(Feature Comics 036, 1940) What makes them a super-villain? Simply put, Python lives in a creepy castle somewhere in New York State and spends his time stealing the brains of great thinkers to wire up to his machine so that he can plunder their knowledge. And he decorates with the shrunken heads of his victims, and he has a surgically mind-controlled goon named Kreeper. What is interesting about them? Aside form the above which is pretty solid villain stuff, the…
(Feature Comics 028, 1940) As far as a guy who attaches bombs to rats in order to sink and subsequently loot ships goes, Dr Rodent has it all: a great name, a rodentlike cast to his features, and, best of all, his heroic foil is Doll Man so we get to see a little guy ride around on a rat: This is the kind of thing that comics are for!
(Detective Comics 046, 1940) Love this guy. The head of a gang of smugglers who looks like a goldfish and is sensitive about it and tortures his foes by imprisoning them in a huge goldfish bowl where they have to stand for days or drown and the only thing to eat is what raw goldfish they can catch and they eventually go mad? Terrific. All that but it’s actually a mask and the Goldfish is actually a frustrated former actor?…
(Detective Comics 043, 1940) A skull-faced propagandist operating out of the Belgian Congo, presumably Nazi but it’s pre-Pearl Harbor so he works for a “hostile power” or “the dictatorships” etc. The really intriguing thing about the Skull is his choice of themes – rather than go with an obvious skeleton motif like your average skull-faced goon would do, he instead opted for a Medieval theme, complete with sword-wielding henchmen and a jungle castle. I would praise him for making good…