The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Yellow Peril

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 364: THE BLACK DRAGON SOCIETY

    (Master Comics 021, 1941)

    The Black Dragon Society is nothing new: a bog standard Yellow Peril spy and sabotage ring that has a couple of weeks of success before being trounced by Minute-Man.

    The one interesting thing about them is that they were based on an actual Japanese secret society that was still extant at the time the comic was published. Despite the fact that the story is just as disseminating as pre-Pearl Harbor comics usually are about the exact country of origin of the Society, the fact is that this is our first Japanese super-villain, even if it’s a bunch of spies and even if it’s a technicality. History!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 348: THE SEVEN MASTERS

    (Master Comics 012, 1941)

    The Seven Masters are just your regular drug smuggling/ opium dealing gang operating out of San Francisco’s Chinatown. They don’t get up to anything too spectacular – El Carim gets in on the action because the head of the gang is using his criminal might to try to get a woman to marry him instead of her boyfriend – and they trade on some pulp-era Yellow Peril tropes, but despite all of that I must admit to liking their style. The name! The robes! The custom sword-lowering engine! If only they all hadn’t been wasted on low-tier chumps!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 348: THE SEVEN MASTERS

    (Master Comics 012, 1941)

    The Seven Masters are just your regular drug smuggling/ opium dealing gang operating out of San Francisco’s Chinatown. They don’t get up to anything too spectacular – El Carim gets in on the action because the head of the gang is using his criminal might to try to get a woman to marry him instead of her boyfriend – and they trade on some pulp-era Yellow Peril tropes, but despite all of that I must admit to liking their style. The name! The robes! The custom sword-lowering engine! If only they all hadn’t been wasted on low-tier chumps!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 317: MR MURO

    (Daring Mystery Comics 001, 004, 1940)

     

    The most interesting thing about Mr Muro is that he represents an intermediate stage in the development of the comic book Yellow Peril villain, away from the gaudy Fu Manchu style of the pulps and the comics of the 30s. There are a few of these more workaday Asian Threat villains kicking around in 1940/ 41 but they eventually lose out to the super-agents of the Japanese Empire as the preeminent example of such.

    Anyway, Muro is a low-rent would-be world conqueror at heart and has the misfortune to have ended up as the antagonist for Monako, Prince of Magic, a typically-overpowered magic hero. This understandably put a crimp in his plans.

    I his second appearance Muro demonstrates some ability at magic himself, but he never makes a third appearance to give Monako a real run for his money. This does mean that he’s another technically-at-large Golden Age villain, but that’s about it as far as mildly interesting facts about Mr Muro goes.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 302: THE FANG

    (Captain America Comics 006, 1941)

    Comics history seems to have taken the Fang as a Japanese agent but I’m pretty sure that as written he’s a Chinese American gang boss who’s working for the Japanese against the Chinese government. Either way, he’s your basic pulp holdover Asian gang boss with swarms of fanatical hatchet-man and a pronounced lack of humanity down to his namesake fangs. Part of me always wants to skip guys like this but they’re just as much a part of comic book history as the Big Wheel or the Hypno Hustler.

    EDIT: Just noticed that he wasn’t even actually technically hired by the Japanese! His employer was “an Asiatic aggressor nation” – Marvel seems to be a bit less inclined to name  and shame them than they were the Nazis.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 123: THE DRAGON

    (Slam-Bang Comics 004, 1940)

    What makes them a super-villain? Why, that snazzy outfit! Comics are full of people who run opium smuggling rings but very few look as good while doing it.

    What makes them interesting? It depends on your definition of interesting, but this is the first costumed criminal on our list whose disguise includes pretending to be another race – specifically, the Dragon is a white hardware store owner named Jones who passes himself off as a Chinese master criminal until Jim Dolan, heroic magazine editor gets involved.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 123: THE DRAGON

    (Slam-Bang Comics 004, 1940)

    What makes them a super-villain? Why, that snazzy outfit! Comics are full of people who run opium smuggling rings but very few look as good while doing it.

    What makes them interesting? It depends on your definition of interesting, but this is the first costumed criminal on our list whose disguise includes pretending to be another race – specifically, the Dragon is a white hardware store owner named Jones who passes himself off as a Chinese master criminal until Jim Dolan, heroic magazine editor gets involved.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 053: PIANG THE TERRIBLE

    (Whiz Comics 009, 1940)

    A rival magician seeking to steal Ibis the Invincible’s mystic Ibistick, Piang dies at the end of their first encounter, is resurrected via careless use of magic by Ibis and then dies again in their second encounter.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 031: THE MAD LAMA

    (Action v1 009, 1939)

    In a fairly typical display of respect for the Tibetan peoples and their religion, the Mad Lama is a ruthless villain bent on world domination. Presumably he achieved his powers through rigid dedication to the popular “evil” style of Tibetan Buddhism.

    The Lama himself doesn’t get to do much other than bloviate for a while before being incinerated in a magic duel with Zatara, so the most interesting thing about him is the fact that he gathered up a cadre of other villains to help him out, a move that I dearly love as it supplies me with more weird little guys to know about.

    Pictured from left to right (after the Mad Lama, of course) above are:

    -Monsieur Henri, a Frenchman able to conjure illusory mists

    -Lalla Gor, probably meant to be Indian but they just kind of spammed syllables to make foreign names back in the day, able to summon an army of phantom warriors

    –the Tigress, our very own MSV 019 in her first turn as another villain’s henchman (she abandons the Lama to team up with Zatara pretty quickly)

    -Zatara, posing as Major Lee, an Englishman of unknown abilities

    -some bald guy

    The Mad Lama gets mentioned every time someone talks about Zatara’s early career in a comic – he came up a couple of times when Zatanna was on her Dad-quest in the 60s, for example – but I don’t reckon he ever recovered from his incineration to actually come back again.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 031: THE MAD LAMA

    (Action v1 009, 1939)

    In a fairly typical display of respect for the Tibetan peoples and their religion, the Mad Lama is a ruthless villain bent on world domination. Presumably he achieved his powers through rigid dedication to the popular “evil” style of Tibetan Buddhism.

    The Lama himself doesn’t get to do much other than bloviate for a while before being incinerated in a magic duel with Zatara, so the most interesting thing about him is the fact that he gathered up a cadre of other villains to help him out, a move that I dearly love as it supplies me with more weird little guys to know about.

    Pictured from left to right (after the Mad Lama, of course) above are:

    -Monsieur Henri, a Frenchman able to conjure illusory mists

    -Lalla Gor, probably meant to be Indian but they just kind of spammed syllables to make foreign names back in the day, able to summon an army of phantom warriors

    –the Tigress, our very own MSV 019 in her first turn as another villain’s henchman (she abandons the Lama to team up with Zatara pretty quickly)

    -Zatara, posing as Major Lee, an Englishman of unknown abilities

    -some bald guy

    The Mad Lama gets mentioned every time someone talks about Zatara’s early career in a comic – he came up a couple of times when Zatanna was on her Dad-quest in the 60s, for example – but I don’t reckon he ever recovered from his incineration to actually come back again.