The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Fort Knox robbery

  • SUPER-VILLAIN 001 UPDATE: DR SIVANA (1941)

    Dr Sivana’s 1941 Whiz Comics appearances! What’s that lil’ scamp up to now?

    Sivana starts 1941 with a bang, by developing a liquid that can reduce someone’s age by up to 30 years. This is a surprisingly useful tool in the super-criminal’s arsenal, as a series of bank messengers, security guards, cops and Billy Batson soon find out.

    Dr Sivan’s ultimate goal is of course another attempt to take over the United States of America. He very reasonably assumes that, having dosed the bulk of the army and turned them into toddlers, he and his army of goons can just waltz in and take over. The flaw in his plan is revealed when Captain Marvel (Billy having found the antidote to the youth formula and escaped) rounds up a bunch of old Civil War vets and de-ages them to defend the country.

    (BONUS: there’s none of that “now return to the quiet dignity of being old” hogwash in this story: all of the youthened veterans stay young at the end and re-enlist to help with national defense in the face of WWII) (Whiz Comics 013, 1941)

    Dr Sivana’s next appearance features him being put on trial for repeatedly attempting to conquer the US. He is of course found guilty and sentenced to 77 consecutive life sentences totalling over 9000 years (and servable with the help of some of that youth serum). Two things happen at this trial: Dr Sivana demonstrates a new breakthrough in intangibility studies as he simply walks through a wall and away from his sentencing, but more importantly this is where we learn that his full name is Thaddeus Bodog Sivana!

    Unlocking the secrets of intangibility really seems to ignite Sivana’s love of the super-villain game. He embarks on a crime spree that includes bombings, espionage, the robbery of the “Fort Gnox” gold reserve and a series of kidnappings of high-level government officials that culminates in the capture of the dang President himself.

    He also kidnaps Billy Batson mid-radio broadcast, and transports him to a room hewn out of living granite, deep under a mountain before he can turn into Captain Marvel. 

    Capturing Captain Marvel turns out to be a classic case of villain’s hubris, as he is able to use the Wisdom of Solomon to work out just exactly how Sivana has been doing his intangibility trick: by mathematically calculating the positions of all of the atoms in a surface and then slipping his own atoms past them. While effective, this method of travel proves to be difficult to do properly when one is being chased by Captain Marvel, as Dr Sivana’s chin soon learns.

    This method of travelling through matter also turn out to have another drawback: every time you use it you end up leaving a little bit of yourself behind, and after an extended chase with Captain Marvel, Dr Sivana has lost so much of himself that he loses all molecular cohesion and dissipates. (Whiz Comics 014, 1941)

    A little thing like being turned into vapour can’t stop a guy like Dr Sivana, however. He returns, dressed in an extremely unfortunate Old Chinese Man outfit, and lures Billy Batson into his lair with the help of an unwitting Beautia. Billy is rendered powerless here by what I consider to be Sivana’s greatest invention: a little box that goes “ozzle ozzle” and drowns him out every time he tries to yell “Shazam.” It’s brilliant in its simplicity, and the kind of thing that only a villain who knows his enemy’s secret identity can come up with.

    Dr Sivana’s lastest scheme involves raising a horde of the froglike Venusian Glompers on Earth and then using them to take over not just the US but the entire planet.

    Billy eventually makes an escape attempt, and though he doesn’t get far the ozzlebox is broken. Dr Sivana attempts to counter Captain Marvel by unleashing his beefy son Magnificus, but this turns out to be a Bad Move, as their battle causes a rockslide and Sivana is beaned by a boulder that is the same size as him.

    Since Dr Sivana appears to be at death’s door, Beautia finally feels free to reveal his origin: he was once an idealistic scientist who wanted to improve the lot of all mankind but found himself hounded by greedy capitalists who benefited more from the current state of things. Bitter and disillusioned, he took his two young children – Beautia and Magnificus – and moved to Venus, where they grew into kind and decent physical paragons and he shrivelled up into the evil little scientist we all know and love.

    Sivana’s kids take him back to Venus, to die, presumably. (Whiz Comics 015, 1941)

    Dr Sivana returns without fanfare in the pages of Captain Marvel Adventures, and then back in his old stomping grounds of Whiz Comics he sets out to get revenge on Billy/Captain Marvel by mysteriously growing a big muscular body. Though he captures Billy without trouble, he again makes the classic villain’s mistake of leaving him tied up to deal with later rather than finishing him off without delay, which of course leaves an opening for a friendly organ grinder’s monkey to scuttle in and free him.

    This is the first instance of Sivana becoming physically as well as mentally powerful and he really gets into it with some local bullies. It’s a pattern that will reoccur throughout the years – becoming a big strong tough guy becomes almost as much of a preoccupation for Sivana as conquering the US is at some points, and he always seems to have a ball once he achieves his goal.

    This time around, Sivana has achieved beefcake status by building himself a robotic exoskeleton, but sadly for him no mere machine is a match for the world’s mightiest mortal. Better luck next time, Thaddeus. (Whiz Comics 020, 1941)

    Dr Sivana makes one more appearance in Whiz Comics in 1941, but since it’s as a part of a team, we will be covering it in a separate entry.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 872: TEXA

    (Zip Comics 003, 1940)

    The Scarlet Avenger looks out his window one sunny day and sees “DEATH TO THE SCARLET AVENGER” in skywriting. This, it turns out is a very effective ploy, as when he flies up to check it out he is swarmed and captured by some very off-model pterodactyls.

    The beasts take him to a dirigible, where he is is introduced to Texa, an eight foot tall woman and self-proclaimed “Queen of Crime,” who is looking to rob Fort Knox and wisely set out to eliminate the Scarlet Avenger ahead of time rather than wait and do it on the day.

    The Scarlet Avenger is of course loaded down with little gadgets, and he manages to escape from Texa’s deathtrap by employing, in turn, his personal electric field, smokescreen and capsule parachute, proving once again that super-villains should have better procedures in place for searching captives.

    Please note the companionable arm that Texa has around one of her minions (called variously the Tribe of the Hood and the Hooded Tribe, FYI) in that second-last panel. I like that! It suggests a better-than-average minion work experience.

    Believing that the Scarlet Avenger is dead, Texa proceeds with her admittedly very cool plan to use a big magnet to pick up the entire Fort Knox vault and fly away with it, upon which the very much alive Avenger and his legion of operatives fly up and release the magnet using anti-magnetic rays. Fort Knox is saved, albeit probably very banged up.

    The Scarlet Avenger is shot down by a very cool bubble weapon, leading to a cliffhanger as he is pinned by dirigible fire in the Kentucky desert*. Will he make it out of this overwhelming display of firepower?

    *just why is there a desert landscape in Kentucky? It’s equally likely that:

    a. That wasn’t literally supposed to be Fort Knox but a fictional US Gold Reserve in a more Western state

    b. The air battle ranged a bit farther than depicted on-panel

    c. the artist just kind of drew what they wanted and hang the geography 

    The answer is of course yes, and for the simple reason that as the story in Zip Comics 004 begins, Texa abruptly decides to capture the Scarlet Avenger rather than kill him. Out come the “pterodactyls” once more! Plus the Tribe of the Hood decide to put on shirts.

    Texa employs the mind-bending properties of the Chamber of Disks to render the Scarlet Avenger susceptible to hypnotic mind control so that she can use him and his network in her next plot: to kidnap FDR! 

    Spoiler: the Scarlet Avenger is not really hypnotized and rather than aiding Texa he is working against her.

    A faceless FDR is saved from the now-fully-clothed and jetpack-equipped Tribe of the Hood by the last-minute intervention of the Scarlet Avenger, which is good, but I can’t help but think that he could have mitigated the danger to the president somewhat by turning on Texa before she had him encased in an electric force field.

    Our second cliffhanger! Texas men have the Scarlet Avenger’s operatives under heavy fire, as their boss rides a jetpack man up to the dirigible to help them! Will they make it out of this one alive? 

    Indeed they will! The Scarlet Avenger arrives just in time to prevent Texa from killing his top aide Operative 12, upon which the villain dumps the entire Scarlet Avenger organization out a trap door. Everyone floats down using their personal parachute capsules and presumably feels grateful that the Scarlet Avenger isn’t the kind of boss who keeps all the gadgets for himself.

    Texa’s final ploy involves raising a criminal army by doing a mass jailbreak of Alcatraz, which always seems to me like a way to acquire a pretty motley crew of henchmen with a really wide range of skills and attitudes toward employment as faceless cogs, but who am I to critique a plan like this? I’ve never even broken one guy out of jail to be my minion.

    It’s no surprise that the Scarlet Avengers operatives show up to stop this operation, and since Texa is once again employing her super magnet, they are all kitted out in cool non-ferrous outfits and wielding… copper machine guns I guess. It’s very good look for them!

    Texa’s dirigible ends up on the wrong end of one too many ray gun blasts from the Scarlet Avenger’s rocket plane and goes down in flames, taking the entire Tribe of the Hood with it, but Texa herself escapes in perhaps the coolest possible manner: in a transparent cube carried by pterodactyls. It’s a heck of a way to make an exit and one that stands, as she never appears again. Somewhere an eight foot tall gandma is reminiscing about the glory days, I guess (obviously I reckon that Texa should be BROUGHT BACK in a more modern Archie super-hero comic. People would go nuts for this big tall crime lady!).

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 841: SIKANDUR, THE ROBOT MASTER

    (War Comics 001, 1940) 

    Sikandur, the Robot Master, is a villain-in-a-starring-role who sadly only appeared once. Any evil roboticist who, for example, makes his robots red-hot as a way of discouraging those who might grapple them is an evil roboticist I want to read about, and I only got the one opportunity to do so.

    Sikandur need gold in order to build more robots, though whether he needs it as a necessary component or as a handy source of cash is unspecified. To that end, he sends his boy Robot X5328B to the United States to rob Fort Knox.

    If Sikandur’s feature had continued to appear then presumably these three dingbats would have been the ones who would be foiling him going forward. As it is, they’re just three… college students? who figure out that Robot X5328B is something more than a simple traveller with jet-black eyes and kind of bumble around trying to figure out what he’s up to.

    Also please not that Sikandur has apparently “conquered half of Europe” at this point.

    Robot X5328B is an advanced robot indeed, because he (?) does some excellent and very menacing threats before being undermined by Sikandur’s caution re: the small-town police missing three local oafs. And that’s a wrap on Sikandur the Robot Master. Presumably the next few issues would have concerned our unlikely trio’s efforts to prevent the robbery of Fort Knox and then ultimately the end of Sikandur and his dreams of world conquest.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 841: SIKANDUR, THE ROBOT MASTER

    (War Comics 001, 1940) 

    Sikandur, the Robot Master, is a villain-in-a-starring-role who sadly only appeared once. Any evil roboticist who, for example, makes his robots red-hot as a way of discouraging those who might grapple them is an evil roboticist I want to read about, and I only got the one opportunity to do so.

    Sikandur need gold in order to build more robots, though whether he needs it as a necessary component or as a handy source of cash is unspecified. To that end, he sends his boy Robot X5328B to the United States to rob Fort Knox.

    If Sikandur’s feature had continued to appear then presumably these three dingbats would have been the ones who would be foiling him going forward. As it is, they’re just three… college students? who figure out that Robot X5328B is something more than a simple traveller with jet-black eyes and kind of bumble around trying to figure out what he’s up to.

    Also please not that Sikandur has apparently “conquered half of Europe” at this point.

    Robot X5328B is an advanced robot indeed, because he (?) does some excellent and very menacing threats before being undermined by Sikandur’s caution re: the small-town police missing three local oafs. And that’s a wrap on Sikandur the Robot Master. Presumably the next few issues would have concerned our unlikely trio’s efforts to prevent the robbery of Fort Knox and then ultimately the end of Sikandur and his dreams of world conquest.

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 019

    We may have gotten away from the “costumed” and “generic” is debatable but you can take the “villain” from my cold dead hands. 

    This guy is part of a gang who:

    -broke into Fort Knox via a secret tunnel

    -smashed up up all of the gold and mixed it into stone in a nearby quarry

    -transported that gold-bearing stone from the quarry to a mansion

    -melted down the gold and concealed it inside a series of bronze statues

    And while I suppose that you want to take a lot of care to conceal your movements when you are looting the US gold reserve I just have to be on record as saying that this is an unnecessarily complex scheme. Just book it for the border, fellows!

    Also Dynamo, stung by the razzing of government investigators, gilds the entire gang… thus killing them? before turning them in. Brutal stuff. (Science Comics 002, 1940)

    This very cool looking but unnamed spy chief has developed anti-Dynamo technology that renders him immune to the various beams and rays that usually assail the hero’s foes, which he uses to make off with some explosive wire that Dynamo and the nerds at his day job have made. He pulls off this theft pretty slickly but then completely fails to recognize the difficulty of attempting to pull off a scheme (in this case blowing up US military installations using explosive wire) while a super-hero is after you. It’s a real failure to recognize the opportunity to slay Dynamo while he can’t get you, unnamed spy chief! (Science Comics 004, 1940)

    John J. Hix, millionaire and asylum escapee, needs to get revenge on his old friend for some reason, so he puts on a cloak that makes him look like the ghost of a cat and hires some crooks to kidnap his friend’s daughter Doris Dare (a “society deb singer,” which is not a type of entertainer I am familiar with. Was it a thing? It’s hard to tell!) so that he can kill her. He is opposed by heroic police inspector the Duke and ends up blowing himself up rather than be captured. (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)

    The Sky Wolf encounters this goofy-but-also-cool magnetically-shielded fire-breathing duck/dragon/plane as it attacks fishing boats one day and traces it back to a similarly magnetically-shielded base where crooks armed with plastic guns inform him that all of this is essentially prep work in advance of setting up a smuggling operation.

    Now, issues of whether the expense involved in setting up this operation might cut substantially into any profits realized from it or indeed whether simply selling this magnetic bullet shield to one of the many armies extant in 1940 might be more profitable aside… my admittedly layman’s understanding of how smuggling works is that you really want to keep it as quiet as possible. Maybe I’m naive, but establishing a huge messy monster-infested exclusion zone might just… draw more attention to your operation? Like a masked pilot, for example? 

    Anyway, they all get blown up. (Silver Streak Comics 006, 1940)

  • GENERIC COSTUMED VILLAIN ROUND-UP 019

    We may have gotten away from the “costumed” and “generic” is debatable but you can take the “villain” from my cold dead hands. 

    This guy is part of a gang who:

    -broke into Fort Knox via a secret tunnel

    -smashed up up all of the gold and mixed it into stone in a nearby quarry

    -transported that gold-bearing stone from the quarry to a mansion

    -melted down the gold and concealed it inside a series of bronze statues

    And while I suppose that you want to take a lot of care to conceal your movements when you are looting the US gold reserve I just have to be on record as saying that this is an unnecessarily complex scheme. Just book it for the border, fellows!

    Also Dynamo, stung by the razzing of government investigators, gilds the entire gang… thus killing them? before turning them in. Brutal stuff. (Science Comics 002, 1940)

    This very cool looking but unnamed spy chief has developed anti-Dynamo technology that renders him immune to the various beams and rays that usually assail the hero’s foes, which he uses to make off with some explosive wire that Dynamo and the nerds at his day job have made. He pulls off this theft pretty slickly but then completely fails to recognize the difficulty of attempting to pull off a scheme (in this case blowing up US military installations using explosive wire) while a super-hero is after you. It’s a real failure to recognize the opportunity to slay Dynamo while he can’t get you, unnamed spy chief! (Science Comics 004, 1940)

    John J. Hix, millionaire and asylum escapee, needs to get revenge on his old friend for some reason, so he puts on a cloak that makes him look like the ghost of a cat and hires some crooks to kidnap his friend’s daughter Doris Dare (a “society deb singer,” which is not a type of entertainer I am familiar with. Was it a thing? It’s hard to tell!) so that he can kill her. He is opposed by heroic police inspector the Duke and ends up blowing himself up rather than be captured. (Silver Streak Comics 002, 1940)

    The Sky Wolf encounters this goofy-but-also-cool magnetically-shielded fire-breathing duck/dragon/plane as it attacks fishing boats one day and traces it back to a similarly magnetically-shielded base where crooks armed with plastic guns inform him that all of this is essentially prep work in advance of setting up a smuggling operation.

    Now, issues of whether the expense involved in setting up this operation might cut substantially into any profits realized from it or indeed whether simply selling this magnetic bullet shield to one of the many armies extant in 1940 might be more profitable aside… my admittedly layman’s understanding of how smuggling works is that you really want to keep it as quiet as possible. Maybe I’m naive, but establishing a huge messy monster-infested exclusion zone might just… draw more attention to your operation? Like a masked pilot, for example? 

    Anyway, they all get blown up. (Silver Streak Comics 006, 1940)

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 472: THE GREAT QUESTION

    (Amazing-Man Comics 005, 1939)

    The Great Question is a member of the Council of Seven, the mysterious body of scientists and mystics who trained and orphan boy into John Aman aka the Amazing-Man. The inner dynamics of the Council of Seven can be a bit hard to parse but early on it seems like the Great Question is if not in charge at least an unofficial leader. Later, as he has more and more conflict with Amazing-Man that role is filled by Aman’s mentor Nika.

    From issue 5 to 11, the first year of Aman’s adventures, the dynamic is such: Amazing-Man travels around helping people and inadvertently foiling the Great Question’s various schemes while the Question attempts to bend Aman to his will – above is a picture of the one time he managed to actually do it, turning Amazing-Man into some sort of terrifying crime genie.

    Then, in Amazing-Man Comics 012, Aman answers a summons to return to the Council and is rewarded with a harness that both makes his “green mist” power permanent and renders him immune to the Question’s mental control. Suddenly, everything changes – sure, Amazing-Man is still travelling around foiling the Great Question’s various schemes, but without the mind control aspect to their dynamic it becomes a much more satisfying hero/villain pairing.

    (This seems like a good place for an aside: it’s never explicitly stated but implicitly it seems like the Council of Seven must know that their most prominent member is a super-villain. Did they recruit him because he was one or was it incidental to the other things he brought to the role? Impossible to say. The gift of the anti-mind control harness makes it clear that they preferred Aman in a heroic role but that’s about all that can be determined)

    From this point the Great Question really comes into his own as an international super-villain. No matter where Amazing-Man goes, the Question has a group of generic goons working on a scheme of some sort. This all comes to a head in Amazing-Man Comics 021, in which Amazing-Man and the Great Question face off on an island base crawling with uniformed henchmen armed with forcefield projectors to bottle up Aman’s gas form.

    There’s even an extremely radical giant robot!

    Things really come crashing down in the next issue, as the Great Question not only joins up with the Nazis but rebrands himself as Mister Que, a much worse name. Now obviously there are a lot of classic Nazi villains – they’re very easy to cast in the role because they suck – and it’s clear that the Great Question Mister Que is using them to further his own goals, but it really does diminish the fun of a classic megalomaniac to see him working to further the goals of the Nazis rather than his own.

    There are some interesting developments during the Mister Que era: he demonstrates more super-powers, for one, including a sort of whirlwind form used for rapid escape. He also manages to rob Fort Knox (well, Fort Fox), a classic villain cheevo. And even though I don’t particularly like the Nazi uniform look he does have the right smirk to be wearing that mask.

    Then, in Amazing-Man Comics 024, Amazing-Man and Tommy the Amazing Kid face off against the Vulture, a Nazi agent with convoluted plan to destroy NYC using US soldiers under the thrall of psychoactive temporary tattoos. In the antepenultimate panel, the Vulture pulls off a rubberoid mask to reveal that he was in fact Mister Que! His reasoning for doing this (to keep Amazing-Man from attempting to kill him) is a bit suspect, but he does manage to get away in the end. Ignominious!

    And that’s it for the Great Question/ Mister Que/ the Vulture. Odds are that he would have returned to vex Amazing-Man yet again but Centaur stopped publishing comics in early 1942. Both he and Amazing-Man have been brought back a handful of times over the years, of course, but mostly the Great Question languishes, unanswered.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 472: THE GREAT QUESTION

    (Amazing-Man Comics 005, 1939)

    The Great Question is a member of the Council of Seven, the mysterious body of scientists and mystics who trained and orphan boy into John Aman aka the Amazing-Man. The inner dynamics of the Council of Seven can be a bit hard to parse but early on it seems like the Great Question is if not in charge at least an unofficial leader. Later, as he has more and more conflict with Amazing-Man that role is filled by Aman’s mentor Nika.

    From issue 5 to 11, the first year of Aman’s adventures, the dynamic is such: Amazing-Man travels around helping people and inadvertently foiling the Great Question’s various schemes while the Question attempts to bend Aman to his will – above is a picture of the one time he managed to actually do it, turning Amazing-Man into some sort of terrifying crime genie.

    Then, in Amazing-Man Comics 012, Aman answers a summons to return to the Council and is rewarded with a harness that both makes his “green mist” power permanent and renders him immune to the Question’s mental control. Suddenly, everything changes – sure, Amazing-Man is still travelling around foiling the Great Question’s various schemes, but without the mind control aspect to their dynamic it becomes a much more satisfying hero/villain pairing.

    (This seems like a good place for an aside: it’s never explicitly stated but implicitly it seems like the Council of Seven must know that their most prominent member is a super-villain. Did they recruit him because he was one or was it incidental to the other things he brought to the role? Impossible to say. The gift of the anti-mind control harness makes it clear that they preferred Aman in a heroic role but that’s about all that can be determined)

    From this point the Great Question really comes into his own as an international super-villain. No matter where Amazing-Man goes, the Question has a group of generic goons working on a scheme of some sort. This all comes to a head in Amazing-Man Comics 021, in which Amazing-Man and the Great Question face off on an island base crawling with uniformed henchmen armed with forcefield projectors to bottle up Aman’s gas form.

    There’s even an extremely radical giant robot!

    Things really come crashing down in the next issue, as the Great Question not only joins up with the Nazis but rebrands himself as Mister Que, a much worse name. Now obviously there are a lot of classic Nazi villains – they’re very easy to cast in the role because they suck – and it’s clear that the Great Question Mister Que is using them to further his own goals, but it really does diminish the fun of a classic megalomaniac to see him working to further the goals of the Nazis rather than his own.

    There are some interesting developments during the Mister Que era: he demonstrates more super-powers, for one, including a sort of whirlwind form used for rapid escape. He also manages to rob Fort Knox (well, Fort Fox), a classic villain cheevo. And even though I don’t particularly like the Nazi uniform look he does have the right smirk to be wearing that mask.

    Then, in Amazing-Man Comics 024, Amazing-Man and Tommy the Amazing Kid face off against the Vulture, a Nazi agent with convoluted plan to destroy NYC using US soldiers under the thrall of psychoactive temporary tattoos. In the antepenultimate panel, the Vulture pulls off a rubberoid mask to reveal that he was in fact Mister Que! His reasoning for doing this (to keep Amazing-Man from attempting to kill him) is a bit suspect, but he does manage to get away in the end. Ignominious!

    And that’s it for the Great Question/ Mister Que/ the Vulture. Odds are that he would have returned to vex Amazing-Man yet again but Centaur stopped publishing comics in early 1942. Both he and Amazing-Man have been brought back a handful of times over the years, of course, but mostly the Great Question languishes, unanswered.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 463: PROFESSOR MONTE

    (Mystic Comics v1 004, 1940)

    Professor Monte is the type of criminal scientist that I want to see in more comics: he has an idea (develop a gold-attracting magnet and use it to steal gold), he secures funding from crooked businessman Prentiss, he tests his device with a series of jewelry store robberies before scaling up to using the big dirigible-mounted model… he has a plan, in other words, rather than a vague idea of how they’re going to take over Newark using their amazing new food additive or gun that fires grass seed.

    And the plan pays off! Professor Monte robs Fort Knox and gets away with it! All he has to do is lie low and he and Prentiss and all his goons are set for life!

    But of course that is too much to ask. Professor Monte is, after all, a criminal scientist and they are not known for their restraint. He is determined to rob the Bank of England as well, and comes close to doing so before running up against the fact that not only is London unusually well prepared for an aerial invasion at the time but that Dynamic Man is on his tail. Ultimately it comes down to electric blast vs hydrogen gas and the hydrogen gas always loses.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 338: THE BANDIT FORCE

    (Master Comics 004, 1940)

    This is a simple one because it’s simply a matter of scale, plus the fact that everyone involved is wearing a stylish purple cloak/ robe combo. A mass of bandits loot arsenals across the Eastern US, stealing tanks, artillery and armoured cars. Panic ensues!

    Soon enough, the band makes its goals known with a bold attack on that sweetest of targets: Fort Knox. And they almost get away with it! They actually have the gold loaded up and are speeding away before second-rate Fawcett character Master Man shows up and absolutely ruins everyone’s day.

    And of course the leader of the pack turns out to be the unnamed altruistic banker who somehow manages to sit in on every meeting about how to deal with the situation. What a surprise!

    ADDENDUM: I absolutely forgot to mention the most notable if underplayed thing about these guys: they use golden bullets for some unstated reason. A bizarre choice for a buncha gold thieves!