The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: scientist

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 007

    The mad scientists are usually up to something criminal, but the criminal scientists are often completely rational.

    Like a fair few of the scientists I speak of here, Dr Hayles here talks a big game but gets caught in the planning stages before he has the chance to prove to the world that he was right all along. In Hayles’ case it was kidnapping a bunch of boys that got him in trouble and operating on young boys’ brains in order to make them geniuses that he never got to prove before he was corralled by Marvelo, Monarch of Magicians. (Big Shot Comics 002, 1940)

    This here Count Alexis fellow is an agent of an unspecified foreign power who employs his extremely cool fleet of giant flying magnifying glasses in an attempt to destroy Boston. This, in turn, will cow the States into serving said unnamed country. It’s a bit of a flimsy plan, especially once you see Skyman beat the tar out of the mere two men operating one of the lenses and using that lens to melt the other four three (almost forgot that he captures two of them, as well as Count Alexis himself) 

    Count Alexis also lives in Vermont and is 100% the only villain on this blog as it currently stands to do so. Congratulations, Vermont! You made it! (Big Shot Comics 007, 1940)

    This unnamed scientist developed a steerable electrically-charged tornado called a “Force-Top” and attempted to extort the US into buying it but got pinched by Jeff Cardiff, Spy-Chief basically as soon as he put his plan into motion. (Big Shot Comics 007, 1940)

    As far as ways to extort the US (in this case into acclaiming Our Villain here as dictator), freezing entire cities solid isn’t a bad way to go, and Norgo goes for some big targets after his initial test freeze of a Florida beach: Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, St Louis and Washington DC. He might have gotten in with a chance if it hadn’t been for Skyman completely owning his plan and unfreezing all the cities in about half an hour – though the fact that he does so by exploding balls of “atomic power” over each city is at least a bit concerning. (Big Shot Comics 008, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 482: DR KRAKO

    (Big 3 Comics 003, 1941)

    Dr Krako is a 1940s Blue Beetle villain, so he’s a (gang boss/ criminal scientist) attempting to (kill Blue Beetle and then take over the city/ take over the city if he has to kill Blue Beetle to do it). He also has the optional Dr Dodo Memorial Sidequest of trying to kill Joan Mason because she is somehow the only person to know what he looks like even though he is going by his own name and, in fact, skywriting it above the city as part of some nebulous ransom notes.

    But though the broad strokes of Dr Krako’s scheme may be a bit formulaic the specifics are anything but. Skeletons! He has a way to control skeletons with electricity! Skeletons driving cars and shooting bullets out of their heads!

    Skeletons walking around and kidnapping people!

    This skeleton is about to explode! In fact, that’s implicitly the foundation of Dr Krako’s entire scheme – he’s going to march a bunch of skeletons into NYC York City and explode them, then profit somehow. Sadly we never actually see it as he commits the cardinal super-villain sin of having the hero at his mercy and then messing around with deathtraps and such rather than just bumping him off. Obviously I care nothing for Dr Krako himself but his skeleton tech should be BRUNG BACK at the earliest convenience.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 482: DR KRAKO

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 482: DR KRAKO

    (Big 3 Comics 003, 1941)

    Dr Krako is a 1940s Blue Beetle villain, so he’s a (gang boss/ criminal scientist) attempting to (kill Blue Beetle and then take over the city/ take over the city if he has to kill Blue Beetle to do it). He also has the optional Dr Dodo Memorial Sidequest of trying to kill Joan Mason because she is somehow the only person to know what he looks like even though he is going by his own name and, in fact, skywriting it above the city as part of some nebulous ransom notes.

    But though the broad strokes of Dr Krako’s scheme may be a bit formulaic the specifics are anything but. Skeletons! He has a way to control skeletons with electricity! Skeletons driving cars and shooting bullets out of their heads!

    Skeletons walking around and kidnapping people!

    This skeleton is about to explode! In fact, that’s implicitly the foundation of Dr Krako’s entire scheme – he’s going to march a bunch of skeletons into NYC York City and explode them, then profit somehow. Sadly we never actually see it as he commits the cardinal super-villain sin of having the hero at his mercy and then messing around with deathtraps and such rather than just bumping him off. Obviously I care nothing for Dr Krako himself but his skeleton tech should be BRUNG BACK at the earliest convenience.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 006

    It’s time for more mad and criminal scientists! Round ’em up!

    The fantastically-named Doctor Evecloud has a plan: shrink everyone else on the planet so that he, the only big person, will be in charge. As so often happens, one of his first guinea pigs is a super-hero, in this case the Shark. Things end poorly for Doctor Evecloud. (Amazing-Man Comics 016, 1940)

    This fellow is Dr Scowl and so far we’re sitting at 2/2 great scientist names. Dr Scowl is attempting to dissect Minimidget and Ritty to figure out how his late colleague got them so dang small and he’s not afraid to deploy a highly unsettling chimeric man to do so. (Amazing-Man Comics 025, 1941)

    Professor Zarr breaks the good name streak and it’s entirely in character, as he’s a guy who can’t catch a break: Samson and David bust up his radium-stealing gang, bust up his fortress lair and destroy his Z-Ray machine before he has a chance to even fire the thing. And to add insult to injury, he sets himself on fire while he’s trying to get his revenge. (Big 3 003, 1941)

    Later in the same issue, Samson and David head to Central America and spoil the plans of Dr Kalt, who seems to be Professor Zarr’s non-union equivalent, down to not getting to fire his solar disintegrator and blowing himself up with a grenade he was trying to throw at the heroes. (Big 3 003, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 474: KING OF THE USA

    (Amazing-Man Comics 020, 1941)

    The King of the USA, not unlike the Emperor of America before him, is a weirdo megalomaniac who lives in a hole, with the major difference being that while the Emperor was of course known for being surrounded by hunks the King lives alone. Note that this means that he personally scurried up to this office boy and delivered his own unhinged manifesto.

    If the King of the USA did have a few hunks around then maybe one of them might have pointed out a potential flaw in his plan: that basing your operation out of sewer might lead to some complications related to eg, flooding when you do things like collapse major parts of New York’s infrastructure with your disintegrator. And this theoretical hunk would be right! It’s just such a flood that brings Minimidget and Ritty to his door!

    Even more to the point: after Our Small Heroes drug his coffee and tie him up he ends up drowning in his sleep due to a flood caused when he collapses the Chrysler Building. Drainage: just one of the many oft-overlooked aspects of successful villain lair design.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 005

    Just a little crypto-fascist saboteur named Dr Vee who battled Dynamic Man but I like his name and I like his style. His sartorial style. Not the fascism. (Mystic v1 002, 1940)

    Lemo here has a mechanical mole-style tank and reckons he can take over the world with it after almost destroying one (1) circus tent. It’s a good thing he was blown up by one of Marvel’s many Herculeses before he could get too far and get disappointed. (Mystic Comics v1 004, 1940)

    This fellow, known only as the Mystery Man, has been working on the problem of how to counter snipers in warfare, and the scheme that he has come up with involves breeding up vicious wolf-dogs, training them to hate a particular smell and then applying that smell to the shoes of enemy combatants so that the dogs hunt and kill them. There’s a slight problem with this plan that the two crypto-fascist gentlemen that he’s trying to sell this system to don’t seem to come on to, even when he offers to sell them the scent and the dogs and doesn’t mention offering a dedicated group of scent-applying agents (or maybe he had some smaller dogs trained to do the job and he was going to upsell them later).

    The Mystery Man only gets caught because he has been picking up hitchhiking college students and using them to train the dogs and the person responsible for their safety is friends with giant super-hero Mighty Man and long story short the Mystery Man gets eaten by dogs. (Amazing-Man Comics 009, 1940)

    This here unnamed fella has a four-step plan: 

    1. Capture the Iron Skull 

    2. Inject the Iron Skull with a serum that turns him completely to iron

    3. Inject his iron blood into robots to make them alive somehow

    4. Profit

    Steps 1 and 2 go fine but as seen above a major flaw in the plan is that the Iron Skull is now more powerful and mops the floor with his erstwhile captor. The robots don’t even show up! (Amazing-Man Comics 015, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 470: THE FIEND

    (Amazing-Man Comics 014, 1940)

    Before we get into the Fiend I just want to highlight this guy. He is about to have a world-record bad day at work.

    The reason that his day is so terrible is that he has just introduced guest speaker Professor Zuraw who, it turns out, is completely insane. Zuraw turns the radio station’s antenna into a death ray broadcaster, killing millions, and not only does our friend the announcer end up dead but any account of this event will inevitably link him with Zurow. Terrible note to go out on.

    It’s very bad! This is when Zurow becomes the Fiend, and you can’t really argue with it.

    The Fiend makes some noise about ruling the world but he’s effectively trapped inside Radio Station WEEE with a handful of goons. He’s got a radio death ray field around the place but you can’t rule the world with a weapon that people have to tune in to to be effective.

    Most of the adventure is concerned with the Iron Skull bashing his way into the station to get the fiend out rather than the logistics of how the Fiend is going to do anything beyond squatting in a radio station until he starves to death or someone realizes that they can probably just cut the station’s power and with good reason! It’s a terrible plan! The Fiend should be happy that he gets thrown off a roof by the Iron Skull and not brought to trial and roasted for his poor planning.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 463: PROFESSOR MONTE

    (Mystic Comics v1 004, 1940)

    Professor Monte is the type of criminal scientist that I want to see in more comics: he has an idea (develop a gold-attracting magnet and use it to steal gold), he secures funding from crooked businessman Prentiss, he tests his device with a series of jewelry store robberies before scaling up to using the big dirigible-mounted model… he has a plan, in other words, rather than a vague idea of how they’re going to take over Newark using their amazing new food additive or gun that fires grass seed.

    And the plan pays off! Professor Monte robs Fort Knox and gets away with it! All he has to do is lie low and he and Prentiss and all his goons are set for life!

    But of course that is too much to ask. Professor Monte is, after all, a criminal scientist and they are not known for their restraint. He is determined to rob the Bank of England as well, and comes close to doing so before running up against the fact that not only is London unusually well prepared for an aerial invasion at the time but that Dynamic Man is on his tail. Ultimately it comes down to electric blast vs hydrogen gas and the hydrogen gas always loses.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 458: BARKO

    (Mystic Comics v1 002, 1940)

    Barko is a mere extortionist who has blown up one mineshaft already and is heavily implying that another can be blown up if the mining concern doesn’t see clear to paying him off. Beyond that he is remarkable mostly for how seriously and thoroughly he responds to the appearance of the Blue Blaze on the scene:

    Boulder.

    Sniper rifle.

    Attack dogs.

    And finally dual-wielded freeze ray guns. All of this during the Blue Blaze’s short drive to the second mineshaft. The Blue Blaze is captured after being frozen solid but of course…

    … freezing a fire-themed super-hero has a pretty low success rate.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 004

    More mad science than criminal science or vice versa? You be the judge! 

    This guy, who seems to be neither bald nor ironically hairy enough for his name of Baldy Fluger to make sense, has a hypnotic ray and a plan: to use that hypnotic ray for crime. The Green Mask and Domino the Miracle Boy have something to say about that. (Mystery Men Comics 021, 1941)

    If there was any more to these three (respectively named Boris, Oscar and Unnamed Man) than what happens in the four panels above then I would be writing hundreds of words about them, but this is about it: three mad scientists, one of whom has one of the top lines in comics history (“They said I was a mad scientist but when I blast their children with my electron gun they won’t call me mad anymore!”) attack a steel mill for unclear reasons, possibly madness. The rest of the story involves them battling Lieutenant Drake of Naval Intelligence and Miss X. There’s a lot of electron gunning but no children are involved. (Mystery Men Comics 021, 1941)

    Renowned transplant surgeon Dr Moru just so happens to also be the mysterious person murdering people and stealing their hands, and all so that he can make beaucoup bucks giving gangsters brand new hands with brand new fingerprints. Until the Green Mask gets involved, of course. (Mystery Men Comics 029, 1941)

    Dr Murdo here had a death ray, an underground lair and a small army of goons but had the misfortune of crossing paths with Flexo the Rubber Man and being subdued with robot gas. (Mystic Comics v1 001, 1940)