(Action v1 017-018, 1939)
There’s a lot of ancient murder-cults in comics, and a lot of them are orientalist nonsense about primitive superstitions and such. I present this one (duped into doing the bidding of a couple of no-good brothers) solely because of the magnificent crotch-throne.
(Action v1 015, 1939)
Just a regular sort of science villain with a regular sort of plan: create a heat ray cannon and use it to ransom the world by melting the ice caps. Derailed and frozen solid by Zatara after a mere few flooded cities. Actually, that would be a neat way for him to come back: thawed out by global warming.
Occasionally a clear super-villain is unnamed in the course of a story and I have to go by something they are referred to in captions. The Ice Menace always feels like one of those to me but I think they actually call him that during the story? Wild.
(Action v1 013, 1939)
An early example of the principle that if you are friends with a comic book hero you have a high chance of either being the victim of a super-crook or being one yourself, the Ace of Spades is just some guy Tex Thomson made friends with on a ship and mooched houseguest status off of.
He’s also a very local super-villain, being a guy with an English country estate who seems to spend his time shaking down his neighbours. Dig the accessorizing of the standard Mysterious Hooded Villain outfit with the pith helmet, though.
(Action v1 013, 1939)
An early example of the principle that if you are friends with a comic book hero you have a high chance of either being the victim of a super-crook or being one yourself, the Ace of Spades is just some guy Tex Thomson made friends with on a ship and mooched houseguest status off of.
He’s also a very local super-villain, being a guy with an English country estate who seems to spend his time shaking down his neighbours. Dig the accessorizing of the standard Mysterious Hooded Villain outfit with the pith helmet, though.
(Action v1 011, 1939)
There are basically three levels of Zatara enemy: unpowered crooks such as the Tigress (MSV 019) or the Ghost (MSV 021) or a million gangsters over the years who are wildly outclassed and only have a chance if they manage to get the jump on him; villains of roughly equal or even greater power to him such as the Mad Lama (MSV 031) and finally folks like the Mad Lama’s minions: armed with one really good trick that can give them a situational edge against him. The latter are generally the most entertaining, as rather than toying with them like a mouse or bringing all he resources to bear on a genuine threat, he is often forced to take some time to figure out what’s going on. Which brings us to Madame Kelly.
Madame Kelly is a magic-using spy who wears cute outfits while trying to steal some defense plans that are being transported by cruise ship. Her only demonstrated power is to summon an illusory ghost, which she uses as a distraction while she hunts for her target below decks. Zatara spends a fair bit of the story stumped because he can’t banish what isn’t actually a ghost. It’s fun stuff! They should BRING HER BACK
ADDENDUM: Gentle reader, I present to you the sea-ghost of Madame Kelly:
(Action v1 009, 1939)
In a fairly typical display of respect for the Tibetan peoples and their religion, the Mad Lama is a ruthless villain bent on world domination. Presumably he achieved his powers through rigid dedication to the popular “evil” style of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Lama himself doesn’t get to do much other than bloviate for a while before being incinerated in a magic duel with Zatara, so the most interesting thing about him is the fact that he gathered up a cadre of other villains to help him out, a move that I dearly love as it supplies me with more weird little guys to know about.
Pictured from left to right (after the Mad Lama, of course) above are:
-Monsieur Henri, a Frenchman able to conjure illusory mists
-Lalla Gor, probably meant to be Indian but they just kind of spammed syllables to make foreign names back in the day, able to summon an army of phantom warriors
–the Tigress, our very own MSV 019 in her first turn as another villain’s henchman (she abandons the Lama to team up with Zatara pretty quickly)
-Zatara, posing as Major Lee, an Englishman of unknown abilities
-some bald guy
The Mad Lama gets mentioned every time someone talks about Zatara’s early career in a comic – he came up a couple of times when Zatanna was on her Dad-quest in the 60s, for example – but I don’t reckon he ever recovered from his incineration to actually come back again.
(Action v1 009, 1939)
In a fairly typical display of respect for the Tibetan peoples and their religion, the Mad Lama is a ruthless villain bent on world domination. Presumably he achieved his powers through rigid dedication to the popular “evil” style of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Lama himself doesn’t get to do much other than bloviate for a while before being incinerated in a magic duel with Zatara, so the most interesting thing about him is the fact that he gathered up a cadre of other villains to help him out, a move that I dearly love as it supplies me with more weird little guys to know about.
Pictured from left to right (after the Mad Lama, of course) above are:
-Monsieur Henri, a Frenchman able to conjure illusory mists
-Lalla Gor, probably meant to be Indian but they just kind of spammed syllables to make foreign names back in the day, able to summon an army of phantom warriors
–the Tigress, our very own MSV 019 in her first turn as another villain’s henchman (she abandons the Lama to team up with Zatara pretty quickly)
-Zatara, posing as Major Lee, an Englishman of unknown abilities
-some bald guy
The Mad Lama gets mentioned every time someone talks about Zatara’s early career in a comic – he came up a couple of times when Zatanna was on her Dad-quest in the 60s, for example – but I don’t reckon he ever recovered from his incineration to actually come back again.
(Action v1 008-009, 1939)
Dr Kichung menaced Tex Thomson for a couple of issues in a fairly standard scientist-who-puts-human-brains-into-apes kind of way until the local apes, sick of his malarky, killed him dead. I really liked his apes though. They had gravitas.
(Action v1 002, 1938)
Love a fake undead villain – it’s a tossup between sheet ghosts and fake mummies for my absolute Number One, with fake skeletons and Flying Dutchmans and Headless Horsemen crowding onto the Bronze pedestal together – so much, in fact that I might be rounding this guy trying to haunt some folks off of some oil land up to super-villain undeservedly. But WHO’S GOING TO STOP ME IF I AM?
(Action v1 002, 1938)
Early on in Tex Thomson’s adventuring career, he and his pal Bob Daly found themselves in a hidden city called, appropriately, the Sealed City. There they met the leader, or Gorrah, of that city and eventually discovered that he was an usurper who they quickly helped overthrow. There it would end for your average hidden-city-usurper but not this Gorrah, no sir. He came back half a dozen times, indulging in schemes such as:
-turning people into weird cyborgs
-turning people into weird rat-men
-attempting to take over Turkey
-fixing boxing matches
and so on.
By his last appearance, he was dealing with Mr America instead of boring old Tex Thomson and it wasn’t a very fair fight. Over the years he had shed his super-science, his one-time hypnotic power and even his flamboyant costume and was merely a one-eyed agent of some unspecified Foreign Power (ie, the Nazis) tasked with bombing libraries, which somewhat ignominiously (if predictably) ended with him being blown up by his own bomb. A sad end to be sure.