(All-Flash 002, 1941) The Threat is an example of a type of morality tale that was very popular in 40s and 50s comic books but never really went out of style: a tale of promise squandered in service to a life of crime. In this case, the subject is a crook named Tough Joe Connor, who swears revenge on Jim Kelley, the prosecutor who sent him to jail for ten years. My summarizing powers are not up to this task,…
(Leading Comics 001, 1941) The Hand holds the distinction of being both the first foe of the Seven Soldiers of Victory (all 9 or 10 of them) and the person who organized them as a team in the first place, and all as a way to get attention, essentially. As first presented, he is a master criminal so successful that he is unknown to the world at large who has just received word that he is dying with no hope…
(Human Torch v1 005a, 1941) The Mad Violinist! Not especially mad, aside from being a fascist fanatic. More of a fiddler than a violinist, too – perhaps Nazi Super-Agent HR got mixed up when assigning codenames and swapped his with the Fiddler and vice versa. Name mixup or no, the Mad Violinist makes quite a splash when he attacks a military parade in NYC and kills potentially hundreds of soldiers and onlookers – it’s always a real pain to estimate…
(Human Torch v1 004, 1941) Blackjack is your regular style gang boss who is operating at a scale sufficient to be considered super-villainous: he has an ocean liner and a private island equipped with various anti-Human Torch measures, including a fleet of nitrogen bomb-dropping bombers, all in service to one of my personal favourite supercrime setups: the escape ring (which of course involves paying a portion of your take to a third party in order to be spirited away from…
(Human Torch v1 002, 1940) As our story opens, what is presumably New York City is under siege by a mysterious killer who drains their victims of their blood. Dr Jack “the Fiery Mask” Castle decides to get involved. He sets a trap by announcing to the paper that he has a lot of blood on hand and then waits for the fiend to show up – too bad for him it’s not just one guy, as twenty blood-hungry maniacs…
(Daring Mystery Comics 008, 1942) Like he says in his dying moments above, Gore is a weird-looking guy who lashes out at society via a series of radio-themed deathtraps, always preceded by a broadcast of the letter D in Morse Code. As a villain he’s all right – he gives the Thunderer a run for his money at least. My major gripe with him is that there was ample opportunity for him to be called the D Killer or the…
(Daring Mystery Comics 007, 1941) Lot to like about the Thunderer: great name, trend-based origin (ham radio enthusiast who finds crime on the airwaves/ rigs up a microphone to enhance his presence with a booming voice), nice-looking costume that was ultimately his downfall (because Marvel Comics 1000 established that virtually every Marvel character who wore a full-face black mask were wearing the same mask, and some of them retroactively had to have died for the chain of mask-wearers to continue)….
(Daring Mystery Comics 006, 1940) The costumed fighter pilot might just be one of the most basic levels of super-villain. Here we have the Black Ace, Nazi and foe of the Flying Flame. He has a tower with an anti-aircraft vibrational cannon in it and a plane with a skull and crossbones on it. He gets shot down at the end of the story. FIN
(Daring Mystery Comics 006, 1940) There’s not much substance to the Legion of the Doomed, but there’s a lot of cool ideas, so lets knock them out. a) a weird figure imposes a baby on a couple dwelling in haunted hill country. The baby, it is later revealed, cries with the voice of a man. b) subsequently, a killer begins stalking the streets of a nearby city, probably New York. Panic ensues! The Fiery Mask is on the prowl. c)…
Back again with another collection of science-villains who didn’t quite make the grade! Fritz Cardif here has a gunpowder-exploding ray and a lot of big plans. He probably would have made the main list except that I personally find his antics very dull, with the exception of the lil’ stinker moment pictured above. (Hit Comics 006, 1940) Dr Marko figured on using kidnapped scientists as research slaves in his Grand Canyon hideout, but he too was corralled by Neon the…