(Action Comics v1 037)
Just a society playboy who puts on a mask to run his crooked casino empire. He might just be my new example of the bare minimum that I need to consider someone a super-villain – nobody is even surprised when his identity is revealed, but he has the barest film of anonymity along with a secret boat dock and a moderately cool name.
Also he gets hit by a boat.
(Action Comics v1 037)
Just a society playboy who puts on a mask to run his crooked casino empire. He might just be my new example of the bare minimum that I need to consider someone a super-villain – nobody is even surprised when his identity is revealed, but he has the barest film of anonymity along with a secret boat dock and a moderately cool name.
Also he gets hit by a boat.
(Action Comics v1 036, 1941)
Another day, another spy from no specific nation striking at the US military for uncertain reasons. This one is even less successful than usual, as he almost blows up an Army convoy and almost blows up an artillery range. But what can I do: I’m a sucker for a monocle, a guy who throws poisoned darts and a neato name.
(Action Comics v1 035, 1941)
Yet another spy encountered by Clip Carson, the Adder was interested in blowing up the Panama Canal for unclear reasons. Much more interestingly, he took his name from a snake-shaped ring which both fatally poisoned those he punched with it and left a cool snake mark on the spot he hit, and evidently he used it enough that his men spoke of him in hushed terms as “the Child of Death,” which is an amazing name.
As with so many villains who use a cool signature weapon, the Adder ends up falling on his own ring. A sad end.
(Action Comics v1 035, 1941)
Yet another spy encountered by Clip Carson, the Adder was interested in blowing up the Panama Canal for unclear reasons. Much more interestingly, he took his name from a snake-shaped ring which both fatally poisoned those he punched with it and left a cool snake mark on the spot he hit, and evidently he used it enough that his men spoke of him in hushed terms as “the Child of Death,” which is an amazing name.
As with so many villains who use a cool signature weapon, the Adder ends up falling on his own ring. A sad end.
(Action Comics v1 035, 1941)
The Spider is a foreign agent with a lot of guys named Herman and Otto working for him who attempts to disrupt US military preparedness. To that end he blows up a military parade and almost manages to poison an entire army camp being captured by Mr America.
(Action Comics v1 035, 1941)
The Spider is a foreign agent with a lot of guys named Herman and Otto working for him who attempts to disrupt US military preparedness. To that end he blows up a military parade and almost manages to poison an entire army camp being captured by Mr America.
(Action Comics v1 032-033, 1941)
Mister Z is actually plantation owner Grasso, who is actually X-11, notorious agent of a “hostile government” whose schemes are placed in jeopardy when a mineral deposit is discovered near his hideout in Colombia. His efforts to shut down the incipient mining operations bring in adventurer Clip Carson but he meets his actual end when he’s gunned down by a young boy whose father he had killed.
(More Fun 062, 1940)
Look at this damn nerd. He’s got a lightning cannon and a robot army and he bothered Dr Fate for a whole afternoon. Good riddance to him, I say. Raymond Rall. Ridiculous.
(More Fun Comics 062, 1940)
An early iteration of the classic tale of a brain that is freed of its cranium and becomes both powerful and EVIL, originally just a man named Dexter with a skeletal system and all the organs, he then became a mysterious shadowy figure named the Crime Lord as he directed his minions toward an eventual takeover of the US.
Upon being freed from his bell jar, the Crime Lord became the rapidly-expanding Brain, who similarly grew his ambitions: no longer interested in conquest on a national level, he was now going to expand to fill the entire universe. And he might have gotten away with it if the Spectre hadn’t shown up to shrivel him away to nothingness.
Bonus: the Spectre eating a bullet to save FDR.