(All-Star Comics 002, 1940) What makes them a super-villain? He’s a money-mad maniac who murdered his own brother to steal a radiation-orb called the Life-Taker, which he uses to rob by the simple act of lobbing it into an area and waiting until it has killed any resistance. He also has a pretty great look, achieved via a crust of a sulphur/lead compound which shields him from his own orb’s radiations. What he doesn’t really have is a name, so I…
(All-Star Comics 002, 1940) Kulak is the High Priest of Brztal, which is originally implied to be an ancient lost civilization but I believe is later defined as extra-dimensional in some way. His deal is ostensibly that he is upset that his tomb was disturbed so he is going to destroy humanity, but I don’t know that he wasn’t just looking for an excuse to flex his magical muscles. He gets up to a lot of fun stuff with disasters…
(All-Star Comics 002, 1940) Nyola is an Aztec priestess of Yum-Chac, the god of rain. As you might expect, the indigenous religions of the Americas are treated with utmost dignity and she is not portrayed as a fanatic who, for example, would kidnap a woman for human sacrifice based on tangential offense done to her faith. Also, Hawkman doesn’t then follow her back to Mexico and bring the might of the authorities down on an indigenous religious group that is,…
(All-Star Comics 001, 1940) 100% included here because I enjoy his name. A Vaudeville memory expert turned spy, captured by minor Golden Age adventure guy Biff Bronson.
(All-Star Comics 001, 1940) A couple of magic users, Beldame Gaffy (curse-caster) and Trygg (necromancer) team up to steal the lands that rightfully belong to Trygg’s niece and nephew so that he could get rich via a zombie-staffed mining operation. Things go well until Hawkman shows up to explode them to death. Also, these are the first (only?) Welsh super-villains we have (will ever?) encountered! Ordinarily in a two-person set-up like this I would designate one as the boss and…
(All American 029, 1941) A simple first costumed foe for Dr Mid-Nite: a mine owner founds his own secret society in order to control public opinion about such things as unionization and also to have a ready-made lynch mob if needed. Really appreciate how on-theme the Cobra Kingdom – wearing a version of King Cobra’s own costume, natch – were at all times, down to referring to their enemies as “mongoose.” It wasn’t a big shock that they almost killed…
(All American 028, 1941) Just a weird little creep with a drug that can mind control someone and then kill them. The Spider hits on a scheme where he is paid by ne’er-do-wells to have their rich relatives write them back into their wills and then mysteriously keel over – and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for Green Lantern and his pesky pals.
(All American Comics 025, 1941) A masked man running a gang of saboteurs to ruin production of war goods as a US steel plant in the name of a vague Cause – at this time most likely fascism – is pretty run-of-the-mill for 1941, but it turns out that the Leader’s real scheme is to drive down the steel mill’s stock price so that he can gain a controlling interest and make big bucks! He’s just duping the fascists-or-maybe-anarchists-or-communists into doing…
(Adventure 069, 1941) An early example of quite a few villain tropes, the Red Dragon is a guy who turns to evil because he was rejected by society due to his deformed face (1). He then decides to set himself up in opposition to the heroic Shining Knight, choosing to become the Red Dragon – less dramatic than a Bizarro-style evil opposite situation but still an evil opposite situation (2). After his first (unsuccessful) foray into crime, he is recruited…
(Adventure 068, 1941) An orchestra conductor who goes off the deep end when he gets fired. Not a terribly deep concept, but he kills his replacements with an electrified conductor’s baton trap and he leaves comedy and tragedy mask symbols to show his involvement so there’s a lot for me, a themed crime enthusiast, to enjoy.