GOLDEN AGE VILLAINS

The heroes of the Golden Age faced a variety of opponents from gimmicked criminal thugs to super-powered Axis agents.

AXIS ASSASSIN

HISTORY

The Axis Assassin was an operative of Nazi Germany who wore an advanced (for the era) suit of powered armor. The Axis Assassin operated primarily in the United States supporting Nazi spies, saboteurs, and fifth columnists in efforts to undermine the American war effort. He was frequently opposed by various Mystery-Men including members of the All-Star Squadron and various other teams and individuals.

Axis Assassin was never captured and his true identity was never discovered. It is even possible that several different Nazi operatives may have worn the armor at different points. The Axis Assassin was never seen again after the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, nor was the suit of powered armor ever recovered.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The Axis Assassin armor allowed its wearer to fly while offering them protection from bullets and even heavier ordnance. The armor was equipped with machine guns and a grenade launcher. The design of the armor used by the villain Harrier of the Soldiers of Anarchy appears to have been based on the Axis Assassin armor.

CAPTAIN COMBAT

HISTORY

Frank Lewis was a multi-talented carnival performer; a powerful circus strongman who was also an expert acrobat, knife-thrower, sharpshooter, boxer and wrestler. He was a star member of the traveling Rossini Circus troupe where he would frequently solicit opponents from the crowd who wanted to challenge him; with the audience placing bets locals who thought they might be able to beat him at wrestling, boxing or feats of strength.

The circus hit bad times due to the combination of the near-monopoly of the Ringling circus and the Great Depression. In the late 1930s, with his primary source of income gone, Lewis took to using his skills to rob banks. He never stayed in one place, following the old circus tour routes from town-to-town and city-to-city, where law enforcement officers were usually no match for Lewis' fighting skills and the media began referring to him as Captain Combat.

Captain Combat finally met his match when he began committing robberies in Superior City in 1941, when he was stopped by the hero Atlas in one of the latter's first appearances. Lewis was incarcerated, but earned an early release at some point in 1942 when he was recruited by the US Army and put into one of its special "suicide squadron" units. It is not known if Lewis survived World War II.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Captain Combat was an expert in a variety of armed and unarmed techniques. He was a skilled boxer and wrestler, and had picked up a smattering of Eastern martial arts from other circus performers. He was also a marksman with pistols and rifles and an expert knife-thrower. Lewis was in exceptional physical condition and possessed the strength, agility and endurance of an Olympic-level athlete.

DEVIL WOMAN

HISTORY

Known simply as Lillian, the Devil Woman first appeared as the toast of high society in the Superior City and Paradise area, tempting many of the wealthy bachelors. When her paramours began turning up dead it attracted the attention of the authorities, but they could find no concrete evidence against her as the victims had all died of what appeared to be natural, if unusual causes.

The hero Ladyhawk got involved when Lillian targeted her friend, Assistant DA Matt Moriarty. Lillian was revealed to be an actual Devil Woman, a succubus who was preying on the men of Paradise. Ladyhawk saved Matt and defeated the Devil Woman, sending her back to the fiery dimension she had come from. The Devil Woman returned a few more times seeking revenge on Ladyhawk but was thwarted by the hero each time.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Devil Woman was a succubus who could appear as an attractive human woman. She had hypnotic powers that she used to seduce men from whom she would slowly drain the life force to feed herself. In her true form she had red skin, horns, giant bat wings that let her fly, and razor-sharp claws on her hands and feet.

DIAMOND JIM

HISTORY

Jimmy Davis was a thug, working for whichever criminal needed muscle for a job. One such employer was the TNT Mob, a group that used dynamite for quick explosive access to vaults and other secure places to rob them. Jimmy was guarding the loot at the mob's headquarters near the river when the hero Atlas arrived alongside the police, having tracked the criminals their base. During the confrontation the mob's stash of dynamite was set off. The explosion drove a cache of stolen diamonds into Jimmy, embedding them in his skin.

In agony Jimmy fled the scene and dove into the river. He dragged himself ashore far downriver and stumbled his way to a criminal doctor, knowing he would be arrested if he went to a regular hospital. The doctor bandaged Jimmy up but could do nothing about the diamonds embedded in his skin. When he recovered, Jimmy discovered that not only had his skin had healed up over the diamonds but it was now diamond-hard. Jimmy started calling himself Diamond Jim and went back to acting as hired muscle, at a much higher rate than before.

Diamond Jim served as indestructible muscle for many criminals, frequently coming into conflict with Atlas. Though the hero was in some ways responsible for what had happened to Jimmy, the villain did not hold a grudge.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Jimmy was not very bright, but was exceptionally strong. He had some basic boxing skills, but generally relied on his strength to overwhelm opponents. After the accident, Diamond Jim's skin was rendered super hard, which let him shrug off bullets, knives and most other conventional forms of attack. Even Atlas' superhuman strength had a hard time getting under Diamond Jim's skin.

EAGLE EYE

HISTORY

Louis Lennox frequently acted as lookout for criminals. His keen eye for detail would serve him well, but could also be a distraction as he took in everything in his surroundings. Louis opted to parlay his skills in a more profitable direction, though still within the criminal underworld. Setting up a network of spies across Superior City, Louis adopted the alias Eagle Eye and started offering lookout services for a fee. With his network continually feeding him information through a special switchboard, Eagle Eye had an unprecedented overview of the actions of law enforcement across the city as well as being able to keep track of sightings of the members of the Adventurers.

Criminals could sign up for Eagle Eye's services and he would provide them with up-to-date information before and during any crimes being committed. This would let the criminals avoid the police and the city's heroes. The Adventurers eventually discovered Eagle Eye's information network and shut it down, sending Louis to prison.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Louis had no special powers, but was highly intelligent and could organize and process information with great efficiency. He also had very keen eyesight that let him pick out details over a wide area.

The HOOD

HISTORY

The Hood was a mysterious criminal mastermind who plagued the heroes of Superior City for many years through the 1940s. The Hood was behind several schemes against the city and the heroes. In his first appearance he attempted to blackmail the city by threatening the docks. The plot was thwarted by Renegade but the Hood escaped. The Hood would return time and time again, usually facing off against the members of the Adventurers, either individually or together.

For one notable encounter, the villain had acquired a "death ray" with which he threatened to burn down the city's entire downtown if the Adventurers did not surrender to him. The Adventurers were able to turn the tables at the last second, but it was one of the team's closest calls.

The Hood was never heard from again after his final plot in 1948, but his actual fate remains as unknown as his real identity.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The Hood was a criminal genius, apparently a skilled scientist and adventurer as well as a capable tactician. As the Hood's true identity was never discovered the source of his skills remains as much a mystery as the man himself.

IRON MASK

HISTORY

Peter Wilde II was the son of the Black Baron, a criminal who had plagued Superior City in its earliest days in the late 19th Century, and was the grandson of none other than the immortal Vandal Savage. Peter followed in his father's criminal footsteps and got his start as a rum runner for the Mob during Prohibition. When masked Mystery Men heroes appeared in the late 1930s, Peter adopted a masked identity of his own by donning a steel helmet and calling himself the Iron Mask.

As the Iron Mask, Peter expanded his criminal efforts along the west coast of the United States. His activities brought him into conflict with several groups of Mystery Men, notably the Freedom Fighters and the Adventurers. In the 1940s the Iron Mask concentrated his efforts around Superior City and he became a frequent adversary of Renegade.

The Iron Mask was killed in an explosion during one of his many confrontations with Renegade, though the hero was unaware of his foe's death. Several years later Peter's father would come out of hiding and take on the Iron Mask identity in an effort to exact revenge on Renegade, during the Legion of Doom's attack on Superior City.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The Iron Mask was a skilled tactician and expert in various forms of armed and unarmed combat. His metal helmet provided him with protection and also contained a small air supply. His suit was partially armored, which also offered him some limited protection from knives and bullets.

The LEPRECHAUN

HISTORY

Ian "The Leprechaun" O'Malley was a diminutive Irish gang leader operating in the city of Paradise. The Leprechaun's gang controlled crime in Longview, site of the Aberdeen Shipyards. When the United States entered World War II the shipyards were used to produce vessels for the US Navy's war effort and the Leprechaun's gang tried to take advantage of the influx of workers and money to pad their own pockets. This brought in Paradise's resident heroine Ladyhawk who became a frequent opponent of the gang and their leader. The Leprechaun was eventually arrested and spent the rest of war years in jail.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The Leprechaun was skilled in boxing and in the use of knives and guns.

The LIZARD GANG

HISTORY

Originally thought to be a trio of masked criminals, the Lizard Gang were eventually discovered to be some kind of humanoid animals. Based on more recent information, it is possible that the three members of the the Adoax. Whatever their origins, the three made a reputation for committing destructive robberies, stealing anything from money and jewels to food and even furniture.

The three took the names of the lizards they seemed to resemble (though one name is technically that of an amphibian). The de facto leader of the trio went by the name Salamander, with the other two going by Iguana and Kingsnake. They were based out of the sewers under Superior City, which they furnished with the goods they stole. The police were not a match for the three, so it fell to the city's Mystery Men to deal with the threat the Lizard Gang posed.

It took the combined effort of the Adventurers to finally put a stop to the Lizard Gang's crime wave. The three were arrested, but were later taken into custody by an unknown government agency. Salamander later resurfaced as a member of the Legion of Doom, and he seemed to imply that the other two had died in captivity. Salamander himself was killed during the Legion's attack on the city in 1951.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The members of the Lizard Gang were humanoid creatures with lizard-like appearances. All three were hairless and had scaled skin, though in differing colors. Like his namesake, Salamander was amphibious and could survive underwater. He could also extreme a paralytic poison from his hands and had exceptional healing abilities, including the ability to regenerate lost limbs. Iguana had tough scales that made him especially hard to injure, and had claws on his hands he could use to slash opponents or to quickly scale walls and ceilings. Iguana also possessed a form of telescopic vision. Kingsnake possessed a superhuman level of strength and was extremely flexible, abilities he often used to grapple and crush opponents. Kingsnake also has dangerous fangs he would use to bite an opponent, though thankfully his bites were not venomous.

NIGHT CAT

HISTORY

The Night Cat was a notorious cat burglar who operated around the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s and 1940s. Whenever she passed through the Superior City - Paradise area, she would frequently cross paths with members of the Adventurers. Her most frequent opponent was Ladyhawk, as the Night Cat seemed to most relish playing cat-and-mouse (or cat-and-bird) games with the winged heroine. Though Ladyhawk and the other heroes could sometimes stop the Night Cat's robberies, or at least recover the stolen goods, they were never able to capture her.

The Night Cat eventually retired from her criminal career and settled in Paradise under the alias Tabitha Black, where she used her ill-gotten wealth to start up several philanthropic endeavors, perhaps in an effort to make up for her past.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The Night Cat was a highly-skilled cat burglar. She was a capable acrobat, skills she would use to climb walls and leap from roof to roof to gain access to buildings and homes through less secure upper level windows and balconies. She almost exclusively targeted the rich and was an expert safecracker, lifting money, jewelry, and occasionally works of art from her victims. The Night Cat prided herself on never carrying weapons, though she was more than capable of improvising some if needed. She appeared to have had training in some form of Eastern martial art, which she used to augment her acrobatic abilities.

RED QUEEN

HISTORY

The Red Queen was a power player who attempted to consolidate control over the criminal gangs in Superior City during the late 1930s. Wearing a red gown and faceless mask she gave orders to her underlings from a throne room hidden underneath the castle on the Kincaid Estate, which was under foreclosure and owned by the Superior Bank at the time. She referred to her underlings as her Pawns and used them to try and manipulate the city's criminal underworld. She had made a fair amount of progress in building her power base before she was finally stopped by the hero Renegade in one of his earliest cases when he first appeared in 1939.

The Red Queen was revealed to be the oldest daughter of the head of the Garibaldi crime family. Angry at having been overlooked for a leadership position in the mob because she was a woman, Teresa Garibaldi adopted the Red Queen identity to prove her father wrong. Her father's organization was one of the first groups she took control of.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The Red Queen was a brilliant tactician and had exceptional powers of persuasion. She combined these abilities to manipulate the criminal underworld of Superior City to bring it all under her control. She was also skilled in the use of small arms, being a reasonable marksman with a pistol. At the peak of her expansion the Red Queen had hundreds of criminals at her command.

The SWORDSMEN

HISTORY

The Swordsmen were a gang of killers serving the diminutive crime boss Kulak and his hulking bodyguard Rog. The Swordsmen dressed in colorful trenchcoats with full-face masks concealing their identities, and wielded electrified swords. They were fiercely loyal to Kulak and wore "suicide belts" that they would electrocute themselves with by touching the buckle rather than allow themselves to be captured. The Swordsmen and their master were defeated by the Red Bee.

In 1951 the Swordsmen were recruited by the Ultra-Humanite to be part of his Legion of Doom team. They were defeated along with the rest of the Legion by the combined efforts of the Justice Society and the Adventurers.

A modern team of villains also calling themselves the Swordsmen have recently made an appearance in Superior City, but it is not known if they are connected to the original Swordsmen or not.

POWERS & WEAPONS

The members of the Swordsmen were skilled with their weapons, swords that were electrified to shock opponents in addition to cut them. As noted above, the Swordsmen also wore special suicide belts they could use to electrocute themselves to avoid capture.

WILD RIDER

HISTORY

The Wild Rider was a thief who fancied himself a latter-day stagecoach robber. At some point he either found or was given a mechanical winged horse of unknown origin. Using the horse he would target trains, robbing the mail cars and sometimes holding up the wealthier passengers. He seemed to be based in or near Superior City and his actions often brought him into conflict with the hero Renegade.

POWERS & WEAPONS

Wild Rider had a clockwork, winged mechanical horse that he could ride at high speed across the ground or fly through the skies. He was typically armed with a pair of classic Colt pistols which he would use to hold up his targets and was an expert marksman in their use.