The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: world domination

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 642: QUEEN OF THE WEED PEOPLE

    (Fight Comics 002, 1940)

    After spending so long with Sub Saunders in the far-off year 10 000 it’s a bit strange to detail an undersea menace that he isn’t battling but here we are and our focus is present-day adventurer Kinks Mason, who sets out with nothing but a helmet that extracts oxygen from seawater to solve the mystery of just where all these missing ships have been getting to and ends up discovering an underwater civilization of seaweed people.

    (I really like the Weed People, as they are referred to in the text a couple of times – their krinkly kelp frond aesthetic is very pleasing to me. It’s quite different from the look of Kozar’s Sea-Weed Men but I enjoy them in a similar fashion. Just something about humanoids made of seaweed, I guess)

    Weed Person society is dependent on a giant whirlpool-powered chlorophyll manufacturing plant. Just where this infrastructure came from and how the Weed People existed without it is not elaborated upon – did their primitive ancestors subsist on naturally occurring chlorophyll or spend their days basking in the sun photosynthesizing and then completely abandon that lifestyle once some unnamed Weed Person genius created the machine? Plausibly!

    Chlorophyll isn’t just the Weed Person staff of life, however. It also turns humans into Weed Creatures, which, though they look and are named similar to the Weed People are in fact distinct and who serve as slaves of the Weed People in their bid to take over the world.

    The Weed People and their Queen have made the crucial mistake of not being genre savvy enough to know that any lone adventurer, particularly one with an action hero-y name like Kinks Mason, should be killed immediately and they end up dead for their trouble. Specifically, Kinks goes ahead and blows up the chlorophyll machine, dooming all Weed People society to extinction. Hopefully there’s some hipster Weed Person subculture on the fringes of society still harvesting chlorophyll in the ancient ways because it tastes better, if only for the sake of Kinks Mason’s conscience.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 637: CHANG

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 637: CHANG

    (Fantastic Comics 013, 1940)

    It finally happened: Flip Falcon told the world that travel between Earth and the Fourth Dimension was possible (I haven’t been highlighting it because there aren’t super-villains etc but a fair few of his adventures have just been commissions from randos to go back in time and find out where pirates hid some treasure and whatnot. Everyone knows about the Fourth Dimension, Billy.) and someone has finally replicated his findings. Too bad for the world in general and Flip Falcon in particular that that person was Chang.

    Chang is a Tibetan Lama for some reason (the reason is that Tibet is far away and Tibetan Buddhism was exotic so virtually any secret knowledge could be ascribed to them. And also Tibetans are Asians, so racism) and is notably more cautious than Flip. Rather than dive headfirst into what could reasonably be called a Hell Dimension, Chang has chosen to communicate with the various spirits and demonoids who reside there. Details are sparse but it seems that he was attempting to recruit them as an invasion force before Flip Falcon cottoned onto him.

    The real stars of the adventure are the creeps and ghouloids that slither out of the landscape to take Chang up on his offer. For such a fun and diverse collection of creepos they certainly get little enough page time in favour of a guy in a robe and a widow’s peak.

    Chang’s caution proves to be his ultimate undoing, however, as while he has not been placing himself into the same danger as Flip Falcon, he has also not been charged up with the same extradimensional energies that Flip is when he does and which allow him to, for example, easily escape from a deathtrap and then fly off after blowing up Chang and his entire lamasery. A valuable lesson, learned too late.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 637: CHANG

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 637: CHANG

    (Fantastic Comics 013, 1940)

    It finally happened: Flip Falcon told the world that travel between Earth and the Fourth Dimension was possible (I haven’t been highlighting it because there aren’t super-villains etc but a fair few of his adventures have just been commissions from randos to go back in time and find out where pirates hid some treasure and whatnot. Everyone knows about the Fourth Dimension, Billy.) and someone has finally replicated his findings. Too bad for the world in general and Flip Falcon in particular that that person was Chang.

    Chang is a Tibetan Lama for some reason (the reason is that Tibet is far away and Tibetan Buddhism was exotic so virtually any secret knowledge could be ascribed to them. And also Tibetans are Asians, so racism) and is notably more cautious than Flip. Rather than dive headfirst into what could reasonably be called a Hell Dimension, Chang has chosen to communicate with the various spirits and demonoids who reside there. Details are sparse but it seems that he was attempting to recruit them as an invasion force before Flip Falcon cottoned onto him.

    The real stars of the adventure are the creeps and ghouloids that slither out of the landscape to take Chang up on his offer. For such a fun and diverse collection of creepos they certainly get little enough page time in favour of a guy in a robe and a widow’s peak.

    Chang’s caution proves to be his ultimate undoing, however, as while he has not been placing himself into the same danger as Flip Falcon, he has also not been charged up with the same extradimensional energies that Flip is when he does and which allow him to, for example, easily escape from a deathtrap and then fly off after blowing up Chang and his entire lamasery. A valuable lesson, learned too late.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 635: KAOS

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 635: KAOS

    (Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

    Kaos, a Venusian scientist, has a plan that in true comics book fashion is both simple (invade the Earth with overwhelming force, thus taking over almost immediately) and overly complicated (hypnotize the local population of giant vultures and then feed them super vitamins extracted from a specially-bred vine, thus making them even more giant and so fast that they are unbeatable, then teleport them to Earth as your main invasion force). Also: those are some crazy legs on those vultures.

    Kaos may be the villain who benefits the most from a frequent plot element in Stardust the Super Wizard adventures, that Stardust lives so gosh darned far away. Thus, despite the fact that Stardust watched Kaos’ entire plan unfold on his View-Plate and Thought-Recorder, Kaos has enough time to effectively conquer the planet while the Super Wizard is on his commute.

    Once Stardust actually shows up, Kaos is subdued in exactly two panels. The vultures take a bit longer but in short order both they and “Kaos-the-Worm” are on their way back to Venus. There’s no mention of removing the birds’ physical enhancements so I guess it’s now up to the Venusians to deal with millions of huge powerful super-fast vultures.

    This is the issue in which a young woman orphaned in the vulture attacks attaches herself to Stardust and ends up returning to his star with him to live. I don’t know if this was intended to be a sexy situation or not – the two of them certainly do seem to be giving each other significant looks, but the same panels are really emphasizing just how much bigger Stardust is than her. It’s unsettling! Though she never appears again in a Fletcher Hanks story, this unnamed character is a frequent feature of more recent Stardust works, so I felt I should include her.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 621: THE EMERALD MEN OF ASPERUS

    (Fantastic Comics 008, 1940)

    The Emerald Men of Asperus live on an asteroid (named Asperus, natch), and I’m pretty sure that their plan is to move the Earth to the Asteroid Belt so that they can easily enslave as many Earthlings as they want, but it’s a bit hard to grok because the way the Emerald Men talk makes it plausible that they don’t know how the Solar System works. Like, it’s possible that they don’t know that Earth and Asperus orbit the same star? This is all further complicated by the fact that the Emerald Men kind of look like the Chad of Virgin/Chad meme fame. None of them actually do that super floppy walk of his but you can see it happening in a Fletcher Hanks comic and it’s distracting.

    Stardust the Super Wizard of course is on this plan immediately. Stealing and enslaving a whole planet? Not on his watch.

    Once Stardust stops the Emerald Men’s original barrage of planetary-control gas missiles, they make the unusual and very confident decision to attempt to tackle him head-on. And it seems like they might actually be a credible threat: 15-20 muscular dudes with a similar level of outlandish technology to his? AND they’re ray-proof, an amazing thing to be when you’re taking on Stardust “I have a ray for every occasion” the Super Wizard.

    But no, even without his signature rays Stardust is still something like twice the size of the average Emerald Man and he swiftly uppercuts every single on of them into submission.

    Even their last-ditch effort, involving anti-star-metal acid bombs designed to destroy the suit that houses most of Stardust’s power, fizzles due to the playground logic of Super Wizard stories as he merely emits a cloud of acid-proof dust to explode them before they reach him.

    The Emerald Men get off pretty easy for Stardust foes, particularly now that we know that being frozen but conscious forever is an option. They and their asteroid home are merely banished to the far reaches of space. A comparative mercy!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 619: GYP CLIPP

    (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940) 

    Mr Clipp here is our first villain with “Gyp” or “Gypsy” as a part of their name, and there are going to be a lot of them. On the one hand you have to cut the old-time creators a bit of slack, as the World Romani Congress didn’t officially vote to reject the term and all of its derivatives until 1971, but on the other hand they knew. “Gyp” is in the Top 50 in my spreadsheet of all the nicknames I come across (yes of course I have one of those) and unlike Red, Doc, Slim or Happy it is only ever given to crooks.

    It therefore both makes sense and is very annoying that a Fletcher Hanks villain would be named such, because this is possibly the Platonic ideal of a Hanks story. Clipp and his pals here have an over-the-top plan to amass wealth: stop the rotation of the Earth, thus flinging all other humans off into space so that they can have all of the good stuff for themselves. And don’t worry about the good stuff also flying off into the endless void because they’ve used rays to stick everything that isn’t humans down.

    Then we have one of those iconic Fletcher Hanks panels of all humans flying off into the lemon void. This is the kind of thing that Roy Lichtenstein would have been stealing if he wasn’t a coward.

    After successfully ejecting all other humans from the planet, Clipp makes the amazing choiceto kill his two accomplices so as not to have to split the take, and while I was initially going to make a big deal about what a wild decision this is, it is in fact extremely consistent with his other actions in the story. You don’t get to the point that Clipp is at without something very wrong with the way you look at the world, but does he not realize that having unlimited wealth on an empty planet is a meaningless thing or does he simply not care and is content to sit on a pile of gold by himself until the canned goods run out, like a horrible little dragon?

    We will never know the answer, because, deus ex machina, Stardust the Super Wizard shows up before anyone even has time to asphyxiate and uses one of his highly specific rays to restore everyone to their starting location!

    Stardust of course does not waste time: Clipp is crumpled up in a big fist and tossed into space. This is the kind of Direct Action Irony we have come to expect and love from the big man.

    The last few Stardust stories have featured crooks being taken to prison instead of messily killed and I kept thinking that that was unusually merciful for a character I had thought of as very harsh in his punishments, but if they’re all being shipped off to the Floating Prison of Eternal Space to be frozen yet aware for all eternity… that’s in character.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 615: SANGLOR

    (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940)

    Sanglor starts out strong. He immediately charms me with his aesthetic sense: his ‘Automatic Subplane’ spy drones are delightful, his ‘Flying Castle’ is simultaneously one of the most ridiculous and great-looking mobile bases I have ever seen and his costume manages to evoke the dress sense of a 1940s comic book movie villain in a way I have not seen since the Vampire, almost exactly 300 entries ago.

    He manages to mess things up almost immediately, of course. His plan is to take over the world by hypnotizing key politicians and diplomats etc., and then presumably induce them to shift the reins of political power his way. This is the kind of scheme that requires some degree of care to set up – you have to get all of your assets in place without causing undue suspicion, so having them for example act all weird and then disappear is problematic. People are noticing your plan, Sanglor.

    This is the first evidence of what I will call Sanglor Self-Sabotages. This one seems to stem from the fact that Sanglor works completely solo, without even a weird little lab assistant to test his hypnotic ray on to see if it makes people freak out in noticeable ways before using it in a sensitive espionage operation.

    The big upshot of this Sanglor Self-Sabotage is that Samson is on the case basically the instant that the scheme is put in motion

    The second Sanglor Self-Sabotage is an extension of the first: he has no real defenses. Once Samson makes his way to the Flying Castle his only real opposition is a crowd of tuxedo-clad diplomats flailing away with their soft fists.

    Sanglor does think to call out his drone army to deal with the intruder but they don’t seem to even be armed, despite their little gun barrels – they just fly at Samson until he smashes them all.

    The really big final Sanglor Self-Sabotage is revealed once Samson bursts into his inner sanctum: Sanglor is too busy being a weird creep to actively manage the defense of his headquarters. It’s not exactly clear what he’s doing with this young woman or who she is (it’s unlikely to be Miss Royce, a politician’s daughter in England and the only named female character in the story) but it’s real creep shit and it’s an unnecessary distraction from the approaching vigilante.

    Sanglor is probably still distracted as he flees through an industrial section of his base, because he can’t even run correctly – he manages to heave himself off what looks to be a pretty solid catwalk into the first available cauldron of boiling chemicals.

    I think that ultimately Sanglor serves as an object example of the need for villains to do a couple of trial runs before attempting world domination. If he’d attempted to take over a county or a small business first, maybe some of these kinks would’ve been worked out.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 615: SANGLOR

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 615: SANGLOR

    (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940)

    Sanglor starts out strong. He immediately charms me with his aesthetic sense: his ‘Automatic Subplane’ spy drones are delightful, his ‘Flying Castle’ is simultaneously one of the most ridiculous and great-looking mobile bases I have ever seen and his costume manages to evoke the dress sense of a 1940s comic book movie villain in a way I have not seen since the Vampire, almost exactly 300 entries ago.

    He manages to mess things up almost immediately, of course. His plan is to take over the world by hypnotizing key politicians and diplomats etc., and then presumably induce them to shift the reins of political power his way. This is the kind of scheme that requires some degree of care to set up – you have to get all of your assets in place without causing undue suspicion, so having them for example act all weird and then disappear is problematic. People are noticing your plan, Sanglor.

    This is the first evidence of what I will call Sanglor Self-Sabotages. This one seems to stem from the fact that Sanglor works completely solo, without even a weird little lab assistant to test his hypnotic ray on to see if it makes people freak out in noticeable ways before using it in a sensitive espionage operation.

    The big upshot of this Sanglor Self-Sabotage is that Samson is on the case basically the instant that the scheme is put in motion

    The second Sanglor Self-Sabotage is an extension of the first: he has no real defenses. Once Samson makes his way to the Flying Castle his only real opposition is a crowd of tuxedo-clad diplomats flailing away with their soft fists.

    Sanglor does think to call out his drone army to deal with the intruder but they don’t seem to even be armed, despite their little gun barrels – they just fly at Samson until he smashes them all.

    The really big final Sanglor Self-Sabotage is revealed once Samson bursts into his inner sanctum: Sanglor is too busy being a weird creep to actively manage the defense of his headquarters. It’s not exactly clear what he’s doing with this young woman or who she is (it’s unlikely to be Miss Royce, a politician’s daughter in England and the only named female character in the story) but it’s real creep shit and it’s an unnecessary distraction from the approaching vigilante.

    Sanglor is probably still distracted as he flees through an industrial section of his base, because he can’t even run correctly – he manages to heave himself off what looks to be a pretty solid catwalk into the first available cauldron of boiling chemicals.

    I think that ultimately Sanglor serves as an object example of the need for villains to do a couple of trial runs before attempting world domination. If he’d attempted to take over a county or a small business first, maybe some of these kinks would’ve been worked out.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 613: DR MARTINIOUS

    (Fantastic Comics 006, 1940)

    Dr Martinious holds a few distinctions. First, he is an Earth scientist who travelled to Mars on a rocket ship of his own design, an impressive feat and one that seems to have endeared him to the Brain Men of Mars sufficiently to make him their leader.

    Secondly, he is an early cosplayer. Note his pseudo-Roman outfit (better view below). This is the outfit of a person who showed up on Mars after reading a lot of pulp fiction and early comic books that populated planets with societies themed after their mythological namesakes – see early Wonder Woman, e.g. How disappointing for Martinious when he showed up and the place was chockablock with cute little big-headed cyborgs! It’s just lucky for him that they’re up for a good war.

    Thirdly, Dr Martinious has the dubious distinction of being the antagonist of a non-Fletcher Hanks-produced Stardust the Super Wizard story. It’s not a particularly bad effort but something is subtly off in a way that makes one feel uneasy while reading it. It’s actually not unlike the sensation of reading Hanks’ work for the first time, so good job unnamed artist!

    The Martinious/Brain Men plan involves flooding the planet with either huge insects or giant bacteria or some hybrid of the two? Big bugs, we’ll say. It’s never expressly spelled out but an attack like this is usually deployed to weaken a planet prior to invasion. Martinious never actually gets that far, however, because Stardust shows up to render aid to the Earthlings.

    (of course Stardust’s solution – to soak the entire planet in ultra-powerful germicide – would probably be just as disastrous in the long term as presumably huge swaths of essential microbial life would be wiped out, but this is a comic with a shaky understanding of the difference between insects and bacteria so don’t hold your breath for that reveal to happen in-story)

    Where a lot of villains would use this as an opportunity to spit defiance at their foe, Dr Martinious instead sinks into despair. He and the Brain Men lock themselves up in a ray-proof fortress to sulk. He also finally gives us a good look at his cosplay, which is nice.

    Martinious never emerges from his funk, so the final act of the story is in the hands of these cute Brain Men assassins, who at least try to kill Stardust. Do they get hurled off a mountain for their efforts? Yes. But it was worth a try.

    Like I said, Martinious never emerges from his ray-proof fortress, and that’s because it’s specifically a death ray-proof fortress. Concentrated solar heat rays are very effective against it. RIP Dr Martinious, you didn’t do a very good job.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 608: KING KELPA

    (Fantastic Comics 005, 1940)

    Sub Saunders needs to investigate a series of sunken ships, so he has his fiance Peg given the same treatment as he got from the great “oceantalogist” Professor Foama so that they are both amphibious and can go on missions together. This is wildly progressive for a Golden (or Silver, or a lot of Bronze) Age comic book hero! They’re usually more likely to toe the “this is too dangerous for a woman” line – it’s probably because Sub Saunders is from the year 10 000.

    Somewhat predictably at this point, the problem stems from an irascible undersea ruler with a vaguely nautical name, in this case one King Kelpa. Unlike the rest of the sub-oceanic peoples from earlier Sub Saunders stories, Kelpa and the inhabitants of his unnamed city are actually amphibious, a huge advantage to people living at the bottom of the ocean! Flush with feelings of superiority, he has decided to invade the surfave world, where his people will have no advantage over regular soldiers. Problem is, he doesn’t actually know anything about the surface world and so has been sinking ships in hopes of getting intel, but up until Sub and Peg showed up all he got was a bunch of drowned sailors. What luck for him to encounter the only two amphibious surface dwellers!

    Only not so much. Sub Saunders defeats Kelpa’s pet swordfish, snaps off its bill and stabs him to death with it, then bombs his city for good measure.