SAMSON DOES THE THING
What is Samson’s signature move? Pushing down two pillars while standing between them. What do we want to see? That! Honorable mention: (hover for issue numbers)
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 628: PROFESSOR DONALDSON
(Fantastic Comics 011, 1940) Sometimes it’s nice to read a story about a straightforwardly criminal scientist, and that’s just what Professor Donaldson is. He’s invented an “electronic exploder” which can turn steel to dust and by gar if he isn’t going to use that to extort some money out of people with steel things that they would like to stay intact, such as the superstructure of a skyscraper. Donaldson is also prepared to pivot: when his original attempt to set…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 627: CHONG
(Fantastic Comics 010, 1940) Chong is basically just a pirate, but there are three things worth noting about him. The first is that his name is Chong in a comic book published in 1940 and he is not a horrendous Asian stereotype of one sort or another. It’s a low bar and he cleared it with aplomb. The second thing is Chong’s weapon of choice, an enormous spiked wheel that rises out of the depths to wreck ships. It’s not…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 626: THE SUPER FIEND
(Fantastic Comics 010, 1940) The Super Fiend (aka the Super Fiend of the Lost Planet) is, if not the archetypal Fletcher Hanks villain then certainly representative of one of the major Hanks villain types, the civilization hater. He’s got no stated motivation but the Super Fiend hates civilization so much that he’s out to destroy it on a planetary scale, starting with Mars and moving on to Earth as an encore. The Super Fiend’s Thermal Ray Spore does the job…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 625: BOLOCH
(Fantastic Comics 009, 1940) Sub Saunders is just cruising around in the ocean when his submarine is swept into an underground cave, the home of the fantastic Cave Things! I was very excited when this comic started but sadly this is the most we see of Cave Things slithering and creeping around like this. They still have a lot going for them as far as humanoid creeps go but it’s real sad that we don’t get to see more creeping…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 624: MOLOKA
(Fantastic Comics 009, 1940) Moloka is our second Stardust the Super Wizard foe from a story not penned by Fletcher Hanks and I’d say that our unknown scribe gets things mostly right: there’s certainly enough wanton destruction for this to be a Hanks comic. Moloka is a humanoid alien who has developed world-wrecking super weapons and as the comic opens is using them to blast away at various inhabited planets. Where exactly this is happening is a little unclear. If…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 623: THE CYCLOP
(Fantastic Comics 009, 1940) Captain Kidd is once again back in Africa, this time in search of a lost explorer named Perez, and has once again bribed a local into taking him somewhere dangerous only to get that local killed (this happens about a third of the time with Kidd – not quite often enough to make a very depressing supercut). Kidd and his unfortunate hireling Wango track Perez to the Lost Valley, where they discover and are captured by…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 622: PROFESSOR SIMM
(Fantastic Comics 009, 1940) We open on a very exciting scene! Professor Simm has unleashed giant monsters on an unnamed US city! Chaos reigns! I unironically love these monsters. They have that half-baked quality that you get in generic kids toys – the kind of thing you got as a cheap way for your parents to occupy you on a trip and because they have no built-in lore you end up inventing a whole backstory for them. That picture of…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 621: THE EMERALD MEN OF ASPERUS
(Fantastic Comics 008, 1940) The Emerald Men of Asperus live on an asteroid (named Asperus, natch), and I’m pretty sure that their plan is to move the Earth to the Asteroid Belt so that they can easily enslave as many Earthlings as they want, but it’s a bit hard to grok because the way the Emerald Men talk makes it plausible that they don’t know how the Solar System works. Like, it’s possible that they don’t know that Earth and…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 620: PRINCE FERNANDO DIABLO
(Fantastic Comics 008, 1940) Prince Fernando Diablo, scion of an unnamed European royal family (though given his name, style of dress and headquarters in the Pyrenees I think it’s safe to say that he’s heavily implied to be Spanish), has a plan: take advantage of the wars raging in 1940 to violently reinstate monarchy across the continent! Specifically, he and his scientists have developed a horrible plague that they plan on releasing throughout Europe to reduce the population to manageable…