MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 437: THE GHOST RIDERS
(Star Ranger 001, 1937) The Ghost Riders are just another gang of bank robbers but I just can’t resist a good outfit, and a trio of hooded cowboys with tommy guns is a great visual if I ever saw one.
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 436: THE HEAD
(Shadow Comics v1 004, 1940) Yo, it’s the Head! The Head is a mystic oracle that takes the form of a spooky head in a box and uses his position as a popular upper crust medium to gather info on crime targets, then sends out gangsters (named things like Squint, Chipmunk and Beak Thungle) to plunder them. The Head is also Zovex, a bulletproof cube-man who is supposedly just a servant of the Head but is mostly just a pile…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 435: KAR THE DESTROYER
(Shadow Comics v1 003, 1940) Here is a list of elements that are in the three-issue story that Kar the Destroyer is the antagonist of: -a dissolving gas called the Smoke of Eternity -a diving bell repurposed as a deathtrap -multiple pirate ships -Thunder Island, a place with a prehistoric remnant ecosystem complete with dinosaurs -Doc Savage Here is how the story made me feel: -bored It’s a real shame because love most of those things! I love Kar’s look!…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 434: THE PHANTOM OF THE SKY
(Popular Comics 046, 1939) The Phantom of the Sky (AKA the Phantom Sky Raider AKA the Black Phantom) is a mysterious pilot who has been flying around the American West, viciously attacking and shooting down civilian planes and painting a skull-and-crossbones calling card on them. He turns out to be a nameless French WWI flying ace, shot down and left for dead but actually just trapped in a delusion of an unending war in which he is essentially conducting guerrilla…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 433: THE RED HOOD GANG
(Popular Comics 046, 1939) Just a simple bank robbing gang operating out of New Orleans and rounded up by Special Agent John Winston but I dig their outfits.
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 432: THE CONQUEROR
(Keen Detective Funnies 011, 1939) The Conqueror is the major recurring foe of Dean Denton, Scientific Adventurer, about whom we will briefly aside: Dean Denton was created by Harry Campbell, who was also responsible for such characters as Ace of Space, Bruce Blackburn and the wretched Scarlet Seal, but also Wizard Wells and John Law, Scientiective, who form a kind of thematic triad of scientific detectives with Dean Denton. Dean Denton is definitely the most entertaining of the three to…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 431: EMRO, LORD OF DIAMONDS
(Mystery Men Comics 016, 1940) As our story opens, huge diamonds are raining down on Earth. Upon contact with a human, they expand to engulf and imprison them. Earth authorities sensibly contact space hero Rex Dexter of Mars who has once again been sidetracked in his seemingly straightforward quest to travel from Earth to his home planet. In a nice change of pace from most Rex Dexter adventures, Rex and his pal Cynde have not stopped due to some mortal…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 430: THE DEVIL
(Mystery Men Comics 007, 1940) I can’t help but love this guy: yes he’s a cheap extortionist who gives himself a scary name to enhance his death threats but he goes to the trouble of dressing up in a devil outfit even while sneaking around so that nobody can see him. And since he’s the antagonist of a Wing Turner story and Wing Turner is a pilot-detective, the Devil is flying around in a fighter plane dressed in little horns…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 429: LORD MARVEL
(Mystery Men Comics 004, 1939) Here we see Lord Marvel, a weird little creep who lives on the planet Ursis (as with many planets in the Rex Dexter comics, Ursis is ambiguously placed: Dexter and his companion/ lover Cynde are constantly sidetracked on the comparatively short voyage from Earth to Mars and always seem to end up on extra-solar planets. The writers of Golden Age sci-fi comics often seem to have a fairly fuzzy grasp of the positions and distances…
MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 428: THE WHITE FACE
(Mystery Men Comics 001, 1939) I have made an error! Two errors! The first was in skipping the Blue Beetle’s very first foe, and it was because of the second, that I had the antagonist in this story marked down as the White Face Gang rather than the White Face, plus his gang. If it was the former, the best their unnamed leader would get was a place in the Generic Costumed Villain Round-Up, but no, he has a special…