MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 886: THE HORNED HOOD

(Wow Comics 002, 1941) 

If a comic story opens on a description of a gem or art object like the Maharajah Jewel here the you can be sure that that item is about to be stolen by a nefarious individual. It's just science!

Sure enough, no sooner does Professor Cadiz finish his lecture on the gem and its provenance than rictus grin-sporting gang boss the Horned Hood is sending two of his top men into the Upstate Museum to grab the swag, and even though Mr Scarlet intervenes, the Horned Hood manages to scuttle out a side door with the jewel in the commotion.

Ultimately, the Horned Hood might be the greatest degree of style over substance that we've encountered in a while, as seen in the extreme brevity of his battle with Mr Scarlet. And no wonder, because the Horned Hood turns out to be Professor Cadiz, the only possible suspect (because he his the only named character who doesn't already work for the Horned Hood) and a real power nerd. 

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 885: THE GHOST

(Wow Comics 002, 1941) 

After a particularly fraught meeting of the Orphan Society, at which the charity's president Henry Suffridge accuses everyone present of potentially being responsible for some recent embezzlement, board member Jones is accosted by some spooky scary ghosts and skeletons while muttering to himself on his way home. They warn him in no uncertain terms to leave town - is he the embezzler, being punished for his misdeeds by the spirits of the dead?

No he is not, as it turns out, because Mr Scarlet is on hand to demonstrate that these are in fact fully tangible, fully punchable goons in sheets and skeleton costumes with a layer of phosphorescent paint over top (specifically radium paint, in fact. Woof, as if being a costumed henchman wasn't enough, now there's an increased cancer risk?)

The point of the whole charade is to scare Jones into leaving town because he knows who is responsible for the embezzlement. Are ghosts and skeletons better at doing that than a dozen large men with guns? The Ghost is betting that they are!

And just who is this Ghost? Why, it's Henry Suffridge, literally the only other named character in the story! Well, I guess there were fellow Orphan Society board members Crane and Petrie but considering that they each showed up for about one and a half panels I think that we can safely say that they were outside of the suspect pool. Ultimately, it's a lot of grandiose window-dressing for a grubby little crime, done poorly. For shame, Ghost.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 884: DOCTOR DEATH

(Wow Comics 002, 1941)

We open as concert pianist Campani plays the "Symphony of Death," a piece of music anonymously dedicated to him, only to die at its conclusion. What will eventually become clear is that the sheet music he was reading from was coated in poison and slightly stuck together so that Campani would need to lick his finger in order to turn the pages, thus poisoning himself in the process.

This is a pretty good plan! If pulled off carefully, it might even be done so anonymously that the perpetrator would be effectively untraceable. There's no chance of that, however, because said perpetrator is in fact a comic book super-villain who calls himself Doctor Death and who has all of the subtlety of his kind. Not only does he have a goon conspicuously parked outside Campani's apartment to report back on the whether the scheme has worked, but the day before he sent a threatening note to Campani, complete with signature and little skull and coffin illustrations.

(as can be seen in the note above, even though Doctor Death does music-based crimes and is kind of dressed like a concert musician his actual theme is that of a medical doctor. It's a bit of a muddle)

Doctor Death's next stated target is another musician, Ravelle, and though Mr Scarlet prevents Ravelle's copy of the "Symphony of Death" from being mailed to him this doesn't stop Doctor Death; he just goes to Ravelle's house, and when Mr Scarlet shows up there he gets captured and slated to die as well.

Doctor Death of course does not contend with the fact that while Mr Scarlet is technically not a super-human he is nonetheless a super-hero and thus able to, for instance, lift a grand piano over his head and throw it at Doctor Death's body. Among other things, this splits the Doctor Death mask asunder, revealing that the villain is in fact... Ravelle! 

It turns out that Ravelle was recently fired and presumably replaced by Campani and his response to this insult was to turn to elaborate murder plots for solace. The attempt on Ravelle's own life was a bluff designed to draw suspicion away from himself that was repurposed into a trap for Mr Scarlet. But what of Sigowitz, the third name on the revenge list? Alas, we shall never know.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 883: AMERICA SMASHER

(Spy Smasher 002, 1941) 

There are a few different kinds of evil opposites. There are your classic elemental opposites, like when a fire guy fights a water guy or an ice guy, and your thematic opposites, like when the Flash goes up against Turtle Man. Then there are your literal Bizarro-style mirror image opposites, which is the closest to what America Smasher is, but not quite. Instead, he is a declared opposing force to Spy Smasher: "if you are going to smash spies, which includes me*, then I am going to smash America, which includes you." Plus, since he is a super-villain, America Smasher has literalized the smashing concept by adopting a spiked mail glove as his thing.

Spy Smasher is on a bit of a hot streak with regard to being able to locate his villains' bases while they are still in the planning stages, but rather than simply use this as an information-gathering opportunity as he did when he found Dark Angel's HQ, this time he gets cocky due to America Smasher's diminutive size and attempts to take on the whole room, and he pays for that with a bop on the head from the mailed fist. 

*Whether America Smasher would count as a spy in any way other than the fact that he is a Spy Smasher enemy is a conversation for another day.

Spy Smasher gets out of this predicament thanks to the fact that America Smasher hit him so hard that everyone thinks that he's dead. There's the usual back and forth between the two before Spy Smasher and Eve Corby are caught and imprisoned in a mysterious humming building full of men and tanks. Just where could they be?

Turns out: inside an incredibly huge plane (containing, for example, a full tank corps and hundreds if not thousands of soldiers) that is about to bomb the US in advance of a full invasion by the Nazis.

The plane is so big, in fact, that Spy Smasher finds plenty of handholds on it to a) prevent himself from falling to his death and b) make is way to the cockpit so that he can start pitching pilots out the window willy-nilly. And as a plane is nothing without its pilots, it crashes, taking America Smasher and all his hundreds of minions to their demise with it.

America Smasher does not in fact die in the crash, but instead establishes a sewer lair in what is probably NYC (Spy Smasher comics are often hard to pin down, geography-wise, even though the characters all live and work in named cities. The problem is in distinguishing whether the action of a particular issue is supposed to be taking place in Washington DC, where Admiral Corby works, or NYC, where he and his daughter Eve reside. Or sometimes Virginia, where Alan Armstrong lives. Or another place entirely). 

America Smasher does get up to more recognizable spy activity in this issue, primarily centred around inducing a German American man to betray his Secret Service agent son, but he also spends a lot of effort attempting to get revenge for his prior foiled plan, by killing Eve Corby in particular. Why her in particular? That's a good question.

America's Greatest Comics 001 was published in November or December of 1941 and this story shows it in one very particular way: by having America Smasher explicitly be a Nazi. Even very slightly in advance of Pearl Harbor and the US entering the war, publishers were starting to get a little bit brave about perhaps suggesting that all these bad guys with German accents and monocles that they had been populating their rogues galleries for for that last couple of years were in fact Nazis.

As mentioned previously, this issue sees America Smasher in reduced circumstances as he's living in a sewer rather than a flying war base. He hasn't entirely given up on the finer things in villainy, however, as evidenced by the enormous Art Deco iron maiden that acts as both the centrepiece of his lair and the primary means by which he inspires cooperation in his victims. Also, it is the instrument of his downfall when Spy Smasher pushes it over onto him!

Not his ultimate downfall, however. That comes when he floods sewer base in attempt to kill Spy Smasher and in a classic case of Bad Boss leaves his henchmen behind to die with him, only for one of them to go mad with fear and blow up the whole damn sewer and America Smasher with it. (America's Greatest Comics 001, 1941)

The rumours of America Smasher's death are once again exaggerated it seems, as he recovers his gauntlet from his shattered lair almost immediately (though just whose arm it was on in that pile of rubble remains a mystery. For that matter, just who made the decision to leave a human corpse under a light coating of rubble in the New York City sewers?).

This final 1941 adventure is a bit anticlimactic after the previous heights and even mediums of villainy that America Smasher had aspired to: he trails Alan Armstrong and Eva and Admiral Corby to Alaska in order to steal the Army's new Ski Tank prototype and then gets his block knocked off by Spy Smasher. He doesn't even appear to die at the end of the issue but instead suffers the ignominy and shame of arrest. 

America Smasher will return in 1942 - will his career continue to spiral ever farther downward? Tune in and see! (Whiz Comics 025, 1941)