The League of Ridiculous Villains, Part One

The League of Ridiculous Villains, Part One

In baseball, all you have to do is succeed about 1/3 of the time to make it into the Hall of Fame. Try messing up two out of every three tasks your boss gives you at work and see how long you last!
Comics, obviously, are a more demanding medium than the National Pastime. No book can last if the vast majority of its stories are inferior. That being said, even all-time Silver Age greats like Gardner Fox and Stan Lee didn’t hit a home run every time up to the plate. In this series, we will examine some of the Silver Age’s lamest do-badders.

First up is…cue drum roll…The Tumbler, from Tales of Suspense #83, November 1966. He isn’t that bad a villain, really, I guess. He was a good match for Captain America powerwise, a well-trained but non-super-powered athlete and acrobat much like Cap himself. But his costume is just awful. I can just imagine what went through this guy’s head when he decided to embark on a life of crime…

“Hmmm, I’ve spent years getting in shape for this gig. I’m gonna need an outfit that tells people right up front that I’m a genuine threat not to be taken lightly…I know, I’ll go with pink long johns!”

He didn’t get a cover appearance in his debut, because it was Iron Man’s turn to be on the Tales of Suspense cover that month, but check out his one and only cover appearance from Captain America #169, January 1974. (And his costume is really a lot pinker than it looks in this scan…it’s literally the color of the human tongue.)

And, just in case you think I’m picking on Marvel, let’s look at a DC loser, too…

…Generalissimo Demmy Gog, from Justice League of America #66, November 1968. Come on! His name alone tells you this guy is nothing more than a joke! And his homeland is called Offalia? No series of negative adjectives is sufficient to describe this stupidity! And the story behind the issue just makes it that much worse. The previous issue was the last written by long-time JLA scribe Gardner Fox, and featured a heart-rending final page with the newly-introduced android Red Tornado lamenting his lack of humanity. This idiotic story was written by none other than Denny O’Neil! Yes, the selfsame Denny O’Neil who a few years later would turn Batman from a TV show-inspired parody of himself back into a fearsome creature of the night! The plot and characters for this tale seem more appropriate to a Jerry Lewis or Inferior Five comic than DC’s flagship team book!

There are plenty more where these two came from, so pop in frequently to see if your favorite ridiculous villain is profiled!

How Green Was My Villain?

How Green Was My Villain?

I was perusing my Silver Age comics collection recently and for the first time came to a rather disturbing realization. Probably because so many Marvel heroes of the era wore red and/or blue, a hugely disproportional number of villains ended up in green costumes (or skin). Green-clad Silver Age Marvel heroes, on the other hand, were few and far between.

Let’s go book by book and see just how many Mean Greenies there really were…

Iron Man: Dr. Strange¹, Kala, Melter, Mr. Doll, Mandarin, Scarecrow, Unicorn, Phantom, Titanium Man, Demolisher, and Cerberus

Dr. Strange: Nightmare and Baron Mordo (two of his three main recurring villains)

Nick Fury: Every Hydra agent and Nazi soldier (so in other words 99.9% of everybody he ever fought)

Avengers: Kang, Immortus, Wonder Man², Living Laser, Whirlwind

Hulk: Abomination, Leader, Ringmaster (Hulk probably didn’t have many green foes being green himself)

Daredevil: Electro, Jester, Leapfrog, Matador, Owl, Starr Saxon’s robot

Thor: Loki, Enchantress, Replicus, Cobra, Mr. Hyde, Hela, Radioactive Man, Tomorrow Man, Merlin³, Sandu the Great

X-Men: Quicksilver, Vanisher, Dominus’ ultra-robots, Locust, Banshee, Warlock aka Maha Yogi³, Mekano, Frankenstein Android, Polaris, Living Pharaoh, Sauron, Stranger

Captain America: Red Skull, Madame Hydra, Super-Adaptoid

Fantastic Four: Dr. Doom, Mole Man, Skrulls, Psycho Man, Red Ghost, Mad Thinker, Monster from the Lost Lagoon, Puppet Master, Rama Tut, Impossible Man, Molecule Man, Sub-Mariner, Plantman⁴, Infant Terrible, Invincible Man, Ronan the Accuser, Eel⁴, Beetle⁴

Spider-Man: The Burglar who killed Uncle Ben⁵, Vulture, Tinkerer, Tinkerer’s aliens, Sandman, Lizard, Living Brain, Mysterio, Green Goblin, Scorpion, Doctor Octopus, Guy Named Joe, Strom’s Pseudopod Construct, Kingpin, Prowler, Schemer, Princess Python

Silver Age Marvel Heroes in Green: Quicksilver⁶, Polaris⁶, Vision⁶, Banshee⁶,
Sub-Mariner ^6,7, Hercules⁸, Captain Marvel⁹, Falcon¹⁰, Marvel Girl¹¹, Hulk¹²

1-No, not the good Doctor Strange, the other, evil, less successful one
2-Listed here as a villain because he was Zemo’s pawn before he died
3-I believe these are all the same guy
4-Listed under FF but originally appeared as foes to Human Torch in his solo stories
5-Wore a green cap and green pants
6-Introduced as a villain but later reformed
7-Wore red in first few appearances before switching to green
8-Outfit is mostly orange and brown with green trim
9-Started out in green and white but later switched to red and blue
10-started out in green and orange but later switched to red and white
11-started out in blue and yellow before switching to green and yellow
12-grey-skinned in his first appearance

So, to sum up, there were literally billions of green-clad or green-skinned bad guys in the Silver Age, but not even one good guy who started out a good guy, wore green from the get go, and stuck with it!

Was the Flash first?

Was the Flash really first?

Most comic book historians regard the advent of the Silver Age of Comic Books as the debut of the Barry Allen Flash in Showcase #4, Oct. 1956. But was Barry really the first Silver Age super-hero? Some say no. Let’s examine the case a little more closely…

It is indisputable that the “Whirlwind Adventures of the Fastest Man Alive” no doubt breathed new life into a comics genre that had been wheezing along for several years. At the time of the Flash’s debut, Marvel / Timely / Atlas had no super-hero comic book titles in their line, and DC only had three being published under their own names, the so-called “Big Three” of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. One has but to examine the stories being published about these three characters during the mid-Fifties to see that the post-Comics Code years were not exactly the peak era for the medium. The Batman tales that took him off the grim and gritty Gotham streets to send him to alien worlds and different time periods were, in my opinion, particularly damaging to the image of a once-hard edged crimefighter and master sleuth.

The Flash’s popularity led to DC re-creating a number of their other Golden Age heroes in “modern” form, including Hawkman, Green Lantern, and the Atom. But was the Flash really there first? Some historians say he was beaten to the Silver Age punch by not one but two other heroes.

Captain Comet first appeared in Strange Adventure #9, June 1951. Since this could technically be considered the tail end of the Golden Age of Comics, calling the good Captain the first Silver Age hero is at the very least debatable. Some say he would better be described as one of if not the last Golden Age hero. But let’s take a closer look at the character…Captain Comet is described as a mutant born a hundred thousand years before his time. Unlike other Golden Age heroes with their gimmicked planes, cars, and motorcycles, the Captain has his own spaceship. His powers include telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, electricity control, super strength, invulnerability, photographic memory, and an immense IQ. This makes him quite unlike the vast majority of Golden Age heroes who mainly hit people and/or blasted stuff. A Space Age mutant flying around in a rocket just plain sounds more Silver Age to me. Golden Age heroes often got their powers from supernatural sources, Silver Age heroes from scientific means. See Green Lantern Alan Scott’s magic green ring versus Hal Jordan’s alien-powered one, or Carter Hall’s reincarnated Egyptian prince Hawkman versus Katar Hol’s alien policeman for perfect examples of this phenomenon.

A strong case for Captain Comet’s place as the first Silver Age hero came in James Robinson and Paul Smith’s excellent 1993 mini-series. In the climactic final issue, set on January 8, 1950, all of the DC heroes converge on Washington, DC and become involved in a battle with Dyna-Man, an almost unstoppable force in human form. A young, never-before seen hero throws himself into the fray, and ends up on the cover of Life Magazine when the dust clears. The young man is Captain Comet. It would appear that no less a personage than James Robinson, a writer noted for his love and esteem for comics history, considers the Captain and not the Flash as the first Silver Age hero.

The other contender for the title of first hero of the Silver Age of Comic Books is J’onn J’onzz, the Manhunter from Mars, who debuted in Detective Comics #225, November 1955. J’onn is another science-themed character in that he is a Martian who was brought accidentally to Earth by an experiment gone awry, and he too was loaded with super powers. His tales, though, while entertaining enough, were not really the stuff of what most people consider super hero comics. He was, for all intents and purposes, more of a detective who used his powers to solve cases than he was a super hero. The “detective with a gimmick” was a popular character type for DC in the late-Forties through the Fifties. Some examples of this type include Roy Raymond TV Detective, Detective Chimp, and Pow Wow Smith Indian Lawman.

Of the two, I feel that the case for Captain Comet is far stronger than that for J’onn J’onzz, for the reasons detailed above. Of course, proclaiming the Captain the first Silver Age super hero would mean cranking back the Silver Age starting date by five whole years, and I doubt most comic book history buffs would be willing to accept that radical a change. Looks like the Flash keeps his title, whether he really and truly deserves it or not.

Fantastic Four Annual #3

FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #3 October 1965
Reprinted in Fantastic Four Annual #9
Reprinted in Fantastic Four Annual #10
Reprinted in Fantastic Four Omnibus #2
Reprinted in Essential Fantastic Four #3
Reprinted in Fantastic Four 40th Wedding Anniversary Special


The oft-reprinted tale of Reed and Sue’s wedding featured just about every Marvel hero and villain of the era. The splash page touted it as “The most sensational super-spectacular ever witnessed by human eye!!” With the line-up in this book, it was easily the biggest single- issue Silver Age event Marvel had produced to that point. I was only one when this story was first published, and read it for the first time in its second reprint, but it has always stuck with me as a work of incredible complexity. I guarantee if you gave this assignment to a modern writer-artist team, they would make it an eight-part mini-series (at least) and only get six of the eight issues (at most) out on time!

Let’s review the guest list, starting with the good guys. Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben are obviously the stars of the show, but they don’t hog the pages by any means. Also in attendance are Tony Stark (who later dons his Iron Man armor) and an unnamed but lovely date-du-jour, ingenues Patsy Walker and Hedy Wolfe, a pack of SHIELD agents including Nick Fury, Gabe Jones, and Dum Dum Dugan, Professor Xavier, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Beast and Angel, Alicia Masters, Doctor Strange, Thor, Daredevil, Foggy Nelson, Karen Page, Captain America, Hawkeye, Spider-Man, Quicksilver, the Watcher, and no less than Stan “The Man” Lee and Jack “King” Kirby!

Wow! With that many heroes in one 23-page story, it may have been easier to just list the Marvel stars of that era who weren’t there! For the record. the major characters who didn’t put in an appearance were the Wasp and Giant Man, Hulk, Namor, and the Scarlet Witch. Now, Subby and Hulk got the equivalent of a written excuse by virtue of footnotes on pages 18 and 19, explaining that both of them were otherwise occupied with their own adventures in Tales to Astonish #72. And Giant Man and the Wasp were effectively in limbo for the last part of that year, having left the Avengers in Avengers #16, May 1965, and having been ousted from the pages of Tales to Astonish in #70, August 1965. The most curious absence is the Scarlet Witch’s…all of her Avengers teammates got in some good licks against the villain horde, but she was nowhere to be seen! (At least until Marvels #2 in 1994, and the cover of the 40th Wedding Anniversary Special in January 2006.)

Of course, the book’s cover is another matter altogether. Several characters not appearing in the actual story manage to make a cover appearance, including the aforementioned Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Wasp, and Scarlet Witch. Also on the cover but not in the story were the Leader, Kid Colt, Crimson Dynamo, the Red Skull, Medusa, the Wizard, Loki, and a WWII-era Sergeant Fury!

The book’s villain line-up is equally impressive. Needless to say, the main man behind the wedding crashing madness is Doctor Doom, who causes the others baddies to attack en masse with his “Emotion Charger”. His “veritable army of the most deadly villains alive” included the Puppet Master, the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes, the Mole Man and a few dozen Moloids, the Mandarin, the Black Knight, Kang, the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android, Grey Gargoyle, Super Skrull, a Hydra attack squad, Cobra, the Executioner, the Enchantress, Mr. Hyde, Electro, Unicorn, the Melter, Diablo, the Beetle, the Eel, the Human Top, Attuma and a full-scale Atlantean invasion force!
With the multitude of characters involved, there were some unfortunate but forgivable coloring issues. Kang, for example, is shown wearing an orange tunic instead of his usual green, and Mr. Hyde’s usually green suit is depicted as blue and brown. But all in all, this book is an artistic and story-telling triumph. (In retrospect, it’s conceivable that the coloring changes were intentional. With the plentitude of green-clad villains that were a hallmark of Marvel’s early Silver Age all appearing in one story, maybe the colorist just decided to make a few of ‘em not so green, just for variety’s sake.)

Welcome to The Silver Agency!

Hello and welcome to The Silver Agency, a blog dedicated to the Silver Age of comic books. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the Silver Age is regarded as the time period extending from the debut of the "new" Flash in Showcase #4, October 1956, until the infamous "death of Gwen Stacy" in Amazing Spider-Man #122, June 1973. (The actual end of the Silver Age has been a topic of debate amongst comic fans and historians, and will be addressed in more detail in a future post.)
In my posts, I hope to be able to share with my readers and fellow comic fans my love for the comics of my youth in a way that will also prove to be informative and, hopefully, entertaining as well. Topics will include issue and storyline reviews, creator profiles, debates, and character bios, plus loads of other stuff!