(Fantastic Comics 006, 1940)
Dr Martinious holds a few distinctions. First, he is an Earth scientist who travelled to Mars on a rocket ship of his own design, an impressive feat and one that seems to have endeared him to the Brain Men of Mars sufficiently to make him their leader.
Secondly, he is an early cosplayer. Note his pseudo-Roman outfit (better view below). This is the outfit of a person who showed up on Mars after reading a lot of pulp fiction and early comic books that populated planets with societies themed after their mythological namesakes – see early Wonder Woman, e.g. How disappointing for Martinious when he showed up and the place was chockablock with cute little big-headed cyborgs! It’s just lucky for him that they’re up for a good war.
Thirdly, Dr Martinious has the dubious distinction of being the antagonist of a non-Fletcher Hanks-produced Stardust the Super Wizard story. It’s not a particularly bad effort but something is subtly off in a way that makes one feel uneasy while reading it. It’s actually not unlike the sensation of reading Hanks’ work for the first time, so good job unnamed artist!
The Martinious/Brain Men plan involves flooding the planet with either huge insects or giant bacteria or some hybrid of the two? Big bugs, we’ll say. It’s never expressly spelled out but an attack like this is usually deployed to weaken a planet prior to invasion. Martinious never actually gets that far, however, because Stardust shows up to render aid to the Earthlings.
(of course Stardust’s solution – to soak the entire planet in ultra-powerful germicide – would probably be just as disastrous in the long term as presumably huge swaths of essential microbial life would be wiped out, but this is a comic with a shaky understanding of the difference between insects and bacteria so don’t hold your breath for that reveal to happen in-story)
Where a lot of villains would use this as an opportunity to spit defiance at their foe, Dr Martinious instead sinks into despair. He and the Brain Men lock themselves up in a ray-proof fortress to sulk. He also finally gives us a good look at his cosplay, which is nice.
Martinious never emerges from his funk, so the final act of the story is in the hands of these cute Brain Men assassins, who at least try to kill Stardust. Do they get hurled off a mountain for their efforts? Yes. But it was worth a try.
Like I said, Martinious never emerges from his ray-proof fortress, and that’s because it’s specifically a death ray-proof fortress. Concentrated solar heat rays are very effective against it. RIP Dr Martinious, you didn’t do a very good job.
