The Greatest Villain Never Seen

Who's the most intriguing villain in the DC universe?

It seems like a tough call, in a world full of deformed psychokillers, mad scientists, and giant purple mind-controlling starfish from outer space. But I know who gets my vote:



Gypo-Bax.


Don't beat yourself up if you don't know who Gypo-Bax is. After all, he never got a Mego, never showed up in a crossover cameo, never even got mentioned in the DC Encyclopedia. In fact, we've never seen Gypo-Bax, we have no background information about Who He Is and How He Came To Be, and we have no knowledge of anything he has ever done.

We just know one thing about Gypo-Bax:


He's as evil as Sinestro.


Or even more evil.


Remember, the whole Green Lantern story is kind of a high school sitcom. Hal Jordan is an annoyingly macho brain-dead jock-type and Sinestro is his Reggie Von Mantle, who participates in annual Evil Popularity Contests. I mean, look at Sinestro:

You just know they called this guy "Screech" in high school; that's why he became evil and changed his named to Sinestro. But the only people he beats out in the popularity contest are the foreign students, Gny-Gryngg, Borbrydi, and Karo-Thynn. Sinestro may surely be evil, but he gets outwitted regularly by Hal Jordan, a man so dim he wears only loafers and boots because knots are so confusing.

Poor Sinestro; Gypo-Bax kicks his butt two years in a row.

Yes, as ridiculous as the Qwardian evil popularity contest was the first time they used it in a Green Lantern story, they used it again, compounding the absurdity. But it leaves a gaping hole in the Green Lantern tapestry...

Who is Gypo-Bax? What does he do that's so evil? Do Qwardian children see Gypo-Bax's face on their box of Meanies, the breakfast of evil champions? Does he dislike Hostess Fruit Pies with Real Fruit Filling? Is he the former DMV director on Oa?

Was/is Gypo-Bax actually more evil than Sinestro or just a lot more successful at it? And now that Sinestro is like Bill Gates, all powerful and able to make people work for him at Microsoft/The Sinestro Corps, does he take any revenge on Gypo-Bax? Does he send evil bug-people with tiny rings to eat G-B from the inside out? Does an aged Gypo-Bax, now in a wheelchair at the Old Evil Folks Home, get a invitation to the Corps, exult for a minute in his regained vitality and newfound power, only to have Sinestro show up and shout "PSYCH!" and snatch the ring back? Now THAT would be evil.

Come on, Geoff Johns. How can you pass up this opportunity?

The Killers of Kurdistan, Part 3: Clever Ruses

Speed Saunders has used his dramatic authority powers to seal the building and time-plucks young Adolf Hitler out of Bavarian Infantry Regiment 16 to assist with the investigation of Mr. Trelawney's murder.

"I admire ze orderliness of zis kitchen."
"Focus, Adolf."

Speed then makes a big deal out of finding a "secret panel", which, to me, looks like a decidedly NON-secret panel: a pantry pass-through that allows servants to easily transfer new and used trays to the main room.  But even if it wasn't a secret panel before, it better damned well BECOME one when Speed Saunders says it is.

It opens at his very touch. Like a metropolitan library, or Trelawney.

Sure enough, because it is the will of Saunders, the Death Weapon is Revealed.

It turns out to be a surrealist art installation. Damned surrealists; never trust 'em.

Yes, the hand we saw shooting Trelawney wasn't a human hand at all! It was a mechanical hand, activated by a human hand pulling a string about eight inches behind it.  Because... 

well, honestly, I can't tell you why someone would do that.  Maybe Rube Goldberg or Salvador Dalí was one of the Killers of Kurdistan, and if you think that seems unlikely, remember that so were Tom and Trelawney.

A group of avant-garde art critics debate the semiotic significance of the murder weapon quickly before Adolf can have the Berlin Fire Brigade burn it as degenerate art. Fortunately, Adolf's busy grabbing a maid he suspects of being with the French resistance as Speed Saunders tesseracts directly before her and simply STARES her into confessing, like he does.

Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth is made of Speed Saunders' beard stubble.

Then she dumps a lot of unnecessary personal backstory like she's Louise Bourgé in Death on the Nile to give an illusion of depth to the mystery.

"I, meanwhile, as the sun extricated itself from the horizon like a gently absconding lover, was applying Ricil to les yeux pour un maquillage complet, harmonieux, y parfait with my newly patented mascara appliqué, remembering the simple days of my childhood with my mother, a widow of La Guerre Mondiale..." 

As a fifth-dimensional being, Speed Saunders has little patience for linear narrative and causality, so rather than listen to Louise drone on, he simply uses his Voice of Authority to command Adolf to shoot the next person he sees outside the window, under the assumption that it will be the guilty party (or at least someone worthy of being shot).

Lots of Adolf jokes to make here and I'm not going near any of 'em.

As it happens, that person is not only Louise's boyfriend but one of the Killers of Kurdistan and operator of the Rube Goldberg Murdering Device.

You'll note that this makes a lovely bookend to the panel where Tom's body is discovered, which is how the story starts.  Golden Age had style.

Let me lampshade this for you.  Trelawney, who is (accidentally) a member of the Killers of Kurdistan and who has known, for years, that they will eventually try to kill him has had in his employ a man with a wardrobe of v-neck tee shirts and a prominent "red crescent" tattoo that is the MARK of the Killers of Kurdistan.  Trelawney may have been an Expert on Eastern Lore but you can see why he needed an Ace Investigator.

An Ace Investigator with a clever ruse...!

"I vill establish an eggsclusive zphere of influence!"
"However you want to put it, Adolf."

Naturally, if Speed Saunders "means to see if something works" then that thing had BETTER work, if it knows what's good for it. So he tesseracts onto Rhett Croissante's elbow and confronts her with his ultimate weapon: his face.

What I wanna know is: how could Louise's boyfriend have named this woman as his boss when this woman doesn't even have a name? "You know... the lady with the red crescents atop her breasts..."

As you would expect, there is no defense against Speed Saunders' face.

"The Veiled Prophetress of the Killers of Kurdistan" sounds like a Dr. Strange villain.

I'm at a loss as to why killing foreign fops like Tom and Trelawney would help her "rival Hassan".  It's clearly some sort of Gypo-Bax situation that I, not being an Expert on Eastern Lore, cannot comprehend.  

For a prophetress, she didn't see the future too well, did she?  Shoulda taken off the veil.  But who could imagine that she'd be identified as a member of the Killers of Kurdistan just because she was wearing their sigil on her breasts, and around her neck, and on her handker-chief, and god knows where else? 

Don't worry about her. Since she's such an over the top foreign femme fatale, Adolf gets her a work-release job fighting against Wonder Woman;
work makes her free.

You can certainly see why Speed Saunders is the star of Detective Comics! There was no time to show it, but I'm convinced that off-panel before he died Trelawney willed his estate to Speed, who just has to patch up that kitchen window and fire Louise before moving in.