The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: spy

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 646: THE LIZARD

    (Fight Comics 006, 1940)

    The Lizard was (will be?) the leader of a group of Grotonian spies working to sabotage the military of Greater America in the far-off future year of 1998 AD. He had (will have?) the pretty clever idea of being arrested as a petty thief and running his operation from inside a jail cell but unfortunately for his reputation as a smart guy he then fell for the most obvious trick in the world when Saber the Spy Fighter, head of Greater American Super Intelligence, was put in his cell for an unstated crime and in full super-power granting uniform and casually “allowed himself to be recruited to the Grotonian cause.”.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 012

    Science class was never like this.

    Count la Roach is a scientist-spy looking to synthesize enough “noxio gas” to flood the NYC of the I-think-it’s-still-the-near-future world of Yank Wilson, but all he gets is a sock in the jaw for his trouble. (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940)

    This unnamed fellow is our first proper mad scientist in a while! I really like his style, particularly the fact that he’s introduced while sitting in a tennis judge’s chair for no stated reason. He lives in an inactive volcano, probably in Africa, and is developing a horrible poison dust that he has used to destroy the neighbouring village – it’s probably a good thing that Captain Kidd melts him. (Fantastic Comics 008, 1940)

    Dr Loy here has created an army of chemical androids that he controls and aims to take over the world with. Two problems: the Fantom of the Fair is on the case and Dr Loy’s androids dissolve in water. Loy is quickly arrested. (Amazing Mystery Funnies v3 002, 1940)

    Chung Hang has a simple dream: wait until the world is exhausted by WWII and then take over using his mind control ray. And he might just get there some day, because Chip Collins of the Skull Squadron just punches him out and leaves once he and his pals have escaped Chung Hang’s science dungeons. (Fight Comics 002, 1940)

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 012

    Science class was never like this.

    Count la Roach is a scientist-spy looking to synthesize enough “noxio gas” to flood the NYC of the I-think-it’s-still-the-near-future world of Yank Wilson, but all he gets is a sock in the jaw for his trouble. (Fantastic Comics 007, 1940)

    This unnamed fellow is our first proper mad scientist in a while! I really like his style, particularly the fact that he’s introduced while sitting in a tennis judge’s chair for no stated reason. He lives in an inactive volcano, probably in Africa, and is developing a horrible poison dust that he has used to destroy the neighbouring village – it’s probably a good thing that Captain Kidd melts him. (Fantastic Comics 008, 1940)

    Dr Loy here has created an army of chemical androids that he controls and aims to take over the world with. Two problems: the Fantom of the Fair is on the case and Dr Loy’s androids dissolve in water. Loy is quickly arrested. (Amazing Mystery Funnies v3 002, 1940)

    Chung Hang has a simple dream: wait until the world is exhausted by WWII and then take over using his mind control ray. And he might just get there some day, because Chip Collins of the Skull Squadron just punches him out and leaves once he and his pals have escaped Chung Hang’s science dungeons. (Fight Comics 002, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 640: YEW BEE

    (Fantastic Comics 013, 1940)

    Yew Bee! A scientist/fifth columnist working for an unnamed nation to soften the US up for invasion! A pretty common type of guy in Golden Age comics if I’m honest, and I might have passed him by if he weren’t a Stardust the Super Wizard villain. Even the most rote Fletcher Hanks creations have at least a couple of interesting things about them.

    The first thing is obviously the name. Yew Bee. Is it a reference to a public figure who I have been unable to track down? Is it a private joke? If Yew Bee looked anything like Ub Iwerks I might’ve tried to figure out if he and Hanks had ever crossed paths and had a bad interaction but he really doesn’t. Another one of those mysteries of the ages, I guess!

    The invasion is nothing special, though it is suitably over the top. I will highlight these cool and also dumb looking super tanks, though. A fun design, say I!

    Stardust pulverizes the entire invasion force without breaking a sweat, of course.

    The real reason to cover Yew Bee is the fact that after a surprising amount of Stardust villains being shown leniency over the course of 1940, this is the group that really draws his ire. The bulk of their leadership are turned into icicles and melted. This turns out to be comparatively merciful.

    The top four leaders are turned to rats and chased through the streets of New York by Stardust in the form of a panther until they swim out to sea and drown. Except for Yew Bee, of course.

    Changed into a horrible little rat man, Yew Bee gets to spend his days being interrogated by the FBI. It really does feel like this guy is a reference to someone specific who Fletcher Hanks did not like, doesn’t it?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 638: THE BLACK HOOD

    (Fantastic Comics 013, 1940)

    Yank Wilson, Super Spy Q-4 (who started out as a near-future character and maybe isn’t any more but until I see a clear sign otherwise still is to me) is after Prusslandic spies Karl Wolff and the Black Hood down in Florida and is going about his search with all the subtlety of a character in a point-and-click adventure game. It’s his bad luck that the first person he asked was an agent of Prussland Intelligence but it was only a matter of time given his tactic of asking everyone he saw if they had seen any espionage going on.

    Lucky for Wilson, the Black Hood is incredibly gullible and accepts him as a fifth columnist named Bruno Schmidt without question (don’t worry: Yank crossed his fingers while swearing allegiance to the Fatherland – no need for a court marshal). I was going to make a crack about how even though it was nice to see the Black Hood dressed in what would become the conventional super-villain ensemble unlike so many of our recent entrants it was in fact completely unnecessary because he is obviously Karl Wolff, but I say was because Yank Wilson does not in fact put two and two together until he is told directly that it is four.

    Yank is pretty swiftly uncovered as a US intelligence agent by Count von Heindorff, the one spy in the entire story who bothered to pay attention in espionage school, leading to a whole lot of malarkey and gunplay and a final airplane chase that spells the end of both von Heindorff and the Black Hood.

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 014

    Once again the also-rans.

    A bunch of small-time crooks get paid to fake the death of Titano (the largest gorilla in captivity!) for an insurance scam and of course use him to rob a series small-town banks. If only they had thought a bit more ambitiously they might have made the big time. (Exciting Comics 005, 1940)

    This Yank Wilson adventure features a fairly by-the-book super-spy ring headed by Count Lustig von Blackgard. They plot, they scheme, they are ultimately foiled. This mysterious radio message is the only mention of a higher-up, but their moniker – the extremely evocative Neuromania – was too good to pass over without comment. (there is of course the possibility that Neuromania is the spies’ home country. Either way, it’s great). (Fantastic Comics 002, 1940)

    This happy fellow has no name but makes up for it with a laundry list of distinctive features: missing left eye, hunch, catlike upper lip, pointy ears, bizarrely long hair on his forearms, etc. He lives under a fake man-eating tree in… probably the African jungle and spends his days torturing and poisoning people for no stated reason until he is killed by Captain Kid using his own poisoned melon. (Fantastic Comics 005, 1940)

    This is Nipon, ruler of an unnamed Asian country (wink, wink) from that period in late 1940 through 1941 when the Axis powers were very clearly the villains on everyone’s minds but the US was remaining neutral so you couldn’t in good conscience make the leader of a foreign nation the villain of your story. These guys are usually either extremely obvious stand-ins named, like Arnolf Hilter or Menito Bussolini (in which case they get added to a Real Folk entry) or so generic that I forget them entirely. Nipon is kind of neither – like, he’s obviously a stand-in for the Emperor of Japan but extremely generically, but also he has a very fun look! (Fantastic Comics 013, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 632: THE BOSS

    (Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

    The Boss is actually Roulf, editor of the Daily Standard newspaper in NYC. He pulls the classic villain mistake of acting as a concerned citizen recruiting the protagonists – in this case Samson and David – to investigate his own villainous alter ego. It’s the kind of error that you can emphasize with to a certain extent: how better to ensure that a super-powered busybody doesn’t unexpectedly show up and wreck your plans then by controlling the flow of information and steering him away? The problem is that the Boss, like most villains who try this gambit, fails on the second part of the plan. Rather than guide Samson and David away from, say, his plot to blow up the Panama Canal he has instead alerted them to look out for such plans. Heck, before getting word to visit him at the Daily Standard Building, Our Heroes were spending their day pulling pranks on ice cream vendors. Truly the Boss has executed an epic self-own.

    The Boss has a secret city hidden in a secret valley in the Western US and in that secret city he has a a little fort and in that little fort he has a littler pyramid. It’s not very effective at keeping Samson out but I think it’s neat that he nested up like that.

    I think I’ve mentioned that Samson is one of your more bloodthirsty Golden Age super-heroes before and I’ve even said to myself “that’s a murder,” when reading a Samson adventure but… he just kind of admits it here, doesn’t he. He captured Roulf and then murdered him while taking him back to civilization. Wild stuff.

  • MAD AND CRIMINAL SCIENTIST ROUND-UP 010

    We have mad scientists at criminal scientist prices.

    Dr Koch is one of the many people hungry to get their hands on the secret vitamin supplement that turned the Champ (derogatory) into the Champ (aspirational) after its creator Dr Marlin is murdered. Koch’s mild claim to fame is the fact that he’s the first one to get ahold of the formula long enough to do anything with it. What he did, specifically, was to mix up a big batch and pump it directly into a poor guy named Cris, thus turning him into a lumpy rage-filled monster-man.

    Koch gets away at the end of his encounter with the Champ and his little pal Henry (Cris sadly does a header off a cliff) but characters later in the story talk about him as if he’s dead. Dead or hiding out in a cave in Mexico: either way he’s not bothering the Champ any more. (Champ Comics 011, 1940)

    Dr Bolms (excuse me, Doktar Bolms) here is a mere gangland plastic surgeon, which was enough to draw the attention of Secret Agent Z-2 here but not necessarily enough to draw ours. What really sets him apart from his peers is the fact that he has captured a government agent named Monty Wood and has been practising facial surgeries on him. Horrible! (Crash Comics Adventures 001, 1940)

    Dr Sax is a doctor/spy who needs Tornado Tom’s good good blood to rejuvenate his spy chief, but since he’s an evil man he is determined to take all of his blood instead of just some of it. (Cyclone Comics 005, 1940)

    These youngsters are the Space Rovers, Jane and Ted, a coupla youths who were forced to flee in Jane’s father’s spaceship rather than have it and its ray cannons fall into the hands of enemy spies and now just kind of ping pong around the Solar System in the hopes of getting home. Their first port of call is Mercury, where they have the misfortune of meeting the Mercurians of Thian, who only live twenty years, are mad about it and thanks to their head scientist Flaedo here have exactly one proposed solution: capture longer-lived beings and vivisect them.

    I love his little mustache! Don’t worry, he gets electrocuted in the Space Rovers’ escape. (Exciting Comics 002, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 573: THE OWL

    (Champion Comics 005, 1940)

    Journalist Penny Wright is on the trail of a notorious spy named the Owl! While I am of course broadly anti-spoilers I will give you a hint to the Owl’s identity: there are four named characters in this comic and poor Hafiz Bey is murdered on the first page.

    Setting aside the compelling and difficult mystery of the Owl’s identity for a moment, we must consider the very concept of the notorious spy known for their distinctive appearance. I mean, yes, adopt a persona and stick to it while working so as to remove yourself from suspicion, but once you are known to be a man wearing thick glasses why continue to appear as such? Why is the Owl still running around as the Owl?

    The Owl of course turns out to be Cora Zender[s], popular diplomatic hostess, because of course he does. OR DOES HE? I put it to you that Cora is just a decoy, sent to take the fall while the real Owl gets away. After all, the only evidence pointing to Cora was the piece of her dress found in the garden – circumstantial at best! If the Owl and Cora were in fact the same highly successful spy then she surely would have at the very least dropped the easily spotted disguise, if not swapped it out for another look altogether! No, the only conclusion that can reasonably be reached is that Cora is not the Owl, merely a pawn, and that the real culprit is long gone.

    Or this was a throwaway story loosely plotted in haste in order to fill pages on an anthology book, but who’s gonna believe that?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 571: THE YELLOW SPIDER

    (Champion Comics 004, 1940)

    Champion Comics 003 featured the murder of the Champ’s mentor Dr Marlin and at the conclusion of that adventure the blame for Marlin’s death seemed to rest squarely on the shoulders of his assistant Dr Katsu. Champion Comics 004, however, introduces a further development: Katsu was in fact working for a greater mastermind, the Yellow Spider!

    (and here I’m going to contrast my usual delight at a villainous note signed with a little cartoon with my deep sighs as I say that yes, the Yellow in Yellow Spider is 100% a racist thing. Early Champion Comics issues are even more comfortable with using racist tropes for their villains than the rest of the comics industry, and that’s saying something)

    The Yellow Spider is big on indirect action. Beyond employing goons to do his dirty work he also uses engine-killing rays and cuts in on radio and telephone signals to orchestrate events at a distance, such as his successful kidnapping of the Champ here, followed by his doing a solid for the unnamed police officer who was supposed to be driving him around.

    The Champ is brought to the Yellow Spider’s dirigible/ base, where he eventually learns that the Spider is in fact this one little guy who has popped up a couple of times previously as an agent of what turns out to be himself. It’s not explicit but quite possible he wants formula because he is puny (spoiler: much later it turns out that Dr Katsu pulled a double cross and had the formula all along. This Yellow Spider/ Champ beef is all a huge waste of everyone’s time).

    As the Champ was summarily evicted from the Yellow Spider’s dirigible at the end of issue 4, Champion Comics 005 is almost entirely concerned with busywork. To whit:

    -the Champ learns to fly a plane

    -the Champ and his pal Bird Kelly attack the dirigible, too late remember about the engine killing ray and are knocked out of the sky

    -the Champ travels back to Midwest University to talk to a ray expert

    -the ray expert is stranded on a mountain; the Champ must go rescue him

    -in consultation with the expert, the Champ crafts ray shielding for his plane

    -the Champ and Bird Kelly go back up in a now-shielded plane

    -the Champ STILL has to go on the dirigible and wreck the ray because it also explodes gunpowder and they only brought grenades for some reason

    -the Champ hops back over to his plane and explodes the dirigible, killing the Yellow Spider

    I will say that the Champ expressing some remorse over having killed an evil man (or at least not being up to watching the carnage) is a real departure for the Golden Age. Lotta righteous killing going on back then.