(National Comics 001, 1940) Once Jock Kellog decides to turn his back on his playboy ways and put his inherited magic cloak to use as Merlin the Magician, he really goes for it. He hits the battlefields of WWII to aid the beleaguered soldiers of the front and ultimately rises into the realm of the gods to confront Mars, God of War and Destruction himself. Mars turns out to be a huge jerk bully who is inciting nations to fight…
Great guns! More of them? the Masked Angel: Steve Oakes, wealthy playboy just so happens to also be the Masked Angel, vigilante feared by the underworld and wanted by the police. Steve’s father Detective Inspector John Oakes was murdered by crooks, so the Masked Angel act is his way of getting back at the criminal fraternity. It also seems to be a way to troll his brother, Detective Inspector John Oakes II, who is an asshole and who hates the…
Once again we must discuss the fascists. The Black League are a pretty regular-style gang of fifth columnists with two points of distinction: 1) they call one another “Black One”, which is kind of fun and 2) they are trying to steal this completely awesome WWII mech suit and get beat up by Dick Cole, Wonder-Boy for their efforts. (Blue Bolt v1 011, 1941) The nation of Bundonia deploys this crack squad of idiots, the Bundsters, to Hollywood to prevent…
Drawn Without Reference: The Rocket and the Queen of Diamonds find themselves facing a very off-model spider in the lad of the Batmen. (Pep Comics 003, 1940) Cops Shooting at Fleeing Suspects: I was briefly tempted to give the cops of the MLJ universe a pass on shooting at the Comet because he did after all kill a bunch of them while mind controlled but then I remembered that a) that’s still no excuse to gun someone down in the…
(Miracle Comics 003, 1940) A scientist/spy who is sabotaging diplomatic talks between the UK and South America by killing diplomats with fog-activated poisoned wallpaper, the Death, aka Jaeger, meets his end at the hands of Secret Agent K-7 and his assistant Yvonne. He’s just the latest in a long line of villains with extremely metal names and not much else going on, except of course for the poisoned wallpaper.
(Miracle Comics 002, 1940) The Eyes is a spy chief (singular) who has a cool gimmick (contact lenses or similar which can emit powerful light beams to spooky effect) and goes all in on it as a theme. Specifically, the Eyes is all about destroying eyes via blinding light, acid or simple traumatic injury – honestly a pretty effective thing to threaten most people with, even if they are for example very loyal to the aircraft company they work for….
(Miracle Comics 001, 1940) “Police athlete” Dash Dixon’s first super-heroic adventure involves him travelling to the small European Republic of Scalene in search of the murderers of several US exporters. Turns out that they were killed to prevent arms and other supplies from being brought into the country, because the Scalene Angles, a group of wealthy jerks, were looking to conquer it. The most important thing about the Scalene Angles is of course their name. It’s fun, but it also…
Some real obscurities from the Hillman House of Ideas: the Sky Wizard: The Sky Wizard is an otherwise-unnamed super-scientist who seemingly dresses in his futuristic super suit 24/7. There’s not too much else to him other than that because he’s one of those characters who has so many gadgets and gizmos that all the narrative focus goes to them rather than him. A partial list: wing suits, super planes, super strength serum (the amazingly named “powerstrength formula”), a paralyzing Q-Ray…
(Miracle Comics 001, 1940) The Unholy One is the major antagonist of scientist-hero the Sky Wizard for three of his four appearances, although for the first two of those appearances he is present only as a voice on the radio directing his American agents Hawk Armand, Vera the Tigress and Butch (a fourth crook, Spud, doesn’t make it past the first encounter with Sky Wizard). And here I must lay out my major problem with the Unholy One: he is…
(Masked Marvel 002, 1940) Kardo, Maker of Monsters, is not quite a super-villain but that’s about the closest thing to what he is and I’m not making up a new category for every guy who doesn’t quite fit the existing ones. What is Kardo then, you ask? A world-famous scientist with the soul of a clown and a compulsion to make creatures and beasties – when we first meet him he is sharing a drink with his friends Dr Melvyn…