Criminals! Unnamed Gambler: Not much is revealed about this fellow, but what we do know for sure is that he has access to a super strength drink and that he has been using it to clean up on gambling by slipping it to boxers and race horses with long odds. He also relies on the potion to help him escape from the cops, which backfires on him because Presto Martin, having taken the place of one of the boxers, is…
(Weird Comics 005, 1940) Blast Bennett, space adventurer of the year 5940, is just noodling around the galaxy one day and decides to stop off to stretch his legs on a desolate ice planet, at which point he falls in a hole and becomes embroiled in a civil war, because he is a comic book protagonist and his every move draws him closer to the nearest source of adventure. The Ice Planet is ruled by the presumably-benevolent Empress Ilera –…
(War Comics 001, 1940) Sikandur, the Robot Master, is a villain-in-a-starring-role who sadly only appeared once. Any evil roboticist who, for example, makes his robots red-hot as a way of discouraging those who might grapple them is an evil roboticist I want to read about, and I only got the one opportunity to do so. Sikandur need gold in order to build more robots, though whether he needs it as a necessary component or as a handy source of cash…
(The Spirit, “The Death Dolls”, 4 August, 1940) In terms of villainy, Yagor ain’t much. Formerly chief engineer at the Battle Arms Co, Yagor murdered the inventor Kalin and stole his inventions and is trying to sell them on when the Spirit tracks him down in a small New England town. Though he gets the drop on the Spirit and captures him when he shows up to take him in, Yagor is undone by his own poor salesmanship and the…
I’m not sure that these guys all have degrees. This fellow is known only as the Professor, and he conducts experiments in long- and short-range mind control on Lost Hope Island until Secret Naval Agent Spike Marlin shows up in search of a missing ship’s crew. (Speed Comics 009, 1940) This unnamed scientist has developed a drug that puts people into indefinite comas and has used it to kidnap and store ten millionaires, presumably with the intent of ransoming them…
(Startling Comics 001, 1940) Shortly after acquiring his super powers, Andrew “Captain Future” Bryant uses them to sniff out a criminal conspiracy to rob a gold shipment from the nation of Finvania and then use that capital to finance a bid for world domination by someone called the Purple Plague. Exactly the sort of thing that a fledgling super-hero is going to be against! Captain Future spends the bulk of the issue in a back-and-forth tussle with the Purple Plague’s…
(Silver Streak Comics 002, 006) As you may or may not recall, when I covered the Claw’s sole 1939 appearance I concluded that taken on its own, it read like one of those stories where a villain holds sway over an area by means of a fake monster and that if the Claw had never appeared again that’s what I would assume he was: just an illusion composed of papier mache and maybe a balloon or an image projected on…
(Science Comics 004, 1940) Cosmic Carson is a fairly generic space hero whose main distinction up to this point was that each issue he fought a different kind of alien with a cool species name (from Science Comics 001 and going forward: the Fang-Men of Jupiter, the Skull-Men and the Hoof-Men), but other than that he wasn’t really of interest to us on this here blog. Until now, that is, because Science Comics 004 features a Cosmic Carson adventure illustrated…
(Prize Comics 006, 1940) It’s a regular day in Mongol-dominated New-New York City of the year 1982 CE: the people are oppressed in various ways and Power Nelson is around to help them solve some but not all of their problems. Suddenly! A space capsule lands and disgorges a trio of rampaging robots! This is a perfect task for Power Nelson to handle as it it a short-term solution to an immediate problem but very importantly does not require and…
(Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) Sanglor starts out strong. He immediately charms me with his aesthetic sense: his ‘Automatic Subplane’ spy drones are delightful, his ‘Flying Castle’ is simultaneously one of the most ridiculous and great-looking mobile bases I have ever seen and his costume manages to evoke the dress sense of a 1940s comic book movie villain in a way I have not seen since the Vampire, almost exactly 300 entries ago. He manages to mess things up almost immediately,…