Memes of Yore: Women be loving hats. (All-Flash 001, 1941) Decoration: On the island nation of Felicia, the chairs are monogrammed with a big F (Master Comics 001, 1940) UPDATE: And the shields. Drawn without reference: The majestic pterodactyl. (Master Comics 007, 1940)
(All-Flash 001, 1941)
(Leading Comics 001, 1941) As promised: the Five Fingers of the Hand! Though the Seven Soldiers would go on the fight more than a few teams of super-henchmen, the Fingers are distinguished by being (mostly) pre-established characters. Fun! Big Caesar: Big Caesar is whatever. A regular-style gang boss with a good name, elevated by being included in the gang. He appears just this once, in a scheme that involves cutting the power to Broadway and then doing a crimewave in…
(Leading Comics 001, 1941) The Hand holds the distinction of being both the first foe of the Seven Soldiers of Victory (all 9 or 10 of them) and the person who organized them as a team in the first place, and all as a way to get attention, essentially. As first presented, he is a master criminal so successful that he is unknown to the world at large who has just received word that he is dying with no hope…
(Human Torch v1 006, 1941) Just one issue after attempting to conquer the world (and sinking a US fleet in the process), Namor is commissioned as an honorary admiral in the US Navy (for saving a different US fleet from sinking).
(Human Torch v1 006, 1941) A fairly simple one today: am man named Haskell advertises for people with no hope in life, then selects the most desperate of them into a gang. Since they were all prepared to die already, the members of the Legion of Despair are prone to, say, blowing themselves up with grenades in order to see that their compatriots get away with whatever loot they’re scampering off with. Aside from this radical investment in the goals…
(Human Torch v1 005b, 1941) Bit of an unfair one here: Rathia is a princess of a Baltic kingdom of Atlanteans who persuades the Sub-Mariner to attempt world conquest. She is unquestionably a bad egg but by far the worst crimes of the issue are perpetuated by Namor himself and include: imprisoning and nearly killing Toro, mind controlling the Human Torch, flooding Africa and NYC, sinking the Italian Navy, nearly destroying Moscow and various war crimes. Crucially, Rathia does not…
(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941) The Mad Violinist! Not especially mad, aside from being a fascist fanatic. More of a fiddler than a violinist, too – perhaps Nazi Super-Agent HR got mixed up when assigning codenames and swapped his with the Fiddler and vice versa. Name mixup or no, the Mad Violinist makes quite a splash when he attacks a military parade in NYC and kills potentially hundreds of soldiers and onlookers – it’s always a real pain to estimate…
(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941) This is kind of a weird one in a few ways, the first being that the foundation of the plot is that a) Namor the Sub-Mariner and the Angel both own Caribbean islands and b) that they are good enough friends for Namor to pay the Angel a visit. During this visit one of Namor’s servants bursts in and promptly drops dead in an effort to deliver a note cryptically warning of a zombie takeover….
(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941) I think I’ve mentioned the old three-act super-villain story structure of yore a couple of times, but there are a whole host of old comic book story styles that have fallen by the wayside and Dr Smart here stars in one of them: the book-length heist story. Three pages into our tale, Smart and his crew, posing as a funeral procession, rob an armoured car. The remaining 38 or so pages concern the efforts of…