(Slam-Bang Comics 006, 1940) The Sky Demon is a heretofore-unseen old enemy of Diamond Jack who starts strong with an overall Satanic look and a little skull on the front of his trunks – just the right amount of accessorizing to make a pretty basic super-outfit pop. I also love his plot to conquer Earth and/or wipe out humanity: get some gorillas, give them wings and revolvers and let them loose. I can’t say whether or not his plan would…
(Slam-Bang Comics 005, 1940) An early entry in the grand tradition of comic book characters that indirectly make the assertion that the Salem Witch Trials were entirely justified, since Salem was crawling with actual, factual witches such as this dapper fellow. See? Witches were real and they summoned fire devils and tried to sacrifice pure-hearted time-travelling children to them! The foils to this dastardly and historically accurate fiend are teacher Rodney Kent and his pupil/ ward Mark Swift, two prime…
(Slam-Bang Comics 005, 1940) A jewel thief who dresses up in a gorilla costume to commit crimes, what really stands out about the Gorilla Man is that he does so for no real reason? He just likes it? Hell, if anything it makes him more likely to get caught since he has pulled this sort of job before and the gorilla costume is a bit of an attention getter. Is it reasonable to call this fictional character from more than…
(Slam-Bang Comics 005, 1940) I quite like Maria. Firstly, she is a vampire with bat wings, which is a feature that hardly ever shows up any more. Also she sleeps in a coffin filled with the bones of her victims, which is not a bit of vampire lore that I am familiar with but which does rule. She hangs out in a castle somewhere in the US and vampirizes random motorists in anticipation of the day that she has enough…
(Slam-Bang Comics 004, 1940) What makes them a super-villain? Why, that snazzy outfit! Comics are full of people who run opium smuggling rings but very few look as good while doing it. What makes them interesting? It depends on your definition of interesting, but this is the first costumed criminal on our list whose disguise includes pretending to be another race – specifically, the Dragon is a white hardware store owner named Jones who passes himself off as a Chinese master…
(Slam-Bang Comics 001-007, 1940) Diamond Jack is pretty simple conceptually: he’s a guy in a suit with a magic ring and he fights crime. He doesn’t have much in the way of backstory or supporting cast – just your average Golden Age adventurer type. He is canonically anti-Nazi, even though all of his appearances are from 1940, so that’s a point in his favour. Mostly his stories are entertaining due to the number of wacky supernatural villains he battles. And as…
(Slam-Bang Comics 003, 1940) I really like the Green Devil. He has a lot going on! He has an army of the living dead, an island base, and a hurricane generator. He’s conservatively 10 ft tall and looks like the Devil (with green skin, natch) His main scheme is to disrupt the laws of magic, which not only weakens his enemy Diamond Jack’s magic ring but also for some reason causes regular stage magic and stuff like snake charming and…
(Slam-Bang Comics 001, 1940) On the one hand the Witch uses smoke-dragon magic in an attempt to kill Diamond Jack for some thugs. On the other, she’s an old woman who Diamond Jack strips of her power and leaves weeping in her slum hovel. Still… technically a villain?
(Nickel Comics 006, 1940) A costumed gang that managed to take over a small town under the direction of head devil Lucifer. Not the most distinguished costumed gang ever but you gotta give them credit for trying. And not only do they have devil horns on their hood but there’s a skull-and-crossbones on both the hood and the chest! Sartorially speaking, they’re years ahead! Anyway, most of them get drowned by Bulletman.
(Nickel Comics 001-007, 1940) Warlock the Wizard, in addition to having a name built to confuse someone familiar with modern D&D classes, is an interesting member of the Magic Guy type of Golden Age super-heroes, in that while he has some innate skill at magic he is much more of a magic item user than a lot of his contemporaries (and yes I am aware that this makes him closer to an Artificer than either a Warlock or a Wizard). This…