Enjoy these ancient delights! the Black Spider: Mild-mannered district attorney Ralph Nelson, like many comic book lawmen, sallies forth at night in order to deal with criminals that the law can’t touch. Nelson is despised by his colleague Police Inspector Stern for being too soft on crime/ dedicated to the letter of the law to allow the cops to torture confessions out of people, while the Black Spider is hated by Stern for showing up the police by being so…
(Super-Mystery Comics v1 004, 1940) Over the course of the last few years I’ve really beefed up the amount of images and words I use to describe the minor super-villains I so love, but sometimes you gotta hearken back to the old ways: When aviator Sky Smith heads to Alaska to help out his friend Tom Harris with a mysterious problem, he finds that a band of air pirates called the Skywaymen (fantastic name) led by a man named Rolf…
(Super-Mystery Comics v1 003, 1940) This is a bit of a weird one. Vulcan, the Volcanic Man, has just saved both a field of gasoline tanks and a government arson inspector named Grace Horner from being incinerated by “notorious arsonist-spy” Torchy Fargo, who then retires to a nearby castle* to report his failure to Ember, the Empress of Fire. Just what is the deal with these two, you ask? We shall explore that momentarily. *Vulcan is plausibly based out of…
(Super-Mystery Comics v1 002, 1940) In terms of crime, the Blue Spark is ambitious but not extraordinary: a little corporate extortion, some bank robbery, a few kidnappings. Nothing we haven’t seen a few hundred times by now. When it comes to the trappings of super-villainy, however, the Blue Spark is on the cutting edge. Just look at that costume – it’s not quite the standardized super-villain getup we will eventually see on so many one-shot Batman villains but it’s pretty…
(Super-Mystery Comics v1 001, 1940) The Octopus! Leader of a nation-wide crime wave! Keenly interested in branding! His men slap little octopus stickers on cops and burgled vaults alike! And when the Octopus talks to his men, he is represented by what appears to be an animated octopus! As far as criminal operations go, this one is pretty slick. Unfortunately for the Octopus, nothing gold can stay and that includes excellent crime setups. While he might be able to outmanoeuvre…
(Super-Mystery Comics 001, 1940) The Terror is really Scar (or Scar-Face) Pontois, a gang boss who is expending a lot of effort in order to drive people away from a rich gold claim that he has hijacked but has perhaps gone a bit too far, as Corporal Flint of the RCMP, the hero of our story, is only nosing around Scar’s locale because of the strange rumours he and/or his superiors have heard. Please note his giant hat. In addition…
Ah the super-hero. Ace Buckley: Ace Buckley is a time traveller, a subgenre of comic book hero mostly notable for the fact that they have no one to blame for their troubles but themselves. Like most of his peers, Buckley (along with his intriguingly-named companion Toni Stark, whose role in the stories is to get captured and then swan around in minimal clothing while waiting for Buckley to rescue her) flings himself willy-nilly into the hotspots of human history and…
the Lone Warrior (and Dicky): The Lone Warrior and Dicky are Stan and Dicky Carter, son of the now-deceased “world’s greatest scientist” and recipients of his Power Elixir injections, leaving them generically physically enhanced and well-equipped to battle pseudo-Nazi forces seeking to wreck America’s military. Plus he made them a land/ air/ sea plane/tank called the Wonder Ship which is very useful. There is of course a knee-jerk impulse to snidely point out that a guy called the Lone Warrior…
Who will rid me of these fascist goons? The Nordland Bund is another German-American Bund analog but operates as more of a traditional spy operation on behalf of Nazi Germany stand-in Prussland. Their moderately complicated plan to get explosive coal onto US ships leaving Bermuda is foiled by Secret Agent D-13 and his Canadian counterpart/ love interest Lorraine MacAlinn (Mystery Men Comics 019, 1941) Like the man’s feet say, the Hoops are a bunch of Nazis (proper Nazis – Fox…
King of Darkness: Radio engineer Bruce King develops the amazingly-named Black Zero Transmitter that selectively allows him to negate light and/or heat in its range of operation, plus an insulated costume and night-vision goggles so that he is immune to its effects. He ends up dealing with nosy reporters and spies inadvertently egged on by said nosy reporters and so adopts the alias of the King of Darkness. Probably the best thing about him is the fact that he will…