(Feature Comics 029, 1940)
What makes them a super-villain? The Reaper is another just-scraping-into-the-ranks gang boss. Between his cool name and a setup where he gives his gang orders through a closed-circuit TV and microphone, he makes that final leap, presumably into a slightly higher security prison cell.
(Detective Comics 041, 1940)
What makes them a super-villain? He's an espionage guy with an invisibility formula.
What is interesting about them? Invisible guys are often pretty dull comic book villains, but I will give the Invisible Man/ Dr Ellis this: his cover identity is as a scientist in the team that is trying to catch him, and he's evidently arrogant enough that he actually developed a formula for a gas that would render him visible again but assumed that investigator Cliff Crosby would not have the chemical knowhow to synthesize it. He was wrong!
(More Fun Comics 052-054, 1940)
The Wizard is the kind of guy you get in comics who develops a robot army and a few different types of rays, destructive and otherwise, and immediately turns around and takes over (what I assume to be) his home town. I do appreciate that he looks like someone who has been sitting in a basement or a cave soldering robot faces for twenty years, but it's no excuse for incivility.
(Feature Comics 036, 1940)
What makes them a super-villain? Simply put, Python lives in a creepy castle somewhere in New York State and spends his time stealing the brains of great thinkers to wire up to his machine so that he can plunder their knowledge. And he decorates with the shrunken heads of his victims, and he has a surgically mind-controlled goon named Kreeper.
What is interesting about them? Aside form the above which is pretty solid villain stuff, the most interesting thing about Python is that he has absolutely no connection to snakes in any way. It just seems to be, like, his name? Wild stuff.
(Feature Comics 028, 1940)
As far as a guy who attaches bombs to rats in order to sink and subsequently loot ships goes, Dr Rodent has it all: a great name, a rodentlike cast to his features, and, best of all, his heroic foil is Doll Man so we get to see a little guy ride around on a rat:
(Detective Comics 046, 1940)
Love this guy. The head of a gang of smugglers who looks like a goldfish and is sensitive about it and tortures his foes by imprisoning them in a huge goldfish bowl where they have to stand for days or drown and the only thing to eat is what raw goldfish they can catch and they eventually go mad? Terrific.
All that but it's actually a mask and the Goldfish is actually a frustrated former actor? So much better.
UPDATE: In a rare callback, a remnant of the Goldfish's gang is the antagonist of the 'Spy' story in Detective Comics 048. Neat!
(Detective Comics 043, 1940)
A skull-faced propagandist operating out of the Belgian Congo, presumably Nazi but it's pre-Pearl Harbor so he works for a "hostile power" or "the dictatorships" etc.
The really intriguing thing about the Skull is his choice of themes - rather than go with an obvious skeleton motif like your average skull-faced goon would do, he instead opted for a Medieval theme, complete with sword-wielding henchmen and a jungle castle. I would praise him for making good and interesting choices but he's probably a Nazi, so never mind.
RETROACTIVE ADDENDUM: got a lot of guys named the Skull coming up so I'm going to start scoring them on how appropriate their nom de crime is. This guy is obviously SKULL SCORE: 5/5
UNPRECIDENTED SECOND ADDENDUM: I messed up! this guy is pro war but he's just a munitions profiteer! Sorry, skull-headed creep!
If I see a wound, I catalogue it. Camilla, Queen of the Lost Empire : Shot in the back with an arrow. (Jungle Comics 019, 1941) Captain Fla...
