The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: world domination

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE SORCERESS OF ZOOM

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE SORCERESS OF ZOOM

    (Weird Comics 001, 1940)

    The Sorceress of Zoom is just what it says on the tin: a sorceress from Zoom, which is a magical flying city that she lives in and controls. She’s another of the Golden Age’s surprisingly large number of headlining super-villains, only instead of being a mad scientist or a more conventional crook she is a mercurial magic woman who just kind of flies around harassing people. Sometimes she’s almost okay and other times she’s one of history’s worst monsters – it’s over all fun!

    As has become the norm with these recurring villains, here is a litany of her crimes for 1940:

    In her first outing, the Sorceress takes over a small American city for unclear reasons (a page is missing from the only available scan of the issue and I reckon that the answer lies there), but the main conflict involves the Sorceress’ attempt to vamp a dude named Tom away from a lady named Janice. 

    Sorceress’ Motivation: caprice, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: This is the first appearance of the Sorceress of Zoom’s most frequent henchmen, a group of unnamed gobliny humanoids 

    In Weird Comics 002, the Sorceress really ups the stakes. This might be her most villainous appearance, as she first attempts to get the king of Bango, a… European city-state? to surrender 300 people so that she can kill them and turn their corpses into her goblin-men, and when he refuses to do so, she razes the entire city and turns the slaughtered population of Bango en masse.

    The only surviving Bangonian, Prince Paul, escapes to the nearby city-state of Zoda and when the Sorceress appears there, conceives of a plan to evaporate the cloud that Zoom sits upon – this marks the first of many times that Zoom is destroyed, but the Sorceress seems to be able to recreate it at will, so that’s not as consequential as it seems.

    I really enjoy the flying throne that the SoZ escapes on, so here it is.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The same gobliny humanoids, now revealed to be necromantically created out of human corpses.

    Weird Comics 003 really highlights the mercurial nature of the Sorceress’ character, as she is fully the blameless protagonist here. She and her friend Allan are just hanging out in Zoom when a nefarious character called the Wizard attacks them and makes off with the entire dang city, forcing the Sorceress and the tuxedo-clad Allan to quest in search of it. The Wizard is number 1 of 5 upcoming Minor Super-Villain entries dealing with foes of the Sorceress, so more on him later.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: vengeance, good times

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Seemingly just regular people, who are all slaughtered by the Wizard. The hazards of living in a magical city owned by a super-villain, I suppose. 

    In Weird Comics 004, the Sorceress attempts to ally with a fellow called the Wizard of Zoro to take over the US (? Possibly – a sense of place is not the strong suit of the Sorceress of Zoom comics), but he is too full of himself to work with someone else, making him the second of our future entries and giving the Sorceress a real opportunity to show off her flying, lion-driven carriage as she makes a brief tactical retreat.

    The Sorceress once again threatens to return and steal someone’s fairly generic man at the end of this one, and as far as is shown she never really follows up on these impulses.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: vengeance, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The coachmen above are the only ones shown, so presumably more regular people have decided to live on the edge by inhabiting a magical villain’s lair. 

     

    Weird Comics 005 sees the Sorceress kidnapping the magical men who live in Nagpur, India, both to beef up her forces and to prove that she is better than them.

    What the Sorceress doesn’t count on is the fact that one of the magical men might have a magical son, and that magical son might effect a magical rescue. The magical men, once released, are able to prevent the Sorceress from making any more attempts to deprive them of their freedom.

    This issue also attempts to inject some continuity and foreshadowing into the ongoing Sorceress of Zoom narrative with a bit of a cliffhanger about just what the general and the king in her cryo-chamber could be doing there. This is to my knowledge never revisited.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: pride, power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The gobliny humanoids are back!

    In Weird Comics 006, a somewhat off-model Sorceress of Zoom attempts to take over the Middle East with the help of some dragons. This attempt is foiled by young Prince Ja’afar, who is gifted a protective amulet and a flying carpet by a friendly desert mage and invades Zoom to rescue his love, the Princess Shahzarad.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: power, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Slaves and dragons.

    Weird Comics 007 sees the Sorceress transporting Zoom back in time to escape the chaos of the growing World War II. She ends up in Arthurian England, mixed up in a conflict between Sir Gareth of the Round Table (who she of course wants, carnally) and Morgana le Fay (upcoming minor super-villain 3/5), before being run out of town by Merlin.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Big beefy shirtless men, mostly. 

    The Weird Comics 008 story is the first of what I think will be a pattern of adventures going forward: the Sorceress rolls into some area and starts causing trouble, then gets into a scrap, then undoes some or all of the mischief that she caused and leaves. My theory is that this is what she does when she gets bored.

    In this case, the Sorceress annoys a young couple and attempts to seduce the man away from the woman (who has been turned into flowers, natch), then attempts to conquer a nearby city before having a real tussle with upcoming villain 4/5, the Super-Scientist, and leaving (after turning the flowers back into a lady).

    This issue also features the second time that Zoom is destroyed and recreated.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: lust, boredom, power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: the very cool-looking Vapor Men. 

    Weird Comics 009 is another of these boredom issues, in which the Sorceress is ostensibly transporting some treasure out of the North African desert but really seems to just be having fun torturing the poor people who she has enslaved to do so. Eventually, she gets into a conflict with out final upcoming super-villain, Gobi, the Super-Wizard of the Desert, who wants to use the Sorceress’ slaves as food for his vultures. Zoom is destroyed yet again this issue.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: wealth, boredom

    Inhabitants of Zoom: None shown. 

    That’s it for the Sorceress of Zoom in 1940: stay tuned for her 1941 adventures! 

     

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 846: THE SORCERESS OF ZOOM

    (Weird Comics 001, 1940)

    The Sorceress of Zoom is just what it says on the tin: a sorceress from Zoom, which is a magical flying city that she lives in and controls. She’s another of the Golden Age’s surprisingly large number of headlining super-villains, only instead of being a mad scientist or a more conventional crook she is a mercurial magic woman who just kind of flies around harassing people. Sometimes she’s almost okay and other times she’s one of history’s worst monsters – it’s over all fun!

    As has become the norm with these recurring villains, here is a litany of her crimes for 1940:

    In her first outing, the Sorceress takes over a small American city for unclear reasons (a page is missing from the only available scan of the issue and I reckon that the answer lies there), but the main conflict involves the Sorceress’ attempt to vamp a dude named Tom away from a lady named Janice. 

    Sorceress’ Motivation: caprice, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: This is the first appearance of the Sorceress of Zoom’s most frequent henchmen, a group of unnamed gobliny humanoids 

    In Weird Comics 002, the Sorceress really ups the stakes. This might be her most villainous appearance, as she first attempts to get the king of Bango, a… European city-state? to surrender 300 people so that she can kill them and turn their corpses into her goblin-men, and when he refuses to do so, she razes the entire city and turns the slaughtered population of Bango en masse.

    The only surviving Bangonian, Prince Paul, escapes to the nearby city-state of Zoda and when the Sorceress appears there, conceives of a plan to evaporate the cloud that Zoom sits upon – this marks the first of many times that Zoom is destroyed, but the Sorceress seems to be able to recreate it at will, so that’s not as consequential as it seems.

    I really enjoy the flying throne that the SoZ escapes on, so here it is.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The same gobliny humanoids, now revealed to be necromantically created out of human corpses.

    Weird Comics 003 really highlights the mercurial nature of the Sorceress’ character, as she is fully the blameless protagonist here. She and her friend Allan are just hanging out in Zoom when a nefarious character called the Wizard attacks them and makes off with the entire dang city, forcing the Sorceress and the tuxedo-clad Allan to quest in search of it. The Wizard is number 1 of 5 upcoming Minor Super-Villain entries dealing with foes of the Sorceress, so more on him later.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: vengeance, good times

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Seemingly just regular people, who are all slaughtered by the Wizard. The hazards of living in a magical city owned by a super-villain, I suppose. 

    In Weird Comics 004, the Sorceress attempts to ally with a fellow called the Wizard of Zoro to take over the US (? Possibly – a sense of place is not the strong suit of the Sorceress of Zoom comics), but he is too full of himself to work with someone else, making him the second of our future entries and giving the Sorceress a real opportunity to show off her flying, lion-driven carriage as she makes a brief tactical retreat.

    The Sorceress once again threatens to return and steal someone’s fairly generic man at the end of this one, and as far as is shown she never really follows up on these impulses.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: vengeance, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The coachmen above are the only ones shown, so presumably more regular people have decided to live on the edge by inhabiting a magical villain’s lair. 

     

    Weird Comics 005 sees the Sorceress kidnapping the magical men who live in Nagpur, India, both to beef up her forces and to prove that she is better than them.

    What the Sorceress doesn’t count on is the fact that one of the magical men might have a magical son, and that magical son might effect a magical rescue. The magical men, once released, are able to prevent the Sorceress from making any more attempts to deprive them of their freedom.

    This issue also attempts to inject some continuity and foreshadowing into the ongoing Sorceress of Zoom narrative with a bit of a cliffhanger about just what the general and the king in her cryo-chamber could be doing there. This is to my knowledge never revisited.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: pride, power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: The gobliny humanoids are back!

    In Weird Comics 006, a somewhat off-model Sorceress of Zoom attempts to take over the Middle East with the help of some dragons. This attempt is foiled by young Prince Ja’afar, who is gifted a protective amulet and a flying carpet by a friendly desert mage and invades Zoom to rescue his love, the Princess Shahzarad.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: power, lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Slaves and dragons.

    Weird Comics 007 sees the Sorceress transporting Zoom back in time to escape the chaos of the growing World War II. She ends up in Arthurian England, mixed up in a conflict between Sir Gareth of the Round Table (who she of course wants, carnally) and Morgana le Fay (upcoming minor super-villain 3/5), before being run out of town by Merlin.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: lust

    Inhabitants of Zoom: Big beefy shirtless men, mostly. 

    The Weird Comics 008 story is the first of what I think will be a pattern of adventures going forward: the Sorceress rolls into some area and starts causing trouble, then gets into a scrap, then undoes some or all of the mischief that she caused and leaves. My theory is that this is what she does when she gets bored.

    In this case, the Sorceress annoys a young couple and attempts to seduce the man away from the woman (who has been turned into flowers, natch), then attempts to conquer a nearby city before having a real tussle with upcoming villain 4/5, the Super-Scientist, and leaving (after turning the flowers back into a lady).

    This issue also features the second time that Zoom is destroyed and recreated.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: lust, boredom, power

    Inhabitants of Zoom: the very cool-looking Vapor Men. 

    Weird Comics 009 is another of these boredom issues, in which the Sorceress is ostensibly transporting some treasure out of the North African desert but really seems to just be having fun torturing the poor people who she has enslaved to do so. Eventually, she gets into a conflict with out final upcoming super-villain, Gobi, the Super-Wizard of the Desert, who wants to use the Sorceress’ slaves as food for his vultures. Zoom is destroyed yet again this issue.

    Sorceress’ Motivation: wealth, boredom

    Inhabitants of Zoom: None shown. 

    That’s it for the Sorceress of Zoom in 1940: stay tuned for her 1941 adventures! 

     

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 841: SIKANDUR, THE ROBOT MASTER

    (War Comics 001, 1940) 

    Sikandur, the Robot Master, is a villain-in-a-starring-role who sadly only appeared once. Any evil roboticist who, for example, makes his robots red-hot as a way of discouraging those who might grapple them is an evil roboticist I want to read about, and I only got the one opportunity to do so.

    Sikandur need gold in order to build more robots, though whether he needs it as a necessary component or as a handy source of cash is unspecified. To that end, he sends his boy Robot X5328B to the United States to rob Fort Knox.

    If Sikandur’s feature had continued to appear then presumably these three dingbats would have been the ones who would be foiling him going forward. As it is, they’re just three… college students? who figure out that Robot X5328B is something more than a simple traveller with jet-black eyes and kind of bumble around trying to figure out what he’s up to.

    Also please not that Sikandur has apparently “conquered half of Europe” at this point.

    Robot X5328B is an advanced robot indeed, because he (?) does some excellent and very menacing threats before being undermined by Sikandur’s caution re: the small-town police missing three local oafs. And that’s a wrap on Sikandur the Robot Master. Presumably the next few issues would have concerned our unlikely trio’s efforts to prevent the robbery of Fort Knox and then ultimately the end of Sikandur and his dreams of world conquest.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 841: SIKANDUR, THE ROBOT MASTER

    (War Comics 001, 1940) 

    Sikandur, the Robot Master, is a villain-in-a-starring-role who sadly only appeared once. Any evil roboticist who, for example, makes his robots red-hot as a way of discouraging those who might grapple them is an evil roboticist I want to read about, and I only got the one opportunity to do so.

    Sikandur need gold in order to build more robots, though whether he needs it as a necessary component or as a handy source of cash is unspecified. To that end, he sends his boy Robot X5328B to the United States to rob Fort Knox.

    If Sikandur’s feature had continued to appear then presumably these three dingbats would have been the ones who would be foiling him going forward. As it is, they’re just three… college students? who figure out that Robot X5328B is something more than a simple traveller with jet-black eyes and kind of bumble around trying to figure out what he’s up to.

    Also please not that Sikandur has apparently “conquered half of Europe” at this point.

    Robot X5328B is an advanced robot indeed, because he (?) does some excellent and very menacing threats before being undermined by Sikandur’s caution re: the small-town police missing three local oafs. And that’s a wrap on Sikandur the Robot Master. Presumably the next few issues would have concerned our unlikely trio’s efforts to prevent the robbery of Fort Knox and then ultimately the end of Sikandur and his dreams of world conquest.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 838: DR DREAD

    (Top-Notch Comics 008, 1940)

    After Harley Hudson perfects his muscular coordination technique and becomes the Firefly after two years of hard study, his first order of business is to move to New York City to find a job, because it’s hard to fight crime on an empty stomach. Plus NYC is the place to be for super-heroics and super-crime. Case in point: the very first job ad that Hudson follows up on turns out to be criminal scientist Dr Dread (unnamed in his first appearance), who is acquiring experimental subjects with a simple notice in the papes.

    Dread’s experiments involve “mechanical brains” that somehow mutate their recipients into huge goblinoid creatures (called the Green Men even though they trend more grey-brown) once implanted – the details are fuzzy at best. He believes that Hudson (and reporter Joan Burton, also unnamed this ish) have the fortitude necessary to be the Adam and Eve of an improved Green Man species, with which Dr Dread will take over the world.

    Luckily for Hudson/ unluckily for Dr Dread, the operation requires a period of complete darkness, allowing Harley to switch to his Firefly persona and begin beating some Green Man ass.

    At this point, it’s all over for Dr Dread – even the late-game addition of a mutated primate named Mongo does little to slow down the muscularly coordinated hero. Mongo goes out the window and the world is poorer for it.

    Indications at the end of that first Dr Dread story are that he escapes, but Thrilling Comics 009 finds him about to be executed for his crimes. After he is electrocuted, his body is collected by a henchman – presumably Selig, his assistant from his first appearance and also a rare example of a mad scientist’s assistant who doesn’t end up dead by the end of the adventure.

    Somewhat coincidentally, not long after Selig has hauled Dr Dread’s corpse away than the district attorney who prosecuted him is attacked and killed by a couple of walking corpses, who then spontaneously deanimate, leaving both a mess and a mystery in the middle of what was formerly a nice restaurant. 

    The mystery is solved when Joan Burton is kidnapped by some more walking corpses and spirited away to a remote castle, where she finds Dr Dread, alive and well. It turns out that he merely drank a potion that made him immune to being electrocuted – if the comic book justice system wants to keep on using capital punishment, they really are going to have to start treating villains like a superstitious peasant treats a suspected vampire: beheading the corpse is a minimum requirement to keep those suckers in the ground.

    Dr Dread is of course using his walking corpses to get revenge on those responsible for his capture and sentencing: the District Attorney (RIP), Joan, the Firefly and Judge Grayson. To that end, he locks Joan and the Firefly in a room with some kill-crazy corpses and then leaves to do something else, in classic super-villain deathtrap fashion.

    The Firefly makes use of his track and field experience to pole vault himself and Joan out of this sticky situation, leaving the kill-crazed corpses with nobody to murder. Thus, when Dr Dread comes back to admire his handiwork he instead finds himself as the target of their attack. He doesn’t make it.

    JUDGE AND JURY REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 1/4

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 019

    MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 019

    Science for all! Whether they want it or not! 

    Doctor Ivan has been pursuing a scheme in which he is systematically taking out insurance policies on everyone he knows and then having them murdered, and he is extremely smug about it. Now, I’m no expert in insurance fraud, but I have to say that I am certain that it requires a bit more subtlety than that, even if you’re doing it as a one-off. Forget the fact that the Flame shows up after the third murder; I would expect some raised eyebrows down at the insurance company after the second. (The Flame 003, 1940)

    Dr Gung is an old associate of magical arch-criminal Elena, and is the one who saves her from execution after the Karoly Gore affair by means of some death-simulating drugs. 

    Gung’s main line of inquiry is the use of his signature ray to destroy men’s minds and turn them into mindless robot soldiers, something that works perfectly well on regular guys sourced from the nearby populace but when tried on Mr Mystic goes badly enough that Dr Gung ends up shrunk to a few inches tall and then blown to smithereens along with his entire mansion. (The Spirit Section, 23 June 1940)

    Ghantse is one of those mad scientists who talk a lot about their grand plans but don’t actually get a chance to put them in motion, so it’s a real mystery whether he actually would have been able to fuse several human brains together into a single entity who would “know all” like he claimed or not, but he sure was willing to try. Along the way, he made two major mistakes: 1) targeting Mr Mystic for brain extraction and 2) somehow ending up with the Shadowman, the literal embodiment of death, on his payroll, the latter being compounded by the fact that the Shadowman hates Ghantse’s guts, and so not only releases Mr Mystic from his chemically-induced paralysis before Ghantse can extract his brain but also blows Ghantse’s entire base to kingdom come. (The Spirit Section, 22 September, 1940)

    Doctor Zorn, an eccentric roboticist living on Puerto Rico, is possibly the world record holder for escalation, as he manages to go from an argument about a late loan payment to unleashing his voice-controlled super robot (aka the Monster) to activating his lab’s self-destruct mechanism in the space of about half an hour. 

    Given that this is what he started shouting immediately after showing off his robot to a young woman, I do suspect that Doctor Zorn was primed for this kind of thing and was just looking for an excuse, like a man who has just bought a katana standing in his kitchen. (Thrilling Comics 005, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 821: KONG

    (Thrilling Comics 003, 1940)

    I can’t really devote a lot of energy to Kong because he just kind of makes me tired, conceptually. He’s a Yellow Peril dictator who has devoted a fair amount of time and resources to stealing both military secrets and entire scientists from the US as a part of his bid for world domination, opposed only by Doc Strange and his companion Virginia Thompson. All very exciting stuff in theory, but it all resolves into a kind of mush – it’s not even as racist as it could be, which is good but not remarkable.

    In the spirit of writing something interesting, here are the good parts of Kong’s story: 

    1. Location: Kong is the dictator of the Asian kingdom of Kachukuo, which was pretty fun to recognize as a stand-in for Manchukuo, the Chinese puppet-state established by the Japanese in 1932. I’m always chuffed to see Manchukuo come up both because it doesn’t really do so very often and because I managed to get pretty far into adulthood before I learned about this entire country, and the joy of learning about it is still fresh in my mind. Not that the history of Manchukuo itself is particularly joy-inspiring, but learning is learning.

    2. Rays. I like Kong’s big chunky ray technology. He’s got a red ray that brings the scientists out of the suspended animation he put them in for transport, a blue mind control ray (blue and red seem to come from the same machine) and a green death ray. What can I say, I like a ray, and I like colours.

    3. Wild Hill Warriors. At one point Kong tries to get rid of Doc Strong by subjecting him to gladiatorial combat and I just really like the fact that he managed to scare up some Germanic warriors fresh from the sack of Rome for the task. They don’t do very well but they’re fun!

    That’s about it for Kong. Doc Strange inspires a revolution in Kachukuo, chucks the dictator into his own chemical soup and thaws out the scientists with a little Alosun, bish bash bosh, start the countdown to the next Fu Manchu knockoff showing up.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 814: SARKU

    (The Spirit Section, 25 August, 1940)

    I’ve mentioned before that the foes faced by magical Golden Age super-heroes break down into roughly three types: 1) regular crooks who are there to be clowned upon, 2) legitimate threats with equivalent magical power of their own and 3) crooks with a little magical power, who provide a Iof a challenge but are ultimately also clowned upon. Sarku is the third type, and has set out, fresh out of prison, to get revenge on those who put him there. Also, like all magic users in “Mr Mystic,” Sarku has an innate resistance to magic that makes even low-level practicioners more of a challenge to Our Hero than they would be to a Zatara or a Yarko.

    By the time Mr Mystic has been brought in on the case, Sarku has already murdered the (police?) Commissioner of the unnamed Indian city he was incarcerated in and escaped via some handy teleportation magic. Though Mystic interrupts his attempt on the life of the French Consul, Sarku escapes again, this time into the far future world of 2050 AD.

    (just what had prevented him from time travelling or indeed merely teleporting out of his prison cell over the ten years of his incarceration is not elaborated upon. Perhaps he only just got the knack)

    Sarku does a bit of premature gloating before learning that Mr Mystic can also travel through time, and the two are quickly engaged in a high-speed rocket chase to the Moon. 

    Mystic ends up shooting Sarku down as they approach the Moon’s surface, and he makes the grim choice to pop his corpse into a handy corpse container (originally intended for the evocatively-named by alas never-seen “Moon King’s mummy”) as a sort of general warning to all would-be murderers who might be wandering around on the Moon. That’s it for Sarku!

    But perhaps I spoke too soon! Sarku is back in the next “Mr Mystic” installment, and though we don’t get to see any mummies, we are treated to a Moon King, as a not-so-dead Sarku is brought before Tan Tan, King of the Moon by his subjects. It turns out that he wasn’t quite dead when Mr Mystic shoved him in that tube, which is great for him now but horrifying in retrospect.

    Tan Tan turns out to have a weird crush on the (to him) historical figure of Elena, former Mr Mystic villain and current Mr Mystic fiance (stay tuned for her entry), and trades Sarku a space fleet for her.

    Sarku’s attempt to get revenge on the entire population of Earth for a 1930-1940 AD prison sentence that almost nobody in 2050 AD would have been alive at the same time as, let alone had anything to do with, is foiled once again by Mr Mystic, who leaves nothing to chance this time as he socks Sarku out the spaceship’s hatch and into the void of space (Tan Tan, by contrast gets a mere sock in the jaw for his creepy Elena-napping. The perks of royalty, eh?).

    REVENGE KILLER SCORE: 1/2+

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 793: BIG SHOT

    (Target Comics v1 002, 1940)

    Big Shot, a New York gang boss with a European spy named Drusella as his companion (a slight speculation as some imprecise speech balloon tails make it hard to be entirely sure just who is talking about what, but the details seem to fit), is after the technological advances that the Skipper has made in Boystate, with an eye toward using them to take over the world. His initial plan – drive up to the front gates and wing it from there – doesn’t bear fruit, so he is forced to improvise a real plan on the spot. Also please note that the Skipper is on to Big Shot from the very start thanks to mind-reading technology that one of the Boystate Rangers tells Big Shot about. This whole three-part story functions mostly as a demonstration of Boystate’s power for the reader.

    Since the Skipper’s stated mission is to take lost and abandoned boys and turn them into upstanding American men, Big Shot’s new plan involves recruiting a suitably wayward youth to infiltrate Boystate and do a little espionage. His chosen agent is the unnervingly-named Pretty Boy, a would-be gangster with a world-weary attitude.

    Pretty Boy is delivered from the harsh streets of NYC, where a boy might get beaten up by a grown man and forced into a life of crime, to the nice streets of Boyville, where boys are beaten up by their fellow boys in order to impart solid moral lessons. The nuance is unfortunately lost on him, and Pretty Boy sets out to fulfill his mission in the most direct manner possible.

    There’s some shenanigans involving a brief accidental foray into space as Pretty Boy steals an aircraft that he has no idea how to fly, but the end result is his delivering to Big Shot a bug-o-plane, a cosmic ray gun and the Skipper’s chief aide the Captain, at which point Big Shot tosses both the Captain and Pretty Boy into the skeleton-filled dungeon pit that he has had installed in his NYC penthouse apartment.

    At this point, Pretty Boy begins to see the error of his ways, and after some weeks of imprisonment and privation manages to make his escape and head back to Boystate for help.

    Once the Skipper and his personal child army are on the case, it’s all over for Big Shot. He doesn’t even get the satisfaction of executing his prisoner thanks to the repentant Pretty Boy.

    And speaking of Pretty Boy, he reforms and sheds his former, weird-to-type-this-many-times-in-short-succession name for the impersonal M-4 as he joins the Boystate Rangers and trades in his former rough and tumble lifestyle for one of blissful militarized conformity.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 785: THE PHOENIX

    (Sure-Fire Comics 001, 1940)

    Flash Lightning’s first stop after getting juiced up with brand-new electric powers is New York City, super-hero capital of the world, and it’s a good career move for him because he immediately gets mixed up in some super shenanigans. An explorer named Parker has gone missing in Central America and the agents of someone named the Phoenix are doing their damnedest to prevent his daughter Mary from looking for him. Lightning and Mary dodge fiery deathtraps, tommy gun-wielding gangsters and threatening coffin deliveries and set out regardless.

    Mary and Lightning travel to what is now the Parque Nacional Sierra De Las Minas in Guatemala (there are coordinates!) and dodge some fellows known variously as the Tzutuhiles, the Jewel Men and the Python Men, a bunch of snake worshippers who help the Phoenix advance his plans for world domination by using slave labour to create artificial gemstones that are then shipped around the world to be sold (and this is not the first nor the last time we will see the creation of artificial jewels, a victimless if not virtuous activity, treated as equivalent to counterfeiting currency).

    It is at this point that the Phoenix makes an actual appearance in the story, and just what does a guy named after a mythical firebird who makes and distributes gemstones with the aid of both hard-boiled gangsters and snake worshipping tribesmen look like?

    You guessed exactly right: he looks like a character from a 1930s sci-fi movie serial. Unfortunately for the Phoenix he is completely unprepared for a superhuman opponent and he appears in a whopping four panels before being sent to his doom at the bottom of his own volcanic crater by Flash Lightning.

    Special shout-out to this fellow, John Roan, aka the Reptile Man, who accompanied Parker Sr on his expedition and managed to escape and return to New York for help only be killed by the Phoenix’s men. Just what is his deal? Was he a reptile man when the expedition started or is this something that happened to him at the hands of the Python Men? I’m asking but nobody is telling me anything.