(Keen Detective Funnies v2 019-020, 1940) Love a number name, particularly one so precise as the One Thousand and One. It’s tied to the number of criminals in their employ, but does it go up and down as they gain or lose members? Is the One a very harried HR guy frantically filling positions as they are vacated? Is it just a nice-sounding number and the actual staffing is a bit more loose? These are the important questions. It’s a…
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 011, 1939) The Fiend is a mad scientist/ musician who has developed a supercharged organ capable of destroying structures such as the Brooklyn Bridge. And he does so, ostensibly as a showcase of his power in aid of his conquest of the world but possibly just as a whim – he’s your classic erratic comic book madman. G-Man Dan Dennis tracks him down with relative ease and the threat of the Fiend is ended forever. OR…
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 008, 1939) There’s no bones about it: the Hawk looks like a guy who has a pretty extensive model train setup down in the basement. And he may just! But he’s also a master thief who stashes his loot inside an active Mexican volcano. But the volcano has a tram running up the side, so perhaps his inner train enthusiast is expressing itself in different ways. As always: you live by the volcano lair; you die…
(Keen Detective Funnies v2 002, 1939) Another day, another guy named the Master. This Master is escaped lunatic Pierre Lacroix, leader of the Hooded Cult and would-be world conqueror. Lacroix maintains the loyalty of his cult via drug addiction and has a castle HQ. This is all penny-ante stuff. The most important thing about the Master is his shirt. It’s like, a sweatshirt with attached cowl? Obviously other villains have been doing similar things with robes for years at this…
(Jumbo Comics 020, 1940) What a cool-looking villain! Suit and cape combo? Blood-red eyes? Great stuff. He’s got a cool mask and a wavy dagger and he goes on an enormous spree killing in NYC while Our Hero Inspector Dayton tries to figure out just how he’s going to stop the Red-Eyed Killer. But they spend too much time in the setup! Dayton stumbles into a doctor’s office on the last page and the resolution happens in an instant –…
(Jumbo Comics 003-005, 1938-1939) The Hooded Archer is included here as a curiosity. He gets an enormous buildup! He’s going to teach the entire movie company that is shooting on hero Wiley Wilton’s ranch the meaning of terror! Here is the meaning of terror. Terror is when: – someone aims but does not fire an arrow at a man (jackass actor Geoffrey Parker) – they then shoot a distinctive arrow at another man (Wiley Wilton) – a bandit (Henry Fleetfoot)…
They may not be the top of the class, but they did their time in the evil sciences! Dr Eric Karlin has a lot of moxie on paper: a Nazi psychologist with a sideline in Egyptology, he dissolves the enemies of the Reich in acid and keeps their jellied remains in a series of jars in his basement. He also employs mind controlled pseudo-zombies in a scheme to recover frozen Nazi assets from a bank vault. The problem is that…
(Funny Picture Stories v2 001-003, 1937) I think I recently mentioned the dreamlike quality of some Golden Age comics. This is one of them, and only partially because the villain operates out of some sort of pocket dimension in the collective human subconscious. Psyk is a would-be world conqueror with three really good tricks in his arsenal: travel between Earth and the aforementioned Realm of the Subconscious, the ability to raise the dead and mental domination of both the raised…
(Funny Picture Stories v1 003, 1936) These guys are a bunch of dipshits, but they’re kind of lovable. They kidnap reporter Red Dolan to keep him from exposing their murder operation and basically give him a guided tour of exactly how to own them. Look, here’s some tear gas! Now we’ll all go into a different room while you overpower your guard. Buncha goofs.
Fascist, Smascist The Volunteers for Peace are another group that advocates for the US not to get involved in WWII as shorthand for them being full-on fascist fifth columnists setting the country up for an invasion by the evocatively-named Nation X. Don’t worry, not even Golden Age Superman has any trouble beating down a bunch of pseudo-Nazis (Action Comics 036, 1941) Another batch of Yellow Shirts, this time with a space! This bunch are some more bundists and they have…