(Keen Detective Funnies v2 011, 1939) The Fiend is a mad scientist/ musician who has developed a supercharged organ capable of destroying structures such as the Brooklyn Bridge. And he does so, ostensibly as a showcase of his power in aid of his conquest of the world but possibly just as a whim – he’s your classic erratic comic book madman. G-Man Dan Dennis tracks him down with relative ease and the threat of the Fiend is ended forever. OR…
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 008, 1939) There’s no bones about it: the Hawk looks like a guy who has a pretty extensive model train setup down in the basement. And he may just! But he’s also a master thief who stashes his loot inside an active Mexican volcano. But the volcano has a tram running up the side, so perhaps his inner train enthusiast is expressing itself in different ways. As always: you live by the volcano lair; you die…
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 002, 1939) Another day, another guy named the Master. This Master is escaped lunatic Pierre Lacroix, leader of the Hooded Cult and would-be world conqueror. Lacroix maintains the loyalty of his cult via drug addiction and has a castle HQ. This is all penny-ante stuff. The most important thing about the Master is his shirt. It’s like, a sweatshirt with attached cowl? Obviously other villains have been doing similar things with robes for years at this…
(Funny Picture Stories v2 001-003, 1937) I think I recently mentioned the dreamlike quality of some Golden Age comics. This is one of them, and only partially because the villain operates out of some sort of pocket dimension in the collective human subconscious. Psyk is a would-be world conqueror with three really good tricks in his arsenal: travel between Earth and the aforementioned Realm of the Subconscious, the ability to raise the dead and mental domination of both the raised…
(Funny Picture Stories v1 003, 1936) These guys are a bunch of dipshits, but they’re kind of lovable. They kidnap reporter Red Dolan to keep him from exposing their murder operation and basically give him a guided tour of exactly how to own them. Look, here’s some tear gas! Now we’ll all go into a different room while you overpower your guard. Buncha goofs.
(Amazing Man Comics 008, 1939) The worst thing about Minimidget is obviously his name. The best thing about him and his partner Ritty is the fact that unlike your Doll Mans or Atoms or Ants Men they are a) permanently six inches tall and b) proportionally as strong as a six-inch human being – they’re just lil’ guys wearing jodhpurs. A lot of their adventures are not so much about going out and finding excitement as dealing with the problems…
(Amazing Man Comics 008, 1939) Dr Magno is your classic elemental evil opposite: a man with magnetic hands pitted against a man with an iron skeleton. He’s a wild-card ex-foe of the Iron Skull freshly broken out of the asylum to loot Chicago of its jewels and get revenge on his traitorous ex-cronies. He’s also, weirdly, an evil equivalent, as both he and the Iron Skull owe their powers to debilitating injuries suffered in the Great War of 1950, but…
(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 012, 1939) The Ten Knights of Doom! Like the Brain of the Robot, more an excuse to talk about their foe than anything else! But here we have to front-load it because you can’t get into these guys without setting things up by talking about Speed Centaur. Speed Centaur is great because he’s one of the very first super-heroes and yet he’s still also one of the weirdest super-hero concepts that isn’t some sort of psychedelic…
(Amazing Mystery Funnies v3 003, 1940) Just a cheeky super-hero for you today: the Headless Horseman! The Headless Horseman is an utterly standard western hero except for their lack of a head. They made maybe two appearances in Centaur comics before fading into the mists of history. A shame, because I really like the simple spin a fake supernatural Western hero gives things – I can’t think of too many of them other than the various Ghost Riders. The cowboy…
(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939) We’ve all read a comic in which a scientist is rejected for his wild-but-true theories and goes a bit bonkers and criminal, but Satan Rex really went for it. Originally Eric von Hochwalt, who developed the Theory of Relativity ten years before Einstein and dealt with his subsequent rejection by disappearing into the Himalayas, founding a city full of people who worship him as a god, conquering the aging process and eventually taking a…