(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 010, 1940) If there’s one thing you can say about just about any given super-hero universe it’s that any given cave, canyon or unguarded parking lot will have its own little group of creeps who lurk in it and are just spoiling for a chance to get up to mischief. Our inaugural creeps are the Ghouls! Hailing from volcanic caverns beneath the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ghouls just love to gather up hot ladies for volcanic sacrifice….
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 009, 1940) This one, while not being particularly spectacular as a whole does contain a lot of fun elements. Let’s count them off! We open on our hero one a one-issue trip to Europe (1) where he pooh-poohs the local superstitions (2) about a castle full of vampires who steal young women (3). The Angel – for it is he who pooh-poohs – quickly gets mixed up in an attempted vampiric abduction and, surprise surprise, the…
(Marvel Mystery Comics 004, 1940) Probably the least of the Superstrong Giant Henchman types we’ve seen so far, Butch is very briefly the scourge of an unnamed city under the command of gang boss Brink, until he gets dropped off a building by the Angel. Nothing specifically bad about this guy – there’s just not much that’s specifically interesting about him. It might be fun to see him get brought back as an example of an early mutant but that’s…
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 003, 1940) The Sacred one is a pretty bog-standard cult leader in a way that was cliched even in 1940: he’s got a bunch of people in a castle in the New York countryside somewhere and they kidnap beautiful white women to sacrifice to their Fire God until the Angel shows up to murderize them. The only really interesting things about him are the questions that the loose plotting leaves you with: he has hypnotic powers…
(Marvel Comics v1 001, 1939) The Six Big Men ain’t much, just a bunch of guys who teamed up to do the maximum amount of Crime possible in an unidentified American city. But I am including them in this list, for two reasons: 1. they’re the first even marginal minor super-villains in Marvel Comics (I of course know about Timely Comics, pedants, but I round up) history, and 2. the Six Big Men are actually Seven Big Men and One Big…