The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: panel fun

  • NOTES – NOVEMBER 2023

    Fate of the Wreck of the Athenia

     

    Showing tremendous respect for the dead, the Blue Tracer uses the wreck of the Athenia as armour while attacking a Nazi battleship. (Military Comics 005, 1941) 

    Honours


    Marine pilots “Loops” McCann and “Banks” Barrows are “decorated for valor” after a barroom brawl in a Shanghai nightclub leads to the destruction of a Japanese spy cell (Military Comics 005, 1941)

    On Crypto-Fascism: 

    As I’ve said before, the US was officially Not Involved in WWII until the December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack and so a lot of pre-1941 comics feature generically Germanish or Japaneseish spies operating on US soil. Military Comics actually features a fair number of actual Nazis (and even some rare comic book appearances by Italian fascists) by having most of its features take place outside of the US. With issue 5 as an example: the Blckhawks battle Nazis in Oslo; the Sniper does the same in Austria; Shot & Shell vex them in a generic Europe; the Death Patrol liberates Nazi POWs as part of the RAF and the Blue Tracer does the same in the Atlantic.

    Loops & Banks, above, are US Marines and as such do not actually battle the Japanese in Shanghai. The most interesting contrast is between Miss America and Yankee Eagle, who both battle Nazi submarines that are preying on US shipping but since the Miss America Nazis are operating out of a New England base and the Yankee Eagle Nazis are based at sea only the latter are actually called Nazis.

    Comics in Comics:

    Inza Cramer meets a fan (More Fun Comics 063, 1941)

    Drawn Without Reference:

    I know that paleontology wasn’t quite as advanced in 1941 as it is today but that is a wild take on what a pterodactyl looked like (More Fun 067, 1941)

    Dynamic Action:

    Check out the dynamic action on adventurer Clip Carson! (More Fun Comics 068, 1941)

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 035: THE HUMAN TOP

    (Red Raven 001, 1940)

    The Human Top is a guy who gets spinning powers after a science accident. The only really noteworthy things about him are that cool collar on his costume and the fact that he’s one of the very few Golden Age Marvel characters to have never had any sort of modern appearance. Spinning powers aren’t cool, I suppose.

    It’s kind of a shame that this is the first of only two appearance of the Human Top and the only one written by Dick Briefer – I really like the weird hyperbole and turns of phrase. Ah well, there’s always Frankenstein to look forward to.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 035: THE HUMAN TOP

    (Red Raven 001, 1940)

    The Human Top is a guy who gets spinning powers after a science accident. The only really noteworthy things about him are that cool collar on his costume and the fact that he’s one of the very few Golden Age Marvel characters to have never had any sort of modern appearance. Spinning powers aren’t cool, I suppose.

    It’s kind of a shame that this is the first of only two appearance of the Human Top and the only one written by Dick Briefer – I really like the weird hyperbole and turns of phrase. Ah well, there’s always Frankenstein to look forward to.

  • NOTES – MAY 2023

    Folk:

    Luther Robinson and Lynne Harris! These folks are hard to categorize! They’re not villains, despite being antagonists to Namor the Sub-Mariner, because Namor is very much a villain at least half of the time. They’re not heroes, despite eventually allying with Namor to fight Nazis, because they definitely attempt to commit at least one genocide against the people of Atlantis. 

    They’re adventurers, they’ve both been surgically modified by Atlantean scientists to be amphibious, and Lynne is one of a long line of women to be abducted by Namor with romantic ill-intent (and she’s, like, third one, in a mere handful of stories). They’re interesting artifacts of the way comic book universes come together, and that’s great.

    (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 010-026 (sporadically), 1940-1941) 

    Vision foe Rhamu Rondi is your bog standard crooked mystic character and will make no further appearances here, but the Buddha Signal is objectively great – even early Jack Kirby knew what was up with regard to villainous décor.(Marvel Mystery Comics v1 015, 1941)

    Names:

    Fella name of Barney Bailey here, which is a pretty great moniker for an exhibiter of curiosities to have. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 016, 1941)

    Panel fun:

    Sub-Mariner x Human Torch (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 017, 1941)

    Whether this is Namor’s personal flag/ crest or a more general Atlantean symbol, this bit of regalia must be noted. (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 018, 1941)

    Biographical Details: Namor the Sub-Mariner weighs 198 pounds, according to the ring announcer during his foray into the world of boxing (Marvel Mystery Comics v1 020, 1941)

  • PANEL FUN

    (Funnies 001, 1936)

    Top notch dinosaur illustration. 

  • PANEL FUN

    (Funnies 001, 1946)

    Really great scared hair on the kid with the braids.

  • PANEL FUN

    (Funnies 001, 1946)

    Really great scared hair on the kid with the braids.

  • CELEBRATION

    (Hit Comics 006, 1940)

    Just a couple of cool bank robbing bad boy brothers living high on the hog. 

    Just a fun panel from the same adventure. Jimmy darling indeed.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 240: PROFESSOR KITZOFF

    (Flash Comics v1 008)

    Professor Kitzoff makes me sad because he is categorically not the Sunspot Wizard. Oh sure, someone at DC or in the fan community went back and assigned titles to all the untitled Golden Age stories and they called this one “the Sunspot Wizard”, but that’s nothing. I love an unofficial name as much as (probably more than) the next guy, but they have to a) come from the text of the story itself and b) can’t just be replacing the actual name by which the character is actually referred!

    So, yes, sad. Professor “Boring Name” Kitzoff has followed the popular criminal scientist path of making an astonishing breakthrough based on junk science – in this case the idea that sunspots affect world events. He has a cool ray that supposedly allows him to affect these sunspots and thus the fate of humanity, but luckily for humanity, Hawkman and his pal Doctor French are on the case and Kitzoff is hounded from New York to the Andes until being accidentally shot by one of his own henchmen. Ho hum.

    My depression is only lifted by the fact that this is the adventure in which Hawkman is seemingly killed and his seeming corpse is nailed up in a coffin with lots of gaps between the boards for some reason, leading to one of the best images of the Golden Age:

  • NOTES – FEBRUARY 2023

    The Whip is an okay character aside from the brownface bit but one thing I absolutely love about him is that although he does a credible job at the Ineffectual Secret Identity act he also just travels from town to town with an enormous black horse.

    (Flash Comics v1 005, 1940) 

    Names:

    This old dude shares his name with Kurt Busiek’s Astro City character Samaritan! The tally of comics characters named Asa Martin stands at 2! (Flash Comics v1 010, 1940)

    Same issue’s Hawkman story features a (bad) guy named John Denver!

    I’m usually pretty good at catching allusions and so forth in these old comics but I have no idea why Joe Magee = “always bungling something” (Flash Comics v1 015, 1941)

    Places: It’s a bit hard to make out but the flash on this armoured car seems to place Seguro in “New Texirona” rather than New Mexico, which might just be the most egregious example of 40s comics writers avoiding real place names that I’ve ever encountered. (Flash Comics v1 016, 1941)

    This is how I order in restaurants, too. (Flash Comics v1 017, 1941)

    Number of references to “the Third Degree” aka the cops torturing someone as a positive thing this month: 3