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Category: 1941

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 170: THE BLACK SPIDER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 170: THE BLACK SPIDER

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(Bulletman 001, 1941) What makes them a super-villain? The Black Spider is Jules Rey, a French crook who got caught in NYC and shipped back to France, where he was thrown in a dungeon, went blind, befriended the spiders in his cell and escaped. Now he’s back for revenge on those he blames for his circumstances, including Jim “Bulletman” Barr and his coworker and future father-in-law Sergeant Kent. Plus he dresses in a kind of low-rent Batman costume. What is…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 169: THE SWAMP MASTER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 169: THE SWAMP MASTER

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(Blue Beetle Comics 010, 1941) Once again I am faced with the painful dichotomy of a villain with all of the trappings I love – he’s a bombastic loudmouth with a bunch of costumed henchmen, who uses simple trickery to appear superhuman – but uses them in service to some frankly uninspired crimes. In this case, the Swamp Master (great name, too!) emerges from the swamp (natch) with his wet-suited Swampmen and a saurian monster that is actually a disguised…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 168: DR KRUG

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 168: DR KRUG

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(Blue Beetle Comics 008, 1941) Dr Krug! I cannot tell you his motives, because he never goes into them! Dr Krug! He wants to destroy NYC York City , and he’s going to do it with gorillas! Dr Krug! Specifically, explosive gorillas! Dr Krug! That’s really all there is to the guy. He somehow figured out how to make time-bombs out of gorillas and went from there. As far as I can tell from the action of the story his plan is…

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GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 001

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 001

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I feel a little bad about what I said in the Armo post. The generic masked guys are, after all, trying their best, even if they aren’t quite measuring up to my standards. So while I can’t quite bring myself to write an individual post about each one, there’s no harm in doing a roundup of them every now and again, starting with the guys that Blue Beetle fought in 1941: Ivor Nick:  This guy had a lieutenant named the Wart…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 167: ARMO

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 167: ARMO

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(Blue Beetle v1 007, 1941) What makes them a super-villain? It’s the helmet! That kind of welder’s mask-looking helm is the key to my super-villain-appreciating heart. Otherwise, Armo is a gang boss who robs armoured cars and ends up launching himself into the sea while trying to run down the Blue Beetle. Honestly, Blue Beetle antagonists in this era are almost all guys in suits wearing masks but otherwise acting like standard gang bosses. If I didn’t include the filter…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 166: LUGO, THE HARPIE OF HORROR

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 166: LUGO, THE HARPIE OF HORROR

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(Blue Beetle Comics 006, 1941) I skip a lot of generic villains from the non-Marvel or DC families of comics, because everyone existing together in a big shared world is the thing about comics that makes me get out my spreadsheets and my extensive tagging system. A guy like Lugo, though, demands at least a little attention. One thing to know about him off the bat is: he’s an underwater guy. This happens a lot in comics starring underwater heroes…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 165: THE EEL

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 165: THE EEL

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(Blue Beetle v1 006, 1941) What makes them a super-villain? I’ll be honest. The Eel’s initial plot – take over NYC York City ‘s shipping industry in order to starve and thereby ransom the city – was, while ambitious, a bit old hat and I was going to write him off as another jagoff gang boss with a decent moniker. But then! He reveals his Room of Horrors(!) where he pickles his enemies alive(!!), and, well, how could I not?

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 163: PROFESSOR RADIUM

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 163: PROFESSOR RADIUM

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(Batman Comics 008, 1941) Professor Henry “Radium” Ross has things stacked against him from at least three different angles by my count. First, he’s a classic Victim of Orthodoxy as his research is rejected as too fantastic by a stick-in-the-mud institute director and he feels compelled to test his radium-based cure for death on himself. It works, but turns him into a radioactive man in the process, and he starts to go mad from a combination of radiation poisoning and…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 162: THE CLOCK MAKER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 162: THE CLOCK MAKER

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(Batman Comics 006, 1941) A few different longstanding comic book bits make early appearances in the tale of the Clock Maker. First, Bruce Wayne has to go to a boring old board meeting at one of the many companies that he has an stake in, but that meeting sows the seeds of crime. Specifically, they all go to a clock store together afterward and Atkins, the evil board member who wants to gain sole ownership of the clock company for…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 161: THE BLACK WITCH

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 161: THE BLACK WITCH

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(Batman Comics v1 005, 1941) Batman and Robin’s first interdimensional jaunt took them to Fairyland, where they were tasked with rescuing the daughter of one Professor Anderson, who it seems he was using as a test subject for his narrative-dimensional travel device? There they face off against sundry giants and dragons and so forth before confronting the top evildoer of the realm: the Black Witch. One could argue that a villain whose existence is defined by peasant morality tales that…

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