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Month: December 2023

MINOR SUPER-HERO 047: THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN

MINOR SUPER-HERO 047: THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN

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(Amazing Mystery Funnies v3 003, 1940) Just a cheeky super-hero for you today: the Headless Horseman! The Headless Horseman is an utterly standard western hero except for their lack of a head. They made maybe two appearances in Centaur comics before fading into the mists of history. A shame, because I really like the simple spin a fake supernatural Western hero gives things – I can’t think of too many of them other than the various Ghost Riders. The cowboy…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 411: SATAN REX

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 411: SATAN REX

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(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939) We’ve all read a comic in which a scientist is rejected for his wild-but-true theories and goes a bit bonkers and criminal, but Satan Rex really went for it. Originally Eric von Hochwalt, who developed the Theory of Relativity ten years before Einstein and dealt with his subsequent rejection by disappearing into the Himalayas, founding a city full of people who worship him as a god, conquering the aging process and eventually taking a…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 410: THE BRAIN OF THE ROBOT

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 410: THE BRAIN OF THE ROBOT

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(Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 011, 1939)  I’ve started reading Mystery Men Comics, as seen at the top of the Sphinx entry, and the thing about Mystery Men Comics is that although it features the Blue Beetle, who by a circuitous chain of publication rights changing hands is now a DC Comics character, it also has a lot of other characters that aren’t currently owned by a media conglomerate! And although I mostly write about DC and Marvel characters because I…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 409: THE SPHINX

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 409: THE SPHINX

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(Mystery Men Comics 018, 1941) The Sphinx is (somewhat appropriately) a bit convoluted? Or maybe disjointed? It’s hard to put into words but there is a weird dreamlike quality to some Golden Age comic books and the Blue Beetle stories from Fox Features often have it. To begin: the Sphinx is a mysterious figure who causes subway accidents and then utters threats and pronouncements in a booming voice, seemingly from nowhere. The Blue Beetle swiftly discovers that one of the…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 408: MR WHO

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 408: MR WHO

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(More Fun Comics 073, 1941)  It’s Mr Who! You know, from comics! I was very excited for this guy to turn up, as he’s one of those comic book characters I had heard about but never really read about, and… he’s okay. See, Mr Who was born all scrawny and seems to have been a weird kid (and to have had a shitty dad, jeez), so he channelled all of his efforts into science, and more specifically into developing a…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 407: DR CLEVER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 407: DR CLEVER

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(More Fun Comics 074, 1941) I have taken an immediate liking to Dr Clever. I mean, just look at the guy: the classic tuxedo-and-cape combo, the rictus grin, the bald pate with two little hair-horns, the tiny skull-and-crossbones pin… he’s really a triumph of design when you think about it. Lucky for us he’s a recurring foe of Johnny Quick so we’ll be seeing him again. Somewhat strangely for a man with such an overall villainous look, Dr Clever’s major…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 406: CAPTAIN BLACK JACK

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 406: CAPTAIN BLACK JACK

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(More Fun Comics 074, 1941) Captain Black Jack is your typical modern pirate, albeit a very charmingly-written one. He took a look at the nautical landscape of the early 40s and saw a niche that he could fill: that of the buccaneer. He raids a yacht and comes into conflict with Aquaman and almost comes out on top but makes the key mistake of trying to drown an amphibious man and ends up blown to Kingdom Come for his efforts….

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MEDIAN SUPER-VILLAINS: WHAT TO DO?

MEDIAN SUPER-VILLAINS: WHAT TO DO?

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What is a Median Super-Villain? It’s a made-up category of character that doesn’t fit into either of the other two made-up categories that I’ve been working from up til now, the Super-Villain and the Minor Super-Villain.  By my definition, Median Super-Villains are all actually Minor Super-Villains: they have a limited number of appearances and your parents have never heard of them. So what gives them the extra zazz that makes them Median? It’s that they keep on appearing, mostly. Some,…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 405: THE VOICE

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 405: THE VOICE

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(More Fun Comics 074, 1941) “The Voice” is such a cool and evocative name that I have a real bias in favour of it but I have to say that this guy leaves me cold. Basically, he’s some sort of science man who has invented a “sound destroyer” capable of dampening all noise in an area the size of Manhattan. His crime-gambit involves employing this device and deploying sign language fluent gangsters to cause mayhem during the resultant confusion, then…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 404: THE AVENGER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 404: THE AVENGER

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(More Fun Comics 074, 1941) Another day, another Avenger. This Avenger is a disgruntled scientist named Mortimer Crandall who is seeking revenge on his old bosses for firing him because of his wacky scientific theories that, you guessed it, turned out to be correct. He uses his working technology to kidnap the men responsible in preparation for their murders. This Avenger also demonstrates a flair for comic-book style hypnosis sufficient to place the Spectre himself under his power, which is…

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