(Flash Comics v1 005, 1940) The Vandal is a wealthy art collector who kills artists to increase the value of their works and has a bunch of hired goons steal art for him. The best thing about him is his name/ concept, that his art collection would be as impactful to the art world as the ancient Vandals supposedly were in antiquity. Since he’s a Golden Age Flash villain, he mostly exists to be trolled at super-speed.
(Flash Comics v1 004, 1940) I have complicated feelings about the Thought Terror! He has both good and bad traits! Off the bat, the basics. His costume choice is pretty entry level for the Golden Age, but suitable for a guy who employs eye-based super-powers (which he does) and wants to project a certain aura of fear. His name, by contrast, is both unusual and bad, and made all the worse for the fact that it’s almost good. Terror is usually a…
(Flash Comics v1 001, 1940) I have a lot of fondness for the Faultless Four, the first super-foes of original Flash Jay Garrick. Firstly and most simply, they are a perfect illustration of the power creep that super-heroes introduced to comic books: where this group of criminal scientists armed with mildly-fantastic skills and tactics would have been sufficient to occupy your traditional adventure hero for months if not years, the Flash walks all over them without a care in the…
(Feature Comics 049, 1941) The Purple Monster is a pretty lacklustre super-villain. He ticks all the boxes: volcano lair on an island somewhere off BC, army of costumed henchmen, subjugated population of poor island yokels to exploit complete with fake human sacrifices and an unexplained sinister use for the sacrificial victims… it’s a complete checklist of features designed to qualify him for this list. He even draws his name from a local superstition, albeit one he started himself by projecting…
(Feature Comics 046, 1941) An exciting development! Up until now our minor super-heroes have been of two flavours: the stars of minor super-hero strips or a new identity adopted by the stars of crime or adventure strips – the key word in either case is star – they are the focus and driving force of the strip. The Red Triangle is our first example of another type of super-hero: the single issue guest star. These are far more common in the…
(Feature Comics 045, 1941) It’s a tale as old as time, by which I mean about a year: noncostumed adventurers adopting costumed identities to keep up with the oncoming juggernaut that is the Golden Age super-hero boom. In this case, it’s Rusty Ryan and the other unusually muscular teens of the Boyville orphanage, who up until now were more of a high school sports type of bunch, dealing with the plague of unscrupulous gamblers betting on local hockey games and…
(Feature Comics 043, 1941) Another example of the classic combination of someone posing as a spooky local legend-figure in order to scare folk away from a valuable area. In this case one Jean Dupre and his mother are trying to use the legend of the giant Black Bat (that they might have just made up) to scare their step sister/ daughter Marie away from the family ranch, which is just lousy with radium ore. It’s a good attempt, foiled by…
(Feature Comics 043, 1941) Another example of the classic combination of someone posing as a spooky local legend-figure in order to scare folk away from a valuable area. In this case one Jean Dupre and his mother are trying to use the legend of the giant Black Bat (that they might have just made up) to scare their step sister/ daughter Marie away from the family ranch, which is just lousy with radium ore. It’s a good attempt, foiled by…
(Feature Comics 039-040, 1940-1941) This is a bit of a complicated one. So: “Captain Bruce Blackburn – Counterspy” was a strip that started in Feature Comics 032 in media res with the cover of the titular Captain and his colleague Lieutenant Jackson having been blown. The two then fake their deaths and a government plastic surgeon alters their appearances so that they are virtually identical, thus allowing them to operate as an incredibly efficient spy team with a flawless ability to generate…
(Doll Man 001, 1941) I truly love the Black Gondolier, as he is to my mind the Platonic ideal of the kind of crook that every super-hero universe should be crawling with: a guy who gets together some gadgets and works out a little scheme and very briefly becomes the scourge of shipping in New York Harbor. Why’s he got a motorized gondola? No idea! Where did he get his climbing gear? Doesn’t matter! What does matter is that in…