(Captain America Comics 007, 1941) Here’s the problem with the Black Toad: he looks great. A really top-notch costume, like something Batman would have worn in a stage production in the 30s. No notes. And that’s the only interesting thing about him. He’s a baseball manager who wants to buy into the team and is killing players in order to drive the price down. HO HUM. (I guess he does use a bomb hidden inside a baseball at one point….
(Captain America Comics 007, 1941) What was the Red Skull up to in 1941? As mentioned in the Red Skull II entry, this here is the real deal bad guy we all know and love to hate, still running around being a total stinker to this day. In-comic there is of course no indication of this, as the decision to differentiate the two was made years later when someone figured that the top Nazi villain worked better as a German…
(Captain America Comics 006, 1941) The Menace is a dude who uses secret tunnels and the power of fear to advance his fairly low-stakes plot to steal $50 000 worth of bonds from his elderly sister. Some might argue that that is far too little money to put murder on the table for but those people aren’t super-villain material. Unfortunately for the Menace, he happens to catch the attention of Hurricane (later retconned as Makkari, one of the Eternals), so…
(Captain America Comics 006, 1941) There are three big reasons that I like the Hangman: 1. It’s hard to beat a Golden or Silver Age story that revolves around a group of suspects who might be the villain. Just a series of fun character sketches followed by (in this case) the character’s grisly murder. 2. The Hangman isn’t actually supposed to be a luchador but he sure does look like one, and that’s one of the top super-hero/ villain looks….
(Captain America Comics 006, 1941) Comics history seems to have taken the Fang as a Japanese agent but I’m pretty sure that as written he’s a Chinese American gang boss who’s working for the Japanese against the Chinese government. Either way, he’s your basic pulp holdover Asian gang boss with swarms of fanatical hatchet-man and a pronounced lack of humanity down to his namesake fangs. Part of me always wants to skip guys like this but they’re just as much a part…
(Captain America Comics 006, 1941) The Camera Fiend is your regular gimmicked-up gang boss who parlays the classic comic book camera gun into a modestly successful career in theft that sees him almost getting away with the British Crown Jewels before being beaten down by Cap and Bucky. He is of course playing off the idea of the rabid photography fanatic from the advent of cheap personal cameras. I was going to criticize him for having such a grotesque costume…
(Captain America Comics 005, 1941) Finally, FINALLY, after 300 of these guys an arbitrary milestone lines up with a reasonably cool character: the Ringmaster of Crime AKA the Ringmaster of Death. Compounding the fun of the circus of crime aesthetic is the fact that some of that good-style retconning has been going on and the Ringmaster in this tale has been made the father (and presumably later grandfather, per Marvel’s sliding timeline) of the mid-level super-villain the Ringmaster! Uh, if…
(Captain America Comics 004, 1941) This is one of those moments where the first examples of a thing that shows up here is not a great example of the thing. Blame the tyranny of alphabetical order, I suppose, because I know for a fact that Star-Spangled Comics will feature the Ring of Rags when I work my way down my list to it, and that is a good example. The thing in question is of course Poor People as a Horrifying and…
(Captain America Comics 003, 1941) The Butterfly is great. You just can’t beat a guy in a semi-accurate butterfly outfit (I mean that head is a bit of a mashup) who robs museums. He’s got a glider rig and a weaponized proboscis! The only really problem with his operation is that he is in reality museum curator Doctor Victroli, both because he is a fairly obvious suspect and because he is an old man who ends up biting the dust…
(Captain America Comics 003, 1941) The Hunchback of Hollywood is a villain in the same classic vein as Clayface: dressing up like a horror character and using murder and fear tactics to shut down a movie production. Also like Clayface, the production is within the hero’s range due to the studio taking advantage of the castle-rich landscape of the Eastern US (the castle in question is said to be near Camp Lehigh, home base of Steve “Captain America” Rogers and…