{"id":2407,"date":"2023-11-12T09:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-12T13:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=2407"},"modified":"2026-09-27T17:03:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T20:03:42","slug":"minor-super-villain-371-the-blitz-gang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=2407","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 371: THE BLITZ GANG"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Minute-Man 002, 1941)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

AKA the Blitz Force AKA the Panzer Gang.<\/p>\n

I almost started out by saying that the idea of a criminal gang operating along military lines was an old one but no, it isn’t yet. It’s not a new idea – there might be half a dozen examples in this list so far and I’m sure it cropped up more than once in the pulps – but it’s not quite the mid-tier trope that it eventually will be.<\/p>\n

This time<\/i>, the idea for a criminal army is inspired by US pre-war military training program crime czar Boss Donker and his don’t-say-he’s-a-Nazi pal Baron Marz have hatched a scheme that takes advantage of the readily-available supply of Army-trained men: arm them and loot cities wholesale (with an optional attempt to conquer the US for “the Fatherland,” wherever that is.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

And of course it all goes swimmingly until Minute-man shows up.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The best part of the story by far is this bit here. Baron Marz has seemingly killed Minute-Man with a falling block of stone and Slippy, the only former gangster army recruit who doesn’t want to return to a life of crime, is about to take up the mantle in his honour. It’s actually kind of too bad that Minute-Man wasn’t <\/i>actually dead, because having the identity change hands this way might have given him an interesting hook at last – maybe it could have been a series about person after person taking on th role of Minute-Man as needed and as the previous one falls instead of about a third-rate Captain America knockoff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Minute-Man 002, 1941) AKA the Blitz Force AKA the Panzer Gang. I almost started out by saying that the idea of a criminal gang operating along military lines was an old one but no, it isn’t yet. It’s not a new idea – there might be half a dozen examples in this list so far […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,339,1647,46,913,156,175,359,13,23,372,665,129,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-14","category-bandit","category-blitz-gang","category-conquest","category-criminal-army","category-crypto-fascist","category-fawcett-comics","category-great-folk","category-group","category-minor-super-villain","category-minute-man","category-ripped-from-the-headlines","category-spy","category-the"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2407","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=2407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2409,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2407\/revisions\/2409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}