The Curse of Skeleton Munroe

Category: Flint Baker

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 052

    The aliens are very humanoid today. I hope that they are to your liking.

    Cavemen:

    There’s no real explanation of why these cavemen are just chilling out in a cavern not a day’s walk from an inhabited region of Africa, along with assorted mammoths and sabretooth tigers. They’re just what Fantomah finds when she follows a river to its source to see why it has been contaminated and is killing those who drink from it. The answer: the cavemen killed a mammoth and just kind of lift it to rot in the water. Unusually, all of these prehistoric remnants are still there when Fantomah leaves, rather than being buried in a cave-in or exploded by a volcano as so frequently happens. (Jungle Comics 022, 1941)

    Martians:

    These very human-looking Martians at least have the good grace to have a weird history, as explained to Earthling Flint Baker: Hundreds of years earlier the Martian government had enacted a draconian Tough on Crime approach and thrown all of their criminals into an underground pit known as the Shaft of Death. However, due to a perpetual high wind rising from the depths, the Shaft of Death was actually a weird area of neutral buoyancy, allowing the criminals and their descendants to form an entire civilization that floats in midair.

    Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this history is that the surface-dwelling Martians have no idea of what their ancestors did, and ignore Flint’s warnings about an impending invasion from sub-Mars until it’s  too late and the drilling machines are on their front doorsteps. Worry not, for everything works out in the end. The sub-Martians are defeated and the subjected to brain treatments to remove their “criminal tendencies” proving that while the surface Martians might have forgotten their history, they are still very much willing to go to moral extremes in the eradication of Crime. (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

    Martians: 

    These similarly-humanoid Martians from the same issue are much more straightforward evil conquerors out to hijack Uranus from its rightful human colonists. (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

    Martians:

    Finally, we have these still-humanoid-but-just-barely Martians encountered by junior space traveller Mitey Powers. These guys made me really excited when I saw them, as they represent a specific vision of what life on Mars might have looked like but which I frustratingly cannot find an image of due to the state of online image searching right now. 

    Essentially, this Martian represents a speculative evolution of humanity as it would look it it evolved on Mars, with huge lungs and ears thanks to the thin atmosphere, spindly limbs due to lower gravity, big flat feet to navigate the loose sandy surface, etc (one of the reasons I wanted to find another example of this is that there are justifications for the trunk and telescopic eyes but I can’t remember them). Very exciting to see these guys walking around and having a society rather than just standing around as an example of their anatomy.

    Speaking of their society, here are a couple of bonus tidbits: these Martians learn in their sleep (but must sleep sitting up due to their bulbous upper torsos) and play Blitzball from Final Fantasy X. (Superworld Comics 002, 1940) 

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 050

    ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 050

    All these fictional aliens and we don’t even get one other inhabited planet in our solar system.

    Moon-Men:

    These Moon-Men are encountered by Phantasmo (seen here in his less-nude human identity) and his pal Whizzer McGee during an impromptu trip to the Moon. They live deep beneath the satellite’s surface and appear to have a mining-based culture that is pretty hostile to outsiders, and that is all we know. While I must commend the “Phantasmo” team for not automatically making every alien race fluent English speakers or gifted telepaths, it does make for a more limited mode of storytelling. “Why are the Moon-Men mad at us, Phantasmo?” “No idea.” (The Funnies 060, 1941)

    Inhabitants of Ru:

    These very humanoid Martians are encountered by Flint Baker and his convict crew upon making the historic first second rocket voyage to Mars. They very specifically inhabit Ru, which is either the name of their country or the entire Light Side of Mars, and are a peaceful society in that sci-fi way that means that they are completely unable to deal with threats. Flint is thus required to save them from both the Earthman Sarko (late of the actual first manned mission to Mars) and then the diabolical Creature and his monster. (Planet Comics 001, 1940)

    One-Eyed Monster Men of Mars: 

    And speaking of Sarko, his plan to conquer Ru revolves around the One-Eyed Monster Men who inhabit the (non-existent) Dark Side of Mars. Though they are intensely fun-looking creatures, the One-Eyed Monster Men don’t get a lot of character development in the course of the story due to being mere foot soldiers and also possibly mind controlled.  (Planet Comics 001, 1940)

    Martians:

    As the “Spurt Hammond, Planet Flyer” series is at least initially set in the year 40 000 CE, there is a strong possibility that both the Martian and Venusian peoples pictured above are descended from some long-ago human colonists. Heck, that might just be the best backstory to explain a planet of warlike Martians or of peaceful Venusians who name their kids things like “Amoura:” because they have built their societies around the cultural assumptions and legends that tie into their planets. (Planet Comics 002, 1940)

    Despite the fact that Spurt Hammond managed to resolve the conflict between Prince Khangiz of Mars and Queen Amoura, Venus was clearly subject to some sort of political upheaval because just four issues later the planet is ruled by Queen Veloptan. Perhaps Amoura was determined to be just a bit to on-the-nose, even for Venus. (Planet Comics 006, 1940)

    Venus is another one of those conflict-averse pacifist societies, and just two issues later they are turning to Spurt Hammond once more. This time the entire planet is swiftly becoming uninhabitable and the population are forced to become refugees, prompting this array of Plutonian, Saturnian and Jovian rulers doing their best impressions of WWII 20th Century most world leaders throughout modern history. And as a bonus: a new Martian leader named Kaga! (Planet Comics 008, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 031

    ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 031

    Great value for your alien and so forth dollar today: seven for the price of four!

    the Nameless Ones: 

    “The Bingham Boys” was a short-lived feature about twin brothers Billy and Bobby Bingham and their dipshit friend Specs inserting themselves into the life of adventurer Dusty Travis. I their first appearance, the trio tag along on what turns out to be a flight to Mato Grosso, Brazil to search for a clue to the fate of lost Atlantis, for some reason.

    Dusty’s plane crashes thanks to Specs just randomly pushing buttons (I didn’t call him a dipshit for no reason) and the group are quickly set upon and captured by a group of morphologicaly-diverse beings called the Nameless Ones. In a tremendous display of both good and bad luck, the Nameless Ones’ leader – called the Oligarch – confirms that they are the descendants of Atlantis that the four are seeking, but also indicates that they will immediately be sacrificed.

    The Bingham Boys et al cannot be contained by a bunch of scaly weirdos, of course, and once they fight their way free it is time to learn the connection between Atlantis and this extremely inland city, right? WRONG, SUCKA. The Oligarch of the Nameless Ones is extremely serious about the “secret” part of “the secret of the Nameless Ones and Atlantis” and blows up the city rather than giving either Dusty Travis or the reader any kind of satisfaction. (Silver Streak Comics 015, 1941)

    Goors:

    Diver Kinks Mason is testing out a new diving apparatus when a rogue current drags him into an underwater cavern willed with the wreckage of lost ships. There, he encounters two battling groups of aquatic humanoids: the fish-eyed Goors and the conventionally-attractive Proconos.

    Kinks throws in with the Proconos due to the one-two punch of them being led by a hot lady and then telling him that the Goors are evil slavers. We can only hope that they were telling the truth because he proceeds to lead them in an attack that wipes the Goor city off the sub-oceanic map. Using war beasts that look like a cross between a plesiosaur and a duck, to boot! (Fight Comics 001, 1940)

    Grangonians: 

    Space adventurer Flint Baker and his reporter pal Mimi Wilson are noodling around in space one day when they happen upon an old worn-out planet full of immortal old people. These are not the Grangonians but a completely and annoyingly unnamed group. The Grangonians show up later, don’t worry.

    These old aliens have a problem: they discovered the secret to immortality too late and now they are trapped on an old planet. This reflects a kind of… folk belief?… that you get in old science fiction and especially in old science fiction comics, that planets have a sort of life cycle that starts out all swampy and primitive and covered in dinosaurs and ends in dusty ruins. If you’ve encountered this at all it’s probably in the notion of Venus being a younger and thus wetter planet than Earth that continues to crop up in comics into at least the early Sixties.

     

    Flint and Mimi transport the old aliens to a newly-discovered solar system full of young, vibrant planets, and sure enough they become young aliens as soon as they step foot on the surface of their new home. This is when the Grangonians come in, as their planet (Grango, natch) has been hit by a meteor and they also want to relocate to Planet Dinosaur. Though the Grangonians have more in the way of overt firepower, a combination of dinosaur attacks, old alien technology and Flint Baker’s heroic antics eventually drives them off.

    Both the Grangonians and the old aliens are essentially just regular humans, and while the notion that intelligent life basically looks the same wherever it evolves isn’t exclusive to the “planetary ages” style of sci-fi, it does usually go hand-in-hand with it – just as planets have a life-cycle, so too does the life on them emerge in predictable forms. (Planet Comics 005, 1940)

    Timid Giants:

    The Timid Giants are very appropriately found on the Planet of Timid Giants, where they just kind of keep to themselves. The planet very briefly sees some drama as a group of space explorers are terrified by the Giants’ size, but some light bullying by the Red Comet is sufficient to demonstrate how harmless the aliens are.

    The real threat on the planet are the Stickers, ant-sized aliens who live to torment the Giants and are all too happy to move on to human targets, including a shrunken Red Comet. The Stickers suck. I hate them and their weird cartoon baby faces.

    It turns out that the one thing that can spur the Timid Giants into action is a threat to the life of another, and so one of them eats the Stickers to save the Red Comet. This results in a sequence in which the Comet in turn has to fly his shrunken spaceship inside the giant to save him from being stuck internally, after which he fumigates the entire planet, and while I must still morally be against murdering an entire intelligent species by god do the Stickers make it hard. (Planet Comics 007, 1940) 

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 022

    Top-quality aliens, fresh-baked! 

    Unnamed Species:

    This unnamed species has that most delightful and implausible of features, an organic wheel that they use to locomote around! Other than that they’re your typical underground dwelling species: they live far enough under the surface or have an extensive enough range that one can enter their kingdom in the Himalayas and exit in Iran; they have a captured surface woman named Rina as their queen but the real power lies with “He”, who is four or five times bigger than the rest of his species; and they are very sensitive to sound. Regular stuff. 

    Those wheels though! (Wonderworld Comics 011, 1940)

    Earth-Men: 

    The Earth-Men are the fellows who worship the ancestor-god Sakka, as detailed in a Divine Round-Up a couple of months back. They’re little bug-eyed guys with a high incidence of male-pattern baldness and a hostile attitude until adventurer Rocky Ryan kind of accidentally convinces them that he is the reincarnation of Sakka. 

    In the peaceful times that follow, Ryan’s companion Professor Ames is able to explore the Earth-Man city and make some frankly astounding discoveries, including the facts that 

    1: There used to be a land mass spanning the Pacific between South America and Asia 

    2. At the time, Earth had 2 moons, one of which then exploded

    3. The force of the exploding moon sank the Pacific continent

    4. The Earth-Men are the remnants of that Pacific civilization, and their shrunken stature and big ol’ eyes are a result of living in a dense jungle, somehow.

    It’s a real upending of everything that we thought we knew about the history of the Earth, plus now Ames has enough material for a book. Publish or perish, huzzah! (Big Shot Comics 014, 1941)

    Mercurians (Three Types):  

    Space Adventurer Flint Baker and his companion Mimi make their way to the planet Mercury, where he finds a city strewn with humanoid corpses. Eventually, they find a single survivor, who reveals that he is the last of the Western Hemisphere Mercurians, the rest having been wiped out by…

    … the Eastern Hemisphere Mercurians, a rowdy bunch of cave-man types who storm in and kidnap Mimi before Flint can do anything to prevent it. Through a series of battles, he recovers Mimi and seemingly wipes out the Eastern Mercurians in turn. Mercury is now an uninhabited planet.

    But not for long, because Flint then uses the atomic conversion pistol gifted to him by the last of the Western Mercurians to make a whole new batch of hot Mercurians out of some nearby flowers and install them in the now-deserted city. (Planet Comics 006, 1940)

    Erostians: 

    After space vigilante Cosmic Carson’s men shoot down a pirate ship over planetoid Eros, both they and the pirates’ victims come under attack by the green, caveman-like Erostians, who carry off as many women as they can get their grubby green mitts on (bonus entry: these women are all Venusians).

    Cosmic Carson himself sets out to rescue the captives and ends up a prisoner himself, wherein he learns that the Erostians are not simply a species of humanoid aliens, but the former dominant species of Earth, thrown down and banished to Eros by some ancient scientist. Plus, they eat people, with a preference for pretty women. It’s actually a bit of a roller coaster, as the standard alien lust for human (or humanoid) women is explained by the fact that the Erostians are also human or at least homo but then their desire turns out not to be lust but gluttony and thus back in the realm of the inexplicable.

    Anyway, Cosmic Carson blasts most of them to smithereens. (Science Comics 005, 1940)

  • ALIENS AND SO FORTH ROUND-UP 022

    Top-quality aliens, fresh-baked! 

    Unnamed Species:

    This unnamed species has that most delightful and implausible of features, an organic wheel that they use to locomote around! Other than that they’re your typical underground dwelling species: they live far enough under the surface or have an extensive enough range that one can enter their kingdom in the Himalayas and exit in Iran; they have a captured surface woman named Rina as their queen but the real power lies with “He”, who is four or five times bigger than the rest of his species; and they are very sensitive to sound. Regular stuff. 

    Those wheels though! (Wonderworld Comics 011, 1940)

    Earth-Men: 

    The Earth-Men are the fellows who worship the ancestor-god Sakka, as detailed in a Divine Round-Up a couple of months back. They’re little bug-eyed guys with a high incidence of male-pattern baldness and a hostile attitude until adventurer Rocky Ryan kind of accidentally convinces them that he is the reincarnation of Sakka. 

    In the peaceful times that follow, Ryan’s companion Professor Ames is able to explore the Earth-Man city and make some frankly astounding discoveries, including the facts that 

    1: There used to be a land mass spanning the Pacific between South America and Asia 

    2. At the time, Earth had 2 moons, one of which then exploded

    3. The force of the exploding moon sank the Pacific continent

    4. The Earth-Men are the remnants of that Pacific civilization, and their shrunken stature and big ol’ eyes are a result of living in a dense jungle, somehow.

    It’s a real upending of everything that we thought we knew about the history of the Earth, plus now Ames has enough material for a book. Publish or perish, huzzah! (Big Shot Comics 014, 1941)

    Mercurians (Three Types):  

    Space Adventurer Flint Baker and his companion Mimi make their way to the planet Mercury, where he finds a city strewn with humanoid corpses. Eventually, they find a single survivor, who reveals that he is the last of the Western Hemisphere Mercurians, the rest having been wiped out by…

    … the Eastern Hemisphere Mercurians, a rowdy bunch of cave-man types who storm in and kidnap Mimi before Flint can do anything to prevent it. Through a series of battles, he recovers Mimi and seemingly wipes out the Eastern Mercurians in turn. Mercury is now an uninhabited planet.

    But not for long, because Flint then uses the atomic conversion pistol gifted to him by the last of the Western Mercurians to make a whole new batch of hot Mercurians out of some nearby flowers and install them in the now-deserted city. (Planet Comics 006, 1940)

    Erostians: 

    After space vigilante Cosmic Carson’s men shoot down a pirate ship over planetoid Eros, both they and the pirates’ victims come under attack by the green, caveman-like Erostians, who carry off as many women as they can get their grubby green mitts on (bonus entry: these women are all Venusians).

    Cosmic Carson himself sets out to rescue the captives and ends up a prisoner himself, wherein he learns that the Erostians are not simply a species of humanoid aliens, but the former dominant species of Earth, thrown down and banished to Eros by some ancient scientist. Plus, they eat people, with a preference for pretty women. It’s actually a bit of a roller coaster, as the standard alien lust for human (or humanoid) women is explained by the fact that the Erostians are also human or at least homo but then their desire turns out not to be lust but gluttony and thus back in the realm of the inexplicable.

    Anyway, Cosmic Carson blasts most of them to smithereens. (Science Comics 005, 1940)

  • 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 697: THE CREATURE

    (Planet Comics 002, 1940)

    Having defeated the evil Sarko, Flint Baker and his crew are ready to head home to accept their accolades as the as-fas-as-anyone-knows first humans to land on Mars, when word comes from Princess Viga that the city of Ru is facing yet another deadly threat. This time it’s a giant four-armed primate that attacks three times per year and hauls Martians away to an uncertain and terrifying fate. Will Flint Baker help them? Of course he will!

    It’s a daunting beast to be sure, and it compounds the danger by immediately grabbing Princess Vigo and Baker Expedition stowaway-turned-crewmember Mimi, but Flint proves the old adage true once more: no matter how big you are or how many arms you have, you’re not walking away from a rocket ship to the mouth.

    I suppose that the old saying was only partially accurate in this case, actually, because the monster does walk away from the scene, if only to die elsewhere. Baker and his crew must pursue on “rocket-propelled degravitation pods” (i.e., pogo sticks).

    Arriving at the monster’s location, Baker and his men find that it is indeed dead, but also that it was not some wild creature with a periodic appetite for Martians but the creation of a little green guy with a big head. The Creature! Which, yes, is almost certainly not what they call themself but “the creature” is basically the only thing that is used to identify them in the caption boxes so I’m going with it.

    Not only does the Creature reveal that they were the creator of the monster, but that the beast was in fact made out of the kidnapped Martians! And they’re making another one! Just how many Martians were being kidnapped, and for how long?

    (this is honestly a pretty great slow burn horror concept that was certainly out of the realm of 1940 comic book storytelling: people start disappearing, nobody knows how or where, and then after a couple of years someone sees a creature grabbing someone. And then every time it comes back, it’s a bit bigger or has another limb, etc. Ideally the reveal comes while the beast is still alive, via DNA sequencing or something like that)

    Honestly, the Creature is an amazing villain. A bombastic weirdo living in a cave and making a monster out of people? Terrific. But also, they are super strong and invulnerable to ray gun blasts that destroy everything around them. Who is this little creep and why are they living in a cave making monsters?

    Sadly, though the Creature might have been immune to ray gun technology they were still susceptible to a good old fashioned sock on the jaw. Flint and his compatriots leave the Creature behind to be blown up with the rest of the laboratory in the obligatory final explosion – a sad end for a terrific antagonist.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 697: THE CREATURE

    (Planet Comics 002, 1940)

    Having defeated the evil Sarko, Flint Baker and his crew are ready to head home to accept their accolades as the as-fas-as-anyone-knows first humans to land on Mars, when word comes from Princess Viga that the city of Ru is facing yet another deadly threat. This time it’s a giant four-armed primate that attacks three times per year and hauls Martians away to an uncertain and terrifying fate. Will Flint Baker help them? Of course he will!

    It’s a daunting beast to be sure, and it compounds the danger by immediately grabbing Princess Vigo and Baker Expedition stowaway-turned-crewmember Mimi, but Flint proves the old adage true once more: no matter how big you are or how many arms you have, you’re not walking away from a rocket ship to the mouth.

    I suppose that the old saying was only partially accurate in this case, actually, because the monster does walk away from the scene, if only to die elsewhere. Baker and his crew must pursue on “rocket-propelled degravitation pods” (i.e., pogo sticks).

    Arriving at the monster’s location, Baker and his men find that it is indeed dead, but also that it was not some wild creature with a periodic appetite for Martians but the creation of a little green guy with a big head. The Creature! Which, yes, is almost certainly not what they call themself but “the creature” is basically the only thing that is used to identify them in the caption boxes so I’m going with it.

    Not only does the Creature reveal that they were the creator of the monster, but that the beast was in fact made out of the kidnapped Martians! And they’re making another one! Just how many Martians were being kidnapped, and for how long?

    (this is honestly a pretty great slow burn horror concept that was certainly out of the realm of 1940 comic book storytelling: people start disappearing, nobody knows how or where, and then after a couple of years someone sees a creature grabbing someone. And then every time it comes back, it’s a bit bigger or has another limb, etc. Ideally the reveal comes while the beast is still alive, via DNA sequencing or something like that)

    Honestly, the Creature is an amazing villain. A bombastic weirdo living in a cave and making a monster out of people? Terrific. But also, they are super strong and invulnerable to ray gun blasts that destroy everything around them. Who is this little creep and why are they living in a cave making monsters?

    Sadly, though the Creature might have been immune to ray gun technology they were still susceptible to a good old fashioned sock on the jaw. Flint and his compatriots leave the Creature behind to be blown up with the rest of the laboratory in the obligatory final explosion – a sad end for a terrific antagonist.

  • MINOR SUPER-VILLAIN 694: SARKO

    (Planet Comics 001, 1940)

    We’re in the 1940 run of Planet Comics now, so look out for a fair few of space tyrants with one-word nonsense names. Like Sarko here! Sarko is an Earth man who came to Mars in 1933 and set about conquering the dark side of the planet. Now it’s the near future and Sarko has his sights set on taking over the remainder of Mars and the light-side city of Ru in particular. 

    The… Ruvians? No demonym is provided. The Ruvians aren’t really up to the task of defending their domed city from Sarko and his army of One-Eyed Monster Men, but lucky for them intrepid space explorer Flint Baker and his crew of condemned murderers (plus New York Globe reporter and stowaway Mimi Wilson) have arrived just in time to help out.

    In an even greater coincidence, crewman Cliff Grant recognizes Sarko! It turns out that he was in jail for a series of murders committed while under the mental control of a man named Sappo and that Sappo is in fact the same guy! It’s a heckuva thing folks, but that’s comics for you.

    Grant almost gets his revenge, too, but doesn’t quite stick the landing. Sarko manages to kill Grant but is then taken down by another member of Baker’s crew. Mars and Ru are saved!

    BONUS: finding a crashed spaceship from decades earlier is an objectively very funny thing to happen to someone who was just crowing about being the first human on Mars.

    Heck! I almost forgot to show the One-Eyed Monster Men of Mars! Well, here one is.