MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 797: JARK AND ZORG

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 797: JARK AND ZORG

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(Target Comics v1 007, 1940) Jark and Zorg, an alien duo of unknown provenance, continue the trend of Spacehawk villains who could broadly be described as space pirates. They also a) have a very hard pair of names to remember without accidentally mixing up some of the letters and b) are possibly the most phallic-looking alien designs that weren’t just ambulatory ding-dongs that I have ever seen. Jark and Zorg’s plan is… not simple, per se, but it doesn’t have…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 796: GREBO

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 796: GREBO

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(Target Comics v1 006, 1940) Grebo is a simple guy, even if he is a Mercurian. He’s on Venus with his pal Gogg hunting a lost stash of Mercurian platinum that was spirited away by the losing side of a long ago war in which Rogg and Grebo’s ancestors were the victors. And heck, that’d be simple treasure hunting if the underwater city that the swag was in were uninhabited, right? Sadly, it turns out that the defeated Mercurians (or…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 795: GROVAK

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 795: GROVAK

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(Target Comics v1 005, 1940)  We meet Grovak the Martian space pirate as he and his crew are about to sacrifice a beautiful human babe in order to capture a portion of the protoplasmic Neptunian Creeping Death. Not only does this highlight Grovak’s ruthlessness but it shows what a bad boss he is – bullying, abusive, refusing to own up to his mistakes – Martian space pirates take note and seek employment elsewhere. Luckily for that never-named young woman, Spacehawk…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 794: THE GHOST OF ROCKY STONE

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 794: THE GHOST OF ROCKY STONE

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(Target Comics v1 005, 1940) If there’s one type of character that the people at Novelty Press liked, it was a young man getting an American-style military education, and Lucky Byrd was one of those very men. A flying cadet at Randolph Field, Texas, Byrd managed to ferret out a variety of espionage and criminal plots as a sideline to his studies, the first of which involved fellow cadet Rocky Stone, a bully turned murderer turned reluctant saboteur who ended…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 793: BIG SHOT

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 793: BIG SHOT

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(Target Comics v1 002, 1940) Big Shot, a New York gang boss with a European spy named Drusella as his companion (a slight speculation as some imprecise speech balloon tails make it hard to be entirely sure just who is talking about what, but the details seem to fit), is after the technological advances that the Skipper has made in Boystate, with an eye toward using them to take over the world. His initial plan – drive up to the…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 792: THE OCTOPUS

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 792: THE OCTOPUS

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(Target Comics v1 003, 1940) I’m going to start out by saying that I have no idea why this story is called “Return of the Octopus!” as this is as far as I can tell both the first and last appearance of the character. Both the title and the Octopus’ costume seem to be dramatic flourishes that don’t really play out in the text of the story. I do really like the Octopus’ costume, though. It’s got a lot of…

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MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 049

MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 049

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Pretty diverse bunch this time. the Lone Rider:  Another masked cowboy hero dispensing justice from the barrel of the gun in the Old Modern West to throw in the pile. The Lone Rider does have the distinction of having been created by Jack Kirby for a very short-lived comic strip and recycled by Eastern Color for comic book content.  Having read through a decent chunk of the Lone Rider’s appearances, I’m pretty sure that Texas never actually put in an…

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GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 021

GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 021

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Another truckload of half-baked mooks for your viewing pleasure. The otherwise-normal gangsters who have gotten ahold of a piece of superscience and are using it for crime are an important part of the super-hero comic ecosystem. Here is a wonderful example of such in the form of a gang who have access to disintegrator ray pistols and are using them like regular guns during a bank robbery. Fantastic stuff. The Invisible Avenger hits them with a train. (Superworld Comics 002,…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 791: CATS ROMELT

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 791: CATS ROMELT

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(Lightning Comics 004, 1940) Though Cats Romelt is the head of a gang of river pirates who organizes a fake warehouse guard union in order to call a general strike and leave the dock warehouses easy pickings, none of this is the reason for his being here. No, it is his sheer bloody-minded commitment to using starved alley cats with poisoned claws as weapons of terror and mass destruction that tipped him over into the category of super-villain. It’s an…

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MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 790: DR HORTON

MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 790: DR HORTON

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(Sure-Fire Comics 003a, 1940) The town of Branton, no state specified, has been struck by a mysterious plague, and X, the Phantom Fed, is suspicious. He infiltrates the quarantine zone around the town in the guise of a doctor and starts investigating the various odd facts of the plague, beginning with 1) the fact that is is being spread by a troop of escaped gorillas that were being used in medical testing and are now apparently just wandering the town…

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