(Daring Mystery Comics 005, 1940) There’s a great temptation when dealing with an evil scientist named Dork to focus on easy, puerile humour rather than appreciating the other things that make him a good super-villain. I had a whole bit about how his big plan was to flood the city with white goo (hur hur) and kidnap women to experiment on their bodies but it wasn’t sustainable. Ironically, I would have had to jump through more hoops to obliquely reference…
(Daring Mystery Comics 001, 004, 1940) The most interesting thing about Mr Muro is that he represents an intermediate stage in the development of the comic book Yellow Peril villain, away from the gaudy Fu Manchu style of the pulps and the comics of the 30s. There are a few of these more workaday Asian Threat villains kicking around in 1940/ 41 but they eventually lose out to the super-agents of the Japanese Empire as the preeminent example of…
(Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1940) The Vampire has the distinction of appearing in the only Golden Age featuring Mister E, possibly the biggest nonentity in the collection of heroes brought back in The Twelve. He’s whatever: he has a drug that makes your heart explode and his major plot involves trying to get control of an oil company (and marry a woman against her will after killing her father, in case you though he might be a bit sympathetic). He…
(Daring Mystery Comics 002, 1940) There’s a lot of people on the internet who like to opine on the morality of bat-themed rich-guy vigilantism, but I gotta tell you that it could have been a whole lot worse. Case in point, the Phantom Bullet, a rich guy who gets ahold of an untraceable ice pellet gun and immediately thinks “what this city needs is a whole lot more extra-judicial killings.” But instead of becoming an unstoppable media juggernaut, the Phantom…
(Daring Mystery Comics 001, 1940) The Zombie Master has layers. Top level is deeds: he is a scientist who kidnaps people on the fringes of society and uses a combination of hypnosis and radiation to turn them into bright green mind controlled thralls – fairly standard stuff for a mad scientist. Next though, is his origin: he felt rejected by society because of his great height – something like 20 feet tall, according to some sources – and so moved…
Another “renegade white“: (Jumbo Comics 034, 1941)
(Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942) A fairly undistinguished costumed gang boss, the Red Terror has three things going for him: 1. he gets around in a very cool rocket-powered dirigible 2. he is the only super-villain to face Golden Age underachiever the Human Top 3. he really goes above and beyond in his attempt to rid himself of the Top, hitting him with, in quick succession: mountain lions, flame throwers, an avalanche and a bursting dam. That’s the kind of…
(Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942) Dr Klutch is your basic criminal scientist. His major distinction is that he got beat up by the Tough Kid Squad in their only recorded outing, but there are a couple of other points worthy of discussion here. The first is that we have a clear timeline for this guy. Many, many super-villains are clearly operating at a level that would require years of work to establish or have a lengthy if nebulous criminal record,…
(Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942) I occasionally opine about the relative obscurity of one super-hero or another and it’s tricky to judge such a thing objectively, especially when it’s about a suite of characters who are all 100% unknown to the world at large. Despite this I am confident in my assertion that the Tough Kid Squad are the most obscure Marvel characters ever to receive their own title, even if it did only last one issue. The Tough Kid…
Conundrum: Golden Age fighter pilot characters are essentially a very minor subset of super-heroes, and they are also very boring to me. I feel a compulsion to write something about them and also to slump sideways in my seat when contemplating their existence. Solution: since the only really interesting thing about them is their cool names, I will list those. the Flying Flame (Daring Mystery Comics 006, 1940) the Flying Fox (More Fun Comics 037, 1938) the Hell Diver (Hit…