The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: DC Comics

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 251: BOMB-BABY SATHAN

    (Flash Comics v1 020, 1941)

    An absolutely ordinary criminal scientist villain completely overshadowed by his criminal rival Big Frenchy in this adventure. Sathan has at-the-time fantastically futuristic guided missile tech, as well as one of my personal favourite bits of super-villain utility tech: the communications cut-in, via which he extorts money from banks lest they get hit by guided missiles.

    The only reason Sathan hasn’t been relegated to the Criminal and Mad Scientist Roundup queue is this here henchman’s inspired nickname game. Bomb-Baby Sathan is a Grant Morrison Making Up a Sixties Villain in the Nineties-style name and it’s genuinely joyful to encounter it in a Golden Age comic.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 251: BOMB-BABY SATHAN

    (Flash Comics v1 020, 1941)

    An absolutely ordinary criminal scientist villain completely overshadowed by his criminal rival Big Frenchy in this adventure. Sathan has at-the-time fantastically futuristic guided missile tech, as well as one of my personal favourite bits of super-villain utility tech: the communications cut-in, via which he extorts money from banks lest they get hit by guided missiles.

    The only reason Sathan hasn’t been relegated to the Criminal and Mad Scientist Roundup queue is this here henchman’s inspired nickname game. Bomb-Baby Sathan is a Grant Morrison Making Up a Sixties Villain in the Nineties-style name and it’s genuinely joyful to encounter it in a Golden Age comic.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 250: THE HOOD

    (Flash Comics v1 019, 1941)

    Hey, it’s the Hood! I’ll be honest: I thought that the Hood was one of those super-villain names like the Masked Man that was super common and that we already had one or more guys with this name but here we are, 250 villains in and welcoming our first.

    The Hood is Pratt Palmer, and he’s a bog standard scientist-villain of type A: scientist who develops some astonishing new tech and turns it to crime (type B is of course the scientist who turns to crime after being rejected by the hidebound academics they go to for approval, while type C is your classic mad scientist meddling where humanity ought not to).


    So yes, Pratt Palmer fakes his own death, forms a gang and is almost immediately captured by Hawkman. There’s not much to recommend about him other than his fun bombastic villainspeak, which he really nails off the bat.

    The really interesting thing about Hawkman’s encounter with the Hood is his tech, which he calls Cold Light, and which functions as a kind of energy blob that wanders around semi-autonomously when not being directed. They don’t really explore it much but I reckon that it’s pretty cool. More weird tech in comics!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 249: THE SCARLET MERMAID

    (Flash Comics v1 019, 1941)

    The Scarlet Mermaid is elegant in her simplicity: she’s a good swimmer who lives near a river where a lot of rich people hang out on boats, so she swims out and robs them. That plus a great name (and an okay costume – could use a contrasting colour) make for a winning combo.

    Even a cool villain must eventually reckon with a super-hero, however, and the Scarlet Mermaid ends up being one of the King’s few non-Witch opponents and is captured without much complication, never to appear again. This is a shame, because, like the Black Gondolier before her, I reckon that the Scarlet Mermaid is exactly the sort of low-level supercrook that should be lurking around every city in every super-hero universe. Some great grandniece of hers should be robbing megayachts to this day, dang it. BRING BACK the Scarlet Mermaid!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 248: THE GOLDEN MUMMY

    (Flash Comics v1 017, 1941)

    It’s the Golden Mummy! As I have previously stated, I love fake mummies and had read this issue before, so I was anticipating this fellow’s appearance with some joy, and it is with great sadness that I must announce that he’s a complete disappointment.

    My threshold for fake mummy appreciation is quite low – usually they just steal a few antiquities before getting tripped up by Archie and Jughead or the Scooby Gang, after all – but the Golden Mummy’s only admirable quality is his dedication to theme. He has the costume, a cave hideout, a bunch of gangsters that he paid well enough to paint themselves gold and pretend to be called the Sect of the Golden Mummy (and of course the only thing better than henchmen in themed costumes is when they also have a cool name). 

    . He even dies lamely, by stumbling into a trap set for Hawkman.

    So why do I dislike this guy so much? The reason is twofold: firstly, the whole Golden Mummy thing is just some incel shit: he’s a guy named Dr Selkirk getting revenge on his ex-fiance for dumping him by murdering her. This is one of those motivations that sucks some of the fun out of super-villain analysis.

    Secondly: the Golden Mummy is a completely unnecessary affectation. He kills her as she’s onstage singing opera, via a poisoned blowdart. The Mummy and his Sect spend the entire adventure coping with Hawkman, and it kind of seems like Selkirk made up the persona expressly because he was afraid of Hawkman – I don’t know if he’d have gotten away with it by not calling attention to himself with cryptic warnings and golden men but it couldn’t have hurt.

    Boo to the Golden Mummy. Booo!

  • THE FATE OF…

    (Flash Comics v1 016, 1941)

    Have you ever wondered what happened to the ancient Dravidians and their kingdom of Dravidia? No, because they’re an extant ethnic group and that would be a bit like wondering about the fate of the Caucasians and their fabled land of Caucasia? Excatly. But nevertheless, here’s Hawkman flying into Dravidia, somewhere in Mongolia.

    Furthermore, the Dravidian king claims that his people originally came from a now-sunken land called Eden. An intriguing concept – that Eden is truly lost because it sank into the sea. Nothing comes of it though.

    The really interesting thing to come out of this adventure is the idea that a prior incarnation of Hawkman might have ruled Dravidia as Keft, known as Icaro, the Redeemer. My experience with Golden Age Hawkman is limited to his JSA appearances, so I don’t know if the exploration of his prior incarnations is a running topic or if this is a weird outlier, decades before the idea of Hawkman and Hawkgirl being endlessly reincarnated gained steam.

  • THE FATE OF…

    (Flash Comics v1 016, 1941)

    Have you ever wondered what happened to the ancient Dravidians and their kingdom of Dravidia? No, because they’re an extant ethnic group and that would be a bit like wondering about the fate of the Caucasians and their fabled land of Caucasia? Excatly. But nevertheless, here’s Hawkman flying into Dravidia, somewhere in Mongolia.

    Furthermore, the Dravidian king claims that his people originally came from a now-sunken land called Eden. An intriguing concept – that Eden is truly lost because it sank into the sea. Nothing comes of it though.

    The really interesting thing to come out of this adventure is the idea that a prior incarnation of Hawkman might have ruled Dravidia as Keft, known as Icaro, the Redeemer. My experience with Golden Age Hawkman is limited to his JSA appearances, so I don’t know if the exploration of his prior incarnations is a running topic or if this is a weird outlier, decades before the idea of Hawkman and Hawkgirl being endlessly reincarnated gained steam.

  • TROPHY ROOM – HAWKGIRL

    (Flash Comics v1 016, 1941)

    After an adventure in the lost city of Dravidia, Hawkgirl (well, Shiera Sanders, a few months out from being Hawkgirl) gets a cool brooch!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 247: THE HAND

    (Flash Comics v1 015, 1941)

    It’s old hat by now: like former Hawkman foe Czar the Unkillable Man and his ilk, the Hand is a henchbeing who is far more interesting to read and talk about than their creator. This is the risk you run when you set out to create an autonomous crime-servant via… I’m guessing magical means? It’s unclear in the text but magic seems more likely than science.

    In this case, the creator is a guy named Edward Thayer, the black sheep of a wealthy family who has decided to turn his amazing talking and flying disembodied hand to the sordid task of killing off his brother Elwin and niece Teddy so that he can inherit enough money to convince some lady to sleep with him. Cue my usual complaints about crooks in super-hero universes not aiming high enough.

    Edward never gets to see his ill-gotten money, though, because Sandra (the lady in question) decides to bump him off for a quick buck. Which leads to the above panel: not only a rare hero/ villain teamup but an as-far-as-I-know unique hero/ disembodied hand teamup! Sadly, the revenge rampage ends with not only Sandra but the Hand itself seemingly plummeting to their deaths in a crashing car. Boo, says I! The Hand should be BRUNG BACK post-haste! Give it a bartending job somewhere.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 246: KARVAC

    (Flash Comics v1 014, 1941)

    Karvac himself is strictly ho hum territory: a would-be world conqueror who leads his army of heat ray-toting goons on a path of destruction before being beaten up by Hawkman. Snoresville, man.

    BUT: the method by which Karvac managed to acquire his army of heat ray-toting goons, now that’s the kind of comic book nonsense that we love around here.

    Karvac, you see, unearthed rites and rituals connected to Scorio, Alligator God of the Phoenicians, and established both a temple and cult of worshippers to Scorio in the Eastern US, in order to cast ancient ritual magics and bring Scorio to him.

    AND IT WORKS! Korvac summons a god! And that god promptly tells him how to make heat rays for his army of goons to tote! (it’s not exactly clear in the text whether the army of goons are also the Scorio cultists that Hawkman sees performing rituals at the temple earlier in the story, but it’s narratively satisfying to think so)

    Scorio eventually gets banished back to the otherworldly swamp that he usually hangs out in, and as far as I know has never made a return appearance. But he should! Korvac might’ve been a dud, but an ancient and vengeful alligator god who can hand out secret knowledge to evil men is a really neat foe for a guy like Hawkman, particularly once his reincarnation bullshit really gets going – Katar Hol might not know Scorio from a hole in the ground but Scorio knows a soul no matter how many times it’s been reborn. BRING BACK Scorio!