(Mystery Men Comics 022, 1941) Magog clearly has some big plans – he repeatedly sends taunting notes to the police and announces his criminal debut by blowing up a playground full of children – but he is almost immediately baited into the open by a fake newspaper and dies in a struggle with the Blue Beetle so we will never know what they were.
(Mystery Men Comics 020, 1941) Hey kids, it’s Galgo! A seemingly regular gang boss! Just how did he hack the system and end up on this illustrious list of no-name losers? He dressed his men like gorillas for no apparent reason. That, my friends, is the simple life hack that will take your regular villainy (such as stealing a device which reportedly forces criminals to confess) to a super level.
(Mystery Men Comics 019, 1941) I’m not sure what the Sky-Ruler’s deal is. Scratch that – I know what his deal is. He rules the sky. He flies around in a big bomber plane and uses it to drop cars containing his enemies on the streets of New York City (he also tries to throw off the scent of the police by calling these the “Skyscraper Murders” in his notes but I have to imagine that this would only work…
They may not be the top of the class, but they did their time in the evil sciences! Dr Eric Karlin has a lot of moxie on paper: a Nazi psychologist with a sideline in Egyptology, he dissolves the enemies of the Reich in acid and keeps their jellied remains in a series of jars in his basement. He also employs mind controlled pseudo-zombies in a scheme to recover frozen Nazi assets from a bank vault. The problem is that…
Fascist, Smascist The Volunteers for Peace are another group that advocates for the US not to get involved in WWII as shorthand for them being full-on fascist fifth columnists setting the country up for an invasion by the evocatively-named Nation X. Don’t worry, not even Golden Age Superman has any trouble beating down a bunch of pseudo-Nazis (Action Comics 036, 1941) Another batch of Yellow Shirts, this time with a space! This bunch are some more bundists and they have…
Police Attempted Murder: The Green Mask broke an accused murderer (innocent, framed) out of jail so the NYPD attempt to murder him and Domino the Miracle Boy (Mystery Men Comics 020, 1941) The police (behind the green car) attempt to gun down the Blue Beetle with no regard for the innocent witness standing next to him (Mystery Men 027, 1941) Future History: A stark vision of the state of the mortuary industry in the far-off year 2000, courtesy of Rex…
(Blue Beetle Comics 009-010, 1941) The Gorilla is actually Jack Castle, a drunken lout who happens to be the lab assistant to the unhinged Dr Brock. Castle pushes his employer a bit too far and ends up on the wrong end of an ape brain transplant. Dr Brock meanwhile has forgotten one of the major things about brains and so ends up like so many other mad scientists do after transplanting an unwilling one: murdered by his own creation. Castle…
(Mystery Men Comics 018, 1941) The Sphinx is (somewhat appropriately) a bit convoluted? Or maybe disjointed? It’s hard to put into words but there is a weird dreamlike quality to some Golden Age comic books and the Blue Beetle stories from Fox Features often have it. To begin: the Sphinx is a mysterious figure who causes subway accidents and then utters threats and pronouncements in a booming voice, seemingly from nowhere. The Blue Beetle swiftly discovers that one of the…
(More Fun Comics 073, 1941) It’s Mr Who! You know, from comics! I was very excited for this guy to turn up, as he’s one of those comic book characters I had heard about but never really read about, and… he’s okay. See, Mr Who was born all scrawny and seems to have been a weird kid (and to have had a shitty dad, jeez), so he channelled all of his efforts into science, and more specifically into developing a…
(More Fun Comics 074, 1941) I have taken an immediate liking to Dr Clever. I mean, just look at the guy: the classic tuxedo-and-cape combo, the rictus grin, the bald pate with two little hair-horns, the tiny skull-and-crossbones pin… he’s really a triumph of design when you think about it. Lucky for us he’s a recurring foe of Johnny Quick so we’ll be seeing him again. Somewhat strangely for a man with such an overall villainous look, Dr Clever’s major…