MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 272: KARL SCHWAB

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 272: KARL SCHWAB

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(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 016, 1941) Karl Schwab is part of a long tradition of villains who spend years and years meticulously preparing for their big moment, only for it to come crashing down the second that a super-hero, adventurer or plucky kid with a pet monkey gets involved. Usually this involves lurking in an old castle or cemetery lair while tinkering or planning or brewing or growing homunculi but Karl actually managed to get caught already, somewhere around 1931,…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 271: PRINCE OMEI

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 271: PRINCE OMEI

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(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 016, 1941) This guy’s a real ding-dong, and I was sorely tempted to just pass him by. I couldn’t in good conscience not mention a guy who not only hypnotizes Professor Zog and (by proxy) Electro as his minions and does so while wearing both an eye patch and a monocle. PLUS he’s one of my favourite types of villains: a complete failure. Literally all he does after acquiring his new giant robot/ robot operator team is…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 270: DR LORROF

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 270: DR LORROF

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(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 015, 1941) Dr Lorrof is your true mad scientist’s mad scientist. He’s all worked up about being “cast out of science,” and he’s not going to take that lying down. To the contrary, he’s going to go way overboard and try to destroy Titan City with a blob that he made out of crabs. Plus, not only does he refer to himself in the third person but he does so while attempting to steal a radium…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 269: THE BRAIN OF PROFESSOR DONAIRE

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 269: THE BRAIN OF PROFESSOR DONAIRE

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(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 015, 1941)  I must admit that I was predisposed to give Professor Donaire the benefit of the doubt, given that where I’m from a donair is a delicious late night drunken street food. But he didn’t need it! Even with a non-snack-based name, Prof. Donaire would be a terrific villain. Having said that: Prof. Donaire is a real dummy. He suffers from exactly the same failure of imagination as our old pal Python: that nobody would…

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NOTES – MAY 2023

NOTES – MAY 2023

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Folk: Luther Robinson and Lynne Harris! These folks are hard to categorize! They’re not villains, despite being antagonists to Namor the Sub-Mariner, because Namor is very much a villain at least half of the time. They’re not heroes, despite eventually allying with Namor to fight Nazis, because they definitely attempt to commit at least one genocide against the people of Atlantis.  They’re adventurers, they’ve both been surgically modified by Atlantean scientists to be amphibious, and Lynne is one of a…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 268: GNORR

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 268: GNORR

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(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 013, 1940)   The history of spaceflight is of course very different in a super-hero universe. For example, Empress Nara of Ligra, featured in a previous post about Professor Zog being knighted, was actually an Earth-woman who arrived on Ligra as an infant because her father invented an interstellar spacecraft sometime around 1920 or so. This it is practically unremarkable that Professor Zog was invited on a trip to the Moon in 1940 by Dr Simon…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 267: THE SHARK

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 267: THE SHARK

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(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 012) The Shark is a submarine pirate, a thing that is fairly common in comic books and as far as I can tell has never actually happened in real life. He’s a bit more ambitious than most such guys, and at the beginning of this particular story is trying parlay a successful streak of piracy into a general toll on shipping. He’s also a pretty snappy dresser. The US, of course, does not take an extortion…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 266: DR BRUNO VAROZ

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 266: DR BRUNO VAROZ

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(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 010, 1940)  I like this guy. This guy is the fun kind of mad scientist with a lot of fun details. First of all he lives in a castle roughly the same size as the island it sits on, off the coast of Cuba. Secondly, he follows the rules of Mad Scientist Grooming, which state that they must either be impeccably groomed or, as with Dr Varoz here, look like they woke up in a compost…

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CREEPS OF THE WORLD: GHOULS

CREEPS OF THE WORLD: GHOULS

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(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 010, 1940) If there’s one thing you can say about just about any given super-hero universe it’s that any given cave, canyon or unguarded parking lot will have its own little group of creeps who lurk in it and are just spoiling for a chance to get up to mischief. Our inaugural creeps are the Ghouls! Hailing from volcanic caverns beneath the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ghouls just love to gather up hot ladies for volcanic sacrifice….

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HONOURS – PROFESSOR ZOG

HONOURS – PROFESSOR ZOG

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(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 009, 1940)  Professor Zog is made an Honorary Knight of Ligra for his services in the war between the Lion-People and the Dragon-Men. If the Lion-Person in the background looks a bit disgruntled it is perhaps because Zog was originally coerced into fighting on the Dragon-Men’s side and really did a number on the Lion-People’s army before getting free. This is possibly why he only gets to be an honorary knight.