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GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 018

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 018

The hits flops just keep coming. This gang doesn’t bother to give themself a proper name even though their scheme is extremely big and loud: they have access to a magnetic ray device and have employed it to pull down multiple large buildings in scenic Midtown City, thus killing between one and four thousand people (a printing error obscures the exact number), all so that their demands for protection money from the owners of other buildings will be paid without…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 718: MASK

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 718: MASK

(Samson 001, 1940) Mask here has a fairly ordinary set of plans and goals, for Masked Criminal levels of ordinary. His associate Dr Dag has developed a super-germ and his other associate Ko has control of a death cult, and he is going to use the latter to deliver the former to a number of nearby cities as revenge for tossing him out on his ear. Plus he’s going to loot once the cities are cleared out by disease, but…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 717: THE MASKED TERROR

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 717: THE MASKED TERROR

(Rocket Comics 003, 1940) The Phantom Ranger is just minding his business one day when he receives a sternly-worded letter via throwing knife, warning him to “steer clear of the red-headed girl.” This is of course your classic case of warning the hero off before he has a dang clue what’s going on. Everything is okay though, because the young woman who shortly rides up and requests the Ranger’s help has blonde hair. The “red-headed girl” must be seeking aid…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 714: SKLAR

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 714: SKLAR

(Prize Comics 006, 1940) It’s a regular day in Mongol-dominated New-New York City of the year 1982 CE: the people are oppressed in various ways and Power Nelson is around to help them solve some but not all of their problems. Suddenly! A space capsule lands and disgorges a trio of rampaging robots! This is a perfect task for Power Nelson to handle as it it a short-term solution to an immediate problem but very importantly does not require and…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 712: DR DEKKAR, MASTER OF MONSTERS

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 712: DR DEKKAR, MASTER OF MONSTERS

(Prize Comics 005, 1940)  Comic book features with the villain as the lead were one of the rarer subgenres of the Golden Age, and so I must note that this is our third instance of one with a monster-maker as the lead. Fun! We first encounter Dr Dekkar here after he has advertised for an assistant and thus brought one Diane Clark to his laboratory-castle on the English moors. There’s a part of me that wants to get very critical…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 708: SOPHUS, THE MAD PHILOSOPHER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 708: SOPHUS, THE MAD PHILOSOPHER

(Planet Comics 008, 1940) Once again an adventure begins that most classic sci-fi way: Buzz Crandall and his gal pal Sandra are noodling around in space when they run smack into something, in this case a crystal sphere that houses the secret headquarters of Sophus, the Mad Philosopher. I couldn’t tell you what school of philosophy Sophus subscribes to, but it’s one with an intellectual framework that encompasses a) turning other humanoids into mist and keeping them in bottles and…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 707: PRINCE BLAGA DARU

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 707: PRINCE BLAGA DARU

(Planet Comics 005, 1940)  Gale Allen was a long-running feature of Planet Comics, which meant that she was a creation of many absent-minded hands. She is always an officer in a gendered space organization, but whether that is the Women’s Space Battalion, the Girl’s Patrol, the Girl’s Squadron and so forth varies from issue to issue. The story is set in the far-off year of 1990 but drifts farther into the future over time. She turns blonde eventually. You get…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 706: LEPUS-THE-FIEND

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 706: LEPUS-THE-FIEND

(Planet Comics 007, 1940)  Lepus-the-Fiend has a lot of classic Fletcher Hanks villain qualities: the weirdly hyphenated name, the fact that he lives on a star (to be clear: not a poetic name for a planet. He lives on a five-pointed, flaming star) and of course his hatred of civilization, which is not given a particular motivation so I am left to assume is because he is a hairy and wild looking guy. He’s not the first Hanks character to…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 705: ROCKO

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 705: ROCKO

(Planet Comics 005, 1940) Rocko is a totally awesome alien (from a species called the Nethermen, a totally awesome name) who looks like a human with one great grandparent who was a toad and dresses in pulp sci-fi armour as he scours the spaceways for a star of sufficient heat to run all of his planet’s industry. Bad luck for humanity: the first adequate star that he manages to find while aimlessly noodling around in space (as opposed to picking…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 704: ZIRGO

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 704: ZIRGO

(Planet Comics 005, 1940) We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again: comic book plots spun out of the popular pre-Pearl Harbor US position that America should stay out of the burgeoning European conflict. This time, we’re treated to a political allegory in the far future, as planet Jupiter (Germany, presumably) attacks tiny planetoid Cato (Belgium, I guess) and draws the ire of the rest of the Solar System (the nascent Allied Forces). Many on Earth (America) want to…

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