(Crack Comics 018, 1941)
The Crow! Wanted in every country on the Earth! A villain with a very impressive resume! It’s actually a bit disappointing when he just does some regular bank robbing in this issue.
To be fair, he does give the Spider much more of a run for his money than his usual foe, and he does end up returning in Crack 021 the next year, in which he steals the Black Widow and uses it for evil deeds. I don’t know if it’s quite enough, but it’s something.
(Crack Comics 018, 1941)
The Crow! Wanted in every country on the Earth! A villain with a very impressive resume! It’s actually a bit disappointing when he just does some regular bank robbing in this issue.
To be fair, he does give the Spider much more of a run for his money than his usual foe, and he does end up returning in Crack 021 the next year, in which he steals the Black Widow and uses it for evil deeds. I don’t know if it’s quite enough, but it’s something.
(Crack Comics 001, 011 & 012, 1940-1941)
The Cricket, leader of the Crickets, is a fairly undistinguished gang boss notable only for his brutality, the fact that he was the first foe of hard done-by hero the Spider and that he made two subsequent appearances!
His first two appearances are nothing to write home about, though I do note a repeated armchair theme. The man loves to be comfortable. Sadly for him, he was shot down by the Spider before he could enjoy another good sit. RIP.
(Crack Comics 012-013, 1941)
It doesn’t take much to push a space pirate over the line into super-villain status, and Captain X’s name and costume are more than enough to do so for me. Plus, she has two whole appearances! What’s that? Yes I said “she” because you see…
CAPTAIN X IS A WOMAN!
Yes, it’s the ol’ gender switcheroo, which is perhaps not as mind-blowing in 2022 as it was in 1941. Evidently, though, it’s almost unthinkable by 2441.
(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 (presumably) grief after he accidentally kills both his partner and his sweetheart (that’s angle no. 2, by the way).
The third misfortune to strike Professor Radium is Batman, who is much more of a protector of capital than he will be later and consequently is more concerned with preventing Ross from stealing the valuable drug that he need to treat his condition than with helping him get better. They fight and Prof Rad goes into the harbour, presumably to drown. OR DOES HE, the final caption box asks? No, depending on which comic book reality you live in. He makes an appearance as part of a squad of radioactive bad guys in Infinite Crisis, so at least one version of him evidently hangs out for up to 70 years before getting motivation to do some evil.
They should have brought him back beforehand (or used him since). He’s neat.
(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 (presumably) grief after he accidentally kills both his partner and his sweetheart (that’s angle no. 2, by the way).
The third misfortune to strike Professor Radium is Batman, who is much more of a protector of capital than he will be later and consequently is more concerned with preventing Ross from stealing the valuable drug that he need to treat his condition than with helping him get better. They fight and Prof Rad goes into the harbour, presumably to drown. OR DOES HE, the final caption box asks? No, depending on which comic book reality you live in. He makes an appearance as part of a squad of radioactive bad guys in Infinite Crisis, so at least one version of him evidently hangs out for up to 70 years before getting motivation to do some evil.
They should have brought him back beforehand (or used him since). He’s neat.
(All-Star Comics 002, 1940)
Kulak is the High Priest of Brztal, which is originally implied to be an ancient lost civilization but I believe is later defined as extra-dimensional in some way. His deal is ostensibly that he is upset that his tomb was disturbed so he is going to destroy humanity, but I don’t know that he wasn’t just looking for an excuse to flex his magical muscles. He gets up to a lot of fun stuff with disasters – worldwide flooding and riots, plagues of lucusts etc – and summons armies of ancient Brztalan dead to smite his enemy but ultimately is put down again by the Spectre.
In what is going to be an ongoing theme with these one-off All-Star villains, he eventually gets Roy Thomased into the pages of All-Star Squadron to mix it up with the Spectre one more time.
(All-Star Comics 002, 1940)
Kulak is the High Priest of Brztal, which is originally implied to be an ancient lost civilization but I believe is later defined as extra-dimensional in some way. His deal is ostensibly that he is upset that his tomb was disturbed so he is going to destroy humanity, but I don’t know that he wasn’t just looking for an excuse to flex his magical muscles. He gets up to a lot of fun stuff with disasters – worldwide flooding and riots, plagues of lucusts etc – and summons armies of ancient Brztalan dead to smite his enemy but ultimately is put down again by the Spectre.
In what is going to be an ongoing theme with these one-off All-Star villains, he eventually gets Roy Thomased into the pages of All-Star Squadron to mix it up with the Spectre one more time.
(All-Star Comics 001, 1940)
A couple of magic users, Beldame Gaffy (curse-caster) and Trygg (necromancer) team up to steal the lands that rightfully belong to Trygg’s niece and nephew so that he could get rich via a zombie-staffed mining operation. Things go well until Hawkman shows up to explode them to death. Also, these are the first (only?) Welsh super-villains we have (will ever?) encountered!
Ordinarily in a two-person set-up like this I would designate one as the boss and the other as a lieutenant or minion but Gaffy and Trygg really do seem like an equal partnership. Sadly however, only Trygg has made any subsequent appearances, specifically in the 2000s-era Hawkman series. I guess it makes sense that the necromancer would be the one to return from the dead but one must nonetheless mourn the dearth of Beldames in this modern world.
(Adventure 069, 1941)
An early example of quite a few villain tropes, the Red Dragon is a guy who turns to evil because he was rejected by society due to his deformed face (1). He then decides to set himself up in opposition to the heroic Shining Knight, choosing to become the Red Dragon – less dramatic than a Bizarro-style evil opposite situation but still an evil opposite situation (2).
After his first (unsuccessful) foray into crime, he is recruited by the Hand to battle the Seven Soldiers of Victory as part of one of the earliest examples of a super-villain team-up (3), some years before the Injustice Society and such became commonplace.
Pretty good for a fairly ordinary hooded villain.