(Military Comics 001, 1941) This is stretching the idea of what a “minor super-hero” is quite a bit but I ultimately had to defer to my judgment rule about criminal groups: if one person were doing this would it make sense to categorize them such? And it would! The Q-Boat is just that, a warship disguised as a harmless four-masted schooner in order to prey on Nazi convoy raiders. Swap out the disguised ship for a submarine and you have…
(Military Comics 001-007, 1941-1942) I am not the first to note this by a country mile but it must be said every time she comes up: she wishes to have all of the powers of the Statue of Liberty and then the Statue of Liberty visits her in a dream and gifts them to her. If USA didn’t exist then this would be a shoe-in for “most outlandish patriotic hero concept” but as it stands I reckon that they’re tied….
(Military Comics 001-016, 1941-1942) The Blue Tracer is your standard guy-with-a-super-vehicle hero: “Wild Bill” Dunn, an American engineer serving with the British in Ethiopia, finds himself the only survivor of an ambush by a race of would-be world-conquering superhumans called the M’bujies. He and Anzac Boomerang Jones team up to build the multienvironment supercraft the Blue Tracer and foil the M’bujie plans (by killing them all). There seems to be a consensus online that the vehicle is the Blue Tracer…
(Master Comics 021, 1941) The Black Dragon Society is nothing new: a bog standard Yellow Peril spy and sabotage ring that has a couple of weeks of success before being trounced by Minute-Man. The one interesting thing about them is that they were based on an actual Japanese secret society that was still extant at the time the comic was published. Despite the fact that the story is just as disseminating as pre-Pearl Harbor comics usually are about the exact…
(Master Comics 001 (behind the scenes) or Master Comics 007 (first mentioned) or Master Comics 008 (first appearance on-panel)-Master Comics 020, 1940-1941) Mr H, the mastermind behind all crime in the city of Carterville and its unnamed state, gets up to all kinds of schemes through his proxies. For example: -running an illegal casino in a hard-to-catch gambling blimp -robbing a munitions plant in order to outfit a small army of gangsters and enact a criminal takeover of Carterville…
(Master Comics 020, 1941) The Son of Count Dracula: 100/100 for theming and commitment to the bit, 0/100 for practical planning. So: a team of private detectives named Splithair and Undermeyer are hired to investigate a series of disappearances associated with Vampire Castle, located in the castle-rich hills of New York State. Splithair is quickly captured by the Son of Count Dracula (tSoCD) and Undermeyer is only saved by the timely intervention of a nosy Bulletman. TSoCD retreats from the…
(Master Comics 019, 1941) Imagine my excitement when I saw that Zoro the Mystery Man was facing a guy called the Throttler so soon after his bout with the Choker: a theme! A villain theme! Huzzah! And imagine my disappointment when I discovered that the Throttler moniker was a fiction developed by two butlers to cover for their fairly inept kidnapping scheme. There wasn’t even any throttling! Still, I do have to tip my hat to them on one front:…
(Master Comics 019, 1941) If you’re ever at a party and a guy shows up with a mysterious bequest for the host and then is murdered by an unseen party before he can hand over what turns out to be a huge diamond then take it from me: you are in a comic book. If there’s a guy named “Rajah Kohur” there to declare the diamond to be cursed, well that’s just what we call further evidence. Now you’re going…
(Master Comics 017-019, 1941) The Unholy Three! A little guy (Nosey), a huge guy (Brutus) and a gorilla (Herbert)! Oh and of course we must not forget the fourth member of the Unholy Three, their boss “Doctor” J. Twiddley Fairchild (quotation marks his). Details in the actual story are sketchy but it seems as if Fairchild was jailed for larceny, escaped, assembled the other three as his minions and set out to get revenge on those who were responsible for…
(Master Comics 018, 1941) Okay, I am a big fan of the Black Hood. Let’s count down the reasons: One: very exciting to see the classic super-suit being worn in the early days of suits and robes. This look won’t take long to become ubiquitous once it catches on but it’s still pretty rare in 1941. Two: not only is he a fashion pioneer but he is a thought leader in the field of henchman couture. Dressing your guys in…