Bulletman's Rogue's Gallery

I love lame rogue's galleries, like Aquaman's. But there's something special about the Golden Age, when you got 1,000 pages for a dime, and a character might appear in 3 or 4 different comics each month. Obviously the creators really had to stretch to come up with villains for all those stories.

So I shouldn't be too harsh when it comes to Bulletman's dire enemies. But still...

Come again?

OK, I can't say they're ripping anything off, because this predates DC's Riddler by six years. But couldn't they come up with a more creative title than the Riddle of Dr. Riddle? What else is he going to bring? Tacos?

Let's take a closer look at all the villains in Bulletman #50 (1942).

The lead story has Bulletman and Bulletgirl facing...

The Dude. Really. What's his gimmick?

Ah, dapperness as a personality defect. Loverly.

Next up, not a joke, not a hoax, not a hallucination:

Yes, they must battle a guy...who is fat.

Again, to be fair, this predates the Kingpin by 2+ decades, and the guy is a pretty nasty piece of work. Click on the following page if you want to see a full size nightmare inducer (he had come across two youths fighting over a sweater):

Ewww. It turns out the quarter was coated with a deadly contact poison. Here's a close-up of evil:

Look kids, comics!!

So Fat Bastard (I mean Fat Fiend) wasn't so lame...but couldn't they have come up with a better name??

Next up, the fellow called out on the cover:

He pretty much follow what would become the Riddler's motif--leaving riddles forecasting his next crimes. The big difference between this guy and Edward Nigma? This guy's a stone killer, killing his victims 80% of the time. Plus, the riddles aren't all that good (What has eighteen legs and catches flies in the same story as What has four wheels and flies? When is a door not a door?!? That was lame and cliche even back then...) Also, there's no evidence that this guy actually has a doctorate in Riddleology...

Last up...

Yup, another murdering bastard. The Murder Prophet's gimmick was that he forecast his crimes to a local paper so they could build their circulation by beating the other papers...then of course he tried to kill the owner and take over the powerful paper himself (PROTIP: not likely to happen in 2009).

You know, I'm not sure sure whether they ever declared what city Bulletman's adventures took place in, but man, it's a cesspool that makes Gotham City look like Metropolis. It seems like every villain--every one--is a vile murderer, leaving a trail of bodies before our heroes get involved. The stories in this one issue had 21 on-page murders, and "many others" off-screen. Let's see, 50 issues, 20 murders each, plus his adventures in Nickel Comics and Master Comics and America's Greatest Comics...this city should be pretty near de-populated by now!!

Maybe Bulletman's villains weren't so lame after all...a little bit of PR, a different costume and name...they could have been contenders.