Micro-Face: Still Awesome

I've only mentioned Micro-Face in a non-offhand way once, but he's seriously probably my favorite no-longer-published Golden Age character. (All images from random issues of Clue Comics; he showed up mostly in the early ones, disappeared for a bit, and then came back for a while.)

Why do I like him?

He's creepy.

It's not uncommon for him to stand in that rather lazy looking slouch, and when he's wearing what looks like a gas mask which obliterates all trace of his human face, it rather compounds that.

His facelessness could potentially make him difficult to make sympathetic, but Golden Age stories never worry too much about that sort of thing, and so he barrels through his adventures with nary a care.

His enemies never see him sweat.

Micro-Face is essentially a detective with some of Superman's weakest powers, to a mostly weaker extent-he has "photoelectric lenses" which grant him "x-ray vision" (all of that is essentially a crock of bad technobabble, but we can let it slide), enhanced hearing, and electronic ventriloquism-all of them tied up in his freakshow mask. (Ironically, it was stated that the patent office, government, etc. had no interest in his inventions, which is madness, even if they needed to be tied up in the silly mask. You're telling me they would have absolutely no interest in a group of tools that would absolutely revolutionize espionage, even now?)

And he uses ventriloquism as a combat power.

Maybe you don't think you'd freak out if a voice repeatedly taunted you from somewhere out of sight, but if it just won't go away, and it keeps sharing secrets nobody should know, and it caps off its taunting by threatening to call the police on your criminal butt, you'd probably freak out a bit too.

Obviously, his costume is a bit silly, but no more so than any other super type's, and I think it's completely workable (and quite charming) myself.

-Signing off.