The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: super vehicle

  • 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 390: DR MAUSE

    (More Fun Comics 067-068, 1941)

    On paper I should love Dr Mause, a weird little creep who preys on Allied shipping for his legally-distinct-from-German masters using not only an “electroblast ray” but a cool floating island base, but in practise he leaves me cold. I’m glad he gets captured by Captain Desmo, see if I’m not.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 370: THE GREEN HOOD

    (Minute-Man 002, 1941)

    As mentioned in our last entry, the Green Hood was retroactively revealed to be the boss of Illyria, Queen of Spies in her final appearance (probably for the best as it’s hard maintain queenly authority when people know that you have a supervisor). He’s your standard hooded mastermind/ spymaster, albeit with a much more dramatically draped hood than most.

    He is also A Bad Boss, as shown by his demonstration of managerial style above. Having tasked Illyria with the daunting task of capturing Minute-Man, he condemns her to death (the super-villain equivalent of a very harsh write-up on her file) for capturing General Milton as bait/ in order to extract Minute-Man’s secret identity from him.

    For comparison, this is like hiring a team of scientists to travel to the centre of he Earth and then firing them when you find that they’re building a giant drill. Or, for that matter, setting someone the task of killing Batman and then getting mad when they show up with Alfred. The Green Hood’s uncle probably runs this spy business, is what I’m saying.

    Having ruined his chances of getting Minute-Man and squandered his best agent on a fit of middle-management pique, the Green Hood determines that he should make a grand gesture by attacking an unnamed New York-like city in the name of his unspecified Germany-like county using a tank that dispenses poison gas. He makes some headway but is ultimately felled by cop with a hand grenade.

    The issue ends with a hint that the Green Hood and Illyria might just be back someday and I’m sure that he would have been if the US had not entered WWII – hooded spymasters and femmes fatale were just too subtle and nuanced to be representatives of Nazi Germany in the comics. Sorry Green Hood but you are D E A D.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 044: THE Q-BOAT

    (Military Comics 001, 1941)

    This is stretching the idea of what a “minor super-hero” is quite a bit but I ultimately had to defer to my judgment rule about criminal groups: if one person were doing this would it make sense to categorize them such? And it would! The Q-Boat is just that, a warship disguised as a harmless four-masted schooner in order to prey on Nazi convoy raiders. Swap out the disguised ship for a submarine and you have the Red Torpedo, a personal fave!

    There are two interesting things about the Q-Boat the first is the fact that although it was a one-off story, whoever wrote it (probably Henry Kiefer?) left a lot of details to be filled in later. Specifically: what the heck is going on with the Q-Boat?

    As presented, the Q-Boat is not just a battle-capable schooner but a super-advanced miniature warship. It is crewed by Captain Foghorn (descended from John Paul Jones, speech balloons indicate that he’s speaking at top volume at all times) and a bunch of teen boys, including Bob Wayne, Dick Martin and Marmaduke “Freckles” van Weyden. Questions such as “where did the Q-Boat come from?” “why all the teen boys?” and “why is Freckles so good at making guided missiles?” all go unanswered (Captain Foghorn’s son-in-law is mentioned as having developed some of the tech on the Q-Boat but that just adds “who the heck is this son-in-law?” to the list).

    The second interesting thing about the Q-Boat is the fun sibling dynamic between the child soldiers.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 042: THE BLUE TRACER

    MINOR SUPER-HERO 042: THE BLUE TRACER

    (Military Comics 001-016, 1941-1942)

    The Blue Tracer is your standard guy-with-a-super-vehicle hero: “Wild Bill” Dunn, an American engineer serving with the British in Ethiopia, finds himself the only survivor of an ambush by a race of would-be world-conquering superhumans called the M’bujies. He and Anzac Boomerang Jones team up to build the multienvironment supercraft the Blue Tracer and foil the M’bujie plans (by killing them all).

    There seems to be a consensus online that the vehicle is the Blue Tracer and Bill Dunn is not but I will not be joining them in that: there is a long tradition of super vehicle pilots sharing a name with their craft and anyone who goes to the trouble of putting together an outfit as ostentatious as Dunn’s is deserves to have a code name.

    The Blue Tracer itself just might have the distinction of being the ugliest super vehicle I have ever seen – it looks like something that really was kitbashed together out of random WWII vehicles in a homemade workshop. It’s so ugly, in fact, that I find it charming. 

    I looked up whether it was ever referenced again and evidently one of the Freedom Fighters teams used a cool plane called the Blue Tracer. Booooooo! Bring back the ugly Blue Tracer! The Blue Tracer can’t be cool.

    Also charming: Boomerang Jones, Bill Dunn’s Australian gnome of a sidekick. It is both weird and refreshing to encounter an Australian character in an era before the tropes of the accent were really embedded in the popular consciousness.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 347: TRIPLE THREAT

    (Master Comics 012, 1941)

    Triple Threat is in actuality a fellow named Theron who believes that due to his own scientific genius he is above such things as “regular jobs” and “not murdering and robbing at whim” and so develops an armoured multi-environment vehicle – also called Triple Threat, as is often the case with super vehicle types – with which to enact his plans.

    The obvious thing to lead with here is that great name: Triple Threat. Some cursory research seems to indicate that in the early 20th Century the term was used to refer to a person etc who could fill three different roles in sports, war etc (I even saw it used to refer to a breed of cow that was useful for meat, dairy and as a work animal). The more narrow entertainment-focused definition that is mostly used today seems to have gained prominence in the mid 20th Century, which is a shame, as it would have been a real fun time if Theron wasn’t just flying around in a land/air/sea vehicle but also singing, dancing and acting.

    That said, there is a real flair for the dramatic in ol’ Triple Threat. He’s your classic police taunter style of criminal genius, never missing an opportunity to fire up his radio and sling some mud at Sergeant Kent and the rest of the boys over at police HQ.

    It’s this kind of bravado that ultimately proves to be Triple Threat’s downfall, in fact: after escaping an initial encounter with Bulletman, he makes an attempt to eliminate top cop Sergeant Kent and in the subsequent fracas ends up smashing his own vehicle to pieces on Bulletman’s pointy head. A true loss to the community of folks like me who like to read comics about real jerks. On the positive side, Bulletman is knocked out in this collision, which leads to Susan Kent finally learning his secret identity, which then leads to her becoming Bulletgirl, by far the best of the half-dozen or so members of the Bullet-family.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 337: DR DROWN

    (Master Comics 001, 1940)

    Dr Drown is a paragon of his sub-category of super-villain. Unfortunately for him, that is not a particularly exalted position, as he belongs to the Association of Seagoing Criminal Scientists and the membership of that group is heavily diluted by decades of Aquaman and Sea Devils and even Challengers of the Unknown foes with wilfully bad schemes.

    Dr Drown’s schemes aren’t too bad! He as a submersible yacht that he uses to torpedo and loot ships, which is a lucrative if very evil business model, with the sole flaw being that he keeps doing it in exactly the same part of the ocean which makes him very easy for his foe Shipwreck Roberts to track him down.

    Drown’s other claim to fame is as a tamer of sea monsters and it’s here that things really get going for me. The “brontosauruses” above are pretty light fare but check this out:

    I follow a lot of horror artists on various social medias and it’s still been a while since I’ve seen anything quite as unsettling as the Giantocrab. Why does it have human arms, for heaven’s sake?

    By contrast the Colostopus is merely a fun dome-shaped friend with a good name.

    Drown also deployed this Mechanosaurus in a later adventure but as the name suggests it was actually a monster-shaped submarine (a classic move but always sad to miss out on a real monster).

    As stated above, Dr Drown is a great example of a generally mediocre lot – I’d be right chuffed if he or one of his descendants were ever brung back.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 039: THE DEVIL’S DAGGER

    (Master Comics 001-020, 1940-1941)

    Devil’s Dagger! I love this guy. He has a lot of familiar things going on: a wealthy young man named Ken Wyman who works as a reporter in order to get the latest crime news and heads out at night in his souped-up car (the excellently named Speed Ghost) to kick butt accompanied by Pat Gleason, ex boxer and member of the surprisingly large Chauffeur/ Sidekick club.

    There are two really interesting things about the Devil’s Dagger: 1. really good costume. 2. he’s a mission-driven vigilante. Once he rids Carterville of the sinister Jeff Marlowe… he finds out about Jeff’s boss, Mr H. But once he gets rid of him, that’s it! Wyman unmasks, retires, maybe takes the job at his father’s bank, who knows? It’s so rare for a super-hero to have a finite career, not just in the Golden Age but any time! How refreshing!

    Of course after saying that I would be a monster to suggest that the Devil’s Dagger be brung back, and I am not! I do however think that the identity would make for quite a fun legacy hero! Picture it: Carterville has once again become a crime-ridden hellhole, perhaps even under the thumb of a superannuated Mr H (or a corrupted Ken Wyman!), and someone stumbles across the unpublished memoirs of Ken Wyman and takes inspiration from them – maybe an underpaid employee at the Daily Blade, now stripped of assets by venture capital and printing a ten-page synopsis of the top clickbait of the week? Heck, maybe this time it’s a whole group of dagger-wielding vigilantes. Fun!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 328: THE NAZOMBIES

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 328: THE NAZOMBIES

    (Human Torch v1 005a, 1941)

    This is kind of a weird one in a few ways, the first being that the foundation of the plot is that a) Namor the Sub-Mariner and the Angel both own Caribbean islands and b) that they are good enough friends for Namor to pay the Angel a visit. During this visit one of Namor’s servants bursts in and promptly drops dead in an effort to deliver a note cryptically warning of a zombie takeover.

    Namor takes off on his own and indeed! Zombies have taken over his island! Kind of!

    I mean, even by 1940s standards of zombie these are clearly either costumed goons or some sort of monstrous humanoid group. They’re not explicitly identified as fancy dress Nazis until the third-to-last panel, but come on. Buncha goose-steppers establishing military bases and concentration camps across the Caribbean? That’s Nazis.

    The Nazombies mostly employ conventional weaponry but seem to have hit up the “underwater” section of the Comic Book Nazi Superweapon department, as not only are they fielding undersea tabks but these extremely cool personal shark submersibles

    This is, by the way, your go-to comic if you have ever wanted to see the Golden Age Angel get crucified by a bunch of Nazi zombies. Not to worry though: Namor rescues him and from then on it’s strictly Nazi-punching time.

    I don’t reckon that the Nazombies have enough potential to be BRUNG BACK but it really seems like the shark-sub tech is ripe for revival in the hands of coastal raiders or something. Once such a revolutionary technology is unleashed it can’t be put back in the bottle.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 328: THE NAZOMBIES

    (Human Torch v1 005a, 1941)

    This is kind of a weird one in a few ways, the first being that the foundation of the plot is that a) Namor the Sub-Mariner and the Angel both own Caribbean islands and b) that they are good enough friends for Namor to pay the Angel a visit. During this visit one of Namor’s servants bursts in and promptly drops dead in an effort to deliver a note cryptically warning of a zombie takeover.

    Namor takes off on his own and indeed! Zombies have taken over his island! Kind of!

    I mean, even by 1940s standards of zombie these are clearly either costumed goons or some sort of monstrous humanoid group. They’re not explicitly identified as fancy dress Nazis until the third-to-last panel, but come on. Buncha goose-steppers establishing military bases and concentration camps across the Caribbean? That’s Nazis.

    The Nazombies mostly employ conventional weaponry but seem to have hit up the “underwater” section of the Comic Book Nazi Superweapon department, as not only are they fielding undersea tabks but these extremely cool personal shark submersibles

    This is, by the way, your go-to comic if you have ever wanted to see the Golden Age Angel get crucified by a bunch of Nazi zombies. Not to worry though: Namor rescues him and from then on it’s strictly Nazi-punching time.

    I don’t reckon that the Nazombies have enough potential to be BRUNG BACK but it really seems like the shark-sub tech is ripe for revival in the hands of coastal raiders or something. Once such a revolutionary technology is unleashed it can’t be put back in the bottle.