(Master Comics 012, 1941) The Seven Masters are just your regular drug smuggling/ opium dealing gang operating out of San Francisco’s Chinatown. They don’t get up to anything too spectacular – El Carim gets in on the action because the head of the gang is using his criminal might to try to get a woman to marry him instead of her boyfriend – and they trade on some pulp-era Yellow Peril tropes, but despite all of that I must admit…
(Master Comics 012, 1941) Triple Threat is in actuality a fellow named Theron who believes that due to his own scientific genius he is above such things as “regular jobs” and “not murdering and robbing at whim” and so develops an armoured multi-environment vehicle – also called Triple Threat, as is often the case with super vehicle types – with which to enact his plans. The obvious thing to lead with here is that great name: Triple Threat. Some cursory…
(Master Comics 011, 1941) It’s our second villain named the Dragon and our second Dragon who turns out to be a white dude in yellowface. Will it happen again? Only time will tell. The only really interesting thing about this guy is that a key part of his plan was to divert suspicion from himself by repeatedly sending his gang to kill his own secret identity (see above). Whether he was banking on Zoro the Mystery Man to show up…
(All-Flash 003, 1941) Like the Threat before him, Adam Addams is a revenge guy. Unlike the Threat, Addams is… I won’t say more petty, but perhaps less focused – they include the woman who didn’t marry him, the man she married instead, the man who refused to give him a medical license because he talked about glands too much, and anyone who contributed to one of his prior revenge schemes going wrong. If he has a particular focus, it’s Dr…
(All-Flash 002, 1941) The Threat is an example of a type of morality tale that was very popular in 40s and 50s comic books but never really went out of style: a tale of promise squandered in service to a life of crime. In this case, the subject is a crook named Tough Joe Connor, who swears revenge on Jim Kelley, the prosecutor who sent him to jail for ten years. My summarizing powers are not up to this task,…
(All-Flash Quarterly 001, 1941) I love a foppish gang boss, and the Monocle might just be the most foppish I’ve seen in some time. He’s got all the accessories: the monocle, natch, but also the eccentric mustache, cigarette holder, neat suit with nosegay and tiepin and pocket square and to top it off one of the more eccentric comic book hobbies I have ever encountered: a twee little garden where he displays his stolen gems in artificial flowers. Pretty great…
Memes of Yore: Women be loving hats. (All-Flash 001, 1941) Decoration: On the island nation of Felicia, the chairs are monogrammed with a big F (Master Comics 001, 1940) UPDATE: And the shields. Drawn without reference: The majestic pterodactyl. (Master Comics 007, 1940)
(All-Flash 001, 1941)
(Leading Comics 001, 1941) As promised: the Five Fingers of the Hand! Though the Seven Soldiers would go on the fight more than a few teams of super-henchmen, the Fingers are distinguished by being (mostly) pre-established characters. Fun! Big Caesar: Big Caesar is whatever. A regular-style gang boss with a good name, elevated by being included in the gang. He appears just this once, in a scheme that involves cutting the power to Broadway and then doing a crimewave in…
(Leading Comics 001, 1941) The Hand holds the distinction of being both the first foe of the Seven Soldiers of Victory (all 9 or 10 of them) and the person who organized them as a team in the first place, and all as a way to get attention, essentially. As first presented, he is a master criminal so successful that he is unknown to the world at large who has just received word that he is dying with no hope…