(Wonderworld Comics 010, 1940) The Bloody Baron was once Karek, Baron of the Duchy of Morziava, somewhere in the spooky part of Eastern Europe. Nine Hundred plus years ago he went off to war and came back a woman-killing creep and so his people burned him at the stake. Ever since, he’s been rising from the dead and carrying off a woman per year – that’s at least eight hundred women as of the story we’re talking about! Yarko the…
None of this science is mad or criminal peer reviewed. This fellow attempts to blackmail Dynamo’s unnamed home city by various methods, including Causing and then threatening further widespread destruction with his “liquid air” freeze cannon and kidnapping city council members and then subjecting some of them to a frankly horrific bone liquefying ray. The main problem with him is honestly the fact that he has no established name. He does go by “Miss Monda” while he is posing as…
(Wonderworld Comics 009, 1940) Detective Dr Fung’s pal Dan Barrister racks up one of the swifter “this information is impossible/ the impossible thing is right behind me” turnarounds in comics history when he and Dr Fung are kidnapped by a Moth Man about 1.5 seconds after he expresses disbelief in the existence of Moth Men who kidnap people. It turns out that the Moth Men in question work for a super-villainous type named Karno the Chess Man (sometimes Chessman) who…
Pilots! Vexatious pilots! Will they give me no peace? the Skull Squad: Yet another gang of pilots with some pretty lacklustre skull theming to go with their name. The Skull Squad is an international affair, with American Jimmy Jones, Englishman Kent Douglas and Scotsman Jock “Sandy” MacGregor all flying a bomber for the RAF and predictably getting into wild and wooly scrapes. (Wings Comics 001, 1940) SKULL SCORE: 0.5/5 the Parachute Patrol: The Parachute Patrol are Tommy, Curly and Blimpo…
(Whiz Comics 002-011, 1940) I first wrote about the Mask back in the early days when I was trying to keep things short – a laudible goal and one I have not always stuck to, but there’s such a thing as too short, especially when talking about Spy Smasher’s only real enemy for about a year and a half. In the spirit of correcting that, here are some of the more interesting moments from the Mask’s 1940 appearances. To start, I had…
Gods aplenty! Tyalpo: The god worshipped by Ibis the Invincible villain Piang the Terrible. Probably real, in that Piang has real magical power that he calls upon Tyalpo to activate, even if the god himself shows up only in idol form. God Style: Idol (Real?) (Whiz Comics 009, 1940) Goddess of the Jungle: Sandor is a jungle hero who doesn’t so much adventure as get into one long series of scrapes and situations in Northern India, the second most popular location…
How fitting and extremely predictable that Dr Sivana, our inaugural full-fledged Super-Villain, is also our first villain to receive a Super-Villain Update! In Whiz Comics 003a, Sivana attempts to conquer the US, first via simple extortion, followed by full-fledged invasion = please note that he even goes to the trouble to declare war before mobilizing his forces. Captain Marvel of course is more than a match for any conventional army, and Dr Sivana seemingly meets his end when a deathtrap meant…
Hate and deception abound in this batch of deities. Wangwa, God of Hate: Wangwa, God of Hate is the personal god of Okoro, medicine man of the Blancas and enemy of Doctor Voodoo. I’ve never decided if the Evil Medicine Man trope is mere condescension toward native spiritual practices or a porting over of the Evil Vizier archetype to jungle comics, and in all honesty it’s probably both. Anyway, Okoro fits the mould to a T and he worships the…
Scoundrels! Mid-tier scoundrels! Simon Rudd loves games and gambling and taking chances, and somehow that has led him to a South Pacific island where he wears a full tuxedo and bosses around a local tribe all day. When ocean adventurer Lance O’Casey and his companions wash up on his shores, Rudd engages in a little Most Dangerous Game action with them, presumably out of sheer boredom. This being a Lance O’Casey story, his ultimate fate is to be socked in…
A motley crew of mostly cavemen await ye. Pleistocene Men: When rich jerk Rodney Stark wants to take over the world, he know just where to go: the Arctic, where he can use his heat ray to thaw out a frozen tribe of prehistoric men to act as his personal army. Did he already know that they were there or was he just assuming that he could dig up a few guys just by sinking a hole any old place?…