The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: slaver

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 710: BLOOR

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 710: BLOOR

    (Prize Comics 004, 1940)

    The year is 1982! The world languishes under the heel of a global dictatorship, and the economy is tanking – presumably the Mongols were running a war economy that failed to stand up to the post-world-conquering peace.

    Emperor Seng I offers nothing but empty promises to his subjects, until Power Nelson, as committed as ever to working within the system, bursts in and strongarms him into making… real promises? Frankly, this is Power Nelson at his worst. He was created to remove the dictator’s yoke from around the neck of the people and he consistently works to make the absolute dictator a better leader rather than, say, destroying him utterly. Like, I know that conflict is the essence of storytelling and if Nelson had just broken Seng I’s neck in Prize Comics 001 there would be less of that but… come on, man. Forcing the Emperor to say he’ll make some jobs isn’t going to do anything.

    In fact, Nelson’s threats probably make Seng I more amenable to the offer he receives when he is visited by Bloor, dictator of Uranus. After all, how can Power Nelson complain after thousands of men are given jobs? And how could the Emperor know that they were actually being sold into slavery, wink, wink?

    The men are of course disappointed to learn that they are effectively slaves, to the extent that none of them seem to notice the high-fashion look that their captor is sporting and how much is contrasts with the simple purple pants of the planet’s leader. A bit self-involved, but who am I to judge?

    Power Nelson of course does not abide this, and busts everyone free at the first opportunity. Note also the factory foreman’s look – orange sunburst bonnets must be “in” on Uranus in 1982.

    Power Nelson does not fight women and so Bloor’s strategy to send his Amazon Regiment to capture him really pays off. But who are these Amazons? Is this what female Uranians look like or are they mercenaries from some other planet? Is this a sex thing for Bloor?

    Power Neslon is of course held in place not by ropes but by the power of his own antiquated ideas about gender and he frees himself just in time to get attacked by some really excellent cylindrical robots that, alas, have no visible gender signifiers and are rendered into so much scrap.

    Bloor is forced to release and pay the men, but in keeping with Nelson’s dedication to preserving existing power structures suffers no further consequences. I do really appreciate how committed he is to his role as a manager of Uranus rather than a traditional dictator – he might just be our first villain who operates almost completely from a desk. 

    The men all head home with a week’s wages and I guess that that solves the financial crisis. Everyone is happy under the boot of Seng I. Thanks, Power Nelson!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 710: BLOOR

    (Prize Comics 004, 1940)

    The year is 1982! The world languishes under the heel of a global dictatorship, and the economy is tanking – presumably the Mongols were running a war economy that failed to stand up to the post-world-conquering peace.

    Emperor Seng I offers nothing but empty promises to his subjects, until Power Nelson, as committed as ever to working within the system, bursts in and strongarms him into making… real promises? Frankly, this is Power Nelson at his worst. He was created to remove the dictator’s yoke from around the neck of the people and he consistently works to make the absolute dictator a better leader rather than, say, destroying him utterly. Like, I know that conflict is the essence of storytelling and if Nelson had just broken Seng I’s neck in Prize Comics 001 there would be less of that but… come on, man. Forcing the Emperor to say he’ll make some jobs isn’t going to do anything.

    In fact, Nelson’s threats probably make Seng I more amenable to the offer he receives when he is visited by Bloor, dictator of Uranus. After all, how can Power Nelson complain after thousands of men are given jobs? And how could the Emperor know that they were actually being sold into slavery, wink, wink?

    The men are of course disappointed to learn that they are effectively slaves, to the extent that none of them seem to notice the high-fashion look that their captor is sporting and how much is contrasts with the simple purple pants of the planet’s leader. A bit self-involved, but who am I to judge?

    Power Nelson of course does not abide this, and busts everyone free at the first opportunity. Note also the factory foreman’s look – orange sunburst bonnets must be “in” on Uranus in 1982.

    Power Nelson does not fight women and so Bloor’s strategy to send his Amazon Regiment to capture him really pays off. But who are these Amazons? Is this what female Uranians look like or are they mercenaries from some other planet? Is this a sex thing for Bloor?

    Power Neslon is of course held in place not by ropes but by the power of his own antiquated ideas about gender and he frees himself just in time to get attacked by some really excellent cylindrical robots that, alas, have no visible gender signifiers and are rendered into so much scrap.

    Bloor is forced to release and pay the men, but in keeping with Nelson’s dedication to preserving existing power structures suffers no further consequences. I do really appreciate how committed he is to his role as a manager of Uranus rather than a traditional dictator – he might just be our first villain who operates almost completely from a desk. 

    The men all head home with a week’s wages and I guess that that solves the financial crisis. Everyone is happy under the boot of Seng I. Thanks, Power Nelson!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 703: THE GREAT INTELLIGENCE

    (Planet Comics 004, 1940)

    Flint Baker and co are making their return trip from Mars and due to an unscheduled diversion to Pluto in Planet Comics 003 they end up passing Jupiter on the way, at which point they are forced to make landfall to avoid an attack by outer space organisms referred to as “stratosphere serpents” despite being more like starfish crossed with octopuses. While there, Flint and gal pal Mimi Wilson do a bit of exploring and discover the city of Zu, inhabited by a wretched mass of oppressed Jovians and ruled over by the Great Intelligence.

    The Great Intelligence is… probably a rogue AI of some description? It watches over the city via the Great Eye, listens with the Great Ear and issues orders with the Great Mouth. It also has flamethrowing capacity. (the reason I hesitate to conclusively say that the Intelligence is a machine is what the Jovian says in the first panel to feature the Great Eye: “our master has lost all human identity.” This could easily be interpreted as a bit of flowery language to describe the declining relationship between the city’s inhabitants and the machines that run it, but how weird and cool would it be if the whole operation was wired into some wizened cyborg in the middle of everything? And as the comic does not bother to resolve the question it could be either, though given the roasting of that poor old man we can at least confirm a distinct lack of humanity)

    Baker manages to fry the Great Eye with his ray gun, upon which we meet the final piece of the city gestalt: its Will, embodied as a bunch of beefy cyborgs.

    For fomenting discord in Zu, Flint and Mimi are  sentenced to death via being ground up and fed to the Great Mouth (and this unusually grotesque method of execution did contribute to my theories about the Intelligence having an at least partially organic makeup, thanks for noticing)! Lucky for them, then, that Mimi stumbles upon the Will’s one weakness: a thin exposed wire at the back of their necks. They escape their fate in the grinder, destroy the Great Ear and Great Mouth, and evacuate the surviving citizens of Zu back to Earth with them. 

    But what of the Great Intelligence itself? Certainly all of its external organs are gone, but the mind itself… who knows?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 702: THE DRAGON MAN

    (Planet Comics 003, 1940)

    The work of the Lord of Jupiter is never done, as Auro (Lord of Jupiter, natch) learns one day when he receives the alarming news that a giant flame-breathing dragon has been carrying off dozens of his subjects.

    And indeed, not only is there a dragon running around causing trouble but that dragon is actually a guy who can turn into a dragon and who has used his humanoid powers of reasoning to correctly identify Auro as the biggest threat to his lifestyle. Fortunately for Auro, the power of thought goes hand in hand with the ability to be fooled, and he manages to bluff the Dragon Man into fleeing from a common apple by pretending that it is a grenade.

    Auro sets out to deal with the Dragon Man once and for all and upon finding him learns the reason for his actions: making a kingdom of his own, plus snacks. That really does have to be the one big perk of being an anthropophageous monster – if you’re looking to establish a food supply, a group of humans will organize and try to keep themselves alive. They are more likely to periodically try to kill you than a flock of sheep, though.

    Too late does the Dragon Man learn the important corollary to to plan of “seeking out and preemptively killing the greatest threat to your life,” which is “and then make sure to kill them, because now they know.” Having not followed through, he must perforce be stabbed.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 636: THE SERPENT LADY

    (Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

    We open on Mephisto, the Dreaded Poison Serpent, attacking a small boat and making off with its inhabitants. For a split second I am excited – maybe this is our long-sought criminal animal! – but then I remember the lessons I learned from Cephalopoda the Octopus and rein myself in.

    And it’s a good thing I did, for Mephisto is a mere tool of the mysterious Serpent Lady, who lives in a golden city in an undersea cave and rules over a population of bald creeps who need blood to live. Maybe? It’s possible that they just like blood. Either way, this is why she has been using her cool snake to kidnap surface dwellers: their delicious blood.

    Sub Saunders will not stand for blood theft in his god-given ocean. He slays Mephisto and a fair few bald-headed creeps but leaves the Serpent Lady alive and at liberty. Will she be returning? I read ahead a bit and yes she will!

    UPDATE 1941

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 636: THE SERPENT LADY

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 636: THE SERPENT LADY

    (Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

    We open on Mephisto, the Dreaded Poison Serpent, attacking a small boat and making off with its inhabitants. For a split second I am excited – maybe this is our long-sought criminal animal! – but then I remember the lessons I learned from Cephalopoda the Octopus and rein myself in.

    And it’s a good thing I did, for Mephisto is a mere tool of the mysterious Serpent Lady, who lives in a golden city in an undersea cave and rules over a population of bald creeps who need blood to live. Maybe? It’s possible that they just like blood. Either way, this is why she has been using her cool snake to kidnap surface dwellers: their delicious blood.

    Sub Saunders will not stand for blood theft in his god-given ocean. He slays Mephisto and a fair few bald-headed creeps but leaves the Serpent Lady alive and at liberty. Will she be returning? I read ahead a bit and yes she will!

    UPDATE 1941

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 632: THE BOSS

    (Fantastic Comics 012, 1940)

    The Boss is actually Roulf, editor of the Daily Standard newspaper in NYC. He pulls the classic villain mistake of acting as a concerned citizen recruiting the protagonists – in this case Samson and David – to investigate his own villainous alter ego. It’s the kind of error that you can emphasize with to a certain extent: how better to ensure that a super-powered busybody doesn’t unexpectedly show up and wreck your plans then by controlling the flow of information and steering him away? The problem is that the Boss, like most villains who try this gambit, fails on the second part of the plan. Rather than guide Samson and David away from, say, his plot to blow up the Panama Canal he has instead alerted them to look out for such plans. Heck, before getting word to visit him at the Daily Standard Building, Our Heroes were spending their day pulling pranks on ice cream vendors. Truly the Boss has executed an epic self-own.

    The Boss has a secret city hidden in a secret valley in the Western US and in that secret city he has a a little fort and in that little fort he has a littler pyramid. It’s not very effective at keeping Samson out but I think it’s neat that he nested up like that.

    I think I’ve mentioned that Samson is one of your more bloodthirsty Golden Age super-heroes before and I’ve even said to myself “that’s a murder,” when reading a Samson adventure but… he just kind of admits it here, doesn’t he. He captured Roulf and then murdered him while taking him back to civilization. Wild stuff.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 621: THE EMERALD MEN OF ASPERUS

    (Fantastic Comics 008, 1940)

    The Emerald Men of Asperus live on an asteroid (named Asperus, natch), and I’m pretty sure that their plan is to move the Earth to the Asteroid Belt so that they can easily enslave as many Earthlings as they want, but it’s a bit hard to grok because the way the Emerald Men talk makes it plausible that they don’t know how the Solar System works. Like, it’s possible that they don’t know that Earth and Asperus orbit the same star? This is all further complicated by the fact that the Emerald Men kind of look like the Chad of Virgin/Chad meme fame. None of them actually do that super floppy walk of his but you can see it happening in a Fletcher Hanks comic and it’s distracting.

    Stardust the Super Wizard of course is on this plan immediately. Stealing and enslaving a whole planet? Not on his watch.

    Once Stardust stops the Emerald Men’s original barrage of planetary-control gas missiles, they make the unusual and very confident decision to attempt to tackle him head-on. And it seems like they might actually be a credible threat: 15-20 muscular dudes with a similar level of outlandish technology to his? AND they’re ray-proof, an amazing thing to be when you’re taking on Stardust “I have a ray for every occasion” the Super Wizard.

    But no, even without his signature rays Stardust is still something like twice the size of the average Emerald Man and he swiftly uppercuts every single on of them into submission.

    Even their last-ditch effort, involving anti-star-metal acid bombs designed to destroy the suit that houses most of Stardust’s power, fizzles due to the playground logic of Super Wizard stories as he merely emits a cloud of acid-proof dust to explode them before they reach him.

    The Emerald Men get off pretty easy for Stardust foes, particularly now that we know that being frozen but conscious forever is an option. They and their asteroid home are merely banished to the far reaches of space. A comparative mercy!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 603: THE MAD GIANT

    (Fantastic Comics 004, 1940)

    The Mad Giant is another Fletcher Hanks villain with a straightforward motivation: civilization has ruined his domination of a slave group (presumably a tribal society as he refers to them by the formerly much-used and now depricated term “savage”) and so he is simply going to end civilization. And given the method that he has chosen – pumping the Earth full of a chemical that will raise its temperature and cause widespread geologic upheaval – he might just be trying to destroy the planet itself!

    (the exact circumstances of the Mad Giant losing his slaves are left as unexplored as those of him being such a big beefcake. He just did and he just is)

    The Mad Giant might just have the most rational plan to deal with Stardust the Super Wizard of any of his foes. Like most of them he seems to have a pretty good inkling that Stardust will show up, so a barrage of missiles (anti-ray missiles, natch) to delay, incapacitate or destroy him will hopefully buy enough time for the Giant and his lil’ pal Kamet to finish destroying the planet. Too bad for the Mad Giant that he is very easily fooled: Stardust fakes his own death and ends up taking them by surprise on his second approach.

    Giant or no, it’s all over once Stardust gets close enough to put those big mitts on you. The Mad Giant is knocked silly and summarily whisked off to… prison? What an odd place for a Stardust villain to end his days. I assume Kamet gets a pass because there’s a high chance he was there against his will.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 593: THE INVINCIBLE FIVE

    (Exciting Comics 006, 1940)

    The Invincible Five (good name!) are a mysterious group of hooded men who have been kidnapping skilled mechanics across the US in order to construct a fleet of vehicles known as Submaplanes.

    If you guessed that a Submaplane was either a submarine capable of flight or and airplane capable of operating underwater then give yourself a pat on the back because it is the former. Submaplanes also have some sort of electric forcefield, an electric ray cannon and appear to be remote controlled from a central location.

    Having seemingly done away with John “Son of the Gods” Thesson, whom they view as their only credible opposition, the Invincible Five proceed with their master plan: world conquest through intimidation and mass destruction. Various governments are given the opportunity to surrender peacefully then given the business when they refuse.

    (side note: these are some good hoods on the Invincible Five. The simple faces sketched on the front are a nice change from all of those regular-style hoods we usually see)

    Unsurprisingly, the leader of the Invincible Five is Burton, the sour-faced industrialist who turns up to advise FDR to surrender. Presumably at least some of his companions are also in on the scheme.

    It turns out that it was a good idea to try to kill John Thesson, because he ends up single-handedly taking down the entire operation by the simple expedient of punching people and things until the Submaplanes are grounded and the Invincible Five are in hand. Remember: if the only thing that stands between you and complete world domination is one person and you’re pretty sure that they’re dead: double check.