The Original Monster Society of Evil

The Complete Original Monster Society of Evil: Captain Marvel Must Battle Against His Worst Enemies Banded Together! by Otto Binder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An evil mastermind named Mr. Mind is bent on world domination. Who or what is Mr. Mind and can Captain Marvel stop him before he takes over the world?

I bought this a few months before my son was born. I tried reading it once but couldn't get into it. Since I'm trying to chew through as much of my to-read pile before Christmas hits as possible, I gave it another shot.

This is published by Gwandanaland and is composed of scans of actual pages from Captain Marvel Adventures 22-46. As such, you get what you get. Some pages look decayed, others are just muddy as hell from poor printing. Still, until DC grows a pair and prints it, this is the easiest way to read the original Monster Society of Evil saga. Offensive racial caricatures abound, as was the style at the time. Still, if you can get past the racism and the dirty reproductions, it's honestly not that bad.

Monster Society of Evil is one of the first stories of its kind, a sweeping tale lasting for 25 issues in 8-12 page installments. The stories aren't great as standalones. Pretty much all of them feature Captain Marvel battling a new monster or villain and end on a cliffhanger. The artists are largely uncredited. The covers had the cleaned reproductions in the book and I think they were done by CC Beck.

As a whole, though, it's pretty good. Captain Marvel beats the shit out of a lot of bad guys and wrecks a lot of shit, Bill Batson gets bound and gagged more times than you can keep track of and somehow escapes, and Mr. Mind and his goons are eventually defeated. How often do you get to see Captain Marvel tells some Scots they can shoot as many Nazis as they want?

The Original Monster Society of Evil is a worth a read to any fan interested in the formative years of comics. I'm giving it a 3 but I'd probably bump it up to a 3.5-4 with cleaner reproductions and less racism.

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