The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Iron Skull

  • 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 467: DRAGO

    (Amazing-Man Comics 011, 1940)

    On the surface Drago seems to merely be a guy who looks like an evil cat and shoots his henchmen rather than paying them (not only a nightmare for HR but a bad financial decision as you’ll be spending more in headhunting and training new goons than you will save in salaries), and that’s just what he is. There are no hidden depths. He kidnaps world-class scientists and sells them to the Axis-equivalent belligerent governments of the far-off year of 1971.

    But though one-dimensional villain he may be, Drago has a lot of accessories. For instance, his henchmen are either drawn from or organized into a secret society named the Devils Cult, seemingly to promote fanatical loyalty (and this is perhaps why he can get away with bumping them off willy-nilly). Naming a group of henchmen? Why, that’s one of the keys to my heart, Drago.

    Other accessories include:

    Robot guards with charmingly doofy faces!

    A deathtrap that was demonstrably not custom-made to kill the Iron Skull because it commits the cardinal sin of allowing him to smash the spiked parts with his head before they kill him.

    And a dead man’s switch time bomb just in case one of his treacherous over- or underlings manages to bump him off (which is in fact what happens – his employers do unto him as he does to his own henchmen). 

    Drago: unmourned, unloved, well accessorized.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 467: DRAGO

    (Amazing-Man Comics 011, 1940)

    On the surface Drago seems to merely be a guy who looks like an evil cat and shoots his henchmen rather than paying them (not only a nightmare for HR but a bad financial decision as you’ll be spending more in headhunting and training new goons than you will save in salaries), and that’s just what he is. There are no hidden depths. He kidnaps world-class scientists and sells them to the Axis-equivalent belligerent governments of the far-off year of 1971.

    But though one-dimensional villain he may be, Drago has a lot of accessories. For instance, his henchmen are either drawn from or organized into a secret society named the Devils Cult, seemingly to promote fanatical loyalty (and this is perhaps why he can get away with bumping them off willy-nilly). Naming a group of henchmen? Why, that’s one of the keys to my heart, Drago.

    Other accessories include:

    Robot guards with charmingly doofy faces!

    A deathtrap that was demonstrably not custom-made to kill the Iron Skull because it commits the cardinal sin of allowing him to smash the spiked parts with his head before they kill him.

    And a dead man’s switch time bomb just in case one of his treacherous over- or underlings manages to bump him off (which is in fact what happens – his employers do unto him as he does to his own henchmen). 

    Drago: unmourned, unloved, well accessorized.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 413: DR MAGNO

    (Amazing Man Comics 008, 1939)

    Dr Magno is your classic elemental evil opposite: a man with magnetic hands pitted against a man with an iron skeleton. He’s a wild-card ex-foe of the Iron Skull freshly broken out of the asylum to loot Chicago of its jewels and get revenge on his traitorous ex-cronies.

    He’s also, weirdly, an evil equivalent, as both he and the Iron Skull owe their powers to debilitating injuries suffered in the Great War of 1950, but whereas the Iron Skull was rebuilt as a nigh-indestructible cyborg, Dr Magno got some magnetic hands. 

    What’s that you say? The Great War of when? That’s right! The Iron Skull stories are set in the far future of ~1970 CE! Carl Burgos invented retro-future neo-noir while regular noir was still going strong (mostly by not changing the clothing and car styles of the future, but still)!

    Anyway, Dr Magno gets the jump on the Iron Skull using magnetism, but spoils his chances for revenge by making the classic mistake of spending so long gloating and drawing out the hero’s end that he is able to escape.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 413: DR MAGNO

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 413: DR MAGNO

    (Amazing Man Comics 008, 1939)

    Dr Magno is your classic elemental evil opposite: a man with magnetic hands pitted against a man with an iron skeleton. He’s a wild-card ex-foe of the Iron Skull freshly broken out of the asylum to loot Chicago of its jewels and get revenge on his traitorous ex-cronies.

    He’s also, weirdly, an evil equivalent, as both he and the Iron Skull owe their powers to debilitating injuries suffered in the Great War of 1950, but whereas the Iron Skull was rebuilt as a nigh-indestructible cyborg, Dr Magno got some magnetic hands. 

    What’s that you say? The Great War of when? That’s right! The Iron Skull stories are set in the far future of ~1970 CE! Carl Burgos invented retro-future neo-noir while regular noir was still going strong (mostly by not changing the clothing and car styles of the future, but still)!

    Anyway, Dr Magno gets the jump on the Iron Skull using magnetism, but spoils his chances for revenge by making the classic mistake of spending so long gloating and drawing out the hero’s end that he is able to escape.

  • MINOR SUPER-HEROES 007-014: AMAZING-MAN COMICS ROUNDUP 1939

    (Amazing-Man Comics 005-026, 1939-1942)

    All the ephemeral Golden Age heroes who stalked the pages of Amazing-Man Comics:

    The Iron Skull! I love him. His origin and so forth is doled out after a few issues so initially you don’t know that he is a cyborg war casualty in the far future world of 1970. The most important things are there from the start, though: his huge anime eyes and the fact that every bullet or attack made against him unerringly hit him in his invulnerable head.

    SKULL SCORE: 2/5 Not very skully but he gets a point for the lack of nose.

    Minimidget: Just a super-small guy with a problematic name. He and his galpal Ritty were shrunk and employed as henchmen by a pervert scientist before redeeming themselves via acts of public service. 

    Chuck Hardy: Chuck and Jerry, a couple of deep sea divers, end up in the subterranean land of Aquatania, beneath the Marquesas Islands. They turn out to be super-strong there for murkily-explained reasons and have adventures with the monstrous flora and fauna and the various near-human races. The best part is absolutely the little lobster antennae that all of the various types of Aquatanians have.

    Mighty Man is a huge dude who is the last descendant of folk who settled in a valley where everything is huge. After murdering a bunch of evil cowboys, he emerges from his valley to fight crime. Eventually he gets the power to change size.

    UPDATE 1940

    The Shark! A water-based hero who can talk to sea life and must hit the water regularly, which is about standard for water guys!

    ADDENDUM: Later on he meets his father Neptune and his adventures turn into father/son outings, which rules.

    UPDATE 1940

    Magician from Mars: Not only is Jane 6em35 an Earthian/Martian hybrid from an unspecified future, and not only was she accidentally irradiated as a baby in a way that activated a lot of vague superpowers (including flight, super-strength and a seemingly complete control over matter) but she is a practical and morally flexible hero who takes advantage of the chaos surrounding a rocket crash to make off with $3 million in gold before saving the day. Very fun. Plus: jodhpurs!

    The Cat Man: a very marginal entry on this list. In his first appearance, he develops his signature technique of dressing like an old lady and having his trained cat scratch people with poisoned claws to murder three former criminal confederates, which isn’t particularly heroic? His second appearance is in more of a vigilante role as he murders a gang of wanted men. How could I not include this loveable murderous scamp, really?