(Doll Man 001, 1941) The Vulture! Flying thief extraordinaire! Terror of NYC for about a week! In reality the Vulture if a very weird looking guy named Aylmer who is predictably upset at his treatment by an uncaring world but seemingly mostly about being short. Hey, if Quality Comics New York is an accepting enough place that that’s all this guy gets bullied about then I have to give it to them, honestly. The really interesting thing about Aylmer/ the…
(Doll Man 001, 1941) The Phantom Duelist is and example of a couple of my favourite comic book story setups: 1. the eerie local legend used as a basis for crime and 2. the murder mystery with a whole passel of suspects. Plus there’s a dose of “aren’t Hollywood people weird!” for flavour. So: movie producer Reynolds decides to drum up a bit of publicity by buying a haunted castle and importing it to Hollywood. The only problem: Reynolds is…
(Doc Savage Comics v1 004, 1941) An unnamed dwarf performer at the Famous Three Ring Circus, billed as the Smallest Man in the World, the Imp is even more remarkably able to secretly build himself a robotic gorilla-shaped exoskeleton in secret while travelling with said circus. As is so often the case when a comic character becomes a villain in response to societal scorn and rejection, the Imp ends up taking things too far by using his gorilla suit to…
What was the Penguin up to in 1941? (Detective Comics v1 058) ‘Untitled’ **First Appearance** Heeeey, it’s the Penguin, the perennial second-tier Batman villain! The Penguin really hits the ground running: he’s already got his look and his suite of trick umbrellas, so all he really needs is his weird bird-obsession, which kicks in in 1942. As is frequently the case with a recurring villain, the Penguin’s first outing is one of his most successful: he takes over a gang…
(Detective Comics v1 057, 1941) A simple concept but a good one: the Fencer is the head of a vaguely-Axis espionage group that has been trying to kill anti-fascist author Jules Vortez for the past two issues using methods including causing plane crashes while still on the plane, duplicates, hypnosis and, sadly, blackface. Aside from the latter, this is exactly the sort of over-the-top behavior that should be going on all the time in a super-hero universe, so it’s only…
(Detective Comics v1 056, 1941) The Lightning Killer is a neat and potentially great concept that was ill-served by being featured in a 6-page middle-of-the-book strip like Cliff Crosby’s. As presented, he’s a mysterious killer who strikes only during thunderstorms and times his shots to lightning strikes so that they go unnoticed by witnesses. Unsurprisingly, he turns out to be the meteorologist Cliff consults midway through the story, as he is the only non-cop/ non-victim/ non-protagonist character featured. The Lightning…
(Detective Comics v1 056, 1941) The Stone Idol is a bit of a weird one: a miner living in the ghost town of Ghost Gulch City discovers silver on town land and recruits an unscrupulous group of circus performers to aid him in driving out the town’s remaining inhabitants so as to have all the silver for themselves. The actual Stone Idol is the circus strongman disguised as a local Native American statue in order to play on the local…
(Detective Comics v1 050, 1941) The Three Devils are an early example of a fairly common minor super-villain archetype: the acrobat who turns their skill to criminal ends (and of course this is a subset of “circus folk who use their talents for crime” which itself is a subset of “talented professional turns their talent to crime” and then I guess above that is “criminals”). I don’t think I’m going to bother calling it out every time it happens but…
(Detective Comics v1 049, 1941) This is one of your technical qualifications: a singer’s former partner, jealous of his success, comes back for revenge. He calls himself the Terror and has a camera-gun and a bunch of hired goons with names like Smokey Joe. It all adds up to just enough to land him in the theoretical super-villain wing of the prison when Slam Bradley busts him.
What did the Joker get up to in 1940? 1. Batman Comics v1 001, ‘Untitled’ **first appearance** The Joker really hits the ground running in his first crime-outing. He establishes his character – prideful, mercurial and on-theme – and methods that are still in his repertoire to this day He indulges in the old standard of warning the police ahead of time, then killing his target and stealing their named gems (uh, this is a personal term for any gem…