(Feature Comics 028, 1940)
As far as a guy who attaches bombs to rats in order to sink and subsequently loot ships goes, Dr Rodent has it all: a great name, a rodentlike cast to his features, and, best of all, his heroic foil is Doll Man so we get to see a little guy ride around on a rat:
This is the kind of thing that comics are for!
(Detective Comics 046, 1940)
Love this guy. The head of a gang of smugglers who looks like a goldfish and is sensitive about it and tortures his foes by imprisoning them in a huge goldfish bowl where they have to stand for days or drown and the only thing to eat is what raw goldfish they can catch and they eventually go mad? Terrific.
All that but it’s actually a mask and the Goldfish is actually a frustrated former actor? So much better.
UPDATE: In a rare callback, a remnant of the Goldfish’s gang is the antagonist of the ‘Spy’ story in Detective Comics 048. Neat!
(Detective Comics 043, 1940)
A skull-faced propagandist operating out of the Belgian Congo, presumably Nazi but it’s pre-Pearl Harbor so he works for a “hostile power” or “the dictatorships” etc.
The really intriguing thing about the Skull is his choice of themes – rather than go with an obvious skeleton motif like your average skull-faced goon would do, he instead opted for a Medieval theme, complete with sword-wielding henchmen and a jungle castle. I would praise him for making good and interesting choices but he’s probably a Nazi, so never mind.
RETROACTIVE ADDENDUM: got a lot of guys named the Skull coming up so I’m going to start scoring them on how appropriate their nom de crime is. This guy is obviously SKULL SCORE: 5/5
UNPRECIDENTED SECOND ADDENDUM: I messed up! this guy is pro war but he’s just a munitions profiteer! Sorry, skull-headed creep!
(Detective Comics 042, 1940)
The Painter of Death (never actually called that in-comic, sadly) engaged in a campaign against the subjects of paintings by up-and-coming portraitist Antal. He first attacked the painting of the person and then killed them in the same manner: via dart, arrow, gunshot etc. Eventually, Bruce “Batman” Wayne commissioned a painting from Antal and used it to set a trap which netted Wylie, an art collector who had invested heavily in Antal’s work and saw the murders as a way to raise the value of his investment via morbid publicity.
Though Wylie bumped himself off at the end of the adventure, the bullet-riddled Antal portrait of Bruce Wayne sticks around to become one of the minor stock trophies in the Batcave. The Painter of Death or Prophetic Portraits Case is also mentioned a couple of times as Batman and Robin’s “first big case” and the reason for their fame. Does this reflect some attitude of the creators about the story itself or is it just a plot contrivance? I have no idea!
(Detective Comics 042, 1940)
The Painter of Death (never actually called that in-comic, sadly) engaged in a campaign against the subjects of paintings by up-and-coming portraitist Antal. He first attacked the painting of the person and then killed them in the same manner: via dart, arrow, gunshot etc. Eventually, Bruce “Batman” Wayne commissioned a painting from Antal and used it to set a trap which netted Wylie, an art collector who had invested heavily in Antal’s work and saw the murders as a way to raise the value of his investment via morbid publicity.
Though Wylie bumped himself off at the end of the adventure, the bullet-riddled Antal portrait of Bruce Wayne sticks around to become one of the minor stock trophies in the Batcave. The Painter of Death or Prophetic Portraits Case is also mentioned a couple of times as Batman and Robin’s “first big case” and the reason for their fame. Does this reflect some attitude of the creators about the story itself or is it just a plot contrivance? I have no idea!
(Detective Comics 041, 1940)
A common or garden-variety masked counterfeiter, the Masked Man operated out of an all-boys’ school, leading to him being the first solo foe of an undercover Dick “Robin” Grayson. Mostly. Batman shows up at the end for a punch or two.
(Amazing-Man Comics 005-026, 1939-1942)
All the ephemeral Golden Age heroes who stalked the pages of Amazing-Man Comics:
The Iron Skull! I love him. His origin and so forth is doled out after a few issues so initially you don’t know that he is a cyborg war casualty in the far future world of 1970. The most important things are there from the start, though: his huge anime eyes and the fact that every bullet or attack made against him unerringly hit him in his invulnerable head.
SKULL SCORE: 2/5 Not very skully but he gets a point for the lack of nose.
Minimidget: Just a super-small guy with a problematic name. He and his galpal Ritty were shrunk and employed as henchmen by a pervert scientist before redeeming themselves via acts of public service.
Chuck Hardy: Chuck and Jerry, a couple of deep sea divers, end up in the subterranean land of Aquatania, beneath the Marquesas Islands. They turn out to be super-strong there for murkily-explained reasons and have adventures with the monstrous flora and fauna and the various near-human races. The best part is absolutely the little lobster antennae that all of the various types of Aquatanians have.
Mighty Man is a huge dude who is the last descendant of folk who settled in a valley where everything is huge. After murdering a bunch of evil cowboys, he emerges from his valley to fight crime. Eventually he gets the power to change size.
The Shark! A water-based hero who can talk to sea life and must hit the water regularly, which is about standard for water guys!
ADDENDUM: Later on he meets his father Neptune and his adventures turn into father/son outings, which rules.
Magician from Mars: Not only is Jane 6em35 an Earthian/Martian hybrid from an unspecified future, and not only was she accidentally irradiated as a baby in a way that activated a lot of vague superpowers (including flight, super-strength and a seemingly complete control over matter) but she is a practical and morally flexible hero who takes advantage of the chaos surrounding a rocket crash to make off with $3 million in gold before saving the day. Very fun. Plus: jodhpurs!
The Cat Man: a very marginal entry on this list. In his first appearance, he develops his signature technique of dressing like an old lady and having his trained cat scratch people with poisoned claws to murder three former criminal confederates, which isn’t particularly heroic? His second appearance is in more of a vigilante role as he murders a gang of wanted men. How could I not include this loveable murderous scamp, really?
(Amazing-Man Comics 005-026, 1939-1942, plus various other Centaur books)
Amazing-Man is not particularly obscure: he was supposedly the inspiration for both Iron Fist and Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt and eventually ended up dropped whole cloth into both one of the Malibu universes and the Marvel Universe (which, yes, means he’s technically in the Marvel Universe twice but if Malibu comics ever comes back in any substantial way I will make and consume an edible hat).
The thing I always focused on in descriptions of Amazing-Man’s origin were the tests he took to prove that his training was complete. Test 1, put on by underutilized character the Strongest Man in Tibet: hold back an elephant.
Test 2 is set by the Great Question, a member of the Amazing-Man Training Committee who also happens to be a super-villain, surprising few: fight a cobra without the use of your limbs. This is the one that made the cover, and with good reason – he really chomps that snake good!
It’s unclear whether Lady Zina is on the selection committee or if they just have a knife-thrower on retainer, but “has a knife thrown through his neck” is definitely the thing about Amazing-Man that stuck with me from my many readings of Jeff Rovin’s Encyclopedia of Superheroes back in the day. That it’s actually a test of his resistance to pain diminishes the weirdness of it only a little.
Test 4 is just languages and trivia, bit of an anticlimax.
BUT! Amazing-Man is a genuinely fun comic and I found myself actually reading the text story starring him in the first issue, AND GLAD I AM THAT I DID – it details the test of his musical abilities, and how the final part of the test was to sing a powerful song perfectly. How was that perfection measured? A man strapped to some sort of music-powered death chair nearby died. It is possible that more than one super-villain was on Amazing-Man’s training committee.
I have not yet read all of Amazing-Man Comics so there may be more tests to be revealed – watch this space!
UPDATE: No further trials from his initial time before the Council of Seven have surfaced but check out this, from a secondary trial about a year later:
Purification by fire: a classic (Amazing-Man 011, 1940)
(Amazing-Man Comics 005-026, 1939-1942, plus various other Centaur books)
Amazing-Man is not particularly obscure: he was supposedly the inspiration for both Iron Fist and Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt and eventually ended up dropped whole cloth into both one of the Malibu universes and the Marvel Universe (which, yes, means he’s technically in the Marvel Universe twice but if Malibu comics ever comes back in any substantial way I will make and consume an edible hat).
The thing I always focused on in descriptions of Amazing-Man’s origin were the tests he took to prove that his training was complete. Test 1, put on by underutilized character the Strongest Man in Tibet: hold back an elephant.
Test 2 is set by the Great Question, a member of the Amazing-Man Training Committee who also happens to be a super-villain, surprising few: fight a cobra without the use of your limbs. This is the one that made the cover, and with good reason – he really chomps that snake good!
It’s unclear whether Lady Zina is on the selection committee or if they just have a knife-thrower on retainer, but “has a knife thrown through his neck” is definitely the thing about Amazing-Man that stuck with me from my many readings of Jeff Rovin’s Encyclopedia of Superheroes back in the day. That it’s actually a test of his resistance to pain diminishes the weirdness of it only a little.
Test 4 is just languages and trivia, bit of an anticlimax.
BUT! Amazing-Man is a genuinely fun comic and I found myself actually reading the text story starring him in the first issue, AND GLAD I AM THAT I DID – it details the test of his musical abilities, and how the final part of the test was to sing a powerful song perfectly. How was that perfection measured? A man strapped to some sort of music-powered death chair nearby died. It is possible that more than one super-villain was on Amazing-Man’s training committee.
I have not yet read all of Amazing-Man Comics so there may be more tests to be revealed – watch this space!
UPDATE: No further trials from his initial time before the Council of Seven have surfaced but check out this, from a secondary trial about a year later:
Purification by fire: a classic (Amazing-Man 011, 1940)
(All-New Comics 009, 1944)
A series of facts:
-one of the things that Kirby was the King of was kid gang comics.
-Kirby often included in his work characters who were some degree of inspired by him: Brooklyn, Scrapper, the Thing, Terrible Turpin, etc. For the purposes of this bit we shall call them kirbies.
-the Boy Heroes, pictured above, are easily spotted as a knockoff of a Kirby kid gang, down to a attempt to mimic his art style, and Punchy, driving the motorcycle, is unmistakably a knockoff kirby.
Going forward, we shall keep watch for further knockoff kirbies. Stay tuned.