Not everyone is as much of a megalomaniac as the world domineering Dr. Doom. After all…he does have a PhD in villainy. Yet what if you’re just an evil every-man? You’re stuck with finding resourceful new super ways of paying the bills. Have you seen the price of milk these days?! It takes no less than a death ray just to fill your cereal bowl in this economy. Does the Joker give good benefits? Better hope workman’s comp covers “pencil in the eye.” How can thugs make ends meet when Two-Face can’t afford to stay on his bi-polar meds? Our health care system…now there’s the real bad guy!

Unfortunately we don’t live in a comic book world. Radioactive accidents only give us radiation burns leading to leukemia. Hijacking armored cars filled with advanced alien weaponry is never as easy as saying Mr. Mxyzptlk. But Joe average comic book enemy certainly does live in that panel and paged world. Sometimes mundane individuals are gifted with…well… sub-par superpowers. This site needs a poorer class of criminal. I’m going to give it to them. Every dog has their day. Unfortunately these dogs happen to be the ones right in front of a barreling Batmobile.

So here’s the first of many satirically “so-bad-they’re-good” villains in a new  series I’m debuting called “Super Villains: What Da Hell?”

Behold the Armless Tiger Man – nothing says superpower like a handicap. Hey, it worked for Daredevil!

Hertz was a Munich factory worker who lost his arms in a machine accident. Instead of taking a vow to install safety buttons and kill-switches in all sweatshops, he pledges to rid the world of all technology. I hear he even refuses to convert to HD. He rigorously trained for years throwing knives with his feet and bringing himself to peak …um…disabled perfection. Think Batman, but with a lot less punching and a lot more biting. So like any bitter working-class German amputee with an obsessive vendetta against inanimate objects, he joined the Nazi party and became a hired…eh…hand.

Wait a second! Wasn’t Hitler crazy about eugenics? So I’d imagine Armless Tiger Man was put through a rigorous test of politically correct challenges like: can he eat with chopsticks, how fast can he cross the monkey bars, and will he salute the Fuhrer with his foot? He must have graded uber poorly because the Gestapo merely peddled him off on the good old USA as an undercover industrial saboteur. An armless vampire in

shimmering golden spandex is definitely discrete. When the third Reich finds you humiliating…clearly you’ve failed at destroying one too many lathes with your fangs.

Once stateside, the Armless Tiger Man begins his reign of terror by first indulging his alcoholic tendencies (can you blame him?). He makes some sort of transaction in a bar with a plant worker who he then (seemingly on a whim) decides he wants to murder. This catches the eye of the Golden Age Angel – that’s not the one of X-Men fame. This Angel is the one sporting a 70’s porn ‘stache three decades early and has random acts of unreliable flight. So tracking him down via Chateau Quim wine (I thought ATM would be more the box of wine with straw type) and pretending to be room service, the Angel busts into Hertz’s hotel suite and prepares for a boxing match with the armless.

Somehow the appendage-challenged fiend knows something is up when the disguised Angel forgets to ask for a tip. Immediately the Armless one does a flying jump kick to the Angel’s head. How could he possibly know he wasn’t randomly beating a remarkably generous waiter!? You are evil!

As if this couldn’t possibly get any better, the scuffle ends and Armless Tiger Man literally leaps for the getaway by grabbing hold of a swinging chandelier… with his teeth. That’s one hell of a dental plan! Not to mention the Angel’s flight powers conveniently disappear as he plummets to the lobby floor below. The commotion is priceless because, for some inexplicable reason, the Armless villain progresses to beat the living crap out of everyone who happens to be present.

I’m pretty sure if a darling little puppy wandered in to the middle of this fracas they’d get an armless Kraut kick to the crotch. Then just when you think it can’t be trumped, you’re treated to the greatest feast for the eyes yet. A few panels later, after Armless Tiger Man makes his narrow escape by…driving away. Can you imagine pulling that car over? “License and registra…are you single…er…leggedly driving?” Say goodbye to your jugular!

Solidifying this as one of the greatest awful comic creation of all time, he bites his way through the factory fencing and begins wailing on every cog and gear he can find with the hammer between his toes. It’s literally hammer time! Meanwhile, the Angel seems to have rediscovered how to fly and shows up in the nick of time to shove a pipe down his gullet before he’s shredded by the tiger maw. As though this armless menace is not already resentful enough about his disabilities! Let’s destroy his vocal chords and add mute to the list. He’ll be thrilled when he has to talk in sign lang…oh! Oh yeah…armless…

So he is restrained and hauled away to prison as the story ties up. Angel delivers a not-so-eloquent soliloquy to the audience with a cheesy thumbs up victory to the readers. Yet is this truly a victory for justice? Was Hertz really a villain or is this just the typical tragic tale of armless agile Nazi agent crying on the inside?

In my heart of hearts, I feel that this story delivers a true anti-mechanical message that any Luddite would love. In addition to speaking for the handicapped and technologically illiterate…that damn machine that amputated his arms got off easy! So my sympathies go out to the Armless Tiger Man. You may be one politically incorrect homicidal maniac with a very poor sense of fashion, but I think you’re truly a voice for the disabled everywhere. High five!…oh…awkward. I’m so sorry!

Don’t believe your eyes? Look for him in 1941′s Marvel Mystery #26 and reprinted in 1999′s Marvel Mystery #1.

Where Are They Now?  – And the terror continues here. Yeah…that just happened.