(Miracle Comics 001, 1940) The Unholy One is the major antagonist of scientist-hero the Sky Wizard for three of his four appearances, although for the first two of those appearances he is present only as a voice on the radio directing his American agents Hawk Armand, Vera the Tigress and Butch (a fourth crook, Spud, doesn’t make it past the first encounter with Sky Wizard). And here I must lay out my major problem with the Unholy One: he is…
(Masked Marvel 002, 1940) Kardo, Maker of Monsters, is not quite a super-villain but that’s about the closest thing to what he is and I’m not making up a new category for every guy who doesn’t quite fit the existing ones. What is Kardo then, you ask? A world-famous scientist with the soul of a clown and a compulsion to make creatures and beasties – when we first meet him he is sharing a drink with his friends Dr Melvyn…
(Masked Marvel 002, 1940) The Eraser Gang, aka the Erasers, aka the Dead Erasers, are a gang with a gimmick: they don’t just hijack armoured cars, they make the cars and their occupants disappear completely, to the consternation of the authorities. But just why do they do this? It’s never actually spelled out but as the Masked Marvel discovers when he is captured by them their actual weapon of choice is not a dissolving ray or a powerful acid but…
(Masked Marvel 001, 1940) Wings is the otherwise-unnamed leader of a gang with a pretty good gimmick: model planes loaded with explosives and rigged with a device that homes in on magnets. Using these, they cause a series of “mysterious explosions” at banks, etc, and loot to their hearts’ content in the ensuing chaos. The real key thing about a scheme like this is that it works best when there is a sense of fear and confusion. If you don’t…
(Jungle Comics 011, 1940) Arco, aka “the immortal mummy of Ancient Egypt! Old Arco, the super-scientist of long ago!” comes to the attention of Fantomah when he begins blinding the inhabitants of her home jungle using a ray with the fairly awesome name of the Scarlet Shadow. His ultimate goal – like so many Fantomah foes – is to conquer the jungle and establish an empire for himself. (Arco is also, somewhat surprisingly, our first actual mummy. The current ratio…
(Jungle Comics 011, 1940) We begin with a very comic book (or monster-of-the-week TV show) setup. Camilla notices and comments on the ancient Magician’s Pool and then is almost immediately compelled to enter that same pool and disappear from the realms of man. Camilla’s aide/paramour Sir Champion turns to local wizard Warlock (not that Warlock the Wizard, but it is wild that there are two of them) for help and learns that the Magician of Magician’s Pool fame is Thoth,…
(Jungle Comics 010, 1940) It’s a c-c-c-combo breaker! Ordinarily Fantomah swans around observing the villains of her comic adventures and periodically telling them that they should stop what they’re doing before it’s too lat, ie, before she delivers unto them an ironic punishment. This issue features one of the few foes to catch her completely flat-footed and she is as surprised as anyone when giant flaming hands start tearing through the jungle, indiscriminately murdering both people and animals. Who or…
(Jungle Comics 009, 1940) Minor Super-Villain 666 is somewhat in line with how underwhelming our milestone numbers in the past have been. Just two entries away from being the Devil his own two-headed self. I suppose I could have shuffled things around to make it work out in a more satisfying way but that would really taint the pure joy we’ll experience when entry 1000 or 1600 or 69420 turn out to be amazingly apropos. Who we have instead is…
Bless ’em, they’re trying. The first few adventures of Hydroman, a character I have an inexplicable affection for, are concerned with what at first seems like some real standard Yellow Peril bullplop (“Oriental invaders” and so forth) but then there are gangsters involved and the two factions variously mention a higher-up named “the Great One” and “the Big Boss”, respectively. Still later, the whole operation seems to be run by this collection of pseudo-Nazis on a yacht in New York…
(Jungle Comics 007, 1940) Not quite a normal super-hero/ super-villain interaction, this. Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle intervenes to stop the wind elemental Sirocco from wreaking havoc and in so doing incurs the wrath of the unspecified but very Norse-looking Wind God. At this point we have a simple misunderstanding over a poorly-trained pet. Everyone involved now escalates things simultaneously. The Wind God unleashes lightning, storms and tornadoes on the valley and Tabu counters using both his own power and…