexter and his companion/ lover Cynde are constantly sidetracked on the comparatively short voyage from Earth to Mars and always seem to end up on extra-solar planets. The writers of Golden Age sci-fi comics often seem to have a fairly fuzzy grasp of the positions and distances of various locations in space. Are these adventures happening on various asteroids? Is the Rex Dexter solar system much more crowded than our own? Who can say?). Marvel's stated goal is universal domination, and to that end he wants to steal Earth's Moon, destroying Earth in the process. Rex Dexter opposes this, of course, and Lord Marvel is left for dead in the flaming wreckage of his laboratory.

The real appeal of Lord Marvel is his design sense: just look at this amazing robot!

And this one! This robot is actually originally from Mars, which leads to Lord Marvel's downfall due to Rex Dexter being able to communicate with it in Martian and turn it against him.

Even the controls of his doomsday devices have little skulls on them. Good job, Lord Marvel. You weird creep.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 411: SATAN REX

(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939)

We've all read a comic in which a scientist is rejected for his wild-but-true theories and goes a bit bonkers and criminal, but Satan Rex really went for it. Originally Eric von Hochwalt, who developed the Theory of Relativity ten years before Einstein and dealt with his subsequent rejection by disappearing into the Himalayas, founding a city full of people who worship him as a god, conquering the aging process and eventually taking a few stabs at destroying the world that wronged him, in the far-off year 2009.

Everything Satan Rex does is over-the-top and baroque: his minions have cryptic science tattoos on their foreheads, for example.

And his doomsday device is incorporated into the Temple of the Golden Man, the state religion of his City of the Mists. If there's a choice to be made, Satan Rex will go with the fanciest option. He makes at least three passes at destroying the Earth and/or humanity before his heroic foil Jon Linton accidentally travels to the far corners of space and time. Did Satan Rex try again, unopposed? It shall remain a mystery!

SUPER-VILLAIN YEARBOOK: WOTAN 1940

What was Wotan up to in 1940?

A trip back in time! A year or so ago when I was reading the 1940 issues of More Fun was before I started doing Super-Villain Yearbook posts and so I skipped poor Wotan, an injustice compounded by the fact that he is what I would call a Median Villain: one who has either enough appearances or importance to a hero's history to be more than a minor villain but without the name recognition of a Capital S Super-Villain. Wotan has a bit of both: as Dr Fate's first enemy he gets dredged up every once in a while when a magic guy (or gal, occasionally) is required.

1. More Fun Comics 055, 'Untitled':  Wotan's Golden Age appearances are pretty standard fare: he is introduced as an evil equivalent to Dr Fate, operating as some sort of magic crime boss - the ins and outs of his operation are less than clear as his main focus is eliminating Fate and his pal Inza Cramer. 

As time goes on Dr Fate gets more ethereal and mystical and I just want to highlight how rock 'em sock'em, throw 'em out the window he was at the beginning. Just a brutal way to deal with a foe (and perhaps a few passing New Yorkers on the sidewalk below).

2. More Fun Comics 056, 'Untitled': But of course throwing Wotan out of a window wasn't going to stop him. Would it stop Dr Fate? Of Course it wouldn't. He returns with a vengeance, quite literally: as revenge for Fate trying to kill him Wotan is going to blow up the whole damn world! Just try to stop that with a sock on the jaw, Fate!

One sock to the jaw later, Dr Fate seals Wotan in a little rocky cyst for all time.

Body Count: 0

End-of-Year Status: Entombed

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 155: MAZDA THE GREAT

(All-Star Comics 003, 1940)

Much of the information that we have on Mazda the Great comes from the mouth of one of his dying henchmen at the end of the story, but what reason would he have to lie? According to this man, Mazda was a scientist (I assume a vulcanologist. An enormous one!) who developed both technology to control/ redirect the energies of a volcano and also volcano-proof suits. Thus equipped, he set up shop in the crater of Mount Krakatoa along with his minions, dubbed the Fire Ghosts.

It's a bit unclear whether Mazda actually planned on taking over the world or destroying it - he said destroy while his minion said conquer - but either way, he was chucked into the volcano for his troubles, once Hawkman showed up on the scene.

A lot of reasons to like this fella - I love a huge guy and I love a skull hat, and on a scientist? Beautiful. He also manages to maintain enough gravitas that I always remember him as having a pseudo-noble goal for his conquest/destruction but on further examination it seems that he just has volcano-weaponizing technology and wants to use it.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 108: UNNAMED MAGE

(More Fun Comics 058, 1940)

I love this guy, for all that he's unnamed. He kills an immortal snake that lives in the Nile in order to steal the magic book that it guards. The first spell he tries summons all of the wealthy men in a wide radius and compels them to give up their cash to him. The second spell he tries starts to tear the world apart, though it's unclear whether that was his goal or if he was trying to punch above his weight. Either way, Dr Fate is forced to take him out to restore order.

Also he dresses like Marvel's Sphinx, which is a neat coincidence.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 075: "UNCLE"

(Adventure Comics 057, 1940)

As I've said before, sometimes a character is very clearly a super-villain but chooses no name for themself, in which case for administrative purposes I pick something that the text boxes or other characters refer to them as and go with that. Scientists are usually easy - they just go by their name. This fellow, on the other hand, is basically only ever referred to as "Uncle," so Uncle I call him.

And Uncle is a credible threat! He tries to ransom the world by threatening to destroy it by knocking it off of its orbit, then actually tries to do it in a fit of pique - it's only the timely intervention of Sandman that saves the day.

In the last entry, when I was talking about mad scientists as perfect characters to bring back as reformed? This is the kind of guy I had in mind. What a gift to a cast!