(Mystery Men Comics 023, 1941) I think that Gat Arat’s name doesn’t mean anything, that it’s just a guy with the unusual surname “Arat” and the nickname “Gat”, but it bothers me. I feel like I should be able to extract meaning from it. Is it a reference to 40s popular culture? Is he supposed to look like a rat? No idea. Confusing name or not, it turns out that Gat Arat has taken a lesson from the dearly departed…
(Mystery Men Comics 019, 1941) I’m not sure what the Sky-Ruler’s deal is. Scratch that – I know what his deal is. He rules the sky. He flies around in a big bomber plane and uses it to drop cars containing his enemies on the streets of New York City (he also tries to throw off the scent of the police by calling these the “Skyscraper Murders” in his notes but I have to imagine that this would only work…
(Tip-Top Comics 054-056, 1940) The Glove here is the head of a gang of international criminals that come to the attention of super-hero brothers the Triple Terror when they make off with a load of radium. Why the radium, you ask? Why, so that the Glove and his pal Mr Mario (good name) could run their death ray cannon. Unfortunately for the Glove he only ever managed to capture 2/3 of the Triple Terror. The final confrontation does reveal the…
(Star Ranger 001, 1937) The Ghost Riders are just another gang of bank robbers but I just can’t resist a good outfit, and a trio of hooded cowboys with tommy guns is a great visual if I ever saw one.
(Shadow Comics v1 004, 1940) Yo, it’s the Head! The Head is a mystic oracle that takes the form of a spooky head in a box and uses his position as a popular upper crust medium to gather info on crime targets, then sends out gangsters (named things like Squint, Chipmunk and Beak Thungle) to plunder them. The Head is also Zovex, a bulletproof cube-man who is supposedly just a servant of the Head but is mostly just a pile…
(Popular Comics 046, 1939) The Phantom of the Sky (AKA the Phantom Sky Raider AKA the Black Phantom) is a mysterious pilot who has been flying around the American West, viciously attacking and shooting down civilian planes and painting a skull-and-crossbones calling card on them. He turns out to be a nameless French WWI flying ace, shot down and left for dead but actually just trapped in a delusion of an unending war in which he is essentially conducting guerrilla…
(Popular Comics 046, 1939) Just a simple bank robbing gang operating out of New Orleans and rounded up by Special Agent John Winston but I dig their outfits.
(Keen Detective Funnies 011, 1939) The Conqueror is the major recurring foe of Dean Denton, Scientific Adventurer, about whom we will briefly aside: Dean Denton was created by Harry Campbell, who was also responsible for such characters as Ace of Space, Bruce Blackburn and the wretched Scarlet Seal, but also Wizard Wells and John Law, Scientiective, who form a kind of thematic triad of scientific detectives with Dean Denton. Dean Denton is definitely the most entertaining of the three to…
(Mystery Men Comics 007, 1940) I can’t help but love this guy: yes he’s a cheap extortionist who gives himself a scary name to enhance his death threats but he goes to the trouble of dressing up in a devil outfit even while sneaking around so that nobody can see him. And since he’s the antagonist of a Wing Turner story and Wing Turner is a pilot-detective, the Devil is flying around in a fighter plane dressed in little horns…
(Mystery Men Comics 001, 1939) I have made an error! Two errors! The first was in skipping the Blue Beetle’s very first foe, and it was because of the second, that I had the antagonist in this story marked down as the White Face Gang rather than the White Face, plus his gang. If it was the former, the best their unnamed leader would get was a place in the Generic Costumed Villain Round-Up, but no, he has a special…