The mad scientists are usually up to something criminal, but the criminal scientists are often completely rational. Like a fair few of the scientists I speak of here, Dr Hayles here talks a big game but gets caught in the planning stages before he has the chance to prove to the world that he was right all along. In Hayles’ case it was kidnapping a bunch of boys that got him in trouble and operating on young boys’ brains in…
(Big Shot Comics 006, 1940) Moora, Queen of the People of the Moon, is technically only called the Moon-Mistress by her enemies, but what can I say, I love alliteration. As introduced, she is merely the leader of a troublesome “hill tribe” that pistol-packing adventurer Rocky Ryan is asked to settle down on behalf of a local Maharajah (where exactly this takes place is ambiguous: Ryan is one of those Golden Age soldier-of-fortune characters who perpetually bums around an “India”…
(Big Shot Comics 006, 1940) Someone is killing old policemen! And furthermore, they’re doing it in such a way that their skin is tinted blue as they die! Unsurprisingly, this ends up being called the Blue Death. But Who is administering it, and why? It’s a short story, so we find out pretty quickly that the culprit is one Doctor Swanson and he’s getting revenge on the eight police officers who arrested him twenty-three years earlier, using special arsenic/ phosphorous/…
(Big Shot Comics 001, 1940) Just a simple head of a gang that specializes in stealing furs (and I would call that over-specialized but we’re just a couple of years off from wartime rationing and with it gangs that specialize in meat, tires and scrap metal theft) but he has a number of super-villainous aspects: -the biggest one has to go first and it’s that he has the chutzpah to track a police informant through the streets of New York…
(Big Shot Comics 003, 1940) Is a hook hand the most basic gimmick that automatically flips a gang boss over to being a super-villain in my mind? We don’t have enough data to call it yet but all signs point to Probably. This Hook is Hook Horner and there’s not too much to say about him: he kidnaps a young woman sometime between the death of someone she is set to inherit millions from but before she herself knows about…
(Big Shot Comics 002, 1940) The Goldmaster is one of my very favourite subtypes of super-villain: the guy who really leans into the bit. Specifically, he is a fellow who has discovered the secret of making gold and subsequently adopted all of the trappings of a Medieval alchemist. Or possibly he was a guy who was really into the alchemy lifestyle who made the luckiest find ever. Either way, he doesn’t have to live like this! It’s a choice! No…
All Columbia Comic Corporation edition! Skyman: Skyman (properly the Skyman but it just doesn’t scan for me) is a pilot hero, normally a ho-hum sort of character for me. But between his sci-fi super plane (the Wing), his blood-freezing stun ray (the Stasimatic) and his cool on-the-edge-of-being-too-busy costume there’s just enough super-hero peanut butter mixed in with the pilot chocolate to make it appealing (bonus running list of Skyman’s super science: atomic explosives, invisible glass phonograph, disitegrator ray, explosives-detonating ray…
Nazi Superweapon: There’s nothing terribly special about this giant dirigible that the Phantom Sub encounters after it starts to fly as well as submerge, but I do appreciate a dirigible that can not only camouflage itself as a stormcloud but has a proper old-school lightning cannon mounted underneath. And is filled with hydrogen, nuch to its later detriment. (Blue Bolt v2 007, 1941) Honours: Corporal Collins, Infantryman earns the French Croix de Guerre. (Blue Ribbon Comics 002, 1939) Rang-a-Tang the…
(Big Shot Comics 001, 1940) The Red Signet is a seemingly unaligned spy chief who has the misfortune of being the antagonist in the very first adventure of pilot super-hero Skyman and so gets just completely owned. Like, “captured within ten minutes of this panel in which he learns that Skyman might be on to him” owned. He does have a really excellent name, at least. BONUS TROPHY ROOM: Skyman nicks the Red Signet’s red signet at the end of…
(Big 3 006, 1941) Our story opens with Samson investigating a series of mysterious deaths and ship disappearances in naval yards across the country. Cut to beloved Samson supporting character J. Rembrandt Speedball hilariously painting camouflage on a Navy cruiser. He is briefly distracted by horniness, and when he manages to get ahold of himself *pow*, the ship has vanished. Speedball is arrested as a spy and spends the rest of the issue failing to commit suicide in his cell…