MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 683: THE MAYFAIR MONSTER

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 683: THE MAYFAIR MONSTER

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(Pep Comics 001, 1940) Inspector Bentley of Scotland Yard is an investigator with the same case profile as the Scooby-Doo Gang: he regularly encounters the supernatural in the course of his job and day-to-day life and just as regularly exposes them as guys in masks and so forth. In this case, Bentley is taking his evening constitutional when he interrupts an honest-to-goodness werewolf attack! He even breaks his signature weapon, his cane on the thing’s head! Taking the victim –…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 033

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 033

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Minor super-heroes, we got ’em. Little Giant:  Professor Rednow has some inventions to test and he has secured an orphan boy named Rusty for that purpose. Rusty is first given a serum that is supposed to turn him into a big hunk of beefcake but instead he becomes a kid with super strength. He then gets an outfit with anti-gravity properties that allow him to leap around like a small Hulk and finally is coated in “impurvogen,” a high-tech chemical…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 682: CLEA

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 682: CLEA

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(OK Comics 001, 1940)  “The Further Adventures of Ulysses” is a feature that posits that Ulysses/ Odysseus, after a gruelling twenty year journey home from Troy to Ithaca, immediately got bored and left again upon hearing a rumour that one of his men had been left behind on the island of the Cyclopes and still lived. This is a fun idea and very in keeping with both the lifestyles of the Greek heroes and a particular 1940s idea of manly…

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REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 007

REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 007

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It’s a bumper crop of real people (and famous fictional ones) showing up in comics! Adolf Hitler: This is very, very tenuous but this adventure story is concerned with a hunt for mythical man-goat lycanthropes known as “weredolfs” and I’ll be danged if I can think of a reason for them to be called that other than as a very oblique jab at Adolf Hitler. (Hyper Mystery Comics 001, 1940) Less tenuous: when Cartho (one of the seemingly limitless number…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 681: BARON HOFF

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 681: BARON HOFF

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(National Comics 006, 1940) Here’s what Baron Hoff brings to the table: 1. Scale. Hoff’s goal in this comic is to rob one (1) bank, and as a distraction from that crime he sets the entire island of Manhattan on fire. 2. Look. Not only does he have a striking face and a killer grin but Baron Hoff has a real flair for villainous fashion. Some might balk at accentuating an aviator’s outfit with a monocle and jodhpurs and big…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 032

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 032

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Just a few more minor super-heroes. Paul Bunyan:  What’s better than a regular two-fisted lumberjack protagonist? Paul Bunyan himself, that’s who. This version of Bunyan works in a modern-day lumber camp and has been toned down a bit with the suggestion that he’s just some guy who was born in Maine and grew to a mere ten feet tall. His adventures aren’t that much different than those of other lumberjack heroes, but there is something about an enormous man with…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 680: MADAMOISELLE MORGUE

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 680: MADAMOISELLE MORGUE

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(National Comics 006, 1940) Madamoiselle Morgue is an interesting case, because technically she does not exist. I mean, technically none of the characters I write about here exist, but even within the fictional world within the story, she is a false person. See, Scar Celleni, big time New York gang boss, has decided that the key to success is to wage all-out war on the police and that the optimal first move in this war is to assassinate prominent police…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 679: THE EXPLOSION OF KRYPTON

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 679: THE EXPLOSION OF KRYPTON

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(Action Comics 001, 1938) Does this first version of the explosion of Krypton really fit the category of minor super-villain? Absolutely not. “The planet got too old and blew up” is a natural disaster, albeit an extreme one. The second appearance of the Explosion of Krypton, in Superman v1 001, 1939, doesn’t even blame the explosion on old age. It just happens. So why categorize it such? Because basically every time it shows up going forward (and it’s going to…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 678: AMNOZO

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 678: AMNOZO

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(National Comics 003, 1940)  Cyclone is an extremely minor Quality Comics future spaceman hero of the year 3000 who, in National Comics 001, participates in a competition between the planets of the solar system to see which one gets to colonize the newly discovered planet Vito. He wins of course, and the remainder of his four appearances are spent dealing with various threats to the new colony, including at least one civilization native to the planet, because colonialism. Do they…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 677: MARS

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 677: MARS

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(National Comics 001, 1940)  Once Jock Kellog decides to turn his back on his playboy ways and put his inherited magic cloak to use as Merlin the Magician, he really goes for it. He hits the battlefields of WWII to aid the beleaguered soldiers of the front and ultimately rises into the realm of the gods to confront Mars, God of War and Destruction himself.  Mars turns out to be a huge jerk bully who is inciting nations to fight…

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