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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 410: THE BRAIN OF THE ROBOT

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 410: THE BRAIN OF THE ROBOT

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(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939)  I’ve started reading Mystery Men Comics, as seen at the top of the Sphinx entry, and the thing about Mystery Men Comics is that although it features the Blue Beetle, who by a circuitous chain of publication rights changing hands is now a DC Comics character, it also has a lot of other characters that aren’t currently owned by a media conglomerate! And although I mostly write about DC and Marvel characters because I…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 403: THE AVENGER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 403: THE AVENGER

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(More Fun Comics 073, 1941) Just a Central American general trying to overthrow his government with crypto-fascist backing, foiled by Clip Carson because he and his men were covered with rice from their rice warehouse HQ. Much more interesting is the fact that this is one of the occasional comics set in a real country but with off-the-cuff, made-up information. In this case, it’s the fact that Clip is in Honduras at the behest of its president, who is a…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 401: THE MASKED MAN

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 401: THE MASKED MAN

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(More Fun Comics 073, 1941) This is not a new development but having Johnny Quick and Green Arrow’s debuts so close together made me realize that a minor sea change had happened some time in 1941: whereas the earliest super-heroes would start out collaring regular crooks we’re entering an era in which super-villains are the norm! (that said, Aquaman’s debut is in this issue as well and he just blows up a few Nazis). As for the Masked Man (our…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 397: ADAM IGOROVICH

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 397: ADAM IGOROVICH

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(More Fun Comics 071, 1941) Adam Igorovich! Your typical scientist unhinged by his treatment by the scientific community, who deemed his theories impractical and/or dangerous and/or insane, so now he is striking back at the world using those selfsame theories to get his back. If we’ve seen it once we’ve seen it a million times. There’s one important difference between the machinations of Adam Igorovich and those of, say, the Master (the last Russian-ish scientist we saw battle Dr Fate):…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 396: THE CIPHER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 396: THE CIPHER

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(More Fun Comics 071, 1941) The Cipher is a fairly unremarkable oceangoing spy with a really great name. He attempts to extract some information on winter warfare tactics from a friend of Clip Carson (on behalf of unspecified employers – somewhat interestingly, the Cipher is explicitly a freelance spy) and gets blown up for his efforts.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 394: BANDAR

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 394: BANDAR

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(More Fun Comics 070, 1941) I got some gripes about Bandar and they’re not really Bandar’s fault. But let’s start with who Bandar is: the source of a mysterious spectral figure that keeps bamboozling the Spectre and killing former members of the Crimson Circle Mystic Society. Jim Corrigan goes deep cover and joins the Society in order to get to the bottom of what the heck is going on and discovers that they’re just a bunch of dupes that society…

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SUPER-VILLAIN YEARBOOK: IAN KARKULL & WOTAN 1941

SUPER-VILLAIN YEARBOOK: IAN KARKULL & WOTAN 1941

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What were Ian Karkull and Wotan up to in 1941? Ian Karkull is my Platonic Ideal of the Median Super-Villain: he has two Golden Age appearances (detailed here) and a handful of post-Silver Age ones but also was seemingly pulled out of a hat (probably by Roy Thomas) as the villain who did some sort of scheme that blasted the Justice Society with some sort of energies that made them age slower so that otherwise normal WWII veterans like Wildcat…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 393: THE TENTACLE

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 393: THE TENTACLE

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(More Fun Comics 069, 1941) We don’t get a lot of backstory on the Tentacle. Presumably he’s a botanist or at least a gifted amateur horticulturalist, as he has developed a type of plant that strangles folks to death and can be triggered remotely (or on a timer, possibly). He uses this creation to blackmail rich men until he is tracked down by the Spectre and of course meets his end at the fronds of his own creation.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 391: THE SEA KHAN

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 391: THE SEA KHAN

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(More Fun Comics 068, 1941) Yes, the Sea Khan is just a pirate, but he’s a very successful one, with fifteen years of piracy on his cv, a whole fleet of his own, a super great name and even a nemesis who blames the Khan for the death of his family. No points if you guess that the Sea Khan’s daughter Sului is actually the guy’s daughter raised to be a pirate. Though the Sea Khan ends up being shot…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 388: THE MASTER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 388: THE MASTER

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(More Fun Comics 068, 1941) The Master is… probably Russian. It’s the same as all of the “pseudo-German crypto-Nazi” characters that populate comics pre-Pearl Harbor. Reading through the vagueness, he is a scientist whose partner emigrated to the US about the time of the Russian Revolution while the Master stayed behind. Now the Master wants revenge for his partner’s success and also is gearing up to take over the world and he’s using his sonic death ray device to achieve…

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