THE LEGION OF REGRETTABLEREGRETTABLE VIVI AI AINSNS
Legion of Ridiculous Super Villains_Sample_MRM_Alt.indd 1 3/7/16 10:06 AM iNTRODUCTiON 8 Part 1: The Golden Age Babyface and Brother 12 The Jingler 78 The Balloon Maker 16 King Killer 80 The Black Hand 18 Lepus The Fiend 84 Black Tarantula 20 Mad Architect 86 Bloor 24 Mother Goose 88 Brickbat 28 Mr. Hydro 90 Bull’s Eye 30 Mr. Meek 92 Captain Black Bunny 32 Mr. Night 94 The Clown 34 Mr. Pointer 96 Colossus A.D. 2640 36 Mr. Skeleton 100 The Crime Merchant 38 The Murder Marionettes 102 The Crane 40 The Piper 104 The Crow 42 The Puzzler 106 The Dark Archer 44 Reefer King 110 The Death Battalion 48 Robbing Hood 112 The Dictator 52 Sadly Sadly 114 evil inventory: Satan 116 Those Nasty Nazis 54 Satanas 118 Doctor Dracula 58 Skir 120 Dr. Voodoo 60 Sniffer 122 The Dude 62 Splinter 124 Falstaff 66 Spider-Man 126 Fang 68 The Vaquero 128 The Hawk 70 Veda 130 He-She 72 The Were-Wolf 134 The Horrible Hand 76 Zor the Caveman 136
Legion of Ridiculous Super Villains_Sample_MRM_Alt.indd 2-3 3/7/16 10:06 AM Part 2: The SILVER Age Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man 138 Mirror Man 174 Atom-Jaw 140 Mod Gorilla Boss 176 Batroc the Leaper 144 evil inventory: The Big Gang 146 Sinister Simians 178 Cat Girl 148 M.O.D.O.K. 180 The Criminal League of Time 150 Oggar 182 The Crimson Raider 152 Our Man 184 Destiny 156 Phantasmon 186 Doctor Cessepoole 158 Praying Mantis Man 188 Egg Fu 160 Round Robin 190 Elasto 162 The Scarlet Beetle 192 Generalissimo Brainstorm 164 Sinistro, Boy Fiend 194 Gore the Man-Ape 166 Stilt-Man 196 The Human Flying Fish 168 Tino the Terrible Teen 198 The Jailer 170 The Top 200 Lord Lazee 172 Uglyman 202
Part 3: The MODERn Age Angar the Screamer 208 Hurdy-Gurdy Man 234 Badman 210 Mr. Fish 236 Black Talon 212 evil inventory: Captain Law 214 Beast-named Bad Guys 236 The Death-Throws 216 The Ninety-Nine 240 The Desert Dwellers 218 Powerhouses 242 Doctor Bong 220 The Roach Wranglers 244 Doctor Mechman 222 Smokescreens 246 Doomstalker 224 Snowflames 248 The Generic Man 226 Starfires 250 Ghetto Blaster 228 Swarms 252 Golden Fuhrer 230 Turner D. Centurys 254 The Headmen 232 Uzzi the Clowns 256
Legion of Ridiculous Super Villains_Sample_MRM_Alt.indd 4-5 3/7/16 10:06 AM PART 1 GOLDEN AGE 1938–1949
WHEN SUPERMAN DEBUTED IN 1938, A hallmark of the Golden Age of comics is he launched the industry of comic book super the limitless sense of invention. The entire genre heroes. His colorful foes came a little later. was shiny, new, and devoid of established rules. Originally, his opponents were limited to corrupt This was a rich playground for imaginative politicians, oligarch industrialists, penny-ante authors and artists who were required by gangsters, and the occasional force of nature. editors to produce limitless grist for the comic- His immediate imitators followed suit, and reading mill. superhero comics began their existence as an Vile ventriloquists’ dummies, brutish space increasingly one-sided battle for justice. invaders, diabolical demagogues, disembodied But by 1939 the Man of Steel was match hands, avenging opera stars, femmes fatales, ing wits with the insidious Ultra-Humanite and murder-happy menaces populated every and a modest coterie of sinister scientists. inch of newsprint’s four-color fantasies. Even Meanwhile, his caped and crusading buddy wilder opponents waited in the wings, as comics Batman debuted in his own title, confronting creators strove to outdo one another with weird a homicidal harlequin called the Joker. Within variations on the villainous theme. a year, supervillains were as common to comics It was an era when anything was possible . . . as the heroes they battled. except the triumph of evil over good.
note: Not everyone agrees on the exact limits of these comicbook dom epochs, but the debut of Superman is generally considered the big bang of superhero comics. 7
Legion of Ridiculous Super Villains_Sample_MRM_Alt.indd 6-7 3/7/16 10:06 AM BRiCKBAT “ You’re ruined and too old to recoup your fortunes—you’re better off dead, fool—so die!”
ITH SOME SUPERVILLAINS, YOU find yourself pondering which came first: the concept or the name. Did the creator have a great idea for a bad guy and then build a nom de villainy to suit it? Or was inspiration sparked by an innocently uttered word overheard in idle conversation? With Brickbat, very little guesswork is involved. “A VS crook who dresses like a bat and strikes his victims with bricks” is not a concept that exists independently of the word “Brickbat.” Liberally armed with, well, bricks, Brickbat wore a bat-eared mask reminiscent of a popular crimefighter residing over at a rival comics publisher. Lest confusion reign between the two blue-hued, pointy-eared cowls, Brickbat completed his outfit with a lime-green blazer and slacks. Consider it the supervillain equivalent of the mullet: all business below the neck, party up Enemy of: 711 above. Oh, and pockets full of bricks. Created by: Bearing on his person any number of gimmicked breakaway clay blocks— George Brenner each filled with a fatal gas concoction—Brickbat’s M.O. was to rob his victims blind and then murder them by chucking the poisoned projectiles at them. The Debuted in: Police Comics #5 bricks were not his of own invention but, rather, that of an unnamed scientist (Quality Comics, whom Brickbat promptly murders. (The science of gas-filled masonry has December 1941) never recovered.) It seems obvious that a regular brick would be a more useful weapon than Not to be confused one that was fake, brittle, and filled with gas. For starters, you can reuse a real with: Cinderblock Fox; Paving Stone brick again and again. With one-shot poisoned bricks, however, you have to Bear carry a bunch around if you want to murder more than one person at a time. And where exactly is Brickbat carrying all his bricks? Those green slacks must have deep pockets. Perhaps the only advantage is that accuracy isn’t much of a factor. But then the do-gooder 711—an incarcerated superhero who escapes from prison every night to battle crime—finds a work-around to overcome even that. In their sole confrontation, 711 stands next to an open window as he taunts the heavy-handed crook. Enraged, Brickbat misses a dodging 711 each time, and the deadly bricks “pass harmlessly through the glass.” Hopefully, no one was walking in the alley below that window. Once Brickbat is out of ammo, he falls subject to 711’s sole superpower: punching crooks repeatedly in the head until they fall down. Brickbat’s criminal career is ignominiously ended, and his incarceration is made particularly ironic when he’s committed to the same prison that holds 711 (in his civilian identity).
8 THE LEGION OF REGRETTABLE SUPERVILLAINS the GOLDEN AGE 9
Legion of Ridiculous Super Villains_Sample_MRM_Alt.indd 8-9 3/7/16 10:06 AM MOTHER GOOSE “This little arrow will stop your worries!”
URSERY RHYMES AND FAIRY TALES make fertile grounds for creating truly terrifying villains. After all, these stories and couplets often involve murder, theft, kidnapping, dismemberment, wicked stepmothersm and evil spirits—all sorts of prime material for terrifying goons and creeps. Take Mother Goose, for instance. Introduced as the antagonist in the VS “most eerie and sinister adventure” of the career of the Hangman, a grim crimefighter, this frightening fairy tale–inspired killer makes short work of a clan of ungrateful brothers in the course of a night. The three Dickson brothers—Simon, Robin, and an unnamed third referred to only as “the Englishman”—are estranged from one another as well as from their mother. But then nursery rhyme–inspired notes draw all three of them to Enemy of: the ancestral home on Cradle Island. The Hangman Brother Simon interrupts the reunion dinner by clutching his throat in terror. “Th-the pie!” he cries. “I’ve been poisoned!” A few hours later Robin Created by: follows, also murdered by a nursery rhyme device: an arrow, Cock Robin–style. Bill Woolfolk and Harry Lucey Besides their ironic deaths, these brothers share something else: their corpses are loomed over by the leering figure of Mother Goose! Debuted in: Under a peaked cap, wearing bedraggled robes, and resembling a haggard Pep Comics #30 witch from her jagged teeth to her clawed hands, Mother Goose claims (MLJ Comics, August 1942) responsibility for the killings. As her signature, she amends the notes that drew the brothers together. “Simple Simon died of poison / Sitting in his chair,” she Odds that MG will adds to Simon’s letter. To Robin’s, she appends, “Said Mother Goose, with my be accompanied little arrow / I killed Cock Robin.” by a vicious attack goose: She goes on to pursue “the Englishman” to a nearby mill, intending to Disappointingly low. grind his bones for bread as in the fairy tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. (Which is, strictly speaking, out of Mother Goose’s rhyme-oriented purview.) But the Hangman stops her, revealing her true identity in the process. She turns out to be John Dickson, the brother of the now-deceased mother of the three bickering boys. As he sees it, his sister “nursed those scoundrels to manhood” and crooned them to sleep with her charming rhymes. But, Dickson muses bitterly, they left her when she needed them most, and so he swore on his sister’s death-bed to murder her “heartless sons.” à
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Legion of Ridiculous Super Villains_Sample_MRM_Alt.indd 10-11 3/7/16 10:06 AM MOTHER GOOSE continued
Mother Goose is cornered by the Hangman and, seeing no other way out of capture, hastily swallows poison and dies. That’s a shame because the nepoticidal uncle will never have the chance to become the knife-wielding Mother Goose depicted on the story’s introductory page (and nowhere else). That Mother Goose is the leader of a gang of weird villains, including an egg-headed Humpty Dumpty, a top-coat-bedecked Jack Sprat, and a hissing goose!
ROLL CALL... Villains based on nursery rhymes are pretty common in comics. There’s Doll Man’s enemies known as the Mother Goose gang, made up of twisted versions of Simple Simon, Jack and Jill, and Humpty Dumpty. Plastic Man fought a crook who adopted the identities of several Mother Goose characters, including Little Jack Horner and Little Miss Muffet, while the heroic Mad Hatter took on a vile Humpty Dumpty at the end of his run.
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Legion of Ridiculous Super Villains_Sample_MRM_Alt.indd 12-13 3/7/16 10:06 AM SINISTER THE GORilla boss OF GOTHAM CiTY
Created by: Dyke is executed for his crimes, but his henchmen retrieve his body David V. Reed, from the gas chamber. With his brain placed inside the skull of a giant Lew Sayre Schwartz ape, the titanic beast embarks on a crime spree around Batman’s and Charles Paris hometown of Gotham City. Despite his power, he’s ultimately SImians! Debuted in: defeated. Adding insult to injury: assorted aliens come by later to steal SImians!Historians Batman vol. 1 #75 his brain and use it for space experiments. disagree which (DC Comics, legendary editor said February 1953) Mobster George it first, but it’s an accepted truism that “Apes sell comics.” Publishers with an eye on the bottom line couldn’t help but Giganta notice that putting a monkey or a gorilla on a comic book Created by: Her statuesque frame, rolling locks of shocking red hair, and glamorously William Moulton appointed leopard-print two-piece might make the exceptionally tall cover increased sales Marston and Giganta seem like a human woman. But in fact she’s a superevolved ape. dramatically. H. G. Peter Driven up the evolutionary ladder by an experimental machine that sends Debuted in: Wonder the world into a prehistoric state of grace, the clever and vicious Giganta Woman vol. 1 #9 (DC takes the opportunity to convince the people of the primordial world to Comics, June 1944) choose evil over good. Luckily, Wonder Woman is there to stop her.
THE GORiLLA WiTCH Created by: Jungle explorer Reed Upton sets out to discover a strange serum which Dave Wood and should grant him “mental contact with all forms of animal life.” What Bernard Bailey he discovers instead a scheming gorilla named Taro. Using the bubbling Debuted in: serum to turn Upton into a mindless ape and transform himself into Strange Adventures an intellectual giant, Taro sets out to conquer the world! Taro disguises #186 (DC Comics, himself as Upton in order to acquire rare chemicals for his ape army, March 1966) but his scheme is unraveled because he wears Upton’s eyepatch on the wrong eye. Apparently he’s only so smart.
THE MANDRiLL KiNG KRYPTON Created by: Jerome Beechman had the misfortune of being born with baboonlike features, Created by: When Superman and his pal Jimmy Olsen stumble across a giant, golden, Carole Seuling and an appearance that subjected him to lifelong torment. Yet his mutation also Otto Binder and super-powered ape in the wilds of Africa, the Man of Steel jumps to the Ross Andru gave him the power to control women with his pheromones, so there’s an Wayne Boring likeliest conclusion: Kryptonian scientists must have rocketed the ape to upside. Despite assembling an all-female army to conquer the world and Action Earth! Well, joke’s on you, Supes: the ape is a Kryptonian scientist, who Debuted in: partnering with a vampirish villainess named Nekra, he’s subsequently Debuted in: Shanna the She-Devil Comics #238 (DC accidentally turned a de-evolution ray on himself. So his friends put him defeated by the jungle heroine Shanna the She-Devil. He has returned a few #4 (Marvel Comics, Comics, March 1958) in a rocketship in hopes that being lost in space might cure him. Anyway, times, only to be defeated anew by different heroes. Poor little monkey. June 1973) he turns back into a person just before dying, a real mess all around.
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