The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Dynamo

  • CATALOGUE OF WOUNDS 013

    If I see a wound, I catalogue it.

    Camilla, Queen of the Lost Empire:

    Shot in the back with an arrow. (Jungle Comics 019, 1941)

    Captain Flag:

    Nearly dies of the Black Hand’s horrible hand disease. (Blue Ribbon Comics 016, 1941)

    the Cat-Man:

    Stabbed in the chest, to death (he gets better). (Crash Comics Adventures 004, 1940)

    Killed by a blood-freezing ray. He gets better again. (Crash Comics Adventures 005, 1940)

    Dynamo:

    Dynamo gets his skull creased by a bullet in the classic fashion. (Science Comics 005, 1940)

    the Green Mask:

    Michael Shelby is shot in the chest, prompting pal Professor Lascomb to stick him in the machine that turns him into the Green Mask. (Green Mask v1 001 1940)

    Domino the Miracle Boy:

    Later in the same issue, the boy known only as Don gets seriously exploded and must also be placed in the machine. (Green Mask v1 001, 1940)

    Kaänga: 

    Not even being an off-brand Tarzan can save you from being shot in the left shoulder,, as Kaänga learns here. (Jungle Comics 010, 1940)

    the Mask:

    District Attorney Colby is blinded by acid as part of his journey to becoming the Mask. (Exciting Comics 001, 1940)

    Tabu, Wizard of the Jungle:

    Tabu is shot in the right shoulder by this jerk. (Jungle Comics 019, 1941)

    Just one issue later, Tabu is speared in the right arm by a different jerk. (Jungle Comics 020, 1941)

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 021

    None of this science is mad or criminal peer reviewed. 

    This fellow attempts to blackmail Dynamo’s unnamed home city by various methods, including Causing and then threatening further widespread destruction with his “liquid air” freeze cannon and kidnapping city council members and then subjecting some of them to a frankly horrific bone liquefying ray. 

    The main problem with him is honestly the fact that he has no established name. He does go by “Miss Monda” while he is posing as the mayor’s secretary in order to get the inside scoop on how his extortion attempts are going, which turns out to be his downfall when he is dewigged by Dynamo. Also, I just realized that in that last panel you can see that he is in fact wearing a full suit under the Miss Monda dress, making this the most improbable disguise in comics by my reckoning. (Weird Comics 009, 1940)

    Dr Z here has long been working on a mind-reading device, to no avail. He arranges for psychologist Larry Hunter to arrive at his isolated mansion in the hopes that forcing him to collaborate on the invention will lead to some sort of breakthrough, and it does! Alas for Dr Z, as s is so often the case in such stories the new technology is then turned on its villainous facilitator, as Hunter uses Dr Z’z own thoughts to show him how to eliminate the murderous scientist using his own deathtrap. 

    Hunter was probably supposed to go on to use the Thought Receiver to fight more crime in future adventures but as with so many of the denizens of Wham Comics he was never seen again. (Wham Comics 002, 1940)

    The mad Dr Chow operates a wax museum at the New York World’s Fair that he stocks with living humans who he has frozen with a weird drug. Why is he doing this? It’s unclear, but the top three answers that I can think of are : 1. for kicks, 2. for cash and 3. as a way of testing out the formula. He is captured by private detective Dan Dare, and unsettlingly there is no nod to the idea of thawing out the doctor’s victims, even though they are implied to still be alive in some way. (Whiz Comics 006, 1940)

    I had a lot of rising expectations as the character of Dr Lleh was introduced. Firstly, he was pretty clearly telegraphed to be a former member of a Tibetan archaeological expedition who was consumed by revenge after being dismissed for theft and was now haunting the countryside with his horde of experimental subjects. Secondly, his name is “Hell” backwards.

    The good times continue, as Dr Lleh derails the Orient Express (a train that historically did not travel through Tibet) in order to acquire more experimental subjects, only to find that Professor Davis – the very man who wad fired him! – was aboard, along with his daughter, plus indomitable detective Dr Fung and his assistant Dan Barrister. All four are away not just to the Temple of Hades but under it, to “Dr Lleh’s Kingdom of Hades” (no I do not know what a temple to Hades is doing in Tibet).

    All my hopes are dashed once Dr Lleh’s actual style of experimentation is revealed. Bribing two big dudes with llama steak (no I do not know how this guy is getting llama steak in Tibet) to pull a woman’s arms off is not research that would be publishied in even mad science journals, Dr Lleh. I hate to say it but I’m glad that Dr Fung blows you up.  (Wonderworld Comics 014, 1940)

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 021

    None of this science is mad or criminal peer reviewed. 

    This fellow attempts to blackmail Dynamo’s unnamed home city by various methods, including Causing and then threatening further widespread destruction with his “liquid air” freeze cannon and kidnapping city council members and then subjecting some of them to a frankly horrific bone liquefying ray. 

    The main problem with him is honestly the fact that he has no established name. He does go by “Miss Monda” while he is posing as the mayor’s secretary in order to get the inside scoop on how his extortion attempts are going, which turns out to be his downfall when he is dewigged by Dynamo. Also, I just realized that in that last panel you can see that he is in fact wearing a full suit under the Miss Monda dress, making this the most improbable disguise in comics by my reckoning. (Weird Comics 009, 1940)

    Dr Z here has long been working on a mind-reading device, to no avail. He arranges for psychologist Larry Hunter to arrive at his isolated mansion in the hopes that forcing him to collaborate on the invention will lead to some sort of breakthrough, and it does! Alas for Dr Z, as s is so often the case in such stories the new technology is then turned on its villainous facilitator, as Hunter uses Dr Z’z own thoughts to show him how to eliminate the murderous scientist using his own deathtrap. 

    Hunter was probably supposed to go on to use the Thought Receiver to fight more crime in future adventures but as with so many of the denizens of Wham Comics he was never seen again. (Wham Comics 002, 1940)

    The mad Dr Chow operates a wax museum at the New York World’s Fair that he stocks with living humans who he has frozen with a weird drug. Why is he doing this? It’s unclear, but the top three answers that I can think of are : 1. for kicks, 2. for cash and 3. as a way of testing out the formula. He is captured by private detective Dan Dare, and unsettlingly there is no nod to the idea of thawing out the doctor’s victims, even though they are implied to still be alive in some way. (Whiz Comics 006, 1940)

    I had a lot of rising expectations as the character of Dr Lleh was introduced. Firstly, he was pretty clearly telegraphed to be a former member of a Tibetan archaeological expedition who was consumed by revenge after being dismissed for theft and was now haunting the countryside with his horde of experimental subjects. Secondly, his name is “Hell” backwards.

    The good times continue, as Dr Lleh derails the Orient Express (a train that historically did not travel through Tibet) in order to acquire more experimental subjects, only to find that Professor Davis – the very man who wad fired him! – was aboard, along with his daughter, plus indomitable detective Dr Fung and his assistant Dan Barrister. All four are away not just to the Temple of Hades but under it, to “Dr Lleh’s Kingdom of Hades” (no I do not know what a temple to Hades is doing in Tibet).

    All my hopes are dashed once Dr Lleh’s actual style of experimentation is revealed. Bribing two big dudes with llama steak (no I do not know how this guy is getting llama steak in Tibet) to pull a woman’s arms off is not research that would be publishied in even mad science journals, Dr Lleh. I hate to say it but I’m glad that Dr Fung blows you up.  (Wonderworld Comics 014, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 059

    You thought that I couldn’t keep doing it but I can. MORE SUPER-HEROES 

    the Dart: 

    On the one hand, the Dart is just another guy with cape and a mask who fights crime alongside his kid sidekick, but on the other, he has a few interesting twists on what is already a tried-and-true formula:

    In the first place, the Dart was originally an Ancient Roman named Caius Martius who was magically sealed in a block of stone by his enemies, only to reemerge in the 20th Century. While this is only a moderately unusual origin for a super-hero, what is neat is that Caius Martius was effectively already a super-hero before he got cursed: he had his signature super-power of flight (referred to a “darting through the air,” hence the name) and was using it to fight “Roman racketeers.”

    Basically the first thing that Caius sees when he leaves the museum is a drive-by shooting, as the Ricarno Gang wipes out the Mariotti Gang, and more pertinently to his origin the parents of…

    Ace Barlow, the Amazing Boy: 

    Ace’s tragic orphaning at the hands of the Ricarno Gang leave him free to join up with Caius Martius as a crime-fighting team. Caius teaches Ace how to scrap, Roman-Style, and even more impressively goes to the trouble to teach him to fly rather than simply having an unpowered teenaged boy tagging along on all of his adventures like so many of his peers. (Weird Comics 005, 1940) 

    The Dart later gets a job as a teacher of Ancient Roman history at the school that Ace attends, and while this may seem like a good idea on the face of it, we must keep in mind that he slightly predates Julius Caesar, and so every time a kid asks a question about the Roman Empire, Caius is going to bug out his eyes and say “the Roman WHAT?”

    Also please note that while Caius Martius had the forethought to change his weird Roman name to something more modern to fit in, the change he made was to add “Wheeler” to the end, like having the last name “Martius” was the problem. (Weird Comics 006, 1940) 

    After their initial appearance, the Dart and Ace spend the rest of their 1940 appearances as nonsuper, nonflying vigilantes, but someone must have realized that that was the more boring option because the Dart was back to darting through the air in 1941.

    Finally, the creators of the Dart either vastly over-estimated the cutting power of a Roman short sword or intend for the Dart’s signature weapon to be magical in some way, because he sure does spend a lot of time carving through things that would stymie the vast majority of handheld tools.

    Dynamo **UPDATE**:

    I don’t know if it’s a new power per se, but in his first appearance in Weird Comics Dynamo continues his long habit of really expanding the limits of what you can do via control over electricity by employing it as a long-range listening device. (Weird Comics 008, 1940)

    Similar but unrelated: he can also hear radio broadcasts through his fingertips. (Weird Comics 009, 1940) 

    the Eagle **Update**: 

    The Eagle just can’t resist the lure of a new costume. Or Perhaps it’s the Eagle’s colourist, since as with several of his previous changes in outfit this one could just be some whimsical palette swap action. (Weird Comics 009, 1940)

    More importantly, that kid up there is the Eagle’s new sidekick:

    Buddy, the Daredevil Boy: 

    Buddy is a kid who was presumably doing a little track-and-field when he saw the Eagle’s archfoe the Beast about to murder him with a poisoned dart and jumped in to save the day. The Eagle proceeds to adopt Buddy in such an abbreviated and perfunctory fashion that it almost serves as a parody of the idea of the kid sidekick – he doesn’t even bother to establish that he’s an orphan first.

    Buddy might just be the most hard-done-by sidekick in Golden Age comics, at least as far as costumes go, as he’s stuck in that track suit until Weird Comics 017, while the Eagle just keeps on trying new outfits the whole time. I can only imagine how galling that must have been for him. (Weird Comics 009, 1940) 

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 059

    MINOR SUPER-HERO ROUND-UP 059

    You thought that I couldn’t keep doing it but I can. MORE SUPER-HEROES 

    the Dart: 

    On the one hand, the Dart is just another guy with cape and a mask who fights crime alongside his kid sidekick, but on the other, he has a few interesting twists on what is already a tried-and-true formula:

    In the first place, the Dart was originally an Ancient Roman named Caius Martius who was magically sealed in a block of stone by his enemies, only to reemerge in the 20th Century. While this is only a moderately unusual origin for a super-hero, what is neat is that Caius Martius was effectively already a super-hero before he got cursed: he had his signature super-power of flight (referred to a “darting through the air,” hence the name) and was using it to fight “Roman racketeers.”

    Basically the first thing that Caius sees when he leaves the museum is a drive-by shooting, as the Ricarno Gang wipes out the Mariotti Gang, and more pertinently to his origin the parents of…

    Ace Barlow, the Amazing Boy: 

    Ace’s tragic orphaning at the hands of the Ricarno Gang leave him free to join up with Caius Martius as a crime-fighting team. Caius teaches Ace how to scrap, Roman-Style, and even more impressively goes to the trouble to teach him to fly rather than simply having an unpowered teenaged boy tagging along on all of his adventures like so many of his peers. (Weird Comics 005, 1940) 

    The Dart later gets a job as a teacher of Ancient Roman history at the school that Ace attends, and while this may seem like a good idea on the face of it, we must keep in mind that he slightly predates Julius Caesar, and so every time a kid asks a question about the Roman Empire, Caius is going to bug out his eyes and say “the Roman WHAT?”

    Also please note that while Caius Martius had the forethought to change his weird Roman name to something more modern to fit in, the change he made was to add “Wheeler” to the end, like having the last name “Martius” was the problem. (Weird Comics 006, 1940) 

    After their initial appearance, the Dart and Ace spend the rest of their 1940 appearances as nonsuper, nonflying vigilantes, but someone must have realized that that was the more boring option because the Dart was back to darting through the air in 1941.

    Finally, the creators of the Dart either vastly over-estimated the cutting power of a Roman short sword or intend for the Dart’s signature weapon to be magical in some way, because he sure does spend a lot of time carving through things that would stymie the vast majority of handheld tools.

    Dynamo **UPDATE**:

    I don’t know if it’s a new power per se, but in his first appearance in Weird Comics Dynamo continues his long habit of really expanding the limits of what you can do via control over electricity by employing it as a long-range listening device. (Weird Comics 008, 1940)

    Similar but unrelated: he can also hear radio broadcasts through his fingertips. (Weird Comics 009, 1940) 

    the Eagle **Update**: 

    The Eagle just can’t resist the lure of a new costume. Or Perhaps it’s the Eagle’s colourist, since as with several of his previous changes in outfit this one could just be some whimsical palette swap action. (Weird Comics 009, 1940)

    More importantly, that kid up there is the Eagle’s new sidekick:

    Buddy, the Daredevil Boy: 

    Buddy is a kid who was presumably doing a little track-and-field when he saw the Eagle’s archfoe the Beast about to murder him with a poisoned dart and jumped in to save the day. The Eagle proceeds to adopt Buddy in such an abbreviated and perfunctory fashion that it almost serves as a parody of the idea of the kid sidekick – he doesn’t even bother to establish that he’s an orphan first.

    Buddy might just be the most hard-done-by sidekick in Golden Age comics, at least as far as costumes go, as he’s stuck in that track suit until Weird Comics 017, while the Eagle just keeps on trying new outfits the whole time. I can only imagine how galling that must have been for him. (Weird Comics 009, 1940) 

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 019

    We may have gotten away from the “costumed” and “generic” is debatable but you can take the “villain” from my cold dead hands. 

    This guy is part of a gang who:

    -broke into Fort Knox via a secret tunnel

    -smashed up up all of the gold and mixed it into stone in a nearby quarry

    -transported that gold-bearing stone from the quarry to a mansion

    -melted down the gold and concealed it inside a series of bronze statues

    And while I suppose that you want to take a lot of care to conceal your movements when you are looting the US gold reserve I just have to be on record as saying that this is an unnecessarily complex scheme. Just book it for the border, fellows!

    Also Dynamo, stung by the razzing of government investigators, gilds the entire gang… thus killing them? before turning them in. Brutal stuff. (Science Comics 002, 1940)

    This very cool looking but unnamed spy chief has developed anti-Dynamo technology that renders him immune to the various beams and rays that usually assail the hero’s foes, which he uses to make off with some explosive wire that Dynamo and the nerds at his day job have made. He pulls off this theft pretty slickly but then completely fails to recognize the difficulty of attempting to pull off a scheme (in this case blowing up US military installations using explosive wire) while a super-hero is after you. It’s a real failure to recognize the opportunity to slay Dynamo while he can’t get you, unnamed spy chief! (Science Comics 004, 1940)

    John J. Hix, millionaire and asylum escapee, needs to get revenge on his old friend for some reason, so he puts on a cloak that makes him look like the ghost of a cat and hires some crooks to kidnap his friend’s daughter Doris Dare (a “society deb singer,” which is not a type of entertainer I am familiar with. Was it a thing? It’s hard to tell!) so that he can kill her. He is opposed by heroic police inspector the Duke and ends up blowing himself up rather than be captured. (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)

    The Sky Wolf encounters this goofy-but-also-cool magnetically-shielded fire-breathing duck/dragon/plane as it attacks fishing boats one day and traces it back to a similarly magnetically-shielded base where crooks armed with plastic guns inform him that all of this is essentially prep work in advance of setting up a smuggling operation.

    Now, issues of whether the expense involved in setting up this operation might cut substantially into any profits realized from it or indeed whether simply selling this magnetic bullet shield to one of the many armies extant in 1940 might be more profitable aside… my admittedly layman’s understanding of how smuggling works is that you really want to keep it as quiet as possible. Maybe I’m naive, but establishing a huge messy monster-infested exclusion zone might just… draw more attention to your operation? Like a masked pilot, for example? 

    Anyway, they all get blown up. (Silver Streak Comics 006, 1940)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 019

    We may have gotten away from the “costumed” and “generic” is debatable but you can take the “villain” from my cold dead hands. 

    This guy is part of a gang who:

    -broke into Fort Knox via a secret tunnel

    -smashed up up all of the gold and mixed it into stone in a nearby quarry

    -transported that gold-bearing stone from the quarry to a mansion

    -melted down the gold and concealed it inside a series of bronze statues

    And while I suppose that you want to take a lot of care to conceal your movements when you are looting the US gold reserve I just have to be on record as saying that this is an unnecessarily complex scheme. Just book it for the border, fellows!

    Also Dynamo, stung by the razzing of government investigators, gilds the entire gang… thus killing them? before turning them in. Brutal stuff. (Science Comics 002, 1940)

    This very cool looking but unnamed spy chief has developed anti-Dynamo technology that renders him immune to the various beams and rays that usually assail the hero’s foes, which he uses to make off with some explosive wire that Dynamo and the nerds at his day job have made. He pulls off this theft pretty slickly but then completely fails to recognize the difficulty of attempting to pull off a scheme (in this case blowing up US military installations using explosive wire) while a super-hero is after you. It’s a real failure to recognize the opportunity to slay Dynamo while he can’t get you, unnamed spy chief! (Science Comics 004, 1940)

    John J. Hix, millionaire and asylum escapee, needs to get revenge on his old friend for some reason, so he puts on a cloak that makes him look like the ghost of a cat and hires some crooks to kidnap his friend’s daughter Doris Dare (a “society deb singer,” which is not a type of entertainer I am familiar with. Was it a thing? It’s hard to tell!) so that he can kill her. He is opposed by heroic police inspector the Duke and ends up blowing himself up rather than be captured. (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)

    The Sky Wolf encounters this goofy-but-also-cool magnetically-shielded fire-breathing duck/dragon/plane as it attacks fishing boats one day and traces it back to a similarly magnetically-shielded base where crooks armed with plastic guns inform him that all of this is essentially prep work in advance of setting up a smuggling operation.

    Now, issues of whether the expense involved in setting up this operation might cut substantially into any profits realized from it or indeed whether simply selling this magnetic bullet shield to one of the many armies extant in 1940 might be more profitable aside… my admittedly layman’s understanding of how smuggling works is that you really want to keep it as quiet as possible. Maybe I’m naive, but establishing a huge messy monster-infested exclusion zone might just… draw more attention to your operation? Like a masked pilot, for example? 

    Anyway, they all get blown up. (Silver Streak Comics 006, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 729: THE WRECKER

    (Science Comics 008, 1940) 

    The Wrecker is a very good example of how a good name can elevate a project out from the ordinary. Comics books are full of corporate extortion schemes – it’s one of the classic scheme types for a reason. You can ramp the threat to life up or down with ease depending on just what is being sabotaged and likewise there are opportunities for big action setpieces as buildings or other corporate infrastructure are targeted. But while I would be hard pressed to find something to write about every time some gang of miscreants shakes down a construction company, once one of them starts calling themself “the Wrecker” well then my interest is piqued.

    The Wrecker himself is nothing special, even if he has a very good thick gangster accent. Somewhat charmingly, though, the Wrecker’s gang are also occasionally referred to as the Wreckers. Wrecker and the Wreckers! Gang name, band name, bowling team name, pub quiz name.

    Dynamo runs out of juice and gets captured during his initial battle with the gang (evidently trading pot-shots with some low-level goons is as energy-intensive as travelling to Betelgeuse) but as with most of his foes, the Wrecker is… a great believer in ironic deaths or something, I don’t know. They all try to electrocute him for some reason is all I can say, and maybe it’s just down to it being 1940 and all of the villains just aren’t genre-savvy enough to know the basics of comic book pseudo-elementalism. Regardless, the Wreacker electrocutes Dynamo and then Dynamo returns the favour – so long Wrecker.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 729: THE WRECKER

    (Science Comics 008, 1940) 

    The Wrecker is a very good example of how a good name can elevate a project out from the ordinary. Comics books are full of corporate extortion schemes – it’s one of the classic scheme types for a reason. You can ramp the threat to life up or down with ease depending on just what is being sabotaged and likewise there are opportunities for big action setpieces as buildings or other corporate infrastructure are targeted. But while I would be hard pressed to find something to write about every time some gang of miscreants shakes down a construction company, once one of them starts calling themself “the Wrecker” well then my interest is piqued.

    The Wrecker himself is nothing special, even if he has a very good thick gangster accent. Somewhat charmingly, though, the Wrecker’s gang are also occasionally referred to as the Wreckers. Wrecker and the Wreckers! Gang name, band name, bowling team name, pub quiz name.

    Dynamo runs out of juice and gets captured during his initial battle with the gang (evidently trading pot-shots with some low-level goons is as energy-intensive as travelling to Betelgeuse) but as with most of his foes, the Wrecker is… a great believer in ironic deaths or something, I don’t know. They all try to electrocute him for some reason is all I can say, and maybe it’s just down to it being 1940 and all of the villains just aren’t genre-savvy enough to know the basics of comic book pseudo-elementalism. Regardless, the Wreacker electrocutes Dynamo and then Dynamo returns the favour – so long Wrecker.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 727: VOLTON

    (Science Comics 006, 1940)

    In the Science Comics 005, Dynamo develops his Brain-Wave Trap helmet which allows him to read the minds of everyone on Earth. Now, only one issue later, we discover that the range of this device is in fact interstellar, and furthermore that Dynamo can travel to other stars, as he receives a call for help from King Berin of Betelguese (sic) and gets himself there almost instantly – that’s somewhere between four and six hundred light years, folks! 

    (assuming that this is the same Betelgeuse as we all know and love – aside from the fact that it’s spelled slightly differently, it’s pretty consistently referred to as a planet instead of a star. Whatever the case, it’s still an impressive expansion of the range of Dynamo’s power)

    Dynamo asserts his heroic privilege by instantly determining which of two warring forces to side with and drives Volton’s attacking army from the field. Luckily, Volton is indeed the evil one of the two, as evidenced by the very creepy way he goes about abducting King Berin’s daughter Princess Glama.

    Here’s where I lay out my real problem with Volton: when Dynamo first shows up, Volton is deploying his Lightning Men to attack King Berin’s fortifications with their Electrode and Lightning Guns, and even his dang name is Volton. In short, I though that he was going to be another electricity powered guy and that we would see Dynamo in some sort of electric duel or similar. Instead, Volton’s personal theme is way more vulture-centric and electricity just seems to be a hobby of his, to the extent that he doesn’t consider all of the ramifications of trying to electrocute a depowered Dynamo to death and ends up being firmly punched out by a repowered Dynamo.

    There follows a 2.5 page interlude featuring what I will call an inexplicable and disastrous decision by Dynamo, as he transport Volton back to Earth with him and offers him a second chance, only for Volton to immediately blow up an entire city while gearing up for an attempt to take over our planet. Like, one panel immediately. Just why did Dynamo do this? Pagecount, I assume.

    Dynamo’s faith in alternative forms of justice is forever shattered by this experience, and Volton quickly finds himself hurtling headfirst into a Betelguesian prison.