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Month: October 2022

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 188: THE SKULL GANG

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 188: THE SKULL GANG

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(Crack Comics 006, 1940) What makes them a super-villain (group)? They’re a gang of thieves who are so devoted to this generic hooded guy that they all take small doses of arsenic to give themselves an emaciated skeletal appearance! The penalty for not thieving enough is death! What a dumb thing to dedicate your life to! Absolutely they qualify as a team of very stupid super-villains. SKULL SCORE: 1/5 Bald guys with gritted teeth just don’t cut the mustard, I’m afraid.

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 187: THE MASTER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 187: THE MASTER

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(Crack Comics 006, 1940) The best thing about the Master is absolutely his henchmen, the Kite Men. Identical shirtless bald guys who shoot lightning from their bracelets as they soar above unnamed, probably American cities, the Kite Men are some terrific weirdo henchmen. They all get blasted by the Black Condor by the end of the story, but until then they have a good run. The Master himself is your typical world conqueror, whose motivation seems to be that he’s…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 186: THE JAY BIRD

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 186: THE JAY BIRD

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(Crack Comics 005, 1940)  The Jay Bird is one of my favourite minor super-villains of all time, I reckon. He’s just a guy in a bird mask with a gimmick that is simultaneously very simple and far too complex and dangerous: he simulates flight via a very long tether that is dangling him from a plane. Thus equipped, he swoops down and robs various targets on the streets of New York City, quipping all the time. He’s great! The real…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO 021: THE BLACK CONDOR

MINOR SUPER-HERO 021: THE BLACK CONDOR

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(Crack Comics 001-031, 1940-1943) There are a lot of elements to the Black Condor’s origin so I shall be presenting them in a bulleted list: -His father, archaeologist Richard Grey, brought his wife and newborn baby along on an expedition to Mongolia. This did not pay off, as their caravan was massacred by bandits and the only survivor was the baby, Richard Jr, who was carried off by a mother condor. -Experiencing cross-species maternal instincts, the condor chose to raise…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 185: THE SAPPHIRE KING

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 185: THE SAPPHIRE KING

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(Crack Comics 005, 1940)  What makes them a super-villain? As his name suggests, the Sapphire king is motivated by his desire for and love of sapphires – he seems to love them for themselves and also for the wealth and by extension power they grant him. And he gets sapphires by using giant eagles to kidnap ships’ crews and take them to his island in the Indian Ocean, there to labour in his underwater sapphire mines (?) until giant octopus or…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 184: THE ASP

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 184: THE ASP

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(Crack Comics 004, 1940) What makes them a super-villain? Any number of things! The Asp is a jewel thief who taunts his victims/ the police ahead of time and then arranges for seemingly impossible murders using time-delayed poisons. He’s a weird creep who hisses all the time and almost manages to kill the Clock. And yet… it’s all a little perfunctory. I saw someone on the DC wikia editorialize about how the Asp’s MO was similar to the Joker’s first appearance,…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO 020: THE RED TORPEDO

MINOR SUPER-HERO 020: THE RED TORPEDO

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(Crack Comics 001-020, 1940-1942) The Red Torpedo is Jim Lockhart, a guy who came up with a design for the ultimate one-man submarine and turned that into his whole personality. This is a not-uncommon Golden-Age comics trope that kind of petered out once the world was no longer awash with mechanized combat – Silver Age super-vehicles tended more toward the exploration side of things. So: Jim Lockhart, young US Navy officer resigns his commission after being told that his submarine…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 183: X-1

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 183: X-1

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(Crack Comics 003, 1940) What makes them a super-villain? While X-1 is concerned with that most banal of crimes, insurance fraud, he does it at scale, employing a fleet of pirates in souped-up submarines to steal his own goods and sink his own ships for the sweet cash payout. What is interesting about them? Well first off, his real name is Wilhelm Wotan, a true banger of a moniker the likes of which we have seldom seen so far. A real villain’s…

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NOTES: OCTOBER 2022

NOTES: OCTOBER 2022

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The Clock flatlines himself in order to solve a murder by speaking to the victim in the afterlife. (Crack Comics 010, 1941)  Decoration: Jaspar Crow’s got a monogrammed wastecan! (Crack Comics 016, 1941) Dr Foster’s got a monogrammed lampshade! (Crack Comics 017, 1941) Names: Tor the Magic Master encounters a counterfeiter with the unlikely name Phrogg Zaarn. One of the victims of Clock foe the Werewolf is named A.B. Ceedee.

MINOR SUPER-HERO 019: THE CLOCK

MINOR SUPER-HERO 019: THE CLOCK

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(Funny Picture Stories/ Funny Pages/ Feature Comics/ Crack Comics, 1936-1944) The Clock has the distinction of probably being the earliest masked crimefighter and definitely that of being the earliest one to stick around, which would make him the earliest super-hero if Dr Occult hadn’t made his debut in 1935. A lot of the details about him are fairly cliché, both because they were cribbed from existing pulp clichés and because the Clock helped define the clichés of the genre. So:…

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