(Human Torch v1 006, 1941) Just one issue after attempting to conquer the world (and sinking a US fleet in the process), Namor is commissioned as an honorary admiral in the US Navy (for saving a different US fleet from sinking).
(Human Torch v1 006, 1941) A fairly simple one today: am man named Haskell advertises for people with no hope in life, then selects the most desperate of them into a gang. Since they were all prepared to die already, the members of the Legion of Despair are prone to, say, blowing themselves up with grenades in order to see that their compatriots get away with whatever loot they’re scampering off with. Aside from this radical investment in the goals…
(Human Torch v1 005b, 1941) Bit of an unfair one here: Rathia is a princess of a Baltic kingdom of Atlanteans who persuades the Sub-Mariner to attempt world conquest. She is unquestionably a bad egg but by far the worst crimes of the issue are perpetuated by Namor himself and include: imprisoning and nearly killing Toro, mind controlling the Human Torch, flooding Africa and NYC, sinking the Italian Navy, nearly destroying Moscow and various war crimes. Crucially, Rathia does not…
(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941) The Mad Violinist! Not especially mad, aside from being a fascist fanatic. More of a fiddler than a violinist, too – perhaps Nazi Super-Agent HR got mixed up when assigning codenames and swapped his with the Fiddler and vice versa. Name mixup or no, the Mad Violinist makes quite a splash when he attacks a military parade in NYC and kills potentially hundreds of soldiers and onlookers – it’s always a real pain to estimate…
(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941) This is kind of a weird one in a few ways, the first being that the foundation of the plot is that a) Namor the Sub-Mariner and the Angel both own Caribbean islands and b) that they are good enough friends for Namor to pay the Angel a visit. During this visit one of Namor’s servants bursts in and promptly drops dead in an effort to deliver a note cryptically warning of a zombie takeover….
(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941) I think I’ve mentioned the old three-act super-villain story structure of yore a couple of times, but there are a whole host of old comic book story styles that have fallen by the wayside and Dr Smart here stars in one of them: the book-length heist story. Three pages into our tale, Smart and his crew, posing as a funeral procession, rob an armoured car. The remaining 38 or so pages concern the efforts of…
There are various groups of fascist goons in comics and doing an individual entry for each bunch would be a slog, so it’s time for another grouping of jerks! The Yellowshirts here put in a better showing than most and almost manage to take over NYC before they get beaten down by the Patriot. (Human Torch v1 004, 1941) Do the Brown Hoods sound kind of like how the Mafia was described in the 30s? Yes. Is that going to…
(Human Torch v1 004, 1941) Blackjack is your regular style gang boss who is operating at a scale sufficient to be considered super-villainous: he has an ocean liner and a private island equipped with various anti-Human Torch measures, including a fleet of nitrogen bomb-dropping bombers, all in service to one of my personal favourite supercrime setups: the escape ring (which of course involves paying a portion of your take to a third party in order to be spirited away from…
(Daring Mystery Comics 007, 1941) Lot to like about the Thunderer: great name, trend-based origin (ham radio enthusiast who finds crime on the airwaves/ rigs up a microphone to enhance his presence with a booming voice), nice-looking costume that was ultimately his downfall (because Marvel Comics 1000 established that virtually every Marvel character who wore a full-face black mask were wearing the same mask, and some of them retroactively had to have died for the chain of mask-wearers to continue)….
Pets: Jerry “the Thunderer” Carstairs has a pet dog named Mike. (Daring Mystery Comics 007, 1941) Cops Attempting to Murder Fleeing Suspects: A really concerted attempt to murder the Challenger by the cops in this issue. (Daring Mystery Comics 007, 1941) Legitimately surprised to see a reference to drinking a Zombie cocktail in 1941 but it seems that it dates from 1934 (Human Torch v1 005b, 1941)