SUPERCUT: IT’S NOT THE SIGN OF THE BLUE BEETLE!
I assume that this one will get at least a little bigger over time. It’s the Sign of the… Black Spider: Daredevil: the Laughing Mask: the Mask: Sub-Zero:
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 776: THE BLUE SPARK
(Super-Mystery Comics v1 002, 1940) In terms of crime, the Blue Spark is ambitious but not extraordinary: a little corporate extortion, some bank robbery, a few kidnappings. Nothing we haven’t seen a few hundred times by now. When it comes to the trappings of super-villainy, however, the Blue Spark is on the cutting edge. Just look at that costume – it’s not quite the standardized super-villain getup we will eventually see on so many one-shot Batman villains but it’s pretty…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 775: THE OCTOPUS
(Super-Mystery Comics v1 001, 1940) The Octopus! Leader of a nation-wide crime wave! Keenly interested in branding! His men slap little octopus stickers on cops and burgled vaults alike! And when the Octopus talks to his men, he is represented by what appears to be an animated octopus! As far as criminal operations go, this one is pretty slick. Unfortunately for the Octopus, nothing gold can stay and that includes excellent crime setups. While he might be able to outmanoeuvre…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 774: THE TERROR
(Super-Mystery Comics 001, 1940) The Terror is really Scar (or Scar-Face) Pontois, a gang boss who is expending a lot of effort in order to drive people away from a rich gold claim that he has hijacked but has perhaps gone a bit too far, as Corporal Flint of the RCMP, the hero of our story, is only nosing around Scar’s locale because of the strange rumours he and/or his superiors have heard. Please note his giant hat. In addition…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 772: THE BARON
(Super Comics 027, 1940) Monocle-wearing crypto-Nazi spy and major recurring foe of war correspondent Jack Wander, the Baron is one duelling scar away from being the quintessential Axis agent. Also he looks like he was designed by Paul Grist – just look at that little sneer.
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 769: DR SLADE
(Startling Comics 001, 1940) “Dr Slade is one of those rare and unfortunate villains who are a part of a super-hero’s origin story but who also die as a part of that origin, so that they don’t even have the dignity of actually properly being a part of that hero’s rogues gallery. That’s sad! On the other hand, Slade did develop his resurrection technology in order to build an army of the formerly-dead in aid of a fascist takeover of…
PROBLEMATIC ROUND-UP 004
Sax Rohmer has a lot to answer for. the Golden Dragon: We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again – the Golden Dragon is yet another Fu Manchu-style Yellow Peril crimelord bent on bending the world to his will. He messes up by making his campaign of kidnapping and extortion a bit too obvious, which attracts the attention of the Invisible Hood, who in turn rallies various kidnap victims etc into a fighting force to take the Dragon’s organization…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 768: THE PURPLE PLAGUE
(Startling Comics 001, 1940) Shortly after acquiring his super powers, Andrew “Captain Future” Bryant uses them to sniff out a criminal conspiracy to rob a gold shipment from the nation of Finvania and then use that capital to finance a bid for world domination by someone called the Purple Plague. Exactly the sort of thing that a fledgling super-hero is going to be against! Captain Future spends the bulk of the issue in a back-and-forth tussle with the Purple Plague’s…
MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 044
A full hand of Better (Nedor/Standard/Pines) Comics characters for ye. Captain Future: When young Dr Andrew Bryant finds himself fired from his job as a… research physicist? electrical engineer?… at the Pacific Electrical Corporation he responds like any rational person would: by working day and night in in a desperate bid to finish his research in the time he has left, until his tired brain thinks its way into an industrial accident. Luckily for Bryant he lives in a super-hero…
REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 013
Yet again we have a selection of comic book appearances of real-style people for you to enjoy. Adolf Hitler: Warak, dictator of Barbaria is a bit generic as far as pseudo-Hitlers go, but a pseudo-Hitler he is. (Smash Comics 017, 1940) Scraggs, leader of the Green Shirts, is very much a “make the leader look like Hitler as shorthand for These Guys Are Fascists” character, a subspecies that will nearly die out some time in 1941 but survives in small…