The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: DC Comics

  • MINOR SUPER-HERO 002: THE GUARDIAN ANGEL

    (All American Comics 025-028, 1941)

    On the list of Obscure Comic Book Characters, Hop Harrigan doesn’t rate very high. Any discussion of Golden Age comic books will eventually mention the teen aviator whose feature was popular enough to support a fan club, radio serial and movie and also ephemeral enough to have completely disappeared from public consciousness around 1948 CE.

    Most writeups of Hop will mention that he adopted a couple of costumed identities over the years, and while I have yet to read any comics featuring him as the Black Lamp, here’s the lowdown on his brief time as the Guardian Angel: his pals Prop Wash and Ikky Tinker are recruited by the US Government to act as deniable assets/ air pirates in situations where direct action would cause diplomatic complications, such as a Nazi-coded ambassador fleeing the country with an attaché of documents that the CIA would like to look at, please. Hop is deliberately left out of this scheme because he is a minor.

    Inevitably, they get in over their heads on these missions and are recued by the Guardian Angel, who is in reality Hop in disguise, flying an experimental VTOL seaplane that the other two… just forgot that they owned? In any case, the ruse only lasts for a few issues. 

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 025: THE MASTER

    (Detective v1 030, 1939)

    I like the Master because he is simultaneously brilliant enough to invent a mind control device capable of enslaving a significant portion of the US Government and dumb enough to brag about his machine to a federal agent not ten feet away from it. Machine smashing ensues.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 025: THE MASTER

    (Detective v1 030, 1939)

    I like the Master because he is simultaneously brilliant enough to invent a mind control device capable of enslaving a significant portion of the US Government and dumb enough to brag about his machine to a federal agent not ten feet away from it. Machine smashing ensues.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 024: THE FACE

    (Adventure 044, 1939)

    Another early Sandman villain. A fairly standard master of disguise who was later reworked into an axe-wielding maniac in Sandman Mystery Theatre.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 023: MOBRUNE

    (Adventure 041, 1939)

    A fanatic radio preacher of no specific religion, Mobrune bolsters his reputation by predicting disasters that he then causes.

    SPECIFICALLY, Mobrune seeds snow clouds with nerve toxin, completely wiping two small cities off the map. A bad dude!

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 022: THE TARANTULA

    (Adventure 040, 1939)

    Standard masked crook, remarkable only for being the Sandman’s first foe. Shows up later in one or two crowd scenes.

    This story is also notable for being the only time Golden Age Wesley Dodds tucks in a little doll version of himself before heading out as Sandman, a charming bit that was later adopted as an ongoing thing in Sandman Mystery Theatre.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 021: THE GHOST

    (Action v1 002, 1938)

    Love a fake undead villain – it’s a tossup between sheet ghosts and fake mummies for my absolute Number One, with fake skeletons and Flying Dutchmans and Headless Horsemen crowding onto the Bronze pedestal together – so much, in fact that I might be rounding this guy trying to haunt some folks off of some oil land up to super-villain undeservedly. But WHO’S GOING TO STOP ME IF I AM?

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 020: THE GORRAH

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 020: THE GORRAH

     (Action v1 002, 1938)

    Early on in Tex Thomson’s adventuring career, he and his pal Bob Daly found themselves in a hidden city called, appropriately, the Sealed City. There they met the leader, or Gorrah, of that city and eventually discovered that he was an usurper who they quickly helped overthrow. There it would end for your average hidden-city-usurper but not this Gorrah, no sir. He came back half a dozen times, indulging in schemes such as:

    -turning people into weird cyborgs

    -turning people into weird rat-men

    -attempting to take over Turkey

    -fixing boxing matches

    and so on. 

    By his last appearance, he was dealing with Mr America instead of boring old Tex Thomson and it wasn’t a very fair fight. Over the years he had shed his super-science, his one-time hypnotic power and even his flamboyant costume and was merely a one-eyed agent of some unspecified Foreign Power (ie, the Nazis) tasked with bombing libraries, which somewhat ignominiously (if predictably) ended with him being blown up by his own bomb. A sad end to be sure.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 019: THE TIGRESS

    MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 019: THE TIGRESS

    (Action Comics v1 001, 1938)

    The Tigress was both Zatara’s first foe and his only real recurring villain, showing up a dozen times over 3 years. She acted in the role of what was occasionally called a “friendly enemy”: a villain of the opposite gender who the hero has a soft spot for, implicitly or explicitly because they’re horny for them. A Catwoman situation, in other words.

    Like Catwoman and Batman, the Tigress occasionally teamed up with Zatara against a worse foe, and Zatara frequently let her escape at the end of a case out of horny sentimentality. Unlike Catwoman, the Tigress was absolutely a multiple murderer, running armed robbery, assassination and extortion rings at various times as well as acting as lieutenant for several other super-villains such as the Mad Lama.

    Ultimately, Zatara caught the Tigress for the last time and seemingly persuaded her to reform. Whether it stuck or not, she never appeared in a comic book again.

  • MINOR SUPER VILLAIN 017: THE RAVEN

    (Detective v1 019, 1938)

    Nemesis of Inspector Kent of Scotland Yard with maybe three appearances – but he’s the kind of  dreaded evil mastermind who shows up already the most wanted man of all time, so he feels more significant.