The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: world ransomer

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 397: ADAM IGOROVICH

    (More Fun Comics 071, 1941)

    Adam Igorovich! Your typical scientist unhinged by his treatment by the scientific community, who deemed his theories impractical and/or dangerous and/or insane, so now he is striking back at the world using those selfsame theories to get his back. If we’ve seen it once we’ve seen it a million times.

    There’s one important difference between the machinations of Adam Igorovich and those of, say, the Master (the last Russian-ish scientist we saw battle Dr Fate): while the master’s sonic death weapon was a finely tuned device capable of targeting everything from a person to a building, Igorovich’s technology is a solar magnet capable of stopping the rotation and orbit of the Earth and moving it closer to the Sun. The willingness to use apocalyptic technology like this in a simple worldwide extortion scheme is the difference between science and Mad Science. Take note, undergraduates!

    After he roasts portions of the Earth’s surface for a while via manipulation of it’s orbit (and what a wild thing to never be mentioned again, the fact that the whole world stopped moving for half a day. Twice!), Igorovich attracts the attention of Dr Fate and gets so thoroughly foiled that he chooses the classic mad scientist’s exit of blowing up his entire compound around him.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 397: ADAM IGOROVICH

    (More Fun Comics 071, 1941)

    Adam Igorovich! Your typical scientist unhinged by his treatment by the scientific community, who deemed his theories impractical and/or dangerous and/or insane, so now he is striking back at the world using those selfsame theories to get his back. If we’ve seen it once we’ve seen it a million times.

    There’s one important difference between the machinations of Adam Igorovich and those of, say, the Master (the last Russian-ish scientist we saw battle Dr Fate): while the master’s sonic death weapon was a finely tuned device capable of targeting everything from a person to a building, Igorovich’s technology is a solar magnet capable of stopping the rotation and orbit of the Earth and moving it closer to the Sun. The willingness to use apocalyptic technology like this in a simple worldwide extortion scheme is the difference between science and Mad Science. Take note, undergraduates!

    After he roasts portions of the Earth’s surface for a while via manipulation of it’s orbit (and what a wild thing to never be mentioned again, the fact that the whole world stopped moving for half a day. Twice!), Igorovich attracts the attention of Dr Fate and gets so thoroughly foiled that he chooses the classic mad scientist’s exit of blowing up his entire compound around him.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 075: “UNCLE”

    (Adventure Comics 057, 1940)

    As I’ve said before, sometimes a character is very clearly a super-villain but chooses no name for themself, in which case for administrative purposes I pick something that the text boxes or other characters refer to them as and go with that. Scientists are usually easy – they just go by their name. This fellow, on the other hand, is basically only ever referred to as “Uncle,” so Uncle I call him.

    And Uncle is a credible threat! He tries to ransom the world by threatening to destroy it by knocking it off of its orbit, then actually tries to do it in a fit of pique – it’s only the timely intervention of Sandman that saves the day.

    In the last entry, when I was talking about mad scientists as perfect characters to bring back as reformed? This is the kind of guy I had in mind. What a gift to a cast!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 034: THE ICE MENACE

    (Action v1 015, 1939)

    Just a regular sort of science villain with a regular sort of plan: create a heat ray cannon and use it to ransom the world by melting the ice caps. Derailed and frozen solid by Zatara after a mere few flooded cities. Actually, that would be a neat way for him to come back: thawed out by global warming.

    Occasionally a clear super-villain is unnamed in the course of a story and I have to go by something they are referred to in captions. The Ice Menace always feels like one of those to me but I think they actually call him that during the story? Wild.