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Month: February 2023

A VEXING CONUNDRUM: KEYSTONE CITY

A VEXING CONUNDRUM: KEYSTONE CITY

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In short: the state of online wiki-based comics scholarship run by people with poor reading comprehension and an adherence to post-hoc continuity decisions makes it very hard to determine when Jay Garrick explicitly starts operating out of Keystone City as the Flash. Flash Comics v1 001 features his origin at Midwestern University, which has since been located in Keystone, but does not mention the city by name. For the rest of 1940 at least, he is pretty explicitly in NYC. No…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 245: SATANA

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 245: SATANA

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(Flash Comics v1 013, 1941)  I am torn on Satana! Torn verily in twain! My standard critique of a comic book scientist-villain is that they would have been better off using their tech in a non-crime endeavor, but Satana is a brilliant and pioneering young surgeon living in 1941 and given what I know about the history of women in science I think it’s fair to say that if she had decided to make a go of it in academia…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 244: THE GREAT ARTURO

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 244: THE GREAT ARTURO

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(Flash Comics v1 013, 1941)  Like Crime & Corruption Inc before him, I almost skipped over the Great Arturo or banished him to the ranks of the generic villains, because a) the Great Arturo is a terrible villain name and b) he appears in a Les Watts comic. But the more I looked at this guy, the more it became clear that he was like a savoury stew made up of all the things I love about comic book creepos….

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 243: CRIME & CORRUPTION INC

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 243: CRIME & CORRUPTION INC

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(Flash Comics v1 013, 1941) I almost didn’t include these guys because Johnny Thunder lives in a heightened cartoon reality that only exists within the same world as the Spectre or Hawkman because of the technicality of them all being in the same club and hanging out together. But then, is the fact that New York is full of goofy-ass cartoon people in Johnny’s reality any more implausible than Alexander the Great blowing up a portion of the city without…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 242: THE WHITE RENEGADE

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 242: THE WHITE RENEGADE

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(Flash Comics v1 010, 1940) I’ve alluded now and then to the colonialist assumptions that comics worked off of and that seemingly were endemic to the mindset of the American people. The White Renegade offers an example of the two major prongs of these assumptions, which boil down to the idea that the world is divided into White People and Everyone Else, and that: 1. All offenses committed by Everyone Else against White people shall be repaid with great vengeance. …

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 241: KING JUPO

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 241: KING JUPO

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(Flash Comics v1 009, 1940) King Jupo is the leader of the Kogats, a race of water-breathing caveman types who live beneath New York Harbor and have a fun mix of technologies, being armed with either stone axes or laser pistols. They’ve decided to invade the surface world, for no substantial reason other than that it seems like a good idea, and immediately run afoul of Hawkman. Needless to say, this does not end well, and the entire Kogats race,…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 240: PROFESSOR KITZOFF

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 240: PROFESSOR KITZOFF

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(Flash Comics v1 008) Professor Kitzoff makes me sad because he is categorically not the Sunspot Wizard. Oh sure, someone at DC or in the fan community went back and assigned titles to all the untitled Golden Age stories and they called this one “the Sunspot Wizard”, but that’s nothing. I love an unofficial name as much as (probably more than) the next guy, but they have to a) come from the text of the story itself and b) can’t…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 239: DR BRINE

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 239: DR BRINE

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(Flash Comics v1 008, 1940) Dr Brine should be in the soon-to-be-unveiled first roundup of minor mad and criminal scientists who don’t quite qualify as super-villains. He’s a guy in a purple pin-stripe suit who has a plan to steal a bunch of submarines and then profit from that somehow. There are two very important reasons for his inclusion here: 1. He’s either a guy who named himself Dr Brine after getting into the submarine piracy game or (even better)…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 239: DR BRINE

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 239: DR BRINE

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(Flash Comics v1 008, 1940) Dr Brine should be in the soon-to-be-unveiled first roundup of minor mad and criminal scientists who don’t quite qualify as super-villains. He’s a guy in a purple pin-stripe suit who has a plan to steal a bunch of submarines and then profit from that somehow. There are two very important reasons for his inclusion here: 1. He’s either a guy who named himself Dr Brine after getting into the submarine piracy game or (even better)…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 238: THE CLUE CRIMINAL

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 238: THE CLUE CRIMINAL

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(Flash Comics v1 007, 1940)   Long before guys like the Joker and the Riddler made leaving baroque clues to taunt the forces of Law ahead of your next crime a super-villain cliché, the Clue Criminal was out there getting things done, with a name that I must assume was used in a low-effort Batman pastiche some time in the late 60s. Speaking of names, the Clue Criminal steals actual real painting “the Blue Boy” and then goes on to…

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