SUPER-VILLAIN FILE 004: WOTAN
(More Fun Comics 055, 1940)
Wotan is the poster child for the class of mid-tier super-villain who figure into a super-hero’s early adventures and thus get to keep coming back any time someone wants to get back to basics on them. In this case, as the first and also the first recurring foe of Doctor Fate, he crops up every decade or so and gets few new details added to his backstory.
When we first meet Wotan he seems to be some sort of upper-class cult leader operating out of a skyscraper temple and simply determined to destroy Doctor Fate and his pal Inza Cramer as they are his greatest obstacles to world conquest.
Wotan comes out swinging with some trained gorillas – a real pro villain move that almost allows him to get one over on Doctor Fate as he is expending his energy to protect Inza. It doesn’t quite work but it is a surprisingly competent plan.
The big reveal from Wotan is of course that he has mastered the same ancient secrets as Doctor Fate, by which he means atomic energy-control – the idea of Fate serving the Lords of Order is a much later development, but it is odd that Wotan doesn’t seem to ever have been affiliated with the Lords of Chaos.
Armed with the knowledge of exactly how Wotan’s powers work, Fate is able to take him by surprise, knock him out and toss him out the window, seemingly to his doom. Not really, though.
Wotan is also the first super-villain who we are encountering post-deprecation of the “Super-Villain Yearbook” style of presenting recurring characters. His previous Yearbook entries are now counted as updates to this entry and so might contain some duplicated information.