(Captain Aero Comics 001, 1941) Captain Hood is your classic fascist of indeterminate allegiance, who has been holed up with a crew of pseudo-Nazis and pseudo-Imperial Japanese agents in a cave underneath Easter Island for four long years working on an “undersea tractor” designed to haul a cargo of explosives to the Panama Canal and then blow it up. Just why he requires a mask in order to oversee this operation is an exercise left for the reader – I…
Since we’re currently reading Whiz Comics for 1941, it’s time yet again for another load of unscrupulous people to get their hands on the Ibistick and then kill themselves with it. And here they are: the Widow Zorn: Ibis lends the Ibistick to old Professor Grubb for scientific study after Grubb finds it outside of an exploded building and uses its magic to restore the building and everyone inside – which included both Ibis and Taia, along with their their young ward…
Just another buncha jerks. John Elton: This fellow brings us right back to the roots of the Generic Costumed Villain Round-Up, being a businessman who puts on a mask to run a gang and kill off the other officers of his company so that he can buy up all their shares and make a fortune. Plus, his name is John Elton, which doesn’t mean anything but is still a fun coincidence. Dan Dare gets ‘im. (Whiz Comics 016, 1941) the…
(Whiz Comics 021, 1941) Due to Allied concerns about the Nazis generic Axis use of black magic to ensure victory, Ibis the Invincible is recruited and sent to the front as a counter-sorcerer. His foe: the mysterious Half-Man, occultist and rumoured worshipper of an ancient evil god called the Dark Spirit. The Half-Man served with distinction in WWI, until an artillery shell cost him a leg, an arm and an eye and he was no longer able to lead troops…
(Whiz Comics 015, 1941) As seen in his recent update, Spy Smasher’s arch-foe the Mask eventually gets a bit too good at villainy for his own sake. While he succeeds at warping Spy Smasher’s mind and turning him against the US government that he once sought only to defend, the Mask’s enthusiasm means that he is a bit too loose with his commands to “Kill! Kill! Kill!” meaning that the first that Spy Smasher does is to kill the Mask….
The fools! The fascist fools. the Steel Guard: The Steel Guard are a home-grown fascist group in the Balkan country of Murania, who plot to sell out their country and its oil wells to the Nazis. They fail to recognize the threat inherent in leaving a camera in the hands of crack magazine photographer Fran Frazer and she ruins their entire setup with a few evidence-heavy snaps. (Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940) the Redshirts: The Redshirts are a homegrown US fascist…
(Wow Comics 003, 1941) Inventor Phineas Cox has created a mummy ray, which is a device that fires a beam that instantly mummifies living tissue, a horrible thing that could only be used ethically by the mortuary and possibly the jerky industries. Cox intends for the weapon to be used in the defense of the United States, and to that end takes it not to the military but to something called the Defend America League, where he is somewhat predictably…
(Spy Smasher 002, 1941) Yet another not-quite Nazi spy for Spy Smasher to smash. I really like the Eye’s little “hey” pose in the splash panel, like even he knows that he’s not quite dynamic enough to be there. Like so many of his peers, the Eye is after Spy Smasher ally Admiral Corby (at least once mentioned as being chief of the US Secret Service but usually just generically Important), and ends up kidnapping his daughter (and Spy Smasher…
(Spy Smasher 002, 1941) After the heady times of having an actual Nazi agent in the person of the Red Death last time, we are back in the realms of plausible deniability and no-name fascism in the person of the Tigress. Though the Tigress does indulge in some activities relating to her chosen theme, including somewhat gruesomely using her two trained tigers for corpse-disposal duties, her main line is in murdering US officials such as Senator Whitney here and then…
(Spy Smasher 001, 1941) We’ve entered 1941 and the crypto-fascist spies are getting closer and closer to being just plain old Nazis. Case in point: the Dark Angel, a classic femme fatale spy with just enough plausible deniability to satisfy comics’ compulsion to stay just barely technically politically neutral. The Dark Angel’s name might be straight out of the mid-90s but her plans are 1941 all the way down. As the story opens she is sending two of her men to blow…