The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: mind control

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 949: PRINCESS SHEBA

    (Daredevil Comics 002, 1941)

    1900! Archaeologist Professor Pierce leads an expedition to find the tomb of Princess Sheba in Arabia! Buried alive in a solid gold tomb with a gold cobra perched on her chest, Princess Sheba appears to be meant to be the daughter of the biblical Queen of Sheba. The mummy, her grave goods and praticularly the golden cobra found sitting on her chest are all promptly packed up and shipped back to New York.

    Professor Pierce puzzles over the inscription on the golden cobra for the next forty years, until, in 1941, he decodes it and learns that the cobra is in fact a bottle filled with special mummy-resurrection juice.

    What can a dedicated Egyptologist do in a situation like this, other
    than immediately run to the museum and unwrap the top half of Princess
    Sheba’s mummy so that he can give her the juice. After all, if it works
    it will be a tremendous boon to science, and if it doesn’t, well, they
    probably have plenty of other mummies.

    The fluid works, and Princess Sheba is restored to life as a goth. I was initially going to classify this as a lucky event for Pierce, but it does complicate his life considerably as he not only has to cover up the fact that one of the museum’s mummies is missing but also has an unexpected nude woman who he has implicitly taken responsibility for.

    And a responsibility it is, because Princess Sheba is not only a woman out of time but a complete amnesiac. She learns English and so forth with supernatural rapidity, but Pierce forces her to remain isolated and withholds the information that she was entombed alive because she was born with the ability to control men’s minds with a kiss and used that power for evil in her first life. This turns out to have been a good idea, because as soon as he does tell her she stabs him to death to gain control of the cobra fluid and use her power for evil. 

    Please note that her mind-control kiss is called “the Kiss of Death” and that that is very annoying to me.

    Sheba declares herself the Queen of America and sets about building an army of men to enact her will, though her methodology is a bit weird. She targets powerful and influential men, but the only use she puts them to (that we see, at least) is to cut out their tongues and employ them as gangsters in a pretty conventional crime wave. Is this evidence of a fundamental lack of imagination on her part or is it that despite her rapid learning she is still effectively a child and cannot yet make subtle plans? Or was her brain all shrivelled and dehydrated for a few thousand years too many?

    This is when the Daredevil gets involved after capturing one of her Tongueless Ones and making him write out the directions to her lair – tonguelessness as a tool of secrecy has really lost a lot of its cache as literacy rates have gone up. Sheba goes into the old familiar femme fatale’s “this is the most handsome man I have ever met” routine, and… c’mon. It makes sense when people do that to Superman or the Spirit, or even Batman, as you can see enough of the face to make some sort of judgment, but this guy? Frankly, her interest read as disingenuous and Daredevil is correct in his decision not to kiss her.

    The confrontation between the two ends in a bit of an anticlimax, as Daredevil doesn’t really do anything beyond avoiding that kiss. Instead, Sheba throws the jar of life-juice at him in a fit of pique, then shrivels back into a mummy almost immediately. Like every comic book character who is dependant on a serum for survival she seems to have timed her doses to the minute instead of leaving a little wiggle room in case of unexpected delays. Or maybe the cobra was magic somehow, whatever. The day is saved and hopefully the surviving Tongueless Ones can go back to their old lives in some fashion.

    AND THEY GO BACK TO DISPLAYING HER MUMMY IN THE MUSEUM

    Categorized in: Origin (Resurrected Mummy), Power (Mind Control Kiss), Royalty (Princesses)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 940: THE PARSON

    (Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941)

    The Parson is a weird little dude who takes over a gang of opportunistic London-based looters who have been taking advantage of the ongoing Blitz to make big bucks off of the misfortune of their fellows. Though the gang is initially against the notion of, again, a little weird dude muscling in on their racket, the Parson presses the issue with his powers of hypnotic domination, the source of which is as mysterious and unexplained as the reason for his nom de guerre. 

    (note the backward-speak in the above panel – this is the only instance of him using Zatara-style “magic words” in the story. After this it’s just big-eye hypnotism)

    We do, however know the Parson’s motivation for taking over the gang: he is in fact a Nazi agent working to destabilize London by encouraging the gang to greater and more violent crime, and he reports directly to – a very rude – Adolf Hitler.

    This is a Daredevil comic, which means that the Daredevil has to be in it, which means that he has to get to London somehow. This is achieved by having Bart “the Daredevil” Hill fly a bomber across the Atlantic to the British on a lark. Once he is on the ground, his super-hero intuition is strong enough that he immediately tracks the gang to their bunker lair.

    Though the Parson gets briefly gets the upper hand with a little quick hypnotism, the Daredevil’s willpower proves too great to be suppressed for long and he swiftly batters the whole gang into submission.

    A final note: though the Parson’s men are low-down dirty thieves and murderers, they are still unwilling to work with a Nazi, to their moderate credit.

    Categorized in: Ideology (Nazis), Power (Mind Control), Professions (Religious)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 940: THE PARSON

    (Silver Streak Comics 014, 1941)

    The Parson is a weird little dude who takes over a gang of opportunistic London-based looters who have been taking advantage of the ongoing Blitz to make big bucks off of the misfortune of their fellows. Though the gang is initially against the notion of, again, a little weird dude muscling in on their racket, the Parson presses the issue with his powers of hypnotic domination, the source of which is as mysterious and unexplained as the reason for his nom de guerre. 

    (note the backward-speak in the above panel – this is the only instance of him using Zatara-style “magic words” in the story. After this it’s just big-eye hypnotism)

    We do, however know the Parson’s motivation for taking over the gang: he is in fact a Nazi agent working to destabilize London by encouraging the gang to greater and more violent crime, and he reports directly to – a very rude – Adolf Hitler.

    This is a Daredevil comic, which means that the Daredevil has to be in it, which means that he has to get to London somehow. This is achieved by having Bart “the Daredevil” Hill fly a bomber across the Atlantic to the British on a lark. Once he is on the ground, his super-hero intuition is strong enough that he immediately tracks the gang to their bunker lair.

    Though the Parson gets briefly gets the upper hand with a little quick hypnotism, the Daredevil’s willpower proves too great to be suppressed for long and he swiftly batters the whole gang into submission.

    A final note: though the Parson’s men are low-down dirty thieves and murderers, they are still unwilling to work with a Nazi, to their moderate credit.

    Categorized in: Ideology (Nazis), Power (Mind Control), Professions (Religious)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 539 UPDATE: THE CLAW (1941 PART 1: THE CLAW VS DAREDEVIL)

    The Claw simply has too many appearances in 1941 and if we covered them all in one post it would be exceptionally long. Thus, we are breaking things up into three chunks. The first and longest of these chunks concerns the Claw battling his most famous opponent, the Daredevil, across five issues of Silver Streak Comics.

    The Claw is now firmly established as being based in Tibet and he has a brand new headquarters: a cool skull-shaped castle. He also has a new goal, to invade and conquer the United States, and to that end he uses a combination of a drilling machine and the labour of his horde of undifferentiated fanatical Asian followers (a hoary old racist trope when this comic was published in 1941 and one that crops up again to this day). I was all set to clown on the Claw for going under the Atlantic rather than the Pacific but then I checked on a map and it seems that it is in fact 5000 km shorter to go that way.

    The Claw’s initial approach to conquering the US is to use simple shock and awe to cow the nation into surrender. He attacks New York City in his giant form and employs an underground generator to fire lightning bolts from his fingers in a way that I don’t quite understand. Is the Claw shooting lightning and the generator merely draws it downward or is the generator solely responsible for the bolts? Either way, New York takes a real beating – so much so that the next issue features a short segment on how it gets put back together again.

    It is at this point that the Daredevil, long established as a New Yorker, steps in. He busts up the lightning generator and beats up the ground troops that the Claw had sent in to pillage the town, then engages the Claw himself. This first battle between them ends when a temporarily-ingested Daredevil drops a stick of dynamite down the Claw’s throat and the villain retreats in a puff of smoke.

    The Claw returns Silver Streak Comics 008 with the maximum degree of subtlety that he appears to be capable of exercising. In an excellent initial plan, he mind control the President (and possibly other government officials) and begins shaping government policy through him. The only major flaw in this plan is the fact that the Claw is constitutionally unable to operate at anything but full throttle, and so he essentially speedruns totalitarianism with a series of reforms designed to impoverish the nation and curtail personal freedom.

    It is only at the point that armed guards are preventing people from going to church that the Daredevil once again takes a hand and exposes the fact that FDR is a mind-controlled thrall. The reins of government are passed off to the Vice-President – presumably Henry A. Wallace, given the publication date – and the Claw is so annoyed by this that he has his men begin to systematically loot US cities including Boston, Philadelphia and Washington.

    Daredevil manages to play on the Claw’s pride and goad him into single combat at a normal human size, which ends in the Claw being beaten up so badly that he is no longer able to access his powers and is easily slung into jail.

    Silver Streak Comics 009: With the Claw in jail, powerless and scheduled for execution in one week’s time, Bart “the Daredevil” Hill decides that, having saved the entire nation on two separate occasions, it’s high time that he take a vacation. So resolved, he hops a yacht for the South Seas and some fishing.

    This proves to be a grave mistake, as the charge of the electric chair is just what the Claw needs to be revitalized. In short order, he breaks jail and sets out with his fellow prisoners, now joined up with him as a criminal army, to make yet another attempt to take over the US. 

    The Claw and his new followers retreat to an extinct volcano in the Rockies and there found a criminal city, which is a concept that I personally have a great deal of affection for and am very pleased whenever I encounter. There, the Claw develops another comic book classic, the engine-killing ray, and uses it to systematically lure and capture US military aircraft until he holds absolute air superiority over the North American continent.

    (about here is when Daredevil II, aka Bart Hill’s unnamed and unmourned brother, makes his run at the Claw and is moderately ceremoniously killed)

    Using his overwhelming air might, the Claw forces the US – possibly still under Vice-Presidential control, which would go far to help FDR’s legacy in light of what happens next – to surrender to his rule. The newly-proclaimed Emperor of America is without effective opposition, having captured the original Daredevil when he deigned to return from his vacation. The modest crime city in the Rockies grows into a bustling new capitol city of the USA over the multiple months that the Claw is in control of the country.

    Having achieved his goal, the Claw enacts a nationwide search for an appropriate consort, finally settling on a luckless young woman to be his unwilling Empress of America. This backfires almost immediately, as the new Empress uses the freedom of her position to sabotage the execution of Daredevil and then escape with him on a handy motorcycle.

    Daredevil returns, of course, and in swift order tricks the Claw into stomping his foot hard enough to set off the dormant volcano under his city, thus destroying it, his criminal army and seemingly himself (and probably a lot of political prisoners and rejected Empress of America candidates, too). The Nation is safe!

    Silver Streak Comics 011: Having repeatedly met defeat at the hands of one man, the Claw grows somewhat discouraged and so turns to the dark arts for aid, and specifically turns to the “genii” Lucifer, to whom he claims to have already sold his soul. A few things about all this:

    Why call him a genii and not a demon? No idea. If this comic were produced in the mid 50s or the mid 80s I might say that it was an attempt to avoid the scrutiny of moral crusaders, but nobody else in 1941 is shy about calling a demon a demon.

    Did this Lucifer stuff ever come up before? It did not and furthermore will not come up again. The Claw has used magic in the past, however, so I guess we must assume that he gained that power through selling his soul.

    If Lucifer already has the Claw’s soul then what’s in this deal for him? Lucifer seems to accept the Claw’s proposal out of mere caprice. Perhaps he looks forward to seeing more chaos being inflicted on the world. The only payment he extracts from the Claw is a stipulation that if he does not defeat Daredevil this time then he will be “banished to Asia,” which I read as some sort of mystic travel restriction.

    Flush with new power, the Claw challenges the Daredevil to a battle to the death and enhances the challenge by attacking the country with various demonic genii entities. How can Daredevil hope to prevail?

    With relative ease, as it turns out. The Claw’s monstrous minions might be dangerous but, like all of us,  are vulnerable to the awesome might of an avalanche, while the Claw, weakened and abandoned by his demonic genii ally, once again falls prey to a Daredevil right hook. The Daredevil and the USA are free of the Claw forever!

    (in actuality the Claw and Daredevil meet up one last time, in Daredevil Comics 001, aka Daredevil Battles Hitler, though the Claw never knows that Daredevil is there. In the story, the Claw has made a pact with Hitler to aid the Japanese in their conquest of China and Daredevil employs subterfuge and sabotage to set the two villains against one another. Also, the Claw absolutely returns to the US – I guess that’s what comes of going with a genii instead of a demon for your fell curses)

    And one last thing that didn’t fit anywhere else: though the Claw is a long-time size changer, this is the year that he demonstrates the ability to selectively grow parts of his body, seen here in Silver Streak Comics 009.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 903: SMASHER SPY

    (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

    As seen in his recent update, Spy Smasher’s arch-foe the Mask eventually gets a bit too good at villainy for his own sake. While he succeeds at warping Spy Smasher’s mind and turning him against the US government that he once sought only to defend, the Mask’s enthusiasm means that he is a bit too loose with his commands to “Kill! Kill! Kill!” meaning that the first that Spy Smasher does is to kill the Mask.

    Spy Smasher’s fervour for his new mission is intense, driven as it is by the Mask’s mind control. He starts blowing up arsenals and machine gunning defense meetings across the country, much to the despair of his erstwhile allies Eve and Admiral Corby.

    Though he is mostly still called Spy Smasher throughout the four issues in which he is evilized, there are a couple of instances of “Smasher Spy” instead and so we shall be using that name for clarity’s sake.

    There’s a lot of cool and interesting stuff happening with regard to Smasher Spy: having a hero become a villain, having such a huge change to the status quo persist over several issues, plus the fact that Smasher Spy is technically a Captain Marvel villain due to the fact that Whiz Comics 016-018 are in fact a crossover event! How very exciting! 

    So: from Whiz Comics 016 to 018, both the “Captain Marvel” and “Spy Smasher” features are concerned with the ongoing efforts of the former to capture the latter and restore him to his heroic ways. A lot of it plays out like the above, with Captain Marvel showing up in time to foil but not capture Smasher Spy. Rather than detail each individual plot, here’s a list of Smasher Spy’s nefarious undertakings:

    – Organizing a mass breakout of Federal Penetentiary

    – Stealing plans from a defense committee meeting and leaving a bomb to kill the committee members

    – Delivering those plans to a fascist submarine (and then sinking that submarine when Captain Marvel turns out to be on board)

    – Stealing a super poison gas and attempting to wipe out the US Army with it

    – Kidnapping and hypnotizing a busload of factory workers into helping him develop super-weapons 

    – Building a fleet in order to conquer and destroy all national governments 

    – Attempted murders: Admiral Corby x2, Captain Marvel x5, Eve Corby x4, Sterling Morris x1

    – Misc destruction: one aircraft factory, two arsenals, two bridges, one dam, one train derailment, one warship sunk

    Captain Marvel eventually allows himself to be captured by Smasher Spy as an intelligence-gathering exercise and so finds out about the Mask’s hypno-chair/brain-o-graph when it is unsuccessfully used in an attempt to turn him evil too. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941) 

    Smasher Spy is also the inventor of the nefarious Banana Bomb, which he uses in one of his attempts to murder Eve Corby. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941)

    Perhaps the Smasher Spy’s greatest creation, this giant motorized lawnmower vehicle was intended to shred whole armies. Truly a magnificent entry into the ranks of the giant superweapon. (Whiz Comics 017, 1941)

    There’s only so long that even a crafty fellow like Smasher Spy can escape the World’s Mightiest Mortal, however, and after a quick Billy Batson trip up the Gyro-Sub’s torpedo tube he is in super-custody.

    In a last-ditch effort to stay true to his programming, Smasher Spy destroys the hypno-chair, but Captain Marvel’s determination to restore him is such that he unlocks a hitherto-unknown power of super-hypnosis and restores his mind by pure will alone.

     Smasher Spy is no more! A symbolic sunrise occurs as our heroes share a manly handshake! Huzzah!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 044 UPDATE: THE MASK 1941

    Some highlights of the Mask‘s career c. 1941.

    The Mask starts off 1941 with a bag, quite literally, as he attempts to blow up a munitions factory with FDR inside of it. (Whiz Comics 012, 1941)

    He’s at it again in the next issue, with another plot to kill FDR – this time by dropping a time bomb on the roof of the White House. He’s an ambitious guy, the Mask. Fortunately for the President, he is also a guy who sets his bomb timers way to long, giving Spy Smasher plenty of time to defuse. (Whiz Comics 013, 1941)

    In his second-to-last appearance, the Mask uses mind control technology in concert with a huge goon named Grosso, to capture US officials and force them to divulge government secrets before sending them off to kill themselves. 

    This scheme is fairly air-tight and the Mask might have gotten away scot-free with a pocket full of secrets if he hadn’t gotten too greedy and kidnapped Eve Corby in an attempt to learn Spy Smasher’s secret identity from her. Spy Smasher shows up to prevent this and in the subsequent scuffle Grosso ends up in the hypno-chair, where he is given two commands: “kill Spy Smasher” and “Spy Smasher is the one in the white mask.” The Mask is then seemingly flung to his death. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941)  

    The next issue, however, we learn that he is alive after all! He is just very, very hurt! Despite this, the Mask captures Spy Smasher via ruse and finally learns his secret identity as Alan Armstrong! This is also incidentally the first time that we the reader learn that Armstrong is Spy Smasher, though as I have mentioned before he is literally the only possible suspect, assuming that he’s not just some guy.

    The Mask’s next move must have felt like a real no-brainer at the time: using the new and improved mind control device (the Brain-o-Graph, natch) he turns the former champion of the US Government into its enemy. This works, and Spy Smasher becomes the wicked Smasher Spy (something he is only actually called a couple of times, but a useful way to differentiate the good and evil versions of the character so I’m using it), and will remain that way for a while. The Mask’s triumph is tarnished somewhat by the fact that he went a little too hard on the brainwashing, meaning that he is the first victim of Smasher Spy’s murderous rampage. Proper safety procedures while creating unstoppable killing machines: they’re important. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 882: THE EYE

    (Spy Smasher 002, 1941)

    Yet another not-quite Nazi spy for Spy Smasher to smash. I really like the Eye’s little “hey” pose in the splash panel, like even he knows that he’s not quite dynamic enough to be there.

    Like so many of his peers, the Eye is after Spy Smasher ally Admiral Corby (at least once mentioned as being chief of the US Secret Service but usually just generically Important), and ends up kidnapping his daughter (and Spy Smasher love interest) Eve as part of his scheme.

    The stated reason for Eve’s capture is to prevent her from telling Alan “Spy Smasher” Armstrong that the Eye is the one behind the latest round of espionage, and I’ll be honest: the Eye is such a weird and distinctive looking guy that I really thought that the reason for this secrecy would turn out to be that he was some other character in disguise, but no, he just Looks Like That.

    (“the Eye commands” is a great catchphrase. I think that they Eye should use it more)

    Spy Smasher foils the Eye’s men in their mission to assassinate Admiral Corby and it is only after that that we learn just why the Eye is called the Eye. It’s because he’s a hypnotism guy, as demonstrated on the unfortunate Major Johnson in the above sequence. He’s not a very good hypnotism guy, though. Sure he manages to kill Johnson by turning his own mind against him, but the only reason he does that is out of frustration after being unable to extract any secrets out of  him. And he had to keep him in a dark room for three weeks in order to soften him up – the Eye doesn’t even have enough confidence in his abilities to try them out on Spy Smasher in a moment of distraction.

    It’s possible that he’s also called the Eye because he only has the one, but the problem with a character who uses the brim of a hat in place of a more conventional eye patch is that they could also just be making a fashion choice and without a real clear look at that right eye area we’re just going to have to mark this one as unresolved. 

    Despite all his bluster, the Eye goes down without a fight once he meets Spy Smasher – perhaps this is why he was so keen to keep word getting out about his being involved. Yet again, Admiral and Eve Corby are saved!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 872: TEXA

    (Zip Comics 003, 1940)

    The Scarlet Avenger looks out his window one sunny day and sees “DEATH TO THE SCARLET AVENGER” in skywriting. This, it turns out is a very effective ploy, as when he flies up to check it out he is swarmed and captured by some very off-model pterodactyls.

    The beasts take him to a dirigible, where he is is introduced to Texa, an eight foot tall woman and self-proclaimed “Queen of Crime,” who is looking to rob Fort Knox and wisely set out to eliminate the Scarlet Avenger ahead of time rather than wait and do it on the day.

    The Scarlet Avenger is of course loaded down with little gadgets, and he manages to escape from Texa’s deathtrap by employing, in turn, his personal electric field, smokescreen and capsule parachute, proving once again that super-villains should have better procedures in place for searching captives.

    Please note the companionable arm that Texa has around one of her minions (called variously the Tribe of the Hood and the Hooded Tribe, FYI) in that second-last panel. I like that! It suggests a better-than-average minion work experience.

    Believing that the Scarlet Avenger is dead, Texa proceeds with her admittedly very cool plan to use a big magnet to pick up the entire Fort Knox vault and fly away with it, upon which the very much alive Avenger and his legion of operatives fly up and release the magnet using anti-magnetic rays. Fort Knox is saved, albeit probably very banged up.

    The Scarlet Avenger is shot down by a very cool bubble weapon, leading to a cliffhanger as he is pinned by dirigible fire in the Kentucky desert*. Will he make it out of this overwhelming display of firepower?

    *just why is there a desert landscape in Kentucky? It’s equally likely that:

    a. That wasn’t literally supposed to be Fort Knox but a fictional US Gold Reserve in a more Western state

    b. The air battle ranged a bit farther than depicted on-panel

    c. the artist just kind of drew what they wanted and hang the geography 

    The answer is of course yes, and for the simple reason that as the story in Zip Comics 004 begins, Texa abruptly decides to capture the Scarlet Avenger rather than kill him. Out come the “pterodactyls” once more! Plus the Tribe of the Hood decide to put on shirts.

    Texa employs the mind-bending properties of the Chamber of Disks to render the Scarlet Avenger susceptible to hypnotic mind control so that she can use him and his network in her next plot: to kidnap FDR! 

    Spoiler: the Scarlet Avenger is not really hypnotized and rather than aiding Texa he is working against her.

    A faceless FDR is saved from the now-fully-clothed and jetpack-equipped Tribe of the Hood by the last-minute intervention of the Scarlet Avenger, which is good, but I can’t help but think that he could have mitigated the danger to the president somewhat by turning on Texa before she had him encased in an electric force field.

    Our second cliffhanger! Texas men have the Scarlet Avenger’s operatives under heavy fire, as their boss rides a jetpack man up to the dirigible to help them! Will they make it out of this one alive? 

    Indeed they will! The Scarlet Avenger arrives just in time to prevent Texa from killing his top aide Operative 12, upon which the villain dumps the entire Scarlet Avenger organization out a trap door. Everyone floats down using their personal parachute capsules and presumably feels grateful that the Scarlet Avenger isn’t the kind of boss who keeps all the gadgets for himself.

    Texa’s final ploy involves raising a criminal army by doing a mass jailbreak of Alcatraz, which always seems to me like a way to acquire a pretty motley crew of henchmen with a really wide range of skills and attitudes toward employment as faceless cogs, but who am I to critique a plan like this? I’ve never even broken one guy out of jail to be my minion.

    It’s no surprise that the Scarlet Avengers operatives show up to stop this operation, and since Texa is once again employing her super magnet, they are all kitted out in cool non-ferrous outfits and wielding… copper machine guns I guess. It’s very good look for them!

    Texa’s dirigible ends up on the wrong end of one too many ray gun blasts from the Scarlet Avenger’s rocket plane and goes down in flames, taking the entire Tribe of the Hood with it, but Texa herself escapes in perhaps the coolest possible manner: in a transparent cube carried by pterodactyls. It’s a heck of a way to make an exit and one that stands, as she never appears again. Somewhere an eight foot tall gandma is reminiscing about the glory days, I guess (obviously I reckon that Texa should be BROUGHT BACK in a more modern Archie super-hero comic. People would go nuts for this big tall crime lady!).

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 859: TOKO THE TERRIBLE

    (Whirlwind Comics 001, 1940)

    In the far future of 1980 CE, Earth is under threat of conquest from space. A mysterious ray has dissolved the nation of Slovania, and now a being called Toko the Terrible, Emperor of Saturn has issued an ultimatum: surrender to him or the entire Earth will suffer the same fate.

    This of course will not stand, and Earth sends their best guy (Bruce Barlow), to deal with the threat of Toko.

    Barlow, being a man of action, immediately attacks Toko and calls him insane, getting himself thrown into the very cool-sounding Prison of Invisible Bars for his trouble. This proves not to be a terrible, species-ending blunder by a real meathead as it might have originally appeared but instead a masterstroke of strategy, as while stewing behind (invisible) bars, he meets Professor Jenkins, first human on Saturn and the original inventor of the Ultra-Dissolvo-Raygun, bane of Slovania. Together, they bust Bruce out of jail, prevent the dissolving of Earth and turn the ray on Toko himself, which has the knockon effect of freeing the citizens of Saturn from his vile influence. Plus he had already conquered the rest of the Solar System, so they all get freed too!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 859: TOKO THE TERRIBLE

    (Whirlwind Comics 001, 1940)

    In the far future of 1980 CE, Earth is under threat of conquest from space. A mysterious ray has dissolved the nation of Slovania, and now a being called Toko the Terrible, Emperor of Saturn has issued an ultimatum: surrender to him or the entire Earth will suffer the same fate.

    This of course will not stand, and Earth sends their best guy (Bruce Barlow), to deal with the threat of Toko.

    Barlow, being a man of action, immediately attacks Toko and calls him insane, getting himself thrown into the very cool-sounding Prison of Invisible Bars for his trouble. This proves not to be a terrible, species-ending blunder by a real meathead as it might have originally appeared but instead a masterstroke of strategy, as while stewing behind (invisible) bars, he meets Professor Jenkins, first human on Saturn and the original inventor of the Ultra-Dissolvo-Raygun, bane of Slovania. Together, they bust Bruce out of jail, prevent the dissolving of Earth and turn the ray on Toko himself, which has the knockon effect of freeing the citizens of Saturn from his vile influence. Plus he had already conquered the rest of the Solar System, so they all get freed too!