(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 004, 1940) What makes them a super-villain? Why, that snazzy outfit! Comics are full of people who run opium smuggling rings but very few look as good while doing it. What makes them interesting? It depends on your definition of interesting, but this is the first costumed criminal on our list whose disguise includes pretending to be another race – specifically, the Dragon is a white hardware store owner named Jones who passes himself off as a Chinese master…
(Slam-Bang Comics 001-007, 1940) Diamond Jack is pretty simple conceptually: he’s a guy in a suit with a magic ring and he fights crime. He doesn’t have much in the way of backstory or supporting cast – just your average Golden Age adventurer type. He is canonically anti-Nazi, even though all of his appearances are from 1940, so that’s a point in his favour. Mostly his stories are entertaining due to the number of wacky supernatural villains he battles. And as…
(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…
(Slam-Bang Comics 001, 1940) On the one hand the Witch uses smoke-dragon magic in an attempt to kill Diamond Jack for some thugs. On the other, she’s an old woman who Diamond Jack strips of her power and leaves weeping in her slum hovel. Still… technically a villain?
(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.
(Nickel Comics 001-007, 1940) Warlock the Wizard, in addition to having a name built to confuse someone familiar with modern D&D classes, is an interesting member of the Magic Guy type of Golden Age super-heroes, in that while he has some innate skill at magic he is much more of a magic item user than a lot of his contemporaries (and yes I am aware that this makes him closer to an Artificer than either a Warlock or a Wizard). This…
(Nickel Comics 003, 1940) Spoilers for the end of this writeup: the Tenement Firebug is that most common of comic book villains, the property owner who burns down their own buildings for the insurance money and/or redevelopment. Ordinarily such a foe would be a regular guy with some hirelings and maybe a mask, but since he was set up as a foil to magic guy Warlock the Wizard the Tenament Firebug has been beefed up slightly. First off is his…
(Nickel Comics 001-003, 1940) A pretty regular “business guy branches out into costumed villainy” villain, Blackmask is distinguished by a) being Bulletman’s first foe, b) his very 90s name and c) lasting 3 whole issues while punching well above his weight class.
(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.