MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 047: DR ALOYSIUS LAKE
(Whiz Comics 005, 1940) Dr Lake has a hypnotism machine which he uses to found a nation-wide network of child thieves. He doesn’t reckon, though, with the fact that Captain Marvel is secretly a child.
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 046: THE BOMB
(Whiz Comics 003a, 1940) Explosives expert who blowed himself up and lived to tell the tale, only to go back into explosives-based crime, go up against Dan Dare (the Fawcett Comics detective, not the UK comics space guy) and get caught.
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 045: DOCTOR DEATH
(Whiz Comics 002, 1940) Kind of a generic evil scientist type – he invents a ray that can restore the dead to life but must kill folk in order to test it – but his name is James Kirk, so that’s fun!
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 044: THE MASK
(Whiz Comics 002-015, 1940-1941) This fellow right here is the spy that Spy Smasher was trying to smash for the first year and a half or so that he was in action. I tend to think of him as a bigger deal than he actually is because of my tendencies re: thinking too much about comics, but certainly if Spy Smasher himself had managed to remain a going concern after the 40s then the Mask would have eventually been brought…