{"id":1363,"date":"2025-08-04T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=1363"},"modified":"2026-09-27T16:16:49","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T19:16:49","slug":"minor-super-villain-833-the-master","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=1363","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 833: THE MASTER"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940) <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The Mosconians, stand-ins for Nazi-allied Russia (or possibly just Russian-flavoured stand-ins for Nazi Germany) have a lot more stick-to-itiveness than your typical gang of foreign espionage agents, to the extent that they manage to not only bedevil the Wizard for three whole issues but also the Shield over in Pep Comics<\/i>, leading to what is touted as the first super-hero crossover in comics (as previously seen here<\/a>). The Master is the shadowy figure behind the Mosconian schemes and as seen above he even managed to kidnap the Wizard’s brother Grover! A decent showing for a crypto-fascist, considering how ephemeral they usually are.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The actual crossover-precipitating plan is an attempt to blow up the military academies at Annapolis and West Point, thus shutting off the supply of officers to the US armed forces and incidentally killing off a portion of the country’s political officials as they attend a ceremony at the latter. The actual crossovers between the Wizard and the two students is fairly ships-in-the-night – he basically waves at them as he leaves to beat up Mosconians at a second location.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The Mosconians and their Master return in Top-Notch Comics<\/i> 006 with an attempt to blow up Boulder Dam*, which is one of those plots that would be pretty horrifying in real life but is not so exciting or unusual in a comic book. This is also the point at which the Mosconians start to get really German.<\/p>\n

*Hoover Dam, which I just learned was in a state of naming limbo for years<\/i> and only officially became Hoover in 1947! <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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The Mosconians next plot, in Top-Notch Comics <\/i>007, involves an attack on the Golden Gate Bridge. The Wizard manages to track them down to their staging area in British Columbia, where the Master is finally unmasked and revealed to be the Mosconian ambassador to the United States (not much of a surprise). This is also the point at which the Wizard is chemically blinded, leading him to change his costume to a more standard super-heroic one with no noticeably different eye protection. So attired, he rounds up the plotter in San Francisco with the aid of the Shield.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Top-Notch Comics 005, 1940)  The Mosconians, stand-ins for Nazi-allied Russia (or possibly just Russian-flavoured stand-ins for Nazi Germany) have a lot more stick-to-itiveness than your typical gang of foreign espionage agents, to the extent that they manage to not only bedevil the Wizard for three whole issues but also the Shield over in Pep Comics, leading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,156,229,1040,1216,23,48,254,345,401,7,1217,276],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","category-crypto-fascist","category-espionage","category-master","category-midshipman","category-minor-super-villain","category-mlj","category-monocle","category-saboteur","category-shield","category-the","category-west-pointer","category-wizard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1366,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions\/1366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}