The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: spy

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 227: FRAULEIN DOKTOR’S DAUGHTER

    (Feature Comics 046-055, 1941-1942) 

    If you, like me, aren’t familiar with WWI-era espionage figures, then this one will require some explanation. Fraulein Doktor was the only name that German spy Elsbeth Schragmüller was known by, even after the war had ended and up until German records were seized in 1945, in fact. And once Captain Bruce Blackburn’s adventures had wrung all of the interest they could out of the German-American Bund, a sexy spy nemesis was just the ticket! Thus: Sonya (presumably) Schragmüller, Fraulein Doktor’s Daughter!

    Sonya’s a fine foe for a regular-style espionage character like Bruce Blackburn, full of all of the staples of the genre: poisons, disguises, fake cults, horniness, etc., but she has three real features of interest aside from being the made-up child of a real person:

    -she has an enormous body count relative to her number of appearances, managing to knock off at least a couple of US intelligence agents per operation.

    -even though she refers to her country of origin as “the Homeland” as is standard in the Counterspy strip, she is presented as the daughter of a German intelligence agent – this is about as close to outright saying she’s a Nazi as you get in mid-1941! (I sometimes feel weird getting so excited for actual Nazis to show up in the books I’m reading, but if it’s so I can see them get beat up a bunch I guess it’s fine)

    -since she’s the major ongoing villain of the Bruce Blackburn strip, and since the industry standard way to keep an espionage villain around is to have them escape at the end of every story, she never really gets caught, and since the strip ends in mid-1942, she ends her time in comics at large, a rare fate.

    ADDENDUM: CARL

    In the first Fraulein Doktor’s Daughter story she has no henchmen. In the second, she has three, Carl, Fritz and Otto, all apprehended. In the third, a second Carl, probably also arrested. In the fourth, Karl, who ends up dead. What does this mean beyond the writers having a limited pool of German names to draw from? I have no idea!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 227: FRAULEIN DOKTOR’S DAUGHTER

    (Feature Comics 046-055, 1941-1942) 

    If you, like me, aren’t familiar with WWI-era espionage figures, then this one will require some explanation. Fraulein Doktor was the only name that German spy Elsbeth Schragmüller was known by, even after the war had ended and up until German records were seized in 1945, in fact. And once Captain Bruce Blackburn’s adventures had wrung all of the interest they could out of the German-American Bund, a sexy spy nemesis was just the ticket! Thus: Sonya (presumably) Schragmüller, Fraulein Doktor’s Daughter!

    Sonya’s a fine foe for a regular-style espionage character like Bruce Blackburn, full of all of the staples of the genre: poisons, disguises, fake cults, horniness, etc., but she has three real features of interest aside from being the made-up child of a real person:

    -she has an enormous body count relative to her number of appearances, managing to knock off at least a couple of US intelligence agents per operation.

    -even though she refers to her country of origin as “the Homeland” as is standard in the Counterspy strip, she is presented as the daughter of a German intelligence agent – this is about as close to outright saying she’s a Nazi as you get in mid-1941! (I sometimes feel weird getting so excited for actual Nazis to show up in the books I’m reading, but if it’s so I can see them get beat up a bunch I guess it’s fine)

    -since she’s the major ongoing villain of the Bruce Blackburn strip, and since the industry standard way to keep an espionage villain around is to have them escape at the end of every story, she never really gets caught, and since the strip ends in mid-1942, she ends her time in comics at large, a rare fate.

    ADDENDUM: CARL

    In the first Fraulein Doktor’s Daughter story she has no henchmen. In the second, she has three, Carl, Fritz and Otto, all apprehended. In the third, a second Carl, probably also arrested. In the fourth, Karl, who ends up dead. What does this mean beyond the writers having a limited pool of German names to draw from? I have no idea!

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 027: THE DESTROYING DEMON

    (Feature Comics 039-040, 1940-1941) 

    This is a bit of a complicated one. So: “Captain Bruce Blackburn – Counterspy” was a strip that started in Feature Comics 032 in media res with the cover of the titular Captain and his colleague Lieutenant Jackson having been blown. The two then fake their deaths and a government plastic surgeon alters their appearances so that they are virtually identical, thus allowing them to operate as an incredibly efficient spy team with a flawless ability to generate alibis.

    Then, in Feature Comics 038, Blackburn, posing as a man named Black, joins the Un-American Band, a thinly-veiled analog of the German-American Bund, a group whose shadow loomed much larger in the pages of the comics than they ever did in history. And in Feature 039, Blackburn, as Black, encounters this guy:

    “Colossal Guy” here does two things: 1. prove my thesis that kids playing super-heroes in comics is always great and 2. give Bruce Blackburn a good idea.

    See, the Un-American Band, being pseudo-Germans, are all intensely superstitious. This is a known thing about Germans and pseudo-Germans! Thus, the simple application of a cheap devil costume and a bungee rig is enough to throw their entire plot into confusion.

    Sadly, Blackburn only wheels out the Destroying Demon (AKA the Destroying Devil, AKA the Avenging Demon) rig one more time, to contend with a force of crypto-Nazi dwarf saboteurs posing as refugee orphans. He does borrow a technique from the Jay Bird and dangle perilously from a plane for this one, though. I really wish he’d kept it up and that this strip had just kept adding more and more layers: government agent who faked his own death and was surgically altered to look like another guy posing as a bundist who is also a super-hero and then the other guy ends up posing as his arch-enemy and then they both pretend to be space aliens battling for control of Earth’s water and then…

    The Destroying Demon is one of the few Golden Age hero identities that I wouldn’t like to see as a returning legacy character. Rather, I want it to reappear as an officially sanctioned super-hero identity for government agents in the DCU – just agent after agent complaining about having to dress up like a pantomime devil in order to infiltrate a super-hero fight club or whatever. Fun!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 219: THE FENCER

    (Detective Comics v1 057, 1941)

    A simple concept but a good one: the Fencer is the head of a vaguely-Axis espionage group that has been trying to kill anti-fascist author Jules Vortez for the past two issues using methods including causing plane crashes while still on the plane, duplicates, hypnosis and, sadly, blackface. Aside from the latter, this is exactly the sort of over-the-top behavior that should be going on all the time in a super-hero universe, so it’s only appropriate when the leader appears in costume, declares himself the “greatest fencer the world has ever known” and initiates a duel to the death with US secret agent Bart Regan.

    Unfortunately for the Fencer, though he ends up skewering Regan he doesn’t do a good enough job to finish him off and their duel soon resumes as a good old American punching competition, one which the Fencer loses. Still, a good show while it lasted!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 219: THE FENCER

    (Detective Comics v1 057, 1941)

    A simple concept but a good one: the Fencer is the head of a vaguely-Axis espionage group that has been trying to kill anti-fascist author Jules Vortez for the past two issues using methods including causing plane crashes while still on the plane, duplicates, hypnosis and, sadly, blackface. Aside from the latter, this is exactly the sort of over-the-top behavior that should be going on all the time in a super-hero universe, so it’s only appropriate when the leader appears in costume, declares himself the “greatest fencer the world has ever known” and initiates a duel to the death with US secret agent Bart Regan.

    Unfortunately for the Fencer, though he ends up skewering Regan he doesn’t do a good enough job to finish him off and their duel soon resumes as a good old American punching competition, one which the Fencer loses. Still, a good show while it lasted!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 216: DR DEKER

    (Detective Comics v1 055, 1941)

    Dr Deker is a spy chief and a fifth columnist from the heady days before the US entered WWI, so of course he’s from an unnamed Fatherland and no further clarification is needed. He has the not-uncommon plan to kidnap prominent American scientists and steal their secrets, abetted by his very first acquisition: the Truth Machine, a device which unsurprisingly forces one to truthfully answer all questions.

    All of this is pretty comics-regular and poor ol’ Dr Deker would be consigned to the pile of discarded also-rans if not for two things: 1. the face that he is pulling in the third panel above and 2. the plan that he is detailing while making that face. Surely it is the mark of a true super-villain that when a method for causing insanity at range falls into his hands Deker’s sole thought is to use it on his own men, that installing an entire factory worth of fifth columnists and then rendering them into violent madmen would be a more desirable end than simply having complete control over a factory in the first place. 

    If you have the means to drive men insane then what other course is available? None, says Dr Deker, and that’s why he’s our Minor Super-Villain 216.

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 003

    Yet another collection of also-rans and never-weres.

    Philip White: 

    Philip White here got exactly one panel into his career as a masked spy chief before Madam Fatal unmasked him. (Crack Comics 014, 1941)

    Basil: 

    An auctioneer named Basil ran an overly complicated scheme to steal the fabled Five Bloodstones of Mu. His plans were also undone by Madam Fatal and ended in his grisly demise. (Crack Comics 016, 1941)

    Unnamed Crook: 

    This unnamed thief almost got away with the Dare Diamond under the very nose of detective Larry Steele. (Detective Comics v1 049, 1941)

    Howard: 

    A baseball pitcher named Howard got up to some shady betting schemes and ended up a generic costumed villain. Let this be a lesson, kids. Also part of his big plan involved shooting himself in the arm with a gimmicked up baseball mitt-gun, which is an early sign that you might not be cut out for costumed villainy. (Detective Comics v1 052, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 158: THE LEADER

    (All-Star Comics 004, 1941)

    What makes them a super-villain? Sheer scale! The Leader AKA Fritz Klaver is the top spy for the “dictator nations” in America, commanding units of his subversive Grey-Shirts as well as other less blatant agents in numbers estimated at 30 000. They come real close to saying he’s a Nazi, too, but it’s about a year out from comics folks being willing to actually do that.

    What makes them interesting? The real deal interesting thing about the Leader is that he’s the first foe that the Justice Society tackle as a group, establishing the split-up-to-take-on-all-of-the-minions-before-coming-together-to-fight-the-overboss paradigm that would rule team super-hero books for decades to come. Other than that he’s your typical fascist spy chief.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 158: THE LEADER

    (All-Star Comics 004, 1941)

    What makes them a super-villain? Sheer scale! The Leader AKA Fritz Klaver is the top spy for the “dictator nations” in America, commanding units of his subversive Grey-Shirts as well as other less blatant agents in numbers estimated at 30 000. They come real close to saying he’s a Nazi, too, but it’s about a year out from comics folks being willing to actually do that.

    What makes them interesting? The real deal interesting thing about the Leader is that he’s the first foe that the Justice Society tackle as a group, establishing the split-up-to-take-on-all-of-the-minions-before-coming-together-to-fight-the-overboss paradigm that would rule team super-hero books for decades to come. Other than that he’s your typical fascist spy chief.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 151: THE GREAT REMEMBO

    (All-Star Comics 001, 1940)

    100% included here because I enjoy his name. A Vaudeville memory expert turned spy, captured by minor Golden Age adventure guy Biff Bronson.