A grab bag of old characters I skipped over back in the early days when I thought that this blog wasn’t going to be completely self-indulgent. Mr Clue: He only had one adventure in which he solves the murder of a mayor by a police chief, but Mr Clue is too great a name not to take note of. (Master Comics 001, 1940) the Red Gaucho: A swashbuckling hero in the Zorro mode, the Red Gaucho protects the South American…
(Speed Comics 009, 1940) The Count is a fairly by-the-book pseudo-Nazi spy with a very audacious plan for acquiring US military secrets: kidnap the US Secretary of State (a moderately off-model Cordell Hull) and extract them from him via gear-based torture. Unfortunately for the Count his plans were anticipated by the US Secret Service, who proactively substituted Ted Parrish, aka the Man With 1000 Faces, for Hull. Led to the spies’ farmhouse hideout by a special radium tracking device, the…
(Speed Comics 009, 1940) Comrade Ratski’s first appearance is fairly undistinguished as far as comic book spymasters go. Sent to subvert US war preparations, Ratski targets an airplane factory operating out of Hollywood, California (for some damn reason) and sensibly decides to do so under the guise of a war movie shoot next door, though at the point that you have all of the equipment required for such an attack in place, why bother going through with the “we’re just…
Making his triumphant return to comics, the dome-headed goblin of crime: Baron von Kampf! Baron von Kampf’s initial return in Speed Comics 004 involves him heading a sabotage ring for an unnamed European nation that is probably meant to be Nazi Germany, and it’s possible that this is a relationship that were were meant to understand was behind his actions all along, but frankly it seems to me to be beneath him. The Baron’s schemes on behalf of his fascist…
(Speed Comics 008, 1940) Like I said in the Queen Sheba entry, her brand of evil was a bit too depressing and I almost skipped making an entry for her in favour of doing this one but it ended up being mostly about her and her unpunished slaving ways anyway, and that wasn’t fair. The Black Knights are just what it says on the tin: a bunch of knights who dress in black. Presumably they are descended from the same…
(Speed Comics 008, 1940) Shock Gibson has been reading magazines, specifically an expose on slave trading in Africa, and being of a heroic turn of mind he decides to do something about it. Making his way across the Atlantic, Shock engages in various animal-related hijinks before finally ambushing a slave caravan and using some elephant-based enhanced interrogation to learn just what is going on with all the slaving. Turns out to be a pretty classic jungle adventure scenario: a hidden…
(Speed Comics 006, 1940) The Devilfish is a pseudo-Nazi mastermind who vexes Lieutenant Jim Cannon of the Royal British Navy for the first 2 or 3 of his handful of appearances in Speed Comics and I won’t lie: it’s all about that great name for me, although that same name is annoying the part of me that loves to put things into categories due to the fact that “devilfish” is such a loose term. People – especially in the first…
(Speed Comics 007, 1940) Despite their KKK-adjacent looks and tactics, the Hooded Riders are nothing more than a gang of rural protection racketeers. Over the course of the adventure the riders keep rolling out more elaborate equipment and plans to deal with both their targets and the interference of Shock Gibson and I kept thinking that their deep well of resources was going to turn out to be due to some sort of secret funding from a hostile country but…
Buncha Smash Comics fascists I lost behind the couch for a while. Just why this German-American Bund equivalent is called the Groups is a real mystery for the ages – it’s possible that these people are protesting, like, all bundist-style organizations at once and calling them “the Groups” collectively, though why they would do so at one specific group’s meeting is beyond me. Whatever the truth of their name, the leadership of the Groups meet their ends after an attempt…
When last we saw Landor, Maker of Monsters, he had just been exploded along with his castle and giant mosquito minions. But did you honestly expect a simple thing like a huge explosion to stop a villain of Landor’s calibre? No! He merely becomes more burned up and crusty and bitter! Landor has not shifted his goals since 1939 and is consumed with the twin urges to 1) make monsters and 2) get revenge on Tony Torrence and Marcia Merrill….