The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Black Death

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 831: THE BLACK DEATH

    (Thrilling Comics 010, 1940)

    Perry Knight has a problem: instead of starring as the titular costumed antagonist of stage production “The Black Death” he has been jailed for murder. He can’t remember doing it, but evidently he gunned down his costar Tinker in cold blood during the dress rehearsal.

    Enter Peggy Allen, the Woman in Red, who quickly discovers that there is a second Black Death running around when they have a confrontation in the wings. Is this a foolish move on the part of the second Black Death, who presumably wants Perry Knight to be the sole suspect in the murder? Absolutely it is.

    Peggy manages to get Knight bailed out to continue the role of the Black Death as bait for the real killer, and indeed the false Black Death attempts to murder Tinker’s replacement at the same point in the show as before. The Woman in Red of course manages to prevent this second murder, and after some running around etc the Black Death is unmasked to reveal… Weber, the theatre owner!

    It turns out that Weber is in love with lead actress Linda Lytell and that this murder/framing/attempted murder/kidnapping (he kidnaps Lytell before the second murder attempt) is all part of an effort to get him out of the way so that Weber can woo her. A foolish plan, and not just because Weber does not appear to have shared his feelings with Lytell at any point, but because literally the first thing that happens in the story is Lytell rejecting Knight, something that Weber might have learned if he had engaged in some conventional human conversation and courtship before jumping straight to adopting a costumed persona.

    Also, the critics hate the play.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 831: THE BLACK DEATH

    (Thrilling Comics 010, 1940)

    Perry Knight has a problem: instead of starring as the titular costumed antagonist of stage production “The Black Death” he has been jailed for murder. He can’t remember doing it, but evidently he gunned down his costar Tinker in cold blood during the dress rehearsal.

    Enter Peggy Allen, the Woman in Red, who quickly discovers that there is a second Black Death running around when they have a confrontation in the wings. Is this a foolish move on the part of the second Black Death, who presumably wants Perry Knight to be the sole suspect in the murder? Absolutely it is.

    Peggy manages to get Knight bailed out to continue the role of the Black Death as bait for the real killer, and indeed the false Black Death attempts to murder Tinker’s replacement at the same point in the show as before. The Woman in Red of course manages to prevent this second murder, and after some running around etc the Black Death is unmasked to reveal… Weber, the theatre owner!

    It turns out that Weber is in love with lead actress Linda Lytell and that this murder/framing/attempted murder/kidnapping (he kidnaps Lytell before the second murder attempt) is all part of an effort to get him out of the way so that Weber can woo her. A foolish plan, and not just because Weber does not appear to have shared his feelings with Lytell at any point, but because literally the first thing that happens in the story is Lytell rejecting Knight, something that Weber might have learned if he had engaged in some conventional human conversation and courtship before jumping straight to adopting a costumed persona.

    Also, the critics hate the play.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 606: THE BLACK DEATH

    (Fantastic Comics 005, 1940)

    In Fantastic Comics 004 Sir Richard of Warwick, aka the Golden Knight, seeking his Crusading companions, arrives in the small village of Namara and learns that it has been cursed for the past ten years after a young girl fell down a well and her father blamed everyone but himself for it and cursed the village. The Golden Knight of course heads down that well because where the heck did that girl go? After a few battles with giant spider-scorpions and the like he finds the now-adult Alice ruling a race of underground winged people and they fall in love.

    (side note: the reason that the Golden Knight couldn’t find his companions was that the writer forgot that he was in North Africa somewhere between Fantastic Comics issues 002 and 004 so he was teleported back to Europe)

    Sir Richard and Alice leave the city of the Winged People and are immediately set upon by a quartet of evil knights in service to the Black Death, owner of a nearby castle and dedicated jerk.

    The Black Death tosses Alice in a locked room and proceeds to torture the Golden Knight for information on the Winged People but hasn’t reckoned with just how proactive Alice is compared to your average Golden Age adventure heroine. For his underestimation of her he is rewarded with a dagger in the back.

    Amid all the chaos subsequent to Alice stabbing the Black Death it comes out that he is, in fact, her father Bawala. Rather than merely curse one village and move on from the mysterious disappearance of his daughter, Bawala instead settled down nearby and became a horrible murderous tyrant. Only now, as he is dying does he see the error of his ways in the person of the daughter he allowed to wander off and fall down a well. He was not, in fact, made into a horrible person by the circumstances of his life but was a horrible person all along.

    It’s a rare heroic patricide!