(Mystery Men Comics 007, 1940) I can’t help but love this guy: yes he’s a cheap extortionist who gives himself a scary name to enhance his death threats but he goes to the trouble of dressing up in a devil outfit even while sneaking around so that nobody can see him. And since he’s the antagonist of a Wing Turner story and Wing Turner is a pilot-detective, the Devil is flying around in a fighter plane dressed in little horns…
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 022, 1940) I want to be clear: there is very little to talk about re: the Tusk. I just find his weird face fascinating. Eponymous tusk plus weak chin plus huge eyes plus bonus enormous combover makes this guy a visual feast! Plus he’s a Masked Marvel foe and I love that guy. Just look at the faces he ends up pulling to highlight the tusk! Real great stuff. Oh, and as for the villainy: the…
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 021, 1940) A simple but effective origin story: The captain of a German Mergan submarine becomes obsessed with death and destruction and goes rogue, preying on Axis and Allied shipping alike and replacing the flag of Nazi Germany Zani Mergany* with the skull and crossbones. Suddenly, the threat of war is a threat to all seagoing vessels! The Red Raider (technically the name of the submarine but I stand firm in my conviction that the name…
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 019-020, 1940) Love a number name, particularly one so precise as the One Thousand and One. It’s tied to the number of criminals in their employ, but does it go up and down as they gain or lose members? Is the One a very harried HR guy frantically filling positions as they are vacated? Is it just a nice-sounding number and the actual staffing is a bit more loose? These are the important questions. It’s a…
(Jumbo Comics 020, 1940) What a cool-looking villain! Suit and cape combo? Blood-red eyes? Great stuff. He’s got a cool mask and a wavy dagger and he goes on an enormous spree killing in NYC while Our Hero Inspector Dayton tries to figure out just how he’s going to stop the Red-Eyed Killer. But they spend too much time in the setup! Dayton stumbles into a doctor’s office on the last page and the resolution happens in an instant –…
They may not be the top of the class, but they did their time in the evil sciences! Dr Eric Karlin has a lot of moxie on paper: a Nazi psychologist with a sideline in Egyptology, he dissolves the enemies of the Reich in acid and keeps their jellied remains in a series of jars in his basement. He also employs mind controlled pseudo-zombies in a scheme to recover frozen Nazi assets from a bank vault. The problem is that…
Fascist, Smascist The Volunteers for Peace are another group that advocates for the US not to get involved in WWII as shorthand for them being full-on fascist fifth columnists setting the country up for an invasion by the evocatively-named Nation X. Don’t worry, not even Golden Age Superman has any trouble beating down a bunch of pseudo-Nazis (Action Comics 036, 1941) Another batch of Yellow Shirts, this time with a space! This bunch are some more bundists and they have…
(Crackajack Funnies 021, 1940) Another Ed Tracer foe. The Scarlet is a freelance spy notable for a) his fantastic name and b) the fact that he uses a reverse disguise – a toupee to disguise his baldness in civilian life.
(Amazing Mystery Funnies v3 003, 1940) Just a cheeky super-hero for you today: the Headless Horseman! The Headless Horseman is an utterly standard western hero except for their lack of a head. They made maybe two appearances in Centaur comics before fading into the mists of history. A shame, because I really like the simple spin a fake supernatural Western hero gives things – I can’t think of too many of them other than the various Ghost Riders. The cowboy…
What was Wotan up to in 1940? A trip back in time! A year or so ago when I was reading the 1940 issues of More Fun was before I started doing Super-Villain Yearbook posts and so I skipped poor Wotan, an injustice compounded by the fact that he is what I would call a Median Villain: one who has either enough appearances or importance to a hero’s history to be more than a minor villain but without the name…