The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: super vehicle

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 327: DR SMART

    (Human Torch v1 005a, 1941)

    I think I’ve mentioned the old three-act super-villain story structure of yore a couple of times, but there are a whole host of old comic book story styles that have fallen by the wayside and Dr Smart here stars in one of them: the book-length heist story. 

    Three pages into our tale, Smart and his crew, posing as a funeral procession, rob an armoured car. The remaining 38 or so pages concern the efforts of the Human Torch and Toro to capture the slippery little devil because to his credit Dr Smart is a guy who reads the paper and knows that the Torch is a cop and will be guarding the money he is after.

    Dr Smart’s entire scheme hinges on anti-Torch technology: asbestos suits; grenades that explode into asbestos bindings; super-cold liquid air bombs and smokescreens; thermite ammunition that won’t melt. The capper is a duo of tricked-out hearses equipped with asbestos linings and heatproof glass – a considerable portion of the issue is spent with Toro and the Torch either locked up in the back of one or fruitlessly trying to get Dr Smart and his henchmen out of the front. Smart might have gotten away with it if he hadn’t tried to be clever and bury the heroes with the loot – it was one too many things to juggle and he got pinched.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 314: THE RED TERROR

    (Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942)

    A fairly undistinguished costumed gang boss, the Red Terror has three things going for him:

    1. he gets around in a very cool rocket-powered dirigible

    2. he is the only super-villain to face Golden Age underachiever the Human Top

    3. he really goes above and beyond in his attempt to rid himself of the Top, hitting him with, in quick succession: mountain lions, flame throwers, an avalanche and a bursting dam. That’s the kind of thoroughness that more villains should aspire to, although of course if it’s not enough to do the job you risk getting thrown from your own rocket-zep in retaliation.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 314: THE RED TERROR

    (Tough Kid Squad 001, 1942)

    A fairly undistinguished costumed gang boss, the Red Terror has three things going for him:

    1. he gets around in a very cool rocket-powered dirigible

    2. he is the only super-villain to face Golden Age underachiever the Human Top

    3. he really goes above and beyond in his attempt to rid himself of the Top, hitting him with, in quick succession: mountain lions, flame throwers, an avalanche and a bursting dam. That’s the kind of thoroughness that more villains should aspire to, although of course if it’s not enough to do the job you risk getting thrown from your own rocket-zep in retaliation.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 295: RED SKULL II

    (Captain America Comics 001 & 003, 1941)

    When I started this here blog I tried to put a little bit of thought into the tagging system, and specifically tried to work out how to deal with the fact that a lot of super-villain types have the same names. The solution I came up with is that everyone named, say, the Skull gets the same tag but legacy characters who are adopting a specific persona that another has used get appended with Roman numerals (skull II, Skull III, etc). And here I am breaking that rule the very first time I have the chance.

    Well, kind of. See, this is the original Red Skull so far as appearance in print is concerned. About 4 issues after he dies in his second appearance, the Red Skull returns, but a different Red Skull. This second Skull is the one that continues to appear to this day and the fellow I’m writing about here has been retroactively relegated to the status of Regional Franchise Red Skull. It’s all about not having to bother typing that extra ‘II’ in the tags for the next 80 years worth of appearances, honestly.

    So: the Red Skull (II)! Pretty much the perfect Nazi creep villain complete with a red skull calling card, taunting notes and a gimmick wherein he convinces his victims that he is killing them with his stare when in fact he is sneakily injecting them with poison. Why does he do this? For his own Nazi creep pleasure I guess.

    And just who is this retroactive knockoff? Why, it’s none other than George Maxon, aircraft manufacturer, who sold out the US to Hitler for the promise of high office. Boo this man!

    Maxon seemingly kills himself with his own syringe at the end of his first appearance and his body is shown being examined by the FBI afterward, they evidently just… left him to rot in his secret lair? Which works out pretty well for him, to be honest, since like any good poison-user he is immune to his own weapon.

    This time around, the Skull goes for a touch of death rather than a gaze, which involves a) an electrified costume and b) getting punched in the face a bunch. He seems to enjoy it, so I guess winning is worth a sock in the jaw to him.

    This second adventure sees this Red Skull’s greatest triumph as he steals the designs for a drilling vehicle and uses it to smash up part of NYC in one of those huge cataclysms that happened so often in the 40s. Marvel Universe New York must be simply awash in commemorative plaques detailing them all.

    Unfortunately for George Maxon and his super-villain legacy, this issue also sees his lowest moment, as he mistakes a couple of con artists for the real Captain America and Bucky despite one million signs that they aren’t. Frankly getting blown up with a round bomb a few pages later must have been a bit of a relief from the embarrassment of it all.

    (Maxon also shows up in Young Allies 001 the same year but it’s a weird appearance that has since been retconned pretty thoroughly for good reasons but in a way that has caused me a lot of annoyance when reading fan wikis. An ignominious end to be sure)

    SKULL SCORE: It’s just the eyes, which merits a healthy score of 4! Minus one point for being a mask makes the total come to 3.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 294: THE WAX MAN

    (Captain America Comics 002, 1941)

    The Wax Man is a bit of  an oddball. For one thing, he’s not explicitly a Nazi, just “in the pay of a hostile foreign power,” which is only strange in that this is Marvel Comics, the only big publisher not hedging their bets about calling bad guys Nazis – the story previous to this featured Captain America and Bucky punching out Hitler and Goering and leaving them in trash cans, for heavens sake. But not the Wax Man, he just has a bunch of nonspecific guys working for him who shout “ach du lieber!” when you surprise them.

    He’s also a combo of two kinds of foreign agent character types. As seen above he’s a ruthless and feared killer who gruesomely slays even his own men via suffocation in wax masks (and collects the heads of his enemies, natch), but also…

    He’s a guy with a squadron of super tanks and a plan to topple the US Government via their mechanized might backed up with barrages of guided missiles. These aren’t incompatible character traits per se (and in fact describe quite a few classic villains including Captain America’s very own Red Skull) but they are quite a lot to cram into a 15-page story without losing focus.

    The Wax Man manages to stick the landing by reverting to the “feared killer” aspect of his persona after his super tanks take a bath. Somewhat predictably/ extremely delightfully, he lairs in a wax museum, where we get some classic bits including The Real Guy Hiding Among the Statues and That’s Not Wax, That’s a Dead Person Covered in Wax.

    And finally, the Wax Man turns out to be a Chekov’s Mayor as his real identity is revealed to be Mayor Dobbs, who only showed up for half a page to demand that somebody do something about that terrible Wax Man.

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 020: THE RED TORPEDO

    (Crack Comics 001-020, 1940-1942)

    The Red Torpedo is Jim Lockhart, a guy who came up with a design for the ultimate one-man submarine and turned that into his whole personality. This is a not-uncommon Golden-Age comics trope that kind of petered out once the world was no longer awash with mechanized combat – Silver Age super-vehicles tended more toward the exploration side of things.

    So: Jim Lockhart, young US Navy officer resigns his commission after being told that his submarine design was unworkable. He builds it anyway, with the help of his fiancé, Meg, then seemingly leaves her behind as well – a “Peggy” show up as his assistant a few issues later but after that he’s a strictly one-man operation. 

    Lockhart shows up here and there in the extended DCU – most notably in a Roy Thomas engineered cull of the old Quality Comics characters in All-Star Squadron back in the day. Like most of the others killed off in that ish, Red Torpedo got better and shows up whenever someone needs a really good submarine for something.

    Good luck finding it but the thing that really cemented my love for this guy is the Crack Comics installment of the Next Issue Project. A really lovely, simple, melancholy story about a submarine man.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 139: IVAN BORLOFF

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 139: IVAN BORLOFF

     (Adventure 061, 1941)


    Ivan Borloff is a strange combination of things: a scientist with a super airship (the Cylindecraft) and a metal-destroying ray, he rains destruction down on New York City in pursuit of his goal of conquering the US (and by implication, the world), but also, it’s implied that he is affiliated with *foreign powers*, ie, fascists – possibly ones who didn’t quite know what they were getting into. 

    His name ringing more Russian might mean that he is a rare pre-Cold War Commie villain, but a more likely explanation is plain old lazy naming – German, Russian… it’s all basically the same, right?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 139: IVAN BORLOFF

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 139: IVAN BORLOFF

     (Adventure 061, 1941)


    Ivan Borloff is a strange combination of things: a scientist with a super airship (the Cylindecraft) and a metal-destroying ray, he rains destruction down on New York City in pursuit of his goal of conquering the US (and by implication, the world), but also, it’s implied that he is affiliated with *foreign powers*, ie, fascists – possibly ones who didn’t quite know what they were getting into. 

    His name ringing more Russian might mean that he is a rare pre-Cold War Commie villain, but a more likely explanation is plain old lazy naming – German, Russian… it’s all basically the same, right?