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Category: 1940

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 571: THE YELLOW SPIDER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 571: THE YELLOW SPIDER

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(Champion Comics 004, 1940) Champion Comics 003 featured the murder of the Champ’s mentor Dr Marlin and at the conclusion of that adventure the blame for Marlin’s death seemed to rest squarely on the shoulders of his assistant Dr Katsu. Champion Comics 004, however, introduces a further development: Katsu was in fact working for a greater mastermind, the Yellow Spider! (and here I’m going to contrast my usual delight at a villainous note signed with a little cartoon with my…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 570: OO-LHAT

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 570: OO-LHAT

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(Champion Comics 003, 1940) There’s a lot to like about ol’ Oo-Lhat. He appears in a gross-sounding mist after explorer Walt Worthington and his aide Snowball (did you know that there was a whole category of racist nicknames for African American characters that has largely been forgotten and that involves naming them after something very black or very white? Well now you do) discover a lost Egyptian tomb containing a blazing scarab (the gem cut, not the insect) that drew…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 569: NEPTINA

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 569: NEPTINA

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(Champion Comics 002, 1939)  I can’t say for sure that whoever created Neptina sat down and said “I will make a lady version of Namor the Sub-Mariner” but it’s at least plausible. Neptina is the ruler of the undersea kingdom of Amloza, and has designs on a total conquest of the surface world as well as the depths. Neptina is, like Namor, a horny character. She captures US Navy Lieutenant Brad Fletcher early in her series and spends a considerable…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 017

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 017

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Another fresh hot basket of also-rans, just for you. the Mask: Scoop Cody, society reporter, is secretly vigilante crimefighter the Mask. He’s not terrific at concealing this fact – both love interest Elaine and villain Carlos figure it out during the course of the one extant Mask story – but he gets the job done. Of mild interest is that Scoop Cody is also the name of the Marvel’s reporter pal. (Star Comics v1 013, 1938*) the Phantom Rider:  The…

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NOTES – JULY 2024

NOTES – JULY 2024

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Cops Shooting Fleeing Suspects:  The cops send a “shower of bullets” after the Fantom of the Fair as he swings over the densely-populated New York World’s Fair. (Amazing Adventure Funnies 001, 1940) Spider Drawn Without Reference: Tarantula: a perfect black sphere covered in root structures. (Champion Comics 006, 1940) Memes of Yore: COWARD!: The “cowardly and superstitious lot” line that Batman is quoted as saying was not a one-off thing but it was in fact a widely-promoted idea of the…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 544: DR VON THORP & THE IRON MONSTER / MINOR SUPER HERO: HUGH HAZZARD & BOZO THE IRON MAN

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 544: DR VON THORP & THE IRON MONSTER / MINOR SUPER HERO: HUGH HAZZARD & BOZO THE IRON MAN

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(Smash Comics 001, 1939) We open on a city (later established as almost certainly NYC) in the grip of terror. A robot known as the Iron Monster is wantonly robbing and murdering and also stealing one or more babies for reasons that are never made clear. Seriously, we never find out what the deal was with those babies. The Iron Monster is the creation of Dr von Thorp, your classic scientist rejected from society for his outre beliefs, though considering…

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REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 002

REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 002

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How did these real people come to be trapped in the 2D realm? We may never know Adolf Hitler: This one is more tenuous but Blitz Krieg here is Fuehrer of the pseudo-Nazi Bundonian forces in America. He’s not not a Hitler analog. (Blue Ribbon Comics 006, 1940) This is Boris Thorax, first foe of Rex Dexter of Mars, who collaborates with the Moon People in order to take over the Earth of 2000 AD. Look at that hair: that’s…

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GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 011

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 011

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Some say they’re not generic enough but I think they’re trying their best. This fellow is part of a gang looking to hijack a shipment of railway guns from train engineer Runaway Ronson. I really enjoy the look of the padded suit they use to help survive crashing a car into a high-speed train but I really really enjoy the fact that they immediately scramble off into the woods and are never seen again, as if they were completely unrelated…

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REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 001

REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 001

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I have a lot of these in a spreadsheet somewhere but we’ll get to those later. For now it’s as we encounter them: real people and versions of real people and analogs of real people and also the same but famous fictional people in comics. Admiral Dewey, John Paul Jones, Sir Francis Drake:  Their ghosts all volunteer to help Sergeant Spook go pirate hunting (Blue Bolt v1 008, 1941) Adolf Hitler:  “Gustave Ritter” isn’t really very close to “Adolf Hitler”…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 010

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 010

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MORE MLJ ACTION Doc Strong: Doc Strong is a famous scientist living in the year 2041, in a world where WWII dragged on for an entire century and a new Mongol Horde has swept in and conquered the battered remnants of civilization. The strangely Doc Savage-like Doc Strong gathers a group of like-minded scientists and starts a new civilization called the Isle of Right from which to strike back at the invaders with such inventions as a ray gun that…

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