MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 553: LANDOR, MAKER OF MONSTERS

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 553: LANDOR, MAKER OF MONSTERS

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(Speed Comics 001, 1939) Landor, Maker of Monsters is a fellow who hangs out in a castle and – no big surprise – makes monsters. He’s also the title character of his feature, which is not unprecidented in Golden Age comics but worth noting whenever it’s the case. Landor is just about finished with his very first monster when socialites Tony Torrence and his fiance  Marcia NoLastName show up at his door seeking shelter from the stormy night. Just why…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 552: BARON VON KAMPF

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 552: BARON VON KAMPF

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(Speed Comics 001, 1939)  Baron von Kampf! Major recurring Shock Gibson villain and aspiring world conqueror. He’s exactly the sort of evil, sneering gloating villain that I love to see vex the heroes of yesteryear, and due to the fact that his appearances are concentrated in the early days of the super-hero medium that’s about all the characterization he gets. He wants to rule the world and he’s a dick about it. But who needs characterization when you’ve 1. got…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 014

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 014

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Some real niche characters this time. the Lone Star Rider: An Old West hero so generic he only appeared once and never even got to track down the owlhoots who killed his parents in order to steal their land. Good gloves. (Smash Comics 002, 1939) Shock Gibson: Like Barry Allen after him, Charles (later Robert) Gibson is a young scientist working late into a stormy night when he is simultaneously struck by lightning and bathed in chemicals. Though he is…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 551: THE MAD PROFESSOR

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 551: THE MAD PROFESSOR

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(Smash Comics 004, 1939) It’s a classic set-up: squat in some out-of the-way location – an isolated island, a desert, or as in this case the mountains of Alaska – bring down planes or draw in ships using a big magnet or fake monster or as here an engine-killing ray, and bingo bango bongo you have your own fleet. You can supply your own crew or save even more money like the Mad Professor by subjecting the existing crew to…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 550: THE NUMBERS

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 550: THE NUMBERS

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(Smash Comics 004, 1939) The real heyday of the capital-a Anarchist as societal boogeyman was in the 1920s by my reckoning and so you don’t get them in anything like the numbers of pseudo-Nazis and Yellow Perils in the comics of the 1930s, and then of course in the 1940s you get your Axis villains, followed by your dastardly Commies and this is all to say that I enjoy these fellows for their novelty if nothing else. As for their…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 549: THE GREEN LIZARD

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 549: THE GREEN LIZARD

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(Smash Comics 004, 1939) The Green Lizard is a Floridian crook who specializes in extorting wealthy men and then kidnapping them when they fail to pay. This is the sort of thing I’ve spoken of before and will again: it absolutely makes sense to adopt a colourful identity like this if you’re a criminal in a super-hero universe, even in the not-exactly-a-rich-and-interconnected-tapestry Quality universe of 1939, with stories of the Clock or Bozo the Iron Man trickling out of New…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 548: MADAME DOOM

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 548: MADAME DOOM

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(Smash Comics 004, 1939) We will be seeing more of Madame Doom, as she is Black X’s only real recurring foe (I think), but as far as 1939 goes she made one appearance and this is it.  Madame Doom, a freelance spy, is working for “the dictators” in an attempt to steal US defense plans and prevent the signing of a pretty vague treaty that acts as a deus ex machina reason for war not to have broken out yet…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 547: THE HOODED TERROR

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 547: THE HOODED TERROR

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(Smash Comics 003, 1939) It’s a good name but I’m afraid that the Hooded Terror is just a stock crypto-fascist European saboteur attempting to destroy the Panama Canal and trap the US fleet in the Pacific in order to set up an invasion of the East Coast. It’s no great loss to fiction when he gets cold-cocked by G-2 agent Wings Wendall and left behind in a sinking submarine to drown. Other than some degree of admiration for his ability…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 546: PROFESSOR DWYER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 546: PROFESSOR DWYER

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(Smash Comics 003, 1939) When a mysterious monster-man robs a London apartment by ripping a safe clean out of the wall, Captain Cook of Scotland Yard somehow intuits that this may be the work of disgraced London University scientist Professor Dwyer and manages to track him down to an abandoned castle on the moors outside the city (I take no responsibility for checking if there are moors just outside London. Or castles). His intuition is of course correct and he…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 545: “?”

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 545: “?”

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(Smash Comics 002, 1939) An art thief, but an audacious art thief. “?” is so-named because he sends a message signed thus to the Paris Prefect of Police warning that he would steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and then actually does it from under the noses of the Prefect, the police and Captain Cook of Scotland Yard. Like, while in the same room as them – he just hits the lights and grabs the painting. Then, a couple…

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