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Category: 1940

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 008

ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 008

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Magical adventurer Kardak the Mystic is drawn into a series of adventures among the various nonhuman intelligences of the world when his new love interest is kidnapped by some of them and he sets off in pursuit. Here are the ones he meets in 1940: the Fishtails:  The Fishtails, inhabitants of “the lost continent, Anderras!” are the ones who start Kardak’s undersea adventure off when they kidnap Lorna to fulfil a prophecy that they require a “white, Earth Queen” to…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 840: THE CRAWLER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 840: THE CRAWLER

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(Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940)  The antagonist of the Bob Phantom story in Top-Notch Comics 010 is Joe Chizzler, who uses his low-rent marriage agency to set scumbags up with wives then murder the wives for insurance payouts. It’s a mean, low-rent, misogynistic little scheme, and the only saving grace of/reason I’m talking about it is the fact that the actual murdering is done by this character, the Crawler. Is the Crawler a superhuman? Just a very talented human fly? We cannot know!…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 839: THE DOCTOR

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 839: THE DOCTOR

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(Top-Notch Comics 010, 1940)  The Doctor operates a simple but brutal extortion racket: a network of crooked doctors refer workplace compensation cases to him at his fake hospital and he then charges them as much as they are being paid in compensation, and if anyone dares to complain, they suddenly require urgent surgery and die on the operating table.   For the second time in two days I must note: surgical scrubs are such a good super-villain costume. This is exactly…

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PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 005

PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 005

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Some day we will hit Peak Problematic and I can’t decide if it will be soon or in a decade or so.  the White Leader:  Our last Problematic Round-Up featured a lot of white guys dressing up like Yellow Peril villains in order to lead Chinese gangs, something that we will unfortunately be seeing plenty more of. This here fellow follows a different path: not putting on yellowface in order to lead a Chinese gang and in fact leaning hard…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 838: DR DREAD

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 838: DR DREAD

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(Top-Notch Comics 008, 1940) After Harley Hudson perfects his muscular coordination technique and becomes the Firefly after two years of hard study, his first order of business is to move to New York City to find a job, because it’s hard to fight crime on an empty stomach. Plus NYC is the place to be for super-heroics and super-crime. Case in point: the very first job ad that Hudson follows up on turns out to be criminal scientist Dr Dread…

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DIVINE ROUND-UP 010

DIVINE ROUND-UP 010

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Pad out your pantheon with some of these: Death: This version of Death may lack the social graces necessary to welcome Kardak the Mystic and his pal Lorna rather than attempt to murder them for entering his domain, but he does have a very good version of the classic “robed skeleton” look. And his house is charmingly coffin-themed, to boot!  God Style: Anthropomorphic Personification (Top-Notch Comics 008, 1940) Ramu, God of Fire:  Ramu, God of Fire is another one of…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 837: THE SKULL

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 837: THE SKULL

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(Top-Notch Comics 009, 1940)   The Skull is the recurring foe of the Golden Age Black Hood, and as is common for such characters he is a kind of generalist super-villain willing to dabble in everything from theft to kidnapping to espionage to murder as circumstances dictate. He even indulges in a little housebreaking on occasion, and it is while doing so that he is interrupted by police officer Kip Burland, who he frames for the crime and then eventually…

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REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 017

REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 017

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Guest stars from reality!  Arthuriana:  Galahad is an ongoing feature inthe 1940 issues of Top-Notch Comics, which always means that we’re going to have a variety of very on- and off-brand characters from Arthuriana in supporting roles. King Arthur here functions mainly as a questing hub for Galahad to report to between missions, for instance. (Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940) Sir Kay, meanwhile, is very comfortably fulfilling his role as a low-level knight who can be defeated as a demonstration of basic…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 836: MORGANA LE FAY

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 836: MORGANA LE FAY

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(Top-Notch Comics 009, 1940)  It’s another version of Morgan le Fay, less than two weeks after the last one! Will le Fay end up being the mythic/fictional character with the greatest number of comic book interpretations? Possibly! This version of Morgan le Fay, Morgana le Fey, is after revenge on Galahad for the death of her husband the Knight of the Griffin and so sends out squads of knights to find him and bring him back to be tiger food. Unfortunately…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 835: KING QUANTUS

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 835: KING QUANTUS

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(Top-Notch Comics 007, 1940) Streak Chandler’s adventures on Mars conclude with a space battle with Kalox, deposed king of the Gas Men, as he attempts to destroy the planet in retribution for losing his throne. Streak and his pals prevent this, but at the moment of their triumph they find themselves in the clutches of yet another villain, the pirate King Quantus, and spirited away to his secret headquarters on the Jovian moon Io. In addition to being a space…

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