(The Face 001, 1941) I can’t say I’m surprised to see Ramun the Evil One again, given what I said about his supposed death in his last appearance. Ramun trails his old foe Marvelo (Monarch of Magicians, natch) into the desert and replaces his caravan’s staff with he and his men in an effort to steal the treasure of Tut-Akum-Aut from them when and if they dig it up. And he does it! He has them at his mercy and…
(Exciting Comics 015, 1941) The Master is a mysterious new crooks who has been going around town kidnapping wealthy men, and the Black Terror and Tim have been running around after him and trying to figure out just what the heck is going on. The Master is also a classic Bad Boss in the “ruthlessly kill your minions” mould. As it turns out, the Master has broadly the same origin story as early Batman villain the Ugliest Man in the…
Once again I am plagued by the absolute dregs of villainy. A Vampire: Vampires are one of the types of character that are statistically likely to make it through my classification system and be certified as super, but this particular one who a) lives in a swamp shack, b) has two meals in a row taken away from him by the Green Knight, c) doesn’t even get a name and d) ends up dead with his shack burned down around…
(Dynamic Comics 002, 1941) It’s a story as old as comics and then some: an inventor has come up with a cool superscientific gizmo – in this case an invisibility serum – and no sooner are they done than some gangsters come stiffing around looking to exploit it. This particular gang is headed by an unnamed and trigger-happy fellow who guns down the scientist and then his own men in order to get his mitts on the single available dose…
(Dynamic Comics 002, 1941) In probably the cheekiest campaign of terror ever, American defense officials are being murdered and then their shrunken skulls are being sent along to places where people are waiting for them with notes reading “Don’t wait for me any longer, here I am.” You may have noticed that all of the skull deliveries involved a man named Professor Curran, and being seasoned comics readers you rightly would have suspected that he was involved in the scheme somehow. It…
(Dynamic Comics 001, 1941) Scientists across the US are going missing, kidnapped by the magical madman known as the Yellow Spot! This brain-draining crime spree inspires the magical scholar Professor Moore to create the super-hero Dynamic Man, which in turn inspires the Yellow Spot to murder Professor Moore. He is just a wee bit too late, however, and instead of preventing the creation of Dynamic Man he merely provides him with a bit of extra motivation in the form of…
(Daredevil Comics 006, 1941) Wolf Carson, gang boss, is in the hospital after being gunned down by his own traitorous associates. Faced with a choice between 1) dying of his wounds or 2) recovering so that the authorities can scoop him up and take him to jail, Carson takes the ever-popular option 3) take the nearby unethical doctor up on his offer to help cheat death via experimental science, in this case a total brain transplant! True to his word,…
Damn their problematic hides! Rango: A former Vaudeville magician who employs a magical gem and some rubberoid mask blackface to establish himself as medicine man/bandit chief in Africa, Rango aka Harrigan is ultimately unmasked by Yarko the Great. (Wonderworld Comics 015, 1940) Unnamed Witch Doctor: This unnamed Haitian witch doctor has a very unusual scheme: blind entire American cities with a floating vision of some of his men and then loot those same cities of all of their diamonds. Why…
(Daredevil Comics 004, 1941) Bart “Daredevil” Hill and his fiance Tonia Saunders are accompanying their friends Jeff and Sue Hart on their honeymoon (!) yacht trip when they encounter the killer combo of rough stormy seas and a mysterious lighthouse that sends them right onto a reef. Happily for all involved (except two sailors who are swept overboard and never mentioned again) the yacht is merely wedged rather than sinking and there is a convenient nearby island. An inhabited one,…
(Daredevil Comics 002, 1941) 1900! Archaeologist Professor Pierce leads an expedition to find the tomb of Princess Sheba in Arabia! Buried alive in a solid gold tomb with a gold cobra perched on her chest, Princess Sheba appears to be meant to be the daughter of the biblical Queen of Sheba. The mummy, her grave goods and praticularly the golden cobra found sitting on her chest are all promptly packed up and shipped back to New York. Professor Pierce puzzles…