(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 021, 1941) I like Prince Itor because he’s a weenie. Not enough of those in the Golden Age. He’s not even really the focus of this story, which ain’t called “The Idol of Death” for nothing. So: Morrison here owns the titular Idol and is loaning it to the Egyptian Museum, but the transfer process and time was leaked in the papers, which leads to at least half of he story being taken up with a…
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 018-020, 1941) The Cat’s Paw gets a pretty classic intro: Dr Lin, the Angel’s old mentor and friend who was introduced in the previous issue, is ruthlessly murdered via high-speed application of poisoned dart. The Angel give chase, but fails to make the bust. The next day we see some of the Cat’s Paw’s scheme begin to emerge. She’s killing industrialists for some reason. But why? Here’s our first look at the villain in question, because…
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020, 1941) We open on a fear-gripped Star City (not the one you’re thinking of), in which ten people have been killed and drained of their blood. VAMPIRE! KILLER! An eleventh soon joins their ranks, and we get a look at the Vampire Killer in his cool as hell Shadow cosplay. VAMPIRE! KILLER! INTO! FASHION! But it seems all is not as we thought! Extradimensional smoke-man the Vision, exercising the oft-overlooked super-hero skill of Research, discovers…
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020, 1941) It’s a bit marginal, but this is a boxing match between Namor the Sub-Mariner and Killer Casey, the Heavyweight Champion of (the US/ the World). Was it for the title? Who knows, but Namor won.
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020, 1941) This here is the Masked Chief, at least according to the caption boxes (welcome to the unofficial name club, fella), a fairly standard masked gang boss enhanced by several factors of variable wildness. First and least: he is yet another in the long line of Human Torch foes who choose to use arson as their modus operandi. Sure he’s not specifically challenging the Torch, but he must know that he’s employed by the city, right? The…
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 019, 1941) There’s a bit in the introductions to the Top 10 anthologies in which Neopolis mayor John Q. Public lays out the exponential propagation of super-heroes, -villains, -pets, -monsters and so forth that takes place in a comic universe that I think of often as I read through these old adventures. Heroes inspire sidekicks and imitators; their enemies build robots and create doppelgangers to counter them, etc, until you have superhumans everywhere. There’s one thing that isn’t…
(Marvel Mystery Comics 019, 1941) I think this giant man has the Limbos MO covered: cause earthquakes via lava manipulation, then attack. The real great thing about the Limbos, however, is the lower body. Give me this style of lizard-man any day. The poisoned bit is icing on the cake, really.
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 019, 1941) I don’t have to go into how wild it is that this woman is called a Hag, right? The wild misogyny of it all? Great, thanks. Aside from her name, the Hag is a gang boss, and one who dreams big. Her plan involves causing a citywide power outage in NYC so that her men could tamper with the Stock Exchange and then clean up the next day while everyone panics about a nonexistent…
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 018, 1941) The Brain is your classic nerd gang boss, of the common subvariety that are almost clever enough to succeed but get in their own way. His core plan this ish is solid as far as supercrime goes: rob an Army payroll and frame the Human Torch for it via the use of what is essentially one of those suits that stuntmen wear in order to set themselves on fire (which as an aside kind…
(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 017, 1941) Mor the Mighty is part of one of my favourite types of super-villain: the magic user who has mastered a couple of spells and intends to see just how far they can get with them. In this case, our friend here seems to be limited to enlarging animals and conjuring stacks of explosives – though he might be juicing the stats of the animals a bit, too. That’s not bad for a guy with…