(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.
(Action Comics v1 001, 1938)
The Tigress was both Zatara’s first foe and his only real recurring villain, showing up a dozen times over 3 years. She acted in the role of what was occasionally called a “friendly enemy”: a villain of the opposite gender who the hero has a soft spot for, implicitly or explicitly because they’re horny for them. A Catwoman situation, in other words.
Like Catwoman and Batman, the Tigress occasionally teamed up with Zatara against a worse foe, and Zatara frequently let her escape at the end of a case out of horny sentimentality. Unlike Catwoman, the Tigress was absolutely a multiple murderer, running armed robbery, assassination and extortion rings at various times as well as acting as lieutenant for several other super-villains such as the Mad Lama.
Ultimately, Zatara caught the Tigress for the last time and seemingly persuaded her to reform. Whether it stuck or not, she never appeared in a comic book again.
(Feature Funnies 007, 1938)
Our first Quality Comics super-villain!
Otherwise, not very interesting – he doesn’t even wear the mask in the story, just tries to frame the Clock and finds out how far that kind of thing gets you in the comic book game.
(Feature Funnies 007, 1938)
Our first Quality Comics super-villain!
Otherwise, not very interesting – he doesn’t even wear the mask in the story, just tries to frame the Clock and finds out how far that kind of thing gets you in the comic book game.
(Detective v1 019, 1938)
Nemesis of Inspector Kent of Scotland Yard with maybe three appearances – but he’s the kind of dreaded evil mastermind who shows up already the most wanted man of all time, so he feels more significant.
(Detective v1 017, 1938)
If there’s one thing that Golden Age comics have in great supply, it’s US fascist groups seeking to (variously) undermine the country’s war production, keep the US out of WWII, draw the US into WWII, or take over the country outright. And while most of these groups are just some guys called the Purple Shirts who rough up a shopkeeper for not loving the Fatherland more than his adopted land of AMERICA, a few, like the Hooded Hordes here, get their act together enough to be minor super-villain organizations.
I mean, they don’t really get up to much more than the hypothetical Purple Shirts – mostly disrupting war production in a bid to take over the US – but there’s a lot to be said about doing so in a sheet ghost outfit with a skull and crossbones on the chest.
(Detective v1 016, 1938)
The Broadway Bandit is just a disgruntled actor who puts on a mask and robs box offices until Slam Bradley shows up to settle his hash but he might be out first illustration of the very basic level of super-villainy: a good name, a basic but distinctive costume and the commission of crimes while in the possession of both.
SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? No, but in a super-hero universe I reckon that there should be way more guys adopting this kind of persona to do basic crimes like armed robbery. In a world with cosmic threats named Molecule Man and such running around you might not even need a weapon to stick up a corner store if you strolled in in a plausible enough costume.
(Detective v1 015, 1938)
Chester Glass almost accidentally frames Slam Bradley and Shorty Morgan for murder, and that’s the main thrust of the story. As things develop, you learn that he has wooed and then murdered at least two dozen women for their money, which alone is enough to get him on this list, but then he captures Slam and Shorty in his murder dungeon basement, which is filled with “dozens” of bodies! And he has up to this point gone completely unnoticed by the Cleveland police!
SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? I mean, a century-old serial killer probably doesn’t have a place in the DCU, so no. He really should be acknowledged somewhere, though – the real berries would have been if there was a Chester Glass Lifetime Achievement Award at the Cereal Convention in Sandman, but alas and alack that ship has sailed.
(Detective v1 015, 1938)
A serial killer who murders diplomats because without them there would be no wars. Brought in by Bart Regan and Sally Norris, protagonists of the early Siegel and Shuster strip Spy.