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Month: September 2022

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 159: MISTER X

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 159: MISTER X

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(All-Star Comics 005, 1941) Mister X is another team comic overboss, like the Leader before him. Outwardly an unassuming little man, he has managed to gather a wide range of organized crime under his control while remaining completely anonymous, even to his own underlings. His only mistake (and the inciting event of the story) is being so threatened by the crimefighting activities of the Justice Society that he mobilizes his forces in an attempt to kill them even though they…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 158: THE LEADER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 158: THE LEADER

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(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…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 157: THE WIZARD

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 157: THE WIZARD

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(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…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 156: OOM THE MIGHTY

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 156: OOM THE MIGHTY

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(All-Star Comics 003, 1940) Oom the Mighty is, by his own description, a sort of low-rent Gozer the Gozerian: a murderous entity of the ancient past who has returned to kill again. Only instead of whole civilizations boiling in his belly or what have you, Oom kills a handful of people every full moon – still bad, but not quite as much cosmic terror. The original appearance of Oom (involving a dimension-hopping battle with the Spectre) maybe kind of implied…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 155: MAZDA THE GREAT

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 155: MAZDA THE GREAT

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(All-Star Comics 003, 1940) Much of the information that we have on Mazda the Great comes from the mouth of one of his dying henchmen at the end of the story, but what reason would he have to lie? According to this man, Mazda was a scientist (I assume a vulcanologist. An enormous one!) who developed both technology to control/ redirect the energies of a volcano and also volcano-proof suits. Thus equipped, he set up shop in the crater of…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 154: THE YELLOW-FACED TERROR

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 154: THE YELLOW-FACED TERROR

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(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…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 153: KULAK

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 153: KULAK

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(All-Star Comics 002, 1940) Kulak is the High Priest of Brztal, which is originally implied to be an ancient lost civilization but I believe is later defined as extra-dimensional in some way. His deal is ostensibly that he is upset that his tomb was disturbed so he is going to destroy humanity, but I don’t know that he wasn’t just looking for an excuse to flex his magical muscles. He gets up to a lot of fun stuff with disasters…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 152: NYOLA

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 152: NYOLA

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(All-Star Comics 002, 1940) Nyola is an Aztec priestess of Yum-Chac, the god of rain. As you might expect, the indigenous religions of the Americas are treated with utmost dignity and she is not portrayed as a fanatic who, for example, would kidnap a woman for human sacrifice based on tangential offense done to her faith. Also, Hawkman doesn’t then follow her back to Mexico and bring the might of the authorities down on an indigenous religious group that is,…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 150: BELDAME GAFFY & TRYGG

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 150: BELDAME GAFFY & TRYGG

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(All-Star Comics 001, 1940) A couple of magic users, Beldame Gaffy (curse-caster) and Trygg (necromancer) team up to steal the lands that rightfully belong to Trygg’s niece and nephew so that he could get rich via a zombie-staffed mining operation. Things go well until Hawkman shows up to explode them to death. Also, these are the first (only?) Welsh super-villains we have (will ever?) encountered! Ordinarily in a two-person set-up like this I would designate one as the boss and…

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