The Wizard

I have been re-watching the Stargirl television show, with all its delightful highs and frustrating flaws.  One of the latter is just how quickly and easily the Wizard (and his son, in one of the saddest and most bitter incidents in the show) were killed off.

You may not know a lot about The Wizard because he hasn't gotten a lot of space in print.  But you deserve to know: The Wizard kicked ***.

And had style.

In his very first outing, he takes on the entire JSA. Single-handed.  

Humiliating them in the process, by the way.

His powers were pretty much whatever he needed them to be; comes with being a wizard, I guess.  

He was a big deal, literally and figuratively.

He wasn't some magic savant who turned to crime.  He was a criminal who turned to magic because it seemed like a great tool.

Well, that's more effective than just snatching a pebble from his hand.

But his opening move was an unusual one:  he tried to give the JSA a million dollars.

His original hook (other than being a nearly omnipotent smart-ass) was that he was not merely evil and dishonest; he was SO evil and dishonest that he simply couldn't believe that anyone else WASN'T.

That is both incredibly ballsy and mind-bogglingly narrow-minded.

Then he preceded to kick their individual asses in separate tales (the usual JSA pattern).  

One must appreciate his commitment to skepticism.

He was not only supremely, competently, confidently evil, he was as spooky when he had a mind to be.

Assembling himself out of scraps of paper from a wastebasket?
He'd be a great screen villain.

He was easily smarter than the JSAers.

That's because he planned it, you muscle-bound oaf.  Stay pretty, Alan.

It's really hard to overemphasize just HOW easily the Wizard defeated the JSAers.

At the end of it, he was man enough to finally admit that he was wrong and the JSAers were just as honest as they seemed.  Then he flung himself into a pit of acid.

As one does.

In his next story, he CREATED the Injustice Society of the World, casually bossing around the biggest villains of the day.

As one does.

Okay, fine, the Gambler's not exactly intimidating.  But the rest of those guys - Brainwave, Vandal Savage, the Thinker--  are portrayed as potential world-conquerors. And, as you will recall, even though Per Degaton is a putz, he is still a putz who actually DID conquer the world and for ten years (his victory just got time-wiped away).  Yet The Wizard is unquestionably the person in charge.

He hands out the assignments.  That makes him the boss.

That outing didn't really work out;  perhaps too many world-conquering cooks spoil the broth.  But just four issues later (All-Star #41), the Wizard was back with a new Injustice Society.

A more familiar line-up for the ISW, for sure.

You'll noice that this group -- The Wizard, The Fiddler, the Icicle, The Sportsmater and the Tigress (or the Huntress as she was still called), and the Harlequin -- is more smiliar to one of the Stargirl show.

Shouldn't have had Mike Mignola ink them.

Under the Wizard's leadership they enslave the JSAers as their servants.

Everyone is just a puppet in the Wizard's little shows.

They even have a brain-washing machine as they do on the show:

I think they used it to make them fall for Green Arrow and Green Lantern, respectively, just as a cruel joke.

It didn't work out, of course; such things never do.  

The Wizard then disappeared for more than 25 years.  He and his Injustice Society came back in the '70s to fight against the JSA during its mini-renaissance of the late Bronze Age and he was briefly part of the Secret Society of Supervillains, during which time he swapped bodies with Superman (because he COULD).  

Powerful, stylish, pedigreed; why isn't the Wizard a better used character? He doesn't really age and has no central foe, so he could easily pop up as the villain in any story.  Perhaps the Wizard is simply too generic to make the big time.

What are your thoughts about the Wizard?