The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: villain updates

  • SUPER-VILLAIN 001 UPDATE: DR SIVANA (1941)

    Dr Sivana’s 1941 Whiz Comics appearances! What’s that lil’ scamp up to now?

    Sivana starts 1941 with a bang, by developing a liquid that can reduce someone’s age by up to 30 years. This is a surprisingly useful tool in the super-criminal’s arsenal, as a series of bank messengers, security guards, cops and Billy Batson soon find out.

    Dr Sivan’s ultimate goal is of course another attempt to take over the United States of America. He very reasonably assumes that, having dosed the bulk of the army and turned them into toddlers, he and his army of goons can just waltz in and take over. The flaw in his plan is revealed when Captain Marvel (Billy having found the antidote to the youth formula and escaped) rounds up a bunch of old Civil War vets and de-ages them to defend the country.

    (BONUS: there’s none of that “now return to the quiet dignity of being old” hogwash in this story: all of the youthened veterans stay young at the end and re-enlist to help with national defense in the face of WWII) (Whiz Comics 013, 1941)

    Dr Sivana’s next appearance features him being put on trial for repeatedly attempting to conquer the US. He is of course found guilty and sentenced to 77 consecutive life sentences totalling over 9000 years (and servable with the help of some of that youth serum). Two things happen at this trial: Dr Sivana demonstrates a new breakthrough in intangibility studies as he simply walks through a wall and away from his sentencing, but more importantly this is where we learn that his full name is Thaddeus Bodog Sivana!

    Unlocking the secrets of intangibility really seems to ignite Sivana’s love of the super-villain game. He embarks on a crime spree that includes bombings, espionage, the robbery of the “Fort Gnox” gold reserve and a series of kidnappings of high-level government officials that culminates in the capture of the dang President himself.

    He also kidnaps Billy Batson mid-radio broadcast, and transports him to a room hewn out of living granite, deep under a mountain before he can turn into Captain Marvel. 

    Capturing Captain Marvel turns out to be a classic case of villain’s hubris, as he is able to use the Wisdom of Solomon to work out just exactly how Sivana has been doing his intangibility trick: by mathematically calculating the positions of all of the atoms in a surface and then slipping his own atoms past them. While effective, this method of travel proves to be difficult to do properly when one is being chased by Captain Marvel, as Dr Sivana’s chin soon learns.

    This method of travelling through matter also turn out to have another drawback: every time you use it you end up leaving a little bit of yourself behind, and after an extended chase with Captain Marvel, Dr Sivana has lost so much of himself that he loses all molecular cohesion and dissipates. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941)

    A little thing like being turned into vapour can’t stop a guy like Dr Sivana, however. He returns, dressed in an extremely unfortunate Old Chinese Man outfit, and lures Billy Batson into his lair with the help of an unwitting Beautia. Billy is rendered powerless here by what I consider to be Sivana’s greatest invention: a little box that goes “ozzle ozzle” and drowns him out every time he tries to yell “Shazam.” It’s brilliant in its simplicity, and the kind of thing that only a villain who knows his enemy’s secret identity can come up with.

    Dr Sivana’s lastest scheme involves raising a horde of the froglike Venusian Glompers on Earth and then using them to take over not just the US but the entire planet.

    Billy eventually makes an escape attempt, and though he doesn’t get far the ozzlebox is broken. Dr Sivana attempts to counter Captain Marvel by unleashing his beefy son Magnificus, but this turns out to be a Bad Move, as their battle causes a rockslide and Sivana is beaned by a boulder that is the same size as him.

    Since Dr Sivana appears to be at death’s door, Beautia finally feels free to reveal his origin: he was once an idealistic scientist who wanted to improve the lot of all mankind but found himself hounded by greedy capitalists who benefited more from the current state of things. Bitter and disillusioned, he took his two young children – Beautia and Magnificus – and moved to Venus, where they grew into kind and decent physical paragons and he shrivelled up into the evil little scientist we all know and love.

    Sivana’s kids take him back to Venus, to die, presumably. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

    Dr Sivana returns without fanfare in the pages of Captain Marvel Adventures, and then back in his old stomping grounds of Whiz Comics he sets out to get revenge on Billy/Captain Marvel by mysteriously growing a big muscular body. Though he captures Billy without trouble, he again makes the classic villain’s mistake of leaving him tied up to deal with later rather than finishing him off without delay, which of course leaves an opening for a friendly organ grinder’s monkey to scuttle in and free him.

    This is the first instance of Sivana becoming physically as well as mentally powerful and he really gets into it with some local bullies. It’s a pattern that will reoccur throughout the years – becoming a big strong tough guy becomes almost as much of a preoccupation for Sivana as conquering the US is at some points, and he always seems to have a ball once he achieves his goal.

    This time around, Sivana has achieved beefcake status by building himself a robotic exoskeleton, but sadly for him no mere machine is a match for the world’s mightiest mortal. Better luck next time, Thaddeus. (Whiz Comics 020, 1941)

    Dr Sivana makes one more appearance in Whiz Comics in 1941, but since it’s as a part of a team, we will be covering it in a separate entry.

  • 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 902: MAGNIFICUS SIVANA

    (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

    After Captain Marvel foils a scheme to be described further in the next Dr Sivana update, he finds himself battling a beefcake named Magnificus.

    Though Magnificus is ultimately not a match for Captain Marvel, he is powerful enough to duke it out with him for several minutes, which is frankly just as impressive. Since they are doing so on the side of a mountain, however, this starts a landslide that seem like it might just spell the end of Dr Sivana for good after he is beaned by a particularly accurate boulder. 

    Since at the time it seems likely that Sivana will finally meet his end, his long-suffering aide Beautia now feels able to share the reason why she has stuck by him all this time despite her increasingly clear desire not to, which is incidentally also the origin of not only Dr Sivana but of her and Magnificus as well.

    This is of course when we learn that both Magnificus and Beautia are in fact Dr Sivana’s children who he brought with him to Venus after being disillusioned by cold-hearted capitalists who saw his attempts to better humanity as nothing but lost profits. Where Sivana became twisted and embittered over the years, his children instead grew up to be fundamentally good-hearted people who only help him out of a sense of filial affection. This is of course a fun bit right up until Dr Sivana’s other two children are introduced to bedevil Captain Marvel Jr and Mary Marvel and a real ugly = evil/ beautiful = good morality system is established.

    One thing about Magnificus that I had not expected was the fact that this is his only Golden Age appearance and that we will next see him during the integration of the Marvel Family into the DC multiverse. I guess that he is just better at establishing boundaries with his toxic parent than his sister is.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 044 UPDATE: THE MASK (REVISITED)

    (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 completely forgotten or perhaps never realized that the Mask was set up to possibly be Alan Armstrong, who is of course in actuality Spy Smasher. The only real swing at establishing the ambiguity of Armstrong’s secret identity comes in their collective first appearance in Whiz Comics 002, when they are both established as operating out of estates in Virginia. After that it’s just the Mask’s hairline and the fact that neither of their identities have been revealed that are left to do all of the heavy lifting. 

    In Whiz Comics 003b, the Mask establishes a secret artillery base in the Rockies in order to shoot down US planes on behalf of the Rooskans.

    Whiz 005 features him stealing a pretty nifty heat ray tank. 

    in Whiz Comics 006, the Mask attempts to destroy a new US battleship (and incidentally kill Eve and Admiral Corby) with a cheeky little exploding champagne bottle.

    Whiz 008 features one of my very favourite types of henchmen: the former professional who has turned their skills to crime, in this case a former baseball pitcher-turned assassin named Bean Ball who kills via baseball to the head. The Mask’s forces this issue also include a (tragically unseen) criminal scientist named Doc Greazbl.

    Finally, Whiz Comics 011 features the Mask’s second eccentric artillery emplacement of the year, in a penthouse apartment overlooking New York Harbor. Fun! 

    (this is also the issue in which the Mask is established to be very racist… less fun)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 044 UPDATE: THE MASK (REVISITED)

    (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 completely forgotten or perhaps never realized that the Mask was set up to possibly be Alan Armstrong, who is of course in actuality Spy Smasher. The only real swing at establishing the ambiguity of Armstrong’s secret identity comes in their collective first appearance in Whiz Comics 002, when they are both established as operating out of estates in Virginia. After that it’s just the Mask’s hairline and the fact that neither of their identities have been revealed that are left to do all of the heavy lifting. 

    In Whiz Comics 003b, the Mask establishes a secret artillery base in the Rockies in order to shoot down US planes on behalf of the Rooskans.

    Whiz 005 features him stealing a pretty nifty heat ray tank. 

    in Whiz Comics 006, the Mask attempts to destroy a new US battleship (and incidentally kill Eve and Admiral Corby) with a cheeky little exploding champagne bottle.

    Whiz 008 features one of my very favourite types of henchmen: the former professional who has turned their skills to crime, in this case a former baseball pitcher-turned assassin named Bean Ball who kills via baseball to the head. The Mask’s forces this issue also include a (tragically unseen) criminal scientist named Doc Greazbl.

    Finally, Whiz Comics 011 features the Mask’s second eccentric artillery emplacement of the year, in a penthouse apartment overlooking New York Harbor. Fun! 

    (this is also the issue in which the Mask is established to be very racist… less fun)

  • SUPER-VILLAIN 001 UPDATE: DR SIVANA (1940)

    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 for Marvel blows up his entire fortress with him inside.

    (this is likely also when Sivana figures out that Billy Batson is Captain Marvel. There’s no on-panel acknowledgement of this fact, but he does know it by the next issue, and frankly given the fast-and-loose way that Billy approaches having a secret identity in the early days it’s a miracle that everyone who he passes on the street doesn’t know. I’m pretty sure that they eventually have to retroactively add a mind-clouding aspect to his transformations to explain why the hundreds of people who have seen a famous boy reporter transform into a famous super-hero don’t retain that fact without making Captain Marvel a secret mass murderer)

    In Whiz Comics 003b, a disguised and not-dead Sivana, operating under the name of Professor Xerxes Smith, entices Billy Batson (and by extension Captain Marvel, who he clearly knows into accompanying him on a rocket trip to the planet Venus. There, with the aid of his ally Beautia, Empress of Venus, he captures Marvel and performs the classic super-villain manoeuvre of placing him in a seemingly-inescapable deathtrap that he does not stick around long enough to watch to completion.

    Once back on Earth, Sivana attempt to take over the US again, this time by way of a paralyzing gas that will leave the populace more susceptible to domination by a charismatic leader like Beautia. This scheme has a tragic flaw: the machines are all easily smashed up by a Captain Marvel type, which is probably why Sivana stranded him on Venus in the first place. Luckily for humanity, Captain Marvel is able to harness the Wisdom of Solomon to build his own rocket ship to return to Earth and smash them up good. Beautia and Sivana escape… 

    …only to return in Whiz Comics 004 with a plan to get Beautia elected President of the United States by employing her great charisma and hotness to capture the entire US male vote. This is possibly Dr Sivana’s most viable and least illegal plan, only he has to spoil it all by immediately making plans to murder huge swaths of the government and populace and to loot the nation’s coffers.

    Knowing that Captain Marvel wouldn’t take this kind of thing lying down, Dr Sivana arranges to get Billy Batson into a machine called the Memory Mangler that removes his ability to remember any details of his past, let alone that he needs to say SHAZAM. He is only cured when he just kind of aimlessly wanders back into the Wizard Shazam’s cave and rediscovers the word written on the wall there. 

    The real downfall of Sivana’s plan this time is the fact that he hired such misogynist henchmen who attempt to murder him and Beautia rather than take orders from a woman, which is how Billy Batson escapes in the first place.

    So far we’ve seen three separate attempts by Dr Sivana to take over the United States, but in Whiz Comics 006 we get the other kind of Sivana plot, in which he attempts to get ahold of a lot of money that he can then use to finance his takeover of the United States. In this case, Sivana has imported a load of Venusian animals, including some sabre-toothed tigers, a dragon, a mastodon, some “crocosaurs” and the amazing-looking gorilla/lion centaur chimera called the gorillion. Unusually for him, Sivana isn’t even using these animals to rob banks or the like – he’s just exhibiting them at a circus and banking on getting large enough crowds to make a fortune.

    Things don’t even go wrong until a jealous circus performer releases the animals in an attempt to kill Captain Marvel, upon which he kills them all by dropping them into the ocean (or just dropping them, in the gorallion’s case). A depressing end for some innocent if hostile animals.

    Whiz Comics 010 features a plot to destroy the US Pacific Fleet using information gathered by Beautia under the alias of Dot Darling, Newsreel Reporter. This is the beginning of the end for the Beautia/Sivana partnership, as she suffers a change of heart when the time comes to actually blow up a whole lot of sailors and Sivana responds by attempting to kill her. He is of course prevented from doing this by Captain Marvel and escapes in style on a very phallic aerial torpedo.

    Dr Sivana’s final appearance of 1940* is in Special Edition Comics 001 and is another money-making scheme. This time it’s some good old fashioned high-tech insurance fraud, involving Sivana buying cheap disaster insurance against, say, a cyclone destroying some properties in downtown NYC and then causing those disasters himself.

    *Okay so it probably goes in between Whiz 006 and 010, but I forgot about it until the last second, so sue me.

    As usual, Captain Marvel is all over this scheme. He prevents most of the disasters from landing and ultimately destroys the disaster causing machine with the body of the criminally underused Grandfather Locust, a plague whose descendants was used to attack some well-insured cropland earlier in the issue. Sadly, he only gets a couple of panels to shine before he head is knocked clean off.

    BODY COUNT: at least 1402

    END OF YEAR STATUS: At large 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 552 UPDATE: BARON VON KAMPF (1940)

    Making his triumphant return to comics, the dome-headed goblin of crime: Baron von Kampf!

    Baron von Kampf’s initial return in Speed Comics 004 involves him heading a sabotage ring for an unnamed European nation that is probably meant to be Nazi Germany, and it’s possible that this is a relationship that were were meant to understand was behind his actions all along, but frankly it seems to me to be beneath him.

    The Baron’s schemes on behalf of his fascist overlords bring him to a secret submarine base, which is how he ends up stranded in the middle of the Atlantic after a final confrontation with Shock Gibson. Will he survive?

    Indeed he will, and does! The Baron returns in Speed Comics 006, and I could not tell you if he’s still working for the fascists or if he just likes a uniform. The Baron spends much of this issue employing the services of a bunch of crooks called the Palooka Gang to hijack trucks, and though he claims that this is in aid of a larger world conquest scheme I’d be tempted to call it a bit low-rent as far as super-villainy is concerned. Fortunately for his reputation, he still knows how to accessorize, and his headquarters (Mammoth Cave, Kentucky) and minions (the Zombies, making their long-awaited reappearance) really save the day.

    How can I complain about truck hijacking when they’re being done with such style?

    The coolness of living in a cave, of course, is offset by the ever-present threat of being crushed to death in a cave-in, and doubly so when you’re doing battle with a guy like Shock Gibson on the regular. Baron von Kampf manages to sneak out a side passage, but the Palooka Gang and this batch of Zombies are all toast, and the Harvey Comics version of Mammoth Cave is certainly the worse for wear.

    Baron von Kampf’s final appearance is in Speed Comics 011, in which he teams up with pseudo-Soviet spy and future entry Comrade Ratski, in what is probably a reference to the then-ongoing Soviet-Nazi nonaggression pact. What is certain about this alliance, however, is that Comrade Ratski is in charge – he seems to have taken von Kampf on as a partner mainly because he wants to use the Zombies as henchmen.

    Speaking of the Zombies, this is their final appearance, and while that is disappointing there is a silver lining, as we get a final bit of lore about the top band of henchcreatures of the 1940s: they can speak, and they speak in backward sentences. Fun!

    Like I said the scheme in this comic is basically all down to Comrade Ratski so we’ll cover it in his entry, but suffice to say it does not go well once Shock Gibson gets wind. Ratski and von Kampf make their escape into the depths of the Florida Everglades and end up as alligator chow.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 553 UPDATE: LANDOR, MAKER OF MONSTERS (1940)

    When last we saw Landor, Maker of Monsters, he had just been exploded along with his castle and giant mosquito minions. But did you honestly expect a simple thing like a huge explosion to stop a villain of Landor’s calibre? No! He merely becomes more burned up and crusty and bitter! Landor has not shifted his goals since 1939 and is consumed with the twin urges to 1) make monsters and 2) get revenge on Tony Torrence and Marcia Merrill.

    Landor makes his dramatic return at the perfect time: US officials, including Landor’s old foe Anthony “Tony” Torrence, are completely unable to deal with the menace of the Fire-Men. This gives Landor the perfect opportunity to get Torrence under his thumb, using the power of patriotism!

     

    As usual, Landor has not rested on his laurels. Rather than trot out a version of one of his prior creations, such as a frankenstein or a giant insect or a surprisingly flammable woman, he has dipped his toe into the twin fields of robotics and cybernetics to produce a giant robot powered by a human brain! A fireproof one!

     
    The brain-bot disposes of the Fire-Men without a problem. Well, I say without a problem, but in fact there is one tiny hiccup in Landor’s plan: the cyborg is not strictly 100% fireproof after all, and the Fire-Men’s last desperate flamethrower attacks end up driving it berserk and it makes a murderous beeline for Landor and Tony Torrence. Torrence manages to destroy it by luring it into an electrical substation, and since he has saved Landor’s life he is forced to relinquish his claim over Torrence’s. Foiled by his own sense of honour!

    In Speed Comics 005, Landor accepts a commission to help a couple of foreign agents rob the US Treasury. Being the Maker of Monsters that he is, Landor proceeds to create a giant mole to aid in the tunnelling process. This escapade ends with Tony Torrence gunning down the agents and collapsing the tunnel on top of Landor, but the “IS LANDOR DEAD?” cliffhanger lacks a bit of oomph as he is in fact standing next to the giant mole when last seen.

    If Landor had given up his quest for revenge following the giant cyborg incident then the tunnel collapse brought it back in force, and so in Speed Comics 006 he puts a very strange revenge scheme into motion: he creates the Cat-Girl, a two-foot-tall human woman with the head of a cat, and uses her to kidnap Tony Torrence’s niece Gloria as a test subject in an experiment to see if he can turn a human being into solid diamond. I’m a bit winded just typing all that out.

    Tony Torrence of course rushes Landor’s castle just in time to rescue Gloria and deal with both the Cat-Girl and Landor using his new fighting technique: throw your opponent at the nearest solid object. Landor of course survives though the Cat-Girl is not so lucky.

    Speed Comics 007 introduces eminent biologist Dr Sina Zurat, who has long admired Landor’s work and wishes to join him in it.

    Together, Landor and Zurat create the bestial woman Creeta, and at some point along the way the two fall in love! Could a stable home life and a loving partner who gets all of his jokes about gene-splicing finally cure Landor of his antisocial ways? We will never know, as poor Creeta was seemingly born already in love with him and only gets about an hour to grapple with having feelings at all, let alone powerful ones. Consumed with jealousy, Creeta attacks Dr Zurat.

    Tony Torrence of course shows up in time to stop Creeta (by turning a screw on the side of her neck that is attached to her steel wire nervous system – a particularly grisly failsafe!), but too late to save Zurat. And here is the point, I reckon, where the Landor/Torrence relationship could turn around. A little compassion from Tony could show Landor that there is a better way to live than in a constant cycle of revenge and biological constructs. Instead, Tony is a huge jerk about the whole thing, ensuring that the cycle continues.

    Landor’s final four appearances are exclusively revenge-oriented: in Speed 008, he goes with what he knows best and makes a humanoid monster, but unfortunately for him, he drops the dang thing before it’s finished… cooking?… and so ends up as a classic Igor rather than the Adonis that Landor had intended. Still, any creature in a storm, and so Ganda, as this particular creation is known, is sent to capture Tony.

    Ganda goofs and brings back Torrence’s house guest, criminologist Kung Fu Tse (sadly just a name in the “mash together a lot of vaguely Chinese-sounding syllables” mode and not a 70s style martial arts master), but that turns out to be okay, as it turns out that Landor, Tse and Torrence all went to the same college and that the beefs between them began back then.

    As usual, Tony shows up in the nick of time, and while Landor escapes unscathed poor Ganda is not so fortunate.

    Landor’s revenge plot in Speed 009 involves kidnapping Marcia Merrill and injecting her with a chemical to make her blind. It’s not a particularly great plan, and Landor absolutely should have seen the end result coming: Tony beats him up until he gives up the antidote to the blindness serum. There are however two points of interest in the story:

    1) Landor’s chosen henchman for this one is the fantastically-named Stumbi the Fish-Man. It’s like I always say: if you’re going to be a biological construct created specifically to kidnap people off of boats then you might as well get a great name out of it. 

    2) From this issue onward Tony Torrence is instead called Jack Torrence, for no clear reason. Is it simple loose Golden Age continuity standards? Burgeoning anti-Italian sentiment relating to WWII? Something else? No idea, but what it certainly is is annoying, though mitigated slightly by the fact that it’s almost the name of the guy from The Shining.

    Landor’s lowest moment comes in Speed Comics 010, as this is the issue in which he doesn’t make a monster at all. At least unless you stretch the definition of “monster” to include a prominent criminologist who has been kidnapped and mind-controlled into a willing participant in a plot to frame Tony “Jack” Torrence as a jewel thief. And I do not do so.

    Tony ends up spending most of this issue in jail, so Kung Fu Tse is the one who hurls Landor into the nearest hard surface before freeing criminologist John Powers from the mind control.

    Speed Comics 011 marks Landor’s final appearance and fortunately for his reputation he does in fact make a monster in this one. Specifically, he tricks fugitive Spike Hart into accepting a job and some free plastic surgery and then proceeds to turn him into the Tiger-Man, i.e., Spike Hart with claws, oversized fangs and little stripes on his face.

    Sent to bring back Torrence alive or dead, the Tiger-Man comes closer to actually doing so than any creature since the Brute, way back in Speed Comics 001. It is not to be, however, as he ultimately meets his end at the hands of Torrence’s butler, a truly ignominious fate.

    As often happens in stories with recurring villains, Landor’s final appearance was not written as a final appearance. Tony/Jack socks him out the window and he scurries away into the night to get ready for their next encounter, which will never happen. 

    ADDENDUM: As I was about to publish this it occurred to me that Landor is of course a revenge killer, albeit one with a terrible score. Counting up all of the various attempts on Tony, Marcia and Kung Fu’s lives over the course of his career, he ends up with an abysmal final score of 0/9.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 548 UPDATE: MADAME DOOM (1940)

    When we last saw Madame Doom, she had been bested at the game of espionage by the Black X and was fleeing the US for friendlier shores at the end of Smash Comics 004.

    Madame Doom returns with a fresh new attitude for 1940 in Smash Comics 008, as now she is not just working for an analog of the Axis powers but explicitly for the Nazis. It’s a lateral move at best but an important one nonetheless. She only actually appears for a page or so and acts as an obstacle to Black X’s escape from Germany rather than a full-fledged villain, and is then left in his dust as he takes off into France.

    In Smash Comics 012, Black X accompanies US Ambassador Blank to Paris as part of an attempt to initiate peace talks in Europe. Madame Doom is there too, attempting to disrupt the process by manipulating the Hunchback of Notre Dame into assassinating Blank. It’s not explicit that she is still working for the Nazis on this, but c’mon. 

    This issue also marks the zenith of Madame Doom’s investment in the will they/won’t they relationship with Black X, but her plea to him to run away with her is an interrupted first by the Hunchback and then by the French authorities and so it is not to be.

    Madame Doom returns in Smash Comics 014 with some snappy new henchmen, the Legion of Living Bombs, who have: a. very cool costumes (that they don’t actually wear while they’re outside of the house), b. a very cool name (as long as you don’t think too hard about it in any context other than aesthetic).

    More importantly, this story features the zenith of Black X’s investment in the relationship between himself and Madame Doom, to the extent that he resigns from the Espionage for her.

    This proves to be what’s known as a Bad Decision, as Black X soon learns that while Madame Doom is not working for the Nazis this time around (that’s good), that is because she has teamed up with a fellow named Count Mirov in a bid to conquer South America (that’s bad), and that to that end she is dosing her fanatical minions with a fluid that eventually causes them to explode and sending them out to disrupt the Pan-American diplomatic talks (that’s even worse). If there’s a positive to this dastardly plot, it’s that it seems to kill the romantic tension between the two once and for all.

    (Madame Doom’s height, hair colour and general appearance are fairly mutable during these appearances, as is not unusual for reoccurring female villains. I mention that here because in order to say that her height had fluctuated I felt compelled to comb through this issue like a foot pervert to see if she was wearing anachronistic 90s stiletto heels, but as you can see above she is not)

    After some hijinks involving Black X’s aide Batu stealing back his letter of resignation so that his boss can get back on the case, Black X returns to Madame Doom’s underground HQ and proceeds to beat ass, and the ease with which he does so to an entire roomful of guys might just be another indictment of selecting your minions for their willingness to die over any other useful quality.

    Defeated, Madame Doom decides to take what I would call “the cool way out” and guzzles some of her own explosive brew rather than be captured. It’s a heck of a way to leave a final impression.

    SPOILER: Madame Doom will return!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 548 UPDATE: MADAME DOOM (1940)

    When we last saw Madame Doom, she had been bested at the game of espionage by the Black X and was fleeing the US for friendlier shores at the end of Smash Comics 004.

    Madame Doom returns with a fresh new attitude for 1940 in Smash Comics 008, as now she is not just working for an analog of the Axis powers but explicitly for the Nazis. It’s a lateral move at best but an important one nonetheless. She only actually appears for a page or so and acts as an obstacle to Black X’s escape from Germany rather than a full-fledged villain, and is then left in his dust as he takes off into France.

    In Smash Comics 012, Black X accompanies US Ambassador Blank to Paris as part of an attempt to initiate peace talks in Europe. Madame Doom is there too, attempting to disrupt the process by manipulating the Hunchback of Notre Dame into assassinating Blank. It’s not explicit that she is still working for the Nazis on this, but c’mon. 

    This issue also marks the zenith of Madame Doom’s investment in the will they/won’t they relationship with Black X, but her plea to him to run away with her is an interrupted first by the Hunchback and then by the French authorities and so it is not to be.

    Madame Doom returns in Smash Comics 014 with some snappy new henchmen, the Legion of Living Bombs, who have: a. very cool costumes (that they don’t actually wear while they’re outside of the house), b. a very cool name (as long as you don’t think too hard about it in any context other than aesthetic).

    More importantly, this story features the zenith of Black X’s investment in the relationship between himself and Madame Doom, to the extent that he resigns from the Espionage for her.

    This proves to be what’s known as a Bad Decision, as Black X soon learns that while Madame Doom is not working for the Nazis this time around (that’s good), that is because she has teamed up with a fellow named Count Mirov in a bid to conquer South America (that’s bad), and that to that end she is dosing her fanatical minions with a fluid that eventually causes them to explode and sending them out to disrupt the Pan-American diplomatic talks (that’s even worse). If there’s a positive to this dastardly plot, it’s that it seems to kill the romantic tension between the two once and for all.

    (Madame Doom’s height, hair colour and general appearance are fairly mutable during these appearances, as is not unusual for reoccurring female villains. I mention that here because in order to say that her height had fluctuated I felt compelled to comb through this issue like a foot pervert to see if she was wearing anachronistic 90s stiletto heels, but as you can see above she is not)

    After some hijinks involving Black X’s aide Batu stealing back his letter of resignation so that his boss can get back on the case, Black X returns to Madame Doom’s underground HQ and proceeds to beat ass, and the ease with which he does so to an entire roomful of guys might just be another indictment of selecting your minions for their willingness to die over any other useful quality.

    Defeated, Madame Doom decides to take what I would call “the cool way out” and guzzles some of her own explosive brew rather than be captured. It’s a heck of a way to leave a final impression.

    SPOILER: Madame Doom will return!