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Category: 1939

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 412: THE TEN KNIGHTS OF DOOM

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 412: THE TEN KNIGHTS OF DOOM

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(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 012, 1939) The Ten Knights of Doom! Like the Brain of the Robot, more an excuse to talk about their foe than anything else! But here we have to front-load it because you can’t get into these guys without setting things up by talking about Speed Centaur. Speed Centaur is great because he’s one of the very first super-heroes and yet he’s still also one of the weirdest super-hero concepts that isn’t some sort of psychedelic…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 411: SATAN REX

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 411: SATAN REX

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(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939) We’ve all read a comic in which a scientist is rejected for his wild-but-true theories and goes a bit bonkers and criminal, but Satan Rex really went for it. Originally Eric von Hochwalt, who developed the Theory of Relativity ten years before Einstein and dealt with his subsequent rejection by disappearing into the Himalayas, founding a city full of people who worship him as a god, conquering the aging process and eventually taking a…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 410: THE BRAIN OF THE ROBOT

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 410: THE BRAIN OF THE ROBOT

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(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939)  I’ve started reading Mystery Men Comics, as seen at the top of the Sphinx entry, and the thing about Mystery Men Comics is that although it features the Blue Beetle, who by a circuitous chain of publication rights changing hands is now a DC Comics character, it also has a lot of other characters that aren’t currently owned by a media conglomerate! And although I mostly write about DC and Marvel characters because I…

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FASCIST GOON CLEARING HOUSE 001

FASCIST GOON CLEARING HOUSE 001

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There are various groups of fascist goons in comics and doing an individual entry for each bunch would be a slog, so it’s time for another grouping of jerks! The Yellowshirts here put in a better showing than most and almost manage to take over NYC before they get beaten down by the Patriot. (Human Torch v1 004, 1941) Do the Brown Hoods sound kind of like how the Mafia was described in the 30s? Yes. Is that going to…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 260: THE SIX BIG MEN

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 260: THE SIX BIG MEN

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(Marvel Comics v1 001, 1939) The Six Big Men ain’t much, just a bunch of guys who teamed up to do the maximum amount of Crime possible in an unidentified American city. But I am including them in this list, for two reasons: 1. they’re the first even marginal minor super-villains in Marvel Comics (I of course know about Timely Comics, pedants, but I round up) history, and 2. the Six Big Men are actually Seven Big Men and One Big…

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MINOR SUPER-HEROES 007-014: AMAZING-MAN COMICS ROUNDUP 1939

MINOR SUPER-HEROES 007-014: AMAZING-MAN COMICS ROUNDUP 1939

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(Amazing-Man Comics 005-026, 1939-1942) All the ephemeral Golden Age heroes who stalked the pages of Amazing-Man Comics: The Iron Skull! I love him. His origin and so forth is doled out after a few issues so initially you don’t know that he is a cyborg war casualty in the far future world of 1970. The most important things are there from the start, though: his huge anime eyes and the fact that every bullet or attack made against him unerringly…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO 006 AMAZING-MAN

MINOR SUPER-HERO 006 AMAZING-MAN

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(Amazing-Man Comics 005-026, 1939-1942, plus various other Centaur books) Amazing-Man is not particularly obscure: he was supposedly the inspiration for both Iron Fist and Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt and eventually ended up dropped whole cloth into both one of the Malibu universes and the Marvel Universe (which, yes, means he’s technically in the Marvel Universe twice but if Malibu comics ever comes back in any substantial way I will make and consume an edible hat). The thing I always focused on…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO 005: RED, WHITE AND BLUE AND DORIS WEST

MINOR SUPER-HERO 005: RED, WHITE AND BLUE AND DORIS WEST

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(All American Comics 001-071 plus appearances in All-Star, World’s Finest, New York World’s Fair Comics and Comics Cavalcade, 1939-1946) They keep coming up, so I might as well spare a word for Red, White and Blue. The concept is simple: three childhood friends, each of whom went into a different branch of the armed forces (and each of whom has a convenient nickname) work for G-2/ US military intelligence to root out enemy plots, most often in partnership with G-2…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO 004: THE THREE ACES

MINOR SUPER-HERO 004: THE THREE ACES

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(Action Comics 018-063, 1939-1943) The Three Aces consist of Gunner Bill (blonde, bland), Fog Fortune (fat, Cockney – the kind of character who starts out 1% comic relief and increases by increments until he is unrecognizable. In this case he gets fatter and more faux-Cockney until his word balloons are up to 1/2 apostrophe) and Whistler Will (dark haired ladies man – more on him in a moment). They’re fairly standard aviator type heroes except for a couple of things:…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 057: THE MASTERMIND

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 057: THE MASTERMIND

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(More Fun Comics 049-050, 1939) Masked spy chief. After his first appearance is foiled by adventurer Biff Bronson he pulls one of the more major pivots in supercrime by opening one of those wax museums that doubles as a murder palace, where he himself is killed in a second encounter with Biff.