The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Great One

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 805: THE GREAT ONE

    (The Funnies 042, 1940)

    I had great hopes for the Great One, a pirate captain so mysterious that he wears a full-face hood (with nostril holes! The rarest hood hole!) even while hanging out on his own South Pacific island inhabited solely by his own fanatical crew. The black skull insignia alone inspired me to hope that there might be some fun mystery behind that hood for Bruce McKay, formerly Sky Master but now Sky Ranger, to solve when he and his companions are captured by one of the Great One’s lieutenants. 

    Alas, such is not the case. Bruce is pressed into service as a scout pilot for the Great One’s fleet and quickly betrays him to the first freighter captain he sees. His fleet is blown up thanks to the fact that the freighter in question was hauling a load of hand grenades and the Great One himself dies ignominiously and still masked, in a fall from a cliff. I should have known it was all over when they didn’t bother to colour his robe in the second issue.

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 016

     Bless ’em, they’re trying.

    The first few adventures of Hydroman, a character I have an inexplicable affection for, are concerned with what at first seems like some real standard Yellow Peril bullplop (“Oriental invaders” and so forth) but then there are gangsters involved and the two factions variously mention a higher-up named “the Great One” and “the Big Boss”, respectively. Still later, the whole operation seems to be run by this collection of pseudo-Nazis on a yacht in New York Harbor. It looks like the bald guy in the monocle might be in charge but the whole issue of just who exactly the Great One is is ultimately rendered moot by Hydroman blowing up the yacht and killing them all before their org chart is fully conveyed. 

    Good costumes on those henchmen, though. (Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics 001, 1940)

    I quite like “the Snarl,” the nom de crime that this fellow has chosen for himself, and he gets up to all sorts of classic villainy to boot: bank robbery, deathtraps, sending taunting notes to the police, mass murder, etc, but he gets caught with ease by semi-comedic actor/detective Fuller Spunk in just a couple of pages so there’s not quite enough meat for a full entry. (Hyper Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

    Jungle comics are crawling with guys like Zan Marzov, a crook who murders and pillages with the aid of a gang of men dressed in leopard skins. Few can match his look, however. Between the leopard scar, haunted eyes, shrunken head necklace and horrible goatee, Marzov may have achieved the pinnacle of the Evil Explorer aesthetic. He ultimately gets blown up by virtuous explorer Buck Barton, by the way. (Jungle Comics 001, 1940)

    This guy calls himself Mr X and he has stolen a sacred mask from a temple in the jungle dimension that Fantomah calls home, thus invoking a curse that threatens to flood the entire land with boiling mud. Needless to say, Fantomah does not look kindly on that sort of behaviour and he is rounded up post haste and sent to a weird cavern to “eat mud and fire for the rest of your days.” Tough but fair, Fantomah! (Jungle Comics 008, 1940)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 016

     Bless ’em, they’re trying.

    The first few adventures of Hydroman, a character I have an inexplicable affection for, are concerned with what at first seems like some real standard Yellow Peril bullplop (“Oriental invaders” and so forth) but then there are gangsters involved and the two factions variously mention a higher-up named “the Great One” and “the Big Boss”, respectively. Still later, the whole operation seems to be run by this collection of pseudo-Nazis on a yacht in New York Harbor. It looks like the bald guy in the monocle might be in charge but the whole issue of just who exactly the Great One is is ultimately rendered moot by Hydroman blowing up the yacht and killing them all before their org chart is fully conveyed. 

    Good costumes on those henchmen, though. (Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics 001, 1940)

    I quite like “the Snarl,” the nom de crime that this fellow has chosen for himself, and he gets up to all sorts of classic villainy to boot: bank robbery, deathtraps, sending taunting notes to the police, mass murder, etc, but he gets caught with ease by semi-comedic actor/detective Fuller Spunk in just a couple of pages so there’s not quite enough meat for a full entry. (Hyper Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

    Jungle comics are crawling with guys like Zan Marzov, a crook who murders and pillages with the aid of a gang of men dressed in leopard skins. Few can match his look, however. Between the leopard scar, haunted eyes, shrunken head necklace and horrible goatee, Marzov may have achieved the pinnacle of the Evil Explorer aesthetic. He ultimately gets blown up by virtuous explorer Buck Barton, by the way. (Jungle Comics 001, 1940)

    This guy calls himself Mr X and he has stolen a sacred mask from a temple in the jungle dimension that Fantomah calls home, thus invoking a curse that threatens to flood the entire land with boiling mud. Needless to say, Fantomah does not look kindly on that sort of behaviour and he is rounded up post haste and sent to a weird cavern to “eat mud and fire for the rest of your days.” Tough but fair, Fantomah! (Jungle Comics 008, 1940)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 016

     Bless ’em, they’re trying.

    The first few adventures of Hydroman, a character I have an inexplicable affection for, are concerned with what at first seems like some real standard Yellow Peril bullplop (“Oriental invaders” and so forth) but then there are gangsters involved and the two factions variously mention a higher-up named “the Great One” and “the Big Boss”, respectively. Still later, the whole operation seems to be run by this collection of pseudo-Nazis on a yacht in New York Harbor. It looks like the bald guy in the monocle might be in charge but the whole issue of just who exactly the Great One is is ultimately rendered moot by Hydroman blowing up the yacht and killing them all before their org chart is fully conveyed. 

    Good costumes on those henchmen, though. (Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics 001, 1940)

    I quite like “the Snarl,” the nom de crime that this fellow has chosen for himself, and he gets up to all sorts of classic villainy to boot: bank robbery, deathtraps, sending taunting notes to the police, mass murder, etc, but he gets caught with ease by semi-comedic actor/detective Fuller Spunk in just a couple of pages so there’s not quite enough meat for a full entry. (Hyper Mystery Comics 002, 1940)

    Jungle comics are crawling with guys like Zan Marzov, a crook who murders and pillages with the aid of a gang of men dressed in leopard skins. Few can match his look, however. Between the leopard scar, haunted eyes, shrunken head necklace and horrible goatee, Marzov may have achieved the pinnacle of the Evil Explorer aesthetic. He ultimately gets blown up by virtuous explorer Buck Barton, by the way. (Jungle Comics 001, 1940)

    This guy calls himself Mr X and he has stolen a sacred mask from a temple in the jungle dimension that Fantomah calls home, thus invoking a curse that threatens to flood the entire land with boiling mud. Needless to say, Fantomah does not look kindly on that sort of behaviour and he is rounded up post haste and sent to a weird cavern to “eat mud and fire for the rest of your days.” Tough but fair, Fantomah! (Jungle Comics 008, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 469: THE GREAT ONE

    (Amazing-Man Comics 013, 1940)

    The Great One is a real testament to the fact that style is far more important than substance when it comes to super-villainy. On a purely objective level the Great One is average at best, with an entry-level costume and a scheme that was old back in the days of the pulps. But it’s the style that makes the villain, and if the Great One has anything , it’s style.

    The Great One’s scheme involves using a submersible aircraft carrier as a base of operations to capture planes using a magnetic tractor ray, then hypnotizing their crews into serving him as an army of loyal minions. If this happened in real life it would obviously be the news of the century but in any comic book universe it’s strictly cliche.

    But the Great One is making it work! He speechifies, he dresses his pilots up in weird brown sack uniforms, he names his submersible aircraft carrier “Eurania, the Floating Continent”. He’s such a grandiose, self-assured ass of a villain that I’m a bit surprised that he bothers to hold the Scarlet Ace at bay with a gun rather than trying to bluff him with sheer personality.

    The Great One’s downfall comes in two parts: first, after the Scarlet Ace discovers that the pilots can be shaken out of their mind control via a good sock to the jaw, he makes the key mistake jaw ordering them to beat him up rather than, say, employing firearms to take him out. As freed pilots join in the jaw-socking, all are freed with an exponential swiftness.

    The second part is unavoidable. There is no way that the Great One that so endeared himself to me would not do something as foolhardy as stand up in his biplane to gloat over his impending victory over the Scarlet Ace. I salute thee, Great One, a bombastic idiot to the end.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 469: THE GREAT ONE

    (Amazing-Man Comics 013, 1940)

    The Great One is a real testament to the fact that style is far more important than substance when it comes to super-villainy. On a purely objective level the Great One is average at best, with an entry-level costume and a scheme that was old back in the days of the pulps. But it’s the style that makes the villain, and if the Great One has anything , it’s style.

    The Great One’s scheme involves using a submersible aircraft carrier as a base of operations to capture planes using a magnetic tractor ray, then hypnotizing their crews into serving him as an army of loyal minions. If this happened in real life it would obviously be the news of the century but in any comic book universe it’s strictly cliche.

    But the Great One is making it work! He speechifies, he dresses his pilots up in weird brown sack uniforms, he names his submersible aircraft carrier “Eurania, the Floating Continent”. He’s such a grandiose, self-assured ass of a villain that I’m a bit surprised that he bothers to hold the Scarlet Ace at bay with a gun rather than trying to bluff him with sheer personality.

    The Great One’s downfall comes in two parts: first, after the Scarlet Ace discovers that the pilots can be shaken out of their mind control via a good sock to the jaw, he makes the key mistake jaw ordering them to beat him up rather than, say, employing firearms to take him out. As freed pilots join in the jaw-socking, all are freed with an exponential swiftness.

    The second part is unavoidable. There is no way that the Great One that so endeared himself to me would not do something as foolhardy as stand up in his biplane to gloat over his impending victory over the Scarlet Ace. I salute thee, Great One, a bombastic idiot to the end.