(Batman Comics 005, 1941) A while ago I decided that groups were going to go into my lists (and charts and graphs) of super-villains. After all, if I was willing to accord one fellow who went around as the Masked Bandit, why should I spurn four guys who do exactly the same, only pluralized? Accordingly, masked gangs get as much credit as masked crooks, if they fulfil enough other criteria. The Four Cards, however, introduce a new wrinkle. Simply put: if…
(All-Star Comics 004, 1941) What makes them a super-villain? Sheer scale! The Leader AKA Fritz Klaver is the top spy for the “dictator nations” in America, commanding units of his subversive Grey-Shirts as well as other less blatant agents in numbers estimated at 30 000. They come real close to saying he’s a Nazi, too, but it’s about a year out from comics folks being willing to actually do that. What makes them interesting? The real deal interesting thing about…
(All-Star Comics 003, 1940) This is the kind of super-villain that you see magical heroes taking on a lot more often than other types: the preemptive striker. The likely cause of this is the status of so many magical heroes as the de facto head of Earth’s magical security, someone that a bad actor can take out and then be free to act with impunity. What’s interesting about this super-villain? The thing that appeals to me about this guy, who is primarily…
(All-Star Comics 002, 1940) What makes them a super-villain? He’s a money-mad maniac who murdered his own brother to steal a radiation-orb called the Life-Taker, which he uses to rob by the simple act of lobbing it into an area and waiting until it has killed any resistance. He also has a pretty great look, achieved via a crust of a sulphur/lead compound which shields him from his own orb’s radiations. What he doesn’t really have is a name, so I…
(All-Star Comics 001, 1940) 100% included here because I enjoy his name. A Vaudeville memory expert turned spy, captured by minor Golden Age adventure guy Biff Bronson.
(All American 028, 1941) Just a weird little creep with a drug that can mind control someone and then kill them. The Spider hits on a scheme where he is paid by ne’er-do-wells to have their rich relatives write them back into their wills and then mysteriously keel over – and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for Green Lantern and his pesky pals.
(All American Comics 025, 1941) A masked man running a gang of saboteurs to ruin production of war goods as a US steel plant in the name of a vague Cause – at this time most likely fascism – is pretty run-of-the-mill for 1941, but it turns out that the Leader’s real scheme is to drive down the steel mill’s stock price so that he can gain a controlling interest and make big bucks! He’s just duping the fascists-or-maybe-anarchists-or-communists into doing…
(Adventure 069, 1941) An early example of quite a few villain tropes, the Red Dragon is a guy who turns to evil because he was rejected by society due to his deformed face (1). He then decides to set himself up in opposition to the heroic Shining Knight, choosing to become the Red Dragon – less dramatic than a Bizarro-style evil opposite situation but still an evil opposite situation (2). After his first (unsuccessful) foray into crime, he is recruited…
(Adventure 068, 1941) An orchestra conductor who goes off the deep end when he gets fired. Not a terribly deep concept, but he kills his replacements with an electrified conductor’s baton trap and he leaves comedy and tragedy mask symbols to show his involvement so there’s a lot for me, a themed crime enthusiast, to enjoy.
(Adventure 066, 1941) Mr Cuthbert Cain, the Camera Eye (and I call him that because it’s what he himself signs on an ominous note – at various points in the story he is called the Camera Fiend and the Camera Criminal) is part of a long tradition of super-villains who take a recent technological or cultural trend and extrapolate it into a criminal gimmick – in this case, candid photography. Using black magic and photographic equipment, Cain captures souls and…