(Detective v1 031-032, 1939)
The only reason this guy’s minor is that Batman shoots him dead in 1939. I know he’s made a few reappearances over the years but mostly they’re retellings of that first story. Also I guess they’re calling him the Mad Monk now? Weird.
My point is that Batman deserves a vampire nemesis so they should BRING HIM BACK.
ADDENDUM: it’s very strange to me that in Batman: Red Rain it’s Dracula who vampires Batman and not the Monk, an established vampiric Bat-villain.
(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.
(More Fun 031, 1938)
A mine owner using zombie labour, which is at best morally questionable, but also he planned to undermine New York and collapse it into a pit, then rule the ruins, which is worse.
Dr Occult dropped a mine on him, which is why it’s such a surprise when he shows up in my upcoming Dr Occult miniseries – back from the dead by his own dark will, the Master of Corpses teams up with the rest of his Golden Age rogues gallery in a bid to destroy their old foe once and for all.
(More Fun 031, 1938)
A mine owner using zombie labour, which is at best morally questionable, but also he planned to undermine New York and collapse it into a pit, then rule the ruins, which is worse.
Dr Occult dropped a mine on him, which is why it’s such a surprise when he shows up in my upcoming Dr Occult miniseries – back from the dead by his own dark will, the Master of Corpses teams up with the rest of his Golden Age rogues gallery in a bid to destroy their old foe once and for all.
(New Adventure 028, 1938)
Bog standard South American revolutionary villain who is hunted down by agents of the US Navy. Remarkable only due to the one-panel appearance of Rose del Muerte, the Rose of Death.
What a good one-panel appearance! El Diablo can sit in a garbage can, but Rose del Muerte should show up all over the DCU, never as an actual culprit but just a red herring living her best life.
(New Adventure 028, 1938)
Bog standard South American revolutionary villain who is hunted down by agents of the US Navy. Remarkable only due to the one-panel appearance of Rose del Muerte, the Rose of Death.
What a good one-panel appearance! El Diablo can sit in a garbage can, but Rose del Muerte should show up all over the DCU, never as an actual culprit but just a red herring living her best life.
(More Fun 018, 1937)
Used a drug to simulate death in others, then revived them post-funeral and made them do his bidding by claiming that without continual treatments they would die again. Unfortunately for him, he tried the same trick on Dr Occult and was unmasked as a fraud, leading to his swift murder at the hands of his former minions.
SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? My initial thought was that he would only be useful as a legacy name, but if, say, you were telling a Dr Occult yarn and worked in a recap of the original adventure early on then a reveal of the Lord of Life as someone who had really returned from the dead could be a nice cliffhanger/ ongoing mystery. Heck, tie it in with the Methuselah and Vampire Master stories (and maybe even work in something to do with the Master of Corpses, MSV No. 12) and you could have a neat little adventure where Dr Occult must reckon with the legacies of his earliest cases. Fun!
(More Fun 018, 1937)
Used a drug to simulate death in others, then revived them post-funeral and made them do his bidding by claiming that without continual treatments they would die again. Unfortunately for him, he tried the same trick on Dr Occult and was unmasked as a fraud, leading to his swift murder at the hands of his former minions.
SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? My initial thought was that he would only be useful as a legacy name, but if, say, you were telling a Dr Occult yarn and worked in a recap of the original adventure early on then a reveal of the Lord of Life as someone who had really returned from the dead could be a nice cliffhanger/ ongoing mystery. Heck, tie it in with the Methuselah and Vampire Master stories (and maybe even work in something to do with the Master of Corpses, MSV No. 12) and you could have a neat little adventure where Dr Occult must reckon with the legacies of his earliest cases. Fun!
(More Fun 010, 1936)
Another Dr Occult foe, Methuselah was basically a serial killer who believed that he could absorb the time he was stealing by killing people and so targeted folks with long-lived ancestors. Dr Occult set a trap and captured Methuselah, which leads to:
SHOULD THEY BE BROUGHT BACK? Absolutely! The assumption in the comic is that Methuselah is wrong, but what if he wasn’t? Just a dude locked up in Arkham or wherever for 90 years, all records lost in the oldest filing cabinets, and then one day he notices a grey hair and busts out to get more time. Is Dr Occult even still around?
(New Fun 006, 1935)
The *second* DC super-villain, the Vampire Master was upset that a lady rejected him so responded reasonably by holding the city to ransom via hordes of machine-created Universal movie monsters, possibly the first example in comics of someone creating something of unbelievable power and using it for petty nonsense instead of becoming the richest person in creation.
Theoretically, the Vampire Master was beaten by Dr Occult, but *really* he was shanked by one of his own creations after talking about how he was going to shut off his machine and make her disappear.
SHOULD THEY COME BACK? Maybe not the Vampire Master himself, but a story about someone breaking into an abandoned basement and finding his tech, still set to fill NYC with Frankensteins and Draculas would be a real hoot.