(Hit Comics 018-025, 1941-1942) I know I talk about how wild the origins of various characters are a lot on here, and I don’t think that I can justify declaring one or another “the most wild” anymore, but the Ghost of Flanders would absolutely have to appear on any reasonably comprehensive Top Ten Characters Who Will Amaze and Befuddle You With Their Wild Origins list. The Ghost of Flanders is in reality Rip Graves, who enlisted in the US Army…
(Hit Comics 013, 1941) The Strange Twins get a medal from the San Francisco PD. (Since they may never come up again: the Strange Twins were a set of English twins (natch) separated as infants when an enemy of their father had one kidnapped as revenge. That one, Rodney, was raised as a criminal and became a feared gang boss, while his brother Douglas grew up to become a Scotland Yard Inspector. The first year or so of Strange Twins…
(Hit Comics 008, 1941) I gotta say: I really like these guys. Now, obviously they’re stinkers of the highest order – their plan involves siphoning all electrical power in the US until they are paid an unspecified amount of big bucks or possibly even placed in charge – but when you spend a little (or a lot of) time thinking about supercrime in a super-hero universe you get opinions about these kinds of things. If these guys had developed this…
(Hit Comics 007, 1941) If Tibetan Lams aren’t the top religious figures cast as super-villains then they at least have to be in the top three, along with druids and Catholic priests – we won’t see any of those for a while but once they get going they go hard. This bunch of Lamas have decided to turn their formidable mental powers (natch) to the task of world conquest, and have chosen to do so by influencing the mind of one…
(Hit Comics 006, 1940) Once again we find ourselves profiling the interesting henchmen of a run-of-the-mill villain: the Swords of Death, in this case. A trio of assassin/ thieves armed with electrified rapiers and high opinions of themselves, the Swords have the misfortune to run into perennial-punching-bag-but-actually-fun-character the Red Bee on what seems to be their first mission, whereupon he promptly kills two of them. I like the Swords of Death – any time a hero has to beat up…
(Flash Comics v1 023, 1941) I’ll be honest: this is a very charitable entry on this list. The Smoke Thief is Dr Lucius Darrell and his gang of toughs, who use smoke bombs and special goggles to rob people on trains. If this was the main focus of the story, that might just be enough for full Minor Super-Villain status, but it ain’t. The real point of the story is this. Darrell captures Hawkman, then tries to kill him by…
(Flash Comics v1 023, 1941) Not much to say about the White Dragon: he’s a guy with a bunch of costumed henchmen who captures Chinese folk in NYC and uses them as slave labour in his motor factory until the Whip settles his hash. He is of course Walter Morgan, a guy who brags to Rod “the Whip” Gaynor about how well he’s doing in the motor business on the first page of the story. About the only interesting thing…
This bit where Hawkman intends to attend a costumed event as himself but doesn’t quite make it (Flash Comics v1 022, 1941) made me realize that I’ve missed a few examples of super-heroes attending costume parties as themselves, one of my most favourite tropes in comics! Time for some catchup rectification! Here’s the Red Gaucho being mistaken for someone who was dressed as him, who is then impersonated by a third person in a story that was not called “Too Many…
(Flash Comics v1 019, 1941) Hey, it’s the Hood! I’ll be honest: I thought that the Hood was one of those super-villain names like the Masked Man that was super common and that we already had one or more guys with this name but here we are, 250 villains in and welcoming our first. The Hood is Pratt Palmer, and he’s a bog standard scientist-villain of type A: scientist who develops some astonishing new tech and turns it to crime…
(Flash Comics v1 019, 1941) The Scarlet Mermaid is elegant in her simplicity: she’s a good swimmer who lives near a river where a lot of rich people hang out on boats, so she swims out and robs them. That plus a great name (and an okay costume – could use a contrasting colour) make for a winning combo. Even a cool villain must eventually reckon with a super-hero, however, and the Scarlet Mermaid ends up being one of the…