The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Ted O’Neil

  • REAL PERSON ROUND-UP 009

    Some day these won’t inevitably start with Hitler. Some day.

    Adolf Hitler:

    Rix, a human living on Venus in the peaceful year 3090 CE, learns about dictators thanks to the time capsule from the 1939 New York World’s Fair and immediately sets out to make himself into the Hitler of the future. Beat down by interplanetary troubleshooter Planet Payson. (Planet Comics 008, 1940)

    Aviator Ted O’Neil is brought down in the warlike nation of Gestapia (one of the more on-the-nose Nazi Germany stand-ins I have encountered), ruled over by dictator “Schnitzler.” (Prize Comics 004, 1940)

    Al Capone:

    It’s just a shorthand reference for “bigtime gangster” but Scarface Marone here is absolutely an Al Capone pastiche for the one and a half panels he appears in before jumping out a window to avoid capture. (Rocket Comics 002, 1940)

    Anna Roosevelt:

    She’s referred to only as “the President’s daughter” throughout this adventure which sees her being kidnapped and almost killed by Gerlandian spies before being rescued by Electro here, but it’s 1940 and the US has had precisely one President’s Daughter for nearly eight years at this point and it’s Anna Roosevelt. (Science Comics 001, 1940)

    Captain Nemo:

    It shouldn’t have surprised me when Navy Jones, established in the previous issue to be descended from the legendary Davy Jones, encounters not-just-fictional-but-fictional-from-about-seventy-years-earlier figure Captain Nemo while noodling around under the sea with his paramour Princess Coral, but I’m afraid that it did. And not only do they team up to battle octopus men and recover an ancient Roman map to Atlantis together but Nemo basically joins the “Navy Jones” cast going forward! (Science Comics 005, 1940)

    FDR:

    Minor Appearances:

    Science Comics 003, 1940

    Genghis Khan:

    Obvious allusion to Genghis Khan in Khangiz, the warlike master of Mars in the year 40 000 CE. (Planet Comics 002, 1940)

    J Edgar Hoover:

    You have a comic book character who works for the FBI and eventually an unnamed J Edgar Hoover is going to show up and congratulate them for doing their job, as happens to FBI agent Buck Brady here. (Prize Comics 005, 1940)

    J Edgar Hoover is not only Joe “the Shield” Higgins’ boss at the FBI but he was the best friend of Tom Higgins, Joe’s father. (Shield-Wizard Comics 001, 1940)

    Minor appearances:

    Science Comics 003, 1940

    Oak Island:

    Even though Fu Chang operates out of San Francisco and thus Money Pit Island is located somewhere in the Pacific, its name alone twigs it as at least inspired by the legend of Oak Island, which (I checked) was indeed going strong as of 1940 (Pep Comics 009, 1940)

  • NOTES – JANUARY 2025

    Heaven help me, I looked forward to the 1950s issues of Planet Comics to see what the Gale Allen feature ended up like and boy oh boy do I regret it. It’s one thing to only read comics from 1940, but seeing the improvements to the form after a decade or so makes it hard to go back. But I must soldier on!

    Happy New Year!

    Infographics:

    A conceptual drawing of a spaceship and some speculative facts about space travel c.1940 (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

    Ephemera:

    This is a bit out of order seeing as I have a two week or so buffer of posts most of the time and I write the Notes bits as they occur to me, but a real theme that has emerged as I’ve read the 1940 issues of Planet Comics has been that Fiction house was just repurposing whole stories left and right, including ones that were written and drawn for characters from other comic book companies. To be clear, I don’t think that this was a shady business practice or anything, just that the industry was still new and that almost every book was an anthology title that features were being shuffled in and out of constantly – it’s no wonder that artists were left with finished stories that were no longer wanted from time to time – why not just slap a new name on the hero and publish it?

    With that in mind, I am 100% confident in saying that this first Crash Parker story started life as a Cyclone story over at Quality Comics – the setup of colonizing a new planet after a space race and even the look of the evil Martian king are dead giveaways. Good news for fans of Cyclone, the character who appeared in 4 comics in 1940, I guess. (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

    Honours:

    American pilot Ted O’Neil is given an unspecified medal for bringing down an Axis superweapon. (Prize Comics 004, 1940)

    Names:

    The third case tackled by Fox Features mid tier hero the Eagle is catching a gang of pickpockets, and that gang’s lead is named Ben Dread, which I think is unnecessarily cool. Save the good names for more interesting criminals, I say. (Science Comics 003, 1940) 

    Drawn Without Reference:

    This might just be the bold new look the narwhal have been looking for. (Science Comics 008, 1940)

  • NOTES – JANUARY 2025

    Heaven help me, I looked forward to the 1950s issues of Planet Comics to see what the Gale Allen feature ended up like and boy oh boy do I regret it. It’s one thing to only read comics from 1940, but seeing the improvements to the form after a decade or so makes it hard to go back. But I must soldier on!

    Happy New Year!

    Infographics:

    A conceptual drawing of a spaceship and some speculative facts about space travel c.1940 (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

    Ephemera:

    This is a bit out of order seeing as I have a two week or so buffer of posts most of the time and I write the Notes bits as they occur to me, but a real theme that has emerged as I’ve read the 1940 issues of Planet Comics has been that Fiction house was just repurposing whole stories left and right, including ones that were written and drawn for characters from other comic book companies. To be clear, I don’t think that this was a shady business practice or anything, just that the industry was still new and that almost every book was an anthology title that features were being shuffled in and out of constantly – it’s no wonder that artists were left with finished stories that were no longer wanted from time to time – why not just slap a new name on the hero and publish it?

    With that in mind, I am 100% confident in saying that this first Crash Parker story started life as a Cyclone story over at Quality Comics – the setup of colonizing a new planet after a space race and even the look of the evil Martian king are dead giveaways. Good news for fans of Cyclone, the character who appeared in 4 comics in 1940, I guess. (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

    Honours:

    American pilot Ted O’Neil is given an unspecified medal for bringing down an Axis superweapon. (Prize Comics 004, 1940)

    Names:

    The third case tackled by Fox Features mid tier hero the Eagle is catching a gang of pickpockets, and that gang’s lead is named Ben Dread, which I think is unnecessarily cool. Save the good names for more interesting criminals, I say. (Science Comics 003, 1940) 

    Drawn Without Reference:

    This might just be the bold new look the narwhal have been looking for. (Science Comics 008, 1940)