(Mystery Men Comics 023, 1941) Our story begins in media res as Lieutenant Drake of Naval Intelligence cleans up the goons of Nazi crypto-fascist (they get real close to calling her a Nazi in this one but she works for the Opatseg instead of the Gestapo, so I guess she’s just another Izan) femme fatale spy named Frau Izan. Izan gets away and is subsequently given an injection by sinister Nazi Izan scientist Doktere von Shnyder that turns her into…
(Mystery Men Comics 022-023, 1941) The Ugly Queen is our first real foray into the heady world of societal beauty standards as motivation for evil (though there’s an element of that sort of thing in Setap’s first appearance and we’ve certainly encountered a fair few characters rejected by society for ugliness and deformity). Her status as a royal is called into question by the end of her appearances but she does cut a powerful figure, with an undersea castle full…
(Mystery Men Comics 023, 1941) I think that Gat Arat’s name doesn’t mean anything, that it’s just a guy with the unusual surname “Arat” and the nickname “Gat”, but it bothers me. I feel like I should be able to extract meaning from it. Is it a reference to 40s popular culture? Is he supposed to look like a rat? No idea. Confusing name or not, it turns out that Gat Arat has taken a lesson from the dearly departed…
(Mystery Men Comics 019, 1941) Miss X is a pretty good example of the Female Guest Star Hero, an infrequent heroic archetype with a clearly identifiable arc: start out mysterious and hypercompetent and become less competent as the hero learns more about them. Our only other example so far is Clock ally the Orchid, but Miss X here is helpfully providing us with a three-issue speedrun of the archetype as illustration: Issue 1, Mystery Men Comics 019: When her sister…
(Mystery Men Comics 022, 1941) Magog clearly has some big plans – he repeatedly sends taunting notes to the police and announces his criminal debut by blowing up a playground full of children – but he is almost immediately baited into the open by a fake newspaper and dies in a struggle with the Blue Beetle so we will never know what they were.
(Mystery Men Comics 020, 1941) Hey kids, it’s Galgo! A seemingly regular gang boss! Just how did he hack the system and end up on this illustrious list of no-name losers? He dressed his men like gorillas for no apparent reason. That, my friends, is the simple life hack that will take your regular villainy (such as stealing a device which reportedly forces criminals to confess) to a super level.
(Mystery Men Comics 019, 1941) I’m not sure what the Sky-Ruler’s deal is. Scratch that – I know what his deal is. He rules the sky. He flies around in a big bomber plane and uses it to drop cars containing his enemies on the streets of New York City (he also tries to throw off the scent of the police by calling these the “Skyscraper Murders” in his notes but I have to imagine that this would only work…
(Tip-Top Comics 054-056, 1940) The Glove here is the head of a gang of international criminals that come to the attention of super-hero brothers the Triple Terror when they make off with a load of radium. Why the radium, you ask? Why, so that the Glove and his pal Mr Mario (good name) could run their death ray cannon. Unfortunately for the Glove he only ever managed to capture 2/3 of the Triple Terror. The final confrontation does reveal the…
(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.
(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…