(The Spirit, “The Origin of the Spirit”, June 2, 1940) Poor Dr Cobra. He goes to all the trouble to put together a sewer lair and develop some weird green slop that puts people into a state of suspended animation and he doesn’t even get to lay out what his plans for the stuff were. No, PI Denny Colt has to show up and get doused in slop and become the Spirit and now that’s all that anyone ever remembers…
(The Funnies 050, 1940) The Scourge is a bandit chief operating in the nonspecific Medieval-pastiche England of the Black Knight, and let me tell you, he is a terrific villain. His amazing look is one thing – just how many Golden Age villains have the confidence to use eye makeup to accentuate their air of menace? – but on top of that I have seldom seen a villain so eager and joyful to torture a peasant woman. Just an amazingly…
(The Funnies 042, 1940) I had great hopes for the Great One, a pirate captain so mysterious that he wears a full-face hood (with nostril holes! The rarest hood hole!) even while hanging out on his own South Pacific island inhabited solely by his own fanatical crew. The black skull insignia alone inspired me to hope that there might be some fun mystery behind that hood for Bruce McKay, formerly Sky Master but now Sky Ranger, to solve when he…
I’m not sure that these guys all have degrees. This fellow is known only as the Professor, and he conducts experiments in long- and short-range mind control on Lost Hope Island until Secret Naval Agent Spike Marlin shows up in search of a missing ship’s crew. (Speed Comics 009, 1940) This unnamed scientist has developed a drug that puts people into indefinite comas and has used it to kidnap and store ten millionaires, presumably with the intent of ransoming them…
(Target Comics v1 009, 1940) Glork here is a candidate for election to the post of King of Mars who manages to lose despite massive political interference on his part. This is probably because he is a very unpleasant and transparently evil person. Despite some recent real-world examples, Glork might still reign supreme as the worst-ever loser of an election. He immediately settles upon a plan to pull the moon Phobos down to the surface to destroy the entire Martian…
(Target Comics v1 007, 1940) Jark and Zorg, an alien duo of unknown provenance, continue the trend of Spacehawk villains who could broadly be described as space pirates. They also a) have a very hard pair of names to remember without accidentally mixing up some of the letters and b) are possibly the most phallic-looking alien designs that weren’t just ambulatory ding-dongs that I have ever seen. Jark and Zorg’s plan is… not simple, per se, but it doesn’t have…
(Target Comics v1 006, 1940) Grebo is a simple guy, even if he is a Mercurian. He’s on Venus with his pal Gogg hunting a lost stash of Mercurian platinum that was spirited away by the losing side of a long ago war in which Rogg and Grebo’s ancestors were the victors. And heck, that’d be simple treasure hunting if the underwater city that the swag was in were uninhabited, right? Sadly, it turns out that the defeated Mercurians (or…
(Target Comics v1 005, 1940) We meet Grovak the Martian space pirate as he and his crew are about to sacrifice a beautiful human babe in order to capture a portion of the protoplasmic Neptunian Creeping Death. Not only does this highlight Grovak’s ruthlessness but it shows what a bad boss he is – bullying, abusive, refusing to own up to his mistakes – Martian space pirates take note and seek employment elsewhere. Luckily for that never-named young woman, Spacehawk…
(Target Comics v1 003, 1940) I’m going to start out by saying that I have no idea why this story is called “Return of the Octopus!” as this is as far as I can tell both the first and last appearance of the character. Both the title and the Octopus’ costume seem to be dramatic flourishes that don’t really play out in the text of the story. I do really like the Octopus’ costume, though. It’s got a lot of…
(Sure-Fire Comics 003a, 1940) The Grand Dictator, aka Miko, is on a mission to conquer the US, and he’s doing it from a cool flying fortress. Miko and his men are probably intended to be at least Nazi-adjacent, but they don’t really come off that way, at least as compared with their contemporaries. I mean, sure, they’ve got the uniforms and the attitude, but where are the dimwitted goons named Hans and Franz shouting “Jah, jah!” as they scuttle off…