(Slam-Bang Comics 005, 1940) I quite like Maria. Firstly, she is a vampire with bat wings, which is a feature that hardly ever shows up any more. Also she sleeps in a coffin filled with the bones of her victims, which is not a bit of vampire lore that I am familiar with but which does rule. She hangs out in a castle somewhere in the US and vampirizes random motorists in anticipation of the day that she has enough…
(Slam-Bang Comics 003, 1940) I really like the Green Devil. He has a lot going on! He has an army of the living dead, an island base, and a hurricane generator. He’s conservatively 10 ft tall and looks like the Devil (with green skin, natch) His main scheme is to disrupt the laws of magic, which not only weakens his enemy Diamond Jack’s magic ring but also for some reason causes regular stage magic and stuff like snake charming and…
(Nickel Comics 006, 1940) A costumed gang that managed to take over a small town under the direction of head devil Lucifer. Not the most distinguished costumed gang ever but you gotta give them credit for trying. And not only do they have devil horns on their hood but there’s a skull-and-crossbones on both the hood and the chest! Sartorially speaking, they’re years ahead! Anyway, most of them get drowned by Bulletman.
(Mystery Men Comics 015, 1940) Yet another crypto-Nazi spy/saboteur with a skull face operating in the US, but this one has an electron-gun! SKULL SCORE: 5/5 full skull; full marks.
(Mystery Men Comics 015, 1940) Yet another crypto-Nazi spy/saboteur with a skull face operating in the US, but this one has an electron-gun! SKULL SCORE: 5/5 full skull; full marks.
(Mystery Men Comics 014, 1940) Once more we meet a Skull, and this time he’s a supposed-to-be-a-Nazi-but-it’s-1940-so-we-won’t-actually-say-it who spends his time bombing bridges in the Blue Beetle’s eventually-just-going-to-be-New-York-City-but-we’re-still-pretending-it-isn’t-for-some-reason. SKULL SCORE: 2/5 Pretty skully for an actual human but this is comics we’re talking about. You’re going to have to shave off that glossy black hair if you want to get ahead in this game.
(More Fun 062, 1940) Look at this damn nerd. He’s got a lightning cannon and a robot army and he bothered Dr Fate for a whole afternoon. Good riddance to him, I say. Raymond Rall. Ridiculous.
(More Fun Comics 062, 1940) An early iteration of the classic tale of a brain that is freed of its cranium and becomes both powerful and EVIL, originally just a man named Dexter with a skeletal system and all the organs, he then became a mysterious shadowy figure named the Crime Lord as he directed his minions toward an eventual takeover of the US. Upon being freed from his bell jar, the Crime Lord became the rapidly-expanding Brain, who similarly…
(More Fun Comics 058, 1940) I love this guy, for all that he’s unnamed. He kills an immortal snake that lives in the Nile in order to steal the magic book that it guards. The first spell he tries summons all of the wealthy men in a wide radius and compels them to give up their cash to him. The second spell he tries starts to tear the world apart, though it’s unclear whether that was his goal or if…
(More Fun Comics 053-057, 1940) Comic books love the Order of Assassins – it’s a ready-made group tough enough to tackle most heroes, plus they’re all foreign and such. They crop up all over the place – it’s like that thing where so many remnants of Atlantis exist that it’s hard to imagine that anyone died, but instead when the power of the Assassins was shattered each individual member went off and founded their own new Order. This bunch of Assassins…