(Detective v1 015, 1938) Chester Glass almost accidentally frames Slam Bradley and Shorty Morgan for murder, and that’s the main thrust of the story. As things develop, you learn that he has wooed and then murdered at least two dozen women for their money, which alone is enough to get him on this list, but then he captures Slam and Shorty in his murder dungeon basement, which is filled with “dozens” of bodies! And he has up to this point gone…
(Detective v1 015, 1938) A serial killer who murders diplomats because without them there would be no wars. Brought in by Bart Regan and Sally Norris, protagonists of the early Siegel and Shuster strip Spy.
(More Fun 031, 1938) A mine owner using zombie labour, which is at best morally questionable, but also he planned to undermine New York and collapse it into a pit, then rule the ruins, which is worse. Dr Occult dropped a mine on him, which is why it’s such a surprise when he shows up in my upcoming Dr Occult miniseries – back from the dead by his own dark will, the Master of Corpses teams up with the rest…
As discussed elsewhere, the vast wealth of reference material that artists have access to nowadays simply wasn’t available back in the day. Sometimes a comic book required a drawing of something that the artist simply had no point of reference for. And while in light of that fact some of the wild octopus or dinosaur anatomy on display in old comics is entirely forgivable and understandable, the wild depictions of the humble spider are totally baffling – I could round…
(New Adventure Comics 026-More Fun 072, 1938-1941) Captain Desmo is a pretty standard Golden Age adventure character: together with his pal Gabby McGuire, the Brooklyn Terror, he jaunts around the world (mostly in Asia), getting into scraps with colonized people on behalf of white folks. The only thing that really makes him stand apart (aside from the fact that he’s a WWI vet, making him a generation older than most Golden Age protagonists) is illustrated in the moderately homoerotic exchange…
(Adventure 032, 1938) British Army officer who lined his own pockets supplying rebels in India. Fought Captain Desmo, a masked aviator whose comics were on the whole drawn as if they took place in North Africa even though quite a lot of them were set in India – not so uncommon a type of thing to happen in all the various times before reference materials became as easy to access as they are now. Anyway: the Masked Man. Fairly unremarkable,…
(New Adventure 028, 1938) Bog standard South American revolutionary villain who is hunted down by agents of the US Navy. Remarkable only due to the one-panel appearance of Rose del Muerte, the Rose of Death. What a good one-panel appearance! El Diablo can sit in a garbage can, but Rose del Muerte should show up all over the DCU, never as an actual culprit but just a red herring living her best life.
(New Adventure 027, 1938) Just a kidnapper, but there’s something about a man who wears a snake, and he’s yet another Siegel and Shuster villain from a pre-Superman series – in this case, Federal Men, about Steve Carson of the FBI.
(Detective Comics 009, 1937) A very marginal entry on the list, but he really makes the concept of “guy who can climb” work as a masterful crime skill. Plus he’s an early Slam Bradley foe, so more charming Siegel and Shuster fun as Slam demonstrates his early tendency to be amazing at all tasks by following him up the side of a building for a trademark fight.
(More Fun 020, 1937) Another common sub-type of masked criminal, the guy who runs his own pirate fleet. Other than being the first example of this on the list, a real snoozer. Taken out by Sandra of the Secret Service.