MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 182: THE BIG SHOT

(Crack Comics 001, 1940)

A series of facts about Golden Age super-hero comics:

-most of them take place in cities

-they are either set in a specific location (e.g. Wonder Woman being in Washington DC or the Red Bee in Superior City) or an unidentified large city

-in the latter case, over time the city acquires characteristics that either lead to it becoming its own thing (e.g. Batman's unidentified large city becomes Gotham) or being identified as New York City

Now there are plenty of exceptions to this (Superman starts out in Cleveland which quickly becomes Metropolis; plenty of Golden Age heroes didn't stick around for their location to gel, etc etc) but it does happen a fair amount and it leads to situations like the above, wherein the Clock, who lives in an unidentified large city clearly based on NYC, arrests crimelord the Big Shot and learns that he is in fact Mayor Kozer! And then over the years it becomes more and more clear that Clock stories are set in New York and you end up with an alternate history of the office of Mayor of New York City in which Fiorello la Guardia is presumably repeatedly ousted from office only to be reelected following the various Evil Mayor Arrested by Vigilante scandals. This is the sort of thing that really gets my heartrate up!

Anyway: the Big Shot, folks.

EDIT TO ADD:

This isn't even the first Mayor of NYC that the Clock is responsible for the arrest of: one year earlier he helped send Mayor Tull up the river! (Feature Comics 022, 1939)

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 181: THE SWAMP DEVIL

(Captain Marvel Adventures 005, 1941)

The Swamp Devil! Part of a couple of fairly populous subgroupings of supercrook: the "kill or scare off folk in order to do a land-grab" type and the "pose as a figure from local legend in order to capitalize on preexisting fear, etc" cohort (a frequently paired duo). Specifically, the Swamp Devil is actually Woggs, an engineer tasked with draining part of the Great Dismal Swamp to create more farmland who is instead flooding nearby farms and using a combination of mind control gas and his monsterized diving rig/ costume to scare off or murder the locals. Later, he plans to return and buy up the fertile farmland cheap.

I gotta say... this seems like a lot of effort to go to for swamp-adjacent farmland. Most guys who pull this kind of scheme are after a quicker payoff: deposits of oil or precious metals, pearl beds, buried treasure... Sure you can get rich off farming but it's a lot more of a long-term plot than your average small-time supercrook is geared for - presumably he's going to have to change his name, right? Or a similar level of obfuscation to cover for the fact that Mr Woggs is back for the land he failed to secure the last time around in his official capacity? Just as well he gets stomped by Captain Marvel, really.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 180: KING OF THE CRATER

(Captain Marvel Adventures 005, 1941)

This rockabilly-looking feller is King of the Crater and I like him quite a bit. His plan, as laid out above, is to weaponize a seam of magma that runs under the Rockies and the Andes in order to lay claim to a strip of territory running the length of the Americas. It's not a bad plan if you subscribe to the attitude that violent conquest is an acceptable means of achieving control over territory. Or that control over territory is a desirable end in itself, I guess. 

It is a plan that is vulnerable to the supposition that it might just be easier to establish a lucrative monopoly on geothermal power production, of course. Also Captain Marvel. The plan is and was vulnerable to Captain Marvel.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 179: THE BEAST-RULER

(Captain Marvel Adventures 003, 1941)

The Beast-Ruler's origin is simple: for reasons of his own, Dr Sivana builds a human out of animal parts - the muscles of a gorilla, the memory of an elephant and yes, the life-force of a thousand beasts - and that creation promptly rebels and runs off with the remaining beasts that have not had their life-forces squeezed out. A real rookie mistake on Sivana's part if you ask me - this isn't his first time toying in God's domain and he should have lab procedures covering such as a rebellious super-powered humanoid.

Speaking of super-powers, the Beast-Ruler has 'em (and speaking of names, that's a bad one). He's got the full suite of enhanced physical abilities, plus he can communicate with animals, a trait that he quickly uses to organize an army of beasts as a prelude to wiping out humanity. A pretty smart move on the part of the animals, honestly, but Captain Marvel ultimately prevails over this force with the help of other animals who choose to side with the human race.

The breakdown of the animal armies is interesting: wild animals are all on the Beast-Ruler's side, while Captain Marvel has dogs, cats and a selection of domesticated farm animals, but not all of them. Sheep are firmly on the side of the Beast-Ruler and the loyalty of pigs and horses seem to be split, with some representation in each army. If we're honest, most of the pro-humanity animals were fooling themselves, but they manage to distract the more sensible beasts long enough for Captain Marvel to send the Beast-Ruler head first off a waterfall.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 178: THE ARSON FIEND

(Captain Marvel Adventures 002, 1941)

The Arson Fiend! A simple villain conceptually: fire insurance salesman George D. Tweedle just can't sell any fire insurance and so he starts what is nominally a protection racket but really seems to be an excuse for wholesale arson.

The twist in this particular tale is that Tweedle has somehow developed or otherwise gotten his hands on a formula that transforms him into the fire-spewing and fireproof Arson Fiend. Legitimately super-powered crooks being a bit underrepresented at this point, I am delighted by this development! I had honestly expected the Fiend to be an asbestos outfit with a flamethrower concealed in each sleeve. The secondary twist is that Tweedle finds out that Billy is Captain Marvel seemingly without effort, which I love. Finally a comic book character is being held accountable for their poor infosec.

Sadly, such a being cannot be long for a comics world. The Arson Fiend and Captain Marvel battle atop a large oil tank and it eventually turns out that however immune to fire you are, you still have to look out for the concussive force element of, say, an oil tank explosion if you want a long career in arson.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 177: BRAM THIRLA

(Captain Marvel Adventures 001, 1941)

I waffled a bit on this guy - he's just a regular-style vampire, after all. But a regular-style vampire is like a ninja or a xenomorph (or a knight, a pirate, a robot, etc): a deadly threat super-villain level singly, while also being easily killed when part of a group.

So: Bram Thirla demonstrates a couple of important safety concerns specific to comic book science. Firstly: if you must combine the practices of science and sorcery, at least do so in proper laboratory conditions, as performing experiments e.g., in a cemetery at midnight not only introduces quite a lot of unintentional variables but limits the ability to pre-plan safety precautions such as escape routes.

Secondly: when sourcing human remains or brains, go the extra mile and try to get ahold of a nice person's corpse. Sure it's easier to bribe the prison morgue attendant to release the body of a recently executed mass murderer to you but now you have a murderer's brain in your gorilla and that spells trouble. Or in this case: you've resurrected the body of a "mysterious and evil man" because nobody would object and now you're being eaten by a vampire.

The best part of this story is presented above: Captain Marvel and Bram Thirla are incapable of hurting one another, so are locked in a race against time: can Captain Marvel do enough research on vampires to figure out how to bump off Thirla before Thirla catches him in his Billy Batson form?

The comic isn't called Bram Thirla Adventures, so thanks to HP Lovecraft's seminal work The Vampire Legend, Billy prevails and Thirla is reinterred.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 176: Z

(Captain Marvel Adventures 001, 1941)

Z is (spoilers) an android built by Dr Sivana to destroy Captain Marvel. He's a cool guy and a fun villain: slick, full of attitude, almost powerful enough to do the job. Plus he doesn't seem to know he's a robot, which I find to be a fun feature in an android character - it allows for shocking reveals! Z should definitely be BROUGHT BACK, if only as disposable muscle for Sivana. We wuz robbed of a smug android thug slouched over a chair cleaning his nails in the background of every Dr Sivana scene from 1941 on, I say!

The really interesting thing about Z is the fact that he and Captain Marvel fight three times and each time, Captain Marvel is explicitly trying to kill him. I came into my ongoing "read all comics" project a lot less familiar with the Fawcett end of things so I was pretty bought in to the modern conception of Captain Marvel as some sort of Pure Being of Childlike Innocence and thus it was a lot more jarring to come into the realization that in his early days he was just as likely to resort to deadly force as Batman or Superman, probably a bit less often than the former and more than the latter. Honestly interested to see just when each adopts a code against killing relative to one another.